Votes from South-eastern Europe and former Yugoslavia countries showed Microsoft's domination of that market, and especially good connections with authorities because most of the national standardization bodies voted "Yes with no comments". Just how did Microsoft get OOXML support in Eastern Europe? More corruption?

Is it time to standardize ISO? In light of the recent events relating to the standardization process of EOOXML, it seems appropriate to look into possible standardization of the process itself.

While many of us have been preoccupied with the OOXML vote, the rest of the world has naturally been continuing to go about its business. One piece of business that took an interesting turn in the last few days is a ruling by a Federal Appellate Court in the United States that breaks new ground in protecting the integrity of the standard setting system.

Although the ISO process gives Malta the same voice as China, the reality is that national support for Microsoft formats is critical to the future of the MS-Office lock-in. We look at the figures behind the NO votes...

I submit though, that the job isn't over, but incomplete. The ISO seriously needs to look at fixing how Microsoft attempted to hijack the process to suit their own gain, and ignore the real purpose of International Standards.

The International Organization for Standardization has voted against a proposal to fast-track Microsoft's Office Open XML format as an international standard. Here's how the vote went: all 41 of the of the countries that had worked on the proposal participated in the vote. There were 17 "yes" votes, 15 "no" votes, and 9 abstentions.

Microsoft is telling it in their press release that 74% of all qualified votes approved: "The results show that 51 ISO members, representing 74 percent of all qualified votes, stated their support for ratification of Open XML." That is downright silly.

Technical Committee 182 decided on August 30th to accept Microsoft format Office Open XML as an ISO standard. Another committee already voted against OOXML last week, but the KT 182 decision is the final vote of Poland sent to ISO on August 31th.