Now this is becoming interesting, or perhaps just very unfortunate: The countries appealing against the ISO procedure on the OOXML standardization have signed and sent a letter of protest to the ISO.

I've been puzzling over something in the ISO press release announcing that the four appeals against OOXML as an ISO standard, from Brazil, India, South Africa and Venezuela, would go no further. In the press release, it said this:According to the ISO/IEC rules, DIS 29500 can now proceed to publication as an ISO/IEC International Standard.

Another possible case of division using lawyers and vendor pressure

The convenor of the OOXML BRM pretends the appeals against his BRM don't count

Thanks to Groklaw's Steve Martin, we have Brazil's appeal against the approval of OOXML as an ISO standard, as text. It begins on page 11 of the ISO document [PDF] Groklaw published Wednesday, the recommendation memo to the TMB to toss the four appeals in the garbage. The memo lists Alan Bryden, Secretary-General and CEO, ISO, and Aharon Amit, General Secretary and CEO, IEC, as the authors.

The fight against the adoption of OOXML as an ISO standard is continuing in many countries. In the UK the UK Unix & Open Systems User Group (UKUUG) unsuccessfully, sought a judicial review of the British Standards Institute’s decision to vote yes. UKUUG are now seeking to appeal against that rejection of a review and you can help them.

Had Microsoft played by the rules like a gentleman, then we would only say that OOXML is deeply flawed (which it is), not a deeply-rooted fraud. Some folks are determined to bring justice, but in a world of intellectual insanity and lawyers, justice is expensive whereas corruption comes cheap.

As the ISO announced, the planned ISO/IEC DIS 29500 cannot be published until these complaints have been heard. Procedure requires that they be dealt with by the end of June, when the ISO and IEC have to hand over their comments on the complaints to two management committees for a final decision.