"With the polls now closed and the early results in (some public, some not), think it's time to predict with assurance that ISO will announce tomorrow that ISO/IEC DIS 29500, the draft specification based upon Microsoft’s Office Open XML formats, has failed to achieve enough yes votes to gain approval at this time..."

Standards Australia has cast a vote to abstain from the ISO/IEC JTC1 ballot to adopt the DIS 29500 Office Open XML format draft standard as an International Standard. The decision to cast an abstain vote from the current ballot follows months of consultation and a clear lack of consensus in Australia on this issue by stakeholders.

In the U.S. vote for Open XML this week, IBM strongly argued against approval of Open XML, and Oracle joined IBM in voting against it. Voting in favor of the Open XML format were Hewlett-Packard, EMC, Intel, Sony Electronics, Lexmark International, and Apple, as well as the Defense Department, Homeland Security, and NIST.

THERE'S MORE news about countries' ISO votes on Microsoft's proposed OOXML document formats ahead of today's deadline for votes to be submitted

This Sunday, September 2, is the deadline for votes from 150 or so national bodies on whether the ECMA standard based on Microsoft Office Open XML formats should be approved by ISO.

It was, for me, a fascinating study of short-term versus long-term as I watched the proceedings surrounding the standardization process of Microsoft's Open XML document format unfold this week. But then, I am easily fascinated.

The ISO "fast track" vote on approval of Microsoft's OOXML document specification happens next Monday (2 Sep.), and news is breaking fast and furious as various countries report out early.