Unofficial document: Open XML passes ISO vote

Update: Microsoft has confirmed that Office Open XML has been ratified as an ISO standard. See updated information below.

A document that appears to be the voting record over a contentious ISO vote shows Office Open XML (OOXML) having enough support to pass as a standard.

The PDF document appeared on at least two Web sites Tuesday morning.

The results in the document show that Open XML received 75 percent approval from the "P-members" of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) committee and 10 negative votes, or 14 percent.

To become certified, Open XML needed at least two-thirds of the votes to be "yes" and not more than one-quarter to be "no."

ISO spokesperson Roger Frost on Tuesday said he could not confirm the results.

"We will be issuing our press release on Wednesday," Frost said.

The document correlates with an unofficial tally done by Open Malaysia and standards expert Andrew Updegrove on Sunday, a day after the voting on Open XML closed.

A Microsoft representative declined to comment on the appearance of the unofficial tally, saying that it will wait until an official statement from the ISO.

An international document standards advocacy group called the OpenDoc Society posted what appear to be the official voting record on a mailing list.

In a letter to OpenDoc Society members, board member Michiel Leenaars said the impact of OOXML standardization will have a minimal impact on the adoption of OpenDocument Format (ODF), another document standard favored by most open-source advocates.

OOXML which was submitted by Microsoft to ECMA, and by ECMA to ISO, has literally crawled through the needles eye. After a year of discussion and repairs it still receives the very minimum of support. The BRM (Ballot Resolution Meeting held in February) convinced some yet unconvinced others, and counter votes from large countries like China, India, Brazil, Canada, South Africa and Iran speak volumes. This must be one of the worst results ever for a standard to pass within ISO/JTC1 in years.

Norway on Monday lodged a formal protest over its Yes vote with an eye to reversing it. Standards Norway responded to the complaint to the ISO, saying that it voted for approval to influence future development.

It does not appear as if a change to Norway's vote would affect the overall result.

Update 8:15 a.m. Pacific: ZDNet has posted the document here, which is a Zip file of PDF.

Update 8:44 a.m. Pacific: Microsoft on Tuesday issued a press release confirming the information found in document posted by the OpenDoc Society. Microsoft said that after the end of voting, 86 percent of the 87 countries participating voted to approve Open XML as a standard.

"The input from technical experts, customers and governments around the world has greatly improved the Open XML specification and will make it even more useful to developers and customers. Once it is formally approved, we are committed to supporting this specification in our products, and we will continue to work with standards bodies, governments and the industry to promote greater interoperability and innovation," said Tom Robertson, Microsoft's general manager of standards and interoperability, in a statement.

[cmwendy]

OOXML Passes? Great News for Choice

This is great news for choice - now Armonk will have to create a better mousetrap, and the competition will continue, in earnest without a rigged deck.

Hope this reporter gets some re-acts from other than Andy Updegrove and the FLOSS crowd. They want to kill choice.

Not good.

[rthutchison]

Choice is good

let the market decide

[huttarl]

rigged deck?

Most of the rigging we've seen here has been in the OOXML ISO approval process. If we want "competition in earnest", let MS actually address the many comments (reflecting MANY serious flaws) in its spec, so that the standard can be honestly approved... instead of this "Sophie's choice" we heard about yesterday.

[fgoldstein]

Choice? What choice?

This is a farce, not a choice. There are precisely zero implementations of OOXML -- Office 2007 is not the same, since the BRM made changes. Yet it is written in a way that makes it literally impossible for any other vendor to get it right, if they were daft enough to try. And if they do it in a country that allows software patents, MS will sue the pants off of them, unless they make a license deal that is not open to the open source world.

BTW, cmwendy, which takes precedence, the text or the ZIP sample schemas? Different post-BRM sections of the text give opposite answers.

[Penguinisto]

So the choice = Patent Trap OOXML vs... ?

Not much of a "choice", since OOXML is a patent trap.

/P

[Commander_Spock]

Sad Day: "Unofficial document shows that Open XML passes ISO vote"

Remember (ETOL)(Engines Turn Or Lives Lost - Passenger Suffer...) Warp Engines Turn (ISO Standards Function) Or Users Suffer (Looses Data). :-( !

[Gzillasam]

JaButttttt by the OpenDoc Society

Subversives strike again.

"An international document standards advocacy group called the OpenDoc Society posted what appear to be the official voting record on a mailing list."

[epr_epr]

finally, things are back to normal.

look back at history,

ms office became the de facto word processer after defeating wordperfect/lotus.....

the defeated, instead of going away, hid in the caves of deep mountains, crying, cursing, for revenge....

they invented::::: ODF
and made it 'a' standard.

funny thing is , this standard has no consideration but only traps for a world wide accepted app: ms office.

the fight went on..... and eventually, the defeated, once again, got defeated.

and the world is back to peace.

but, don't get close to the caves, queer creatures are not going away...

you will see them posting soon for unjustice and revenge......

hahahaha

[Commander_Spock]

Talking About Hypocrisy....

"look back at history, ms office became the de facto word processer after defeating wordperfect/lotus..... the defeated, instead of going away, hid in the caves of deep mountains, crying, cursing, for revenge.... they invented::::: ODF and made it 'a' standard. funny thing is , this standard has no consideration but only traps for a world wide accepted app: ms office. the fight went on..... and eventually, the defeated, once again, got defeated. and the world is back to peace. but, don't get close to the caves, queer creatures are not going away... you will see them posting soon for unjustice and revenge......" (Not going to bother with the spelling) But, every one else (except "epr_epr" it appear) know that in any military conflict one can always expect a "counter-offensive" and "caves of deep mountains" provide safe sanctuaries (and, some Arab dude called Ben something and the U.S. Military know this except "epr_epr") Let the world wait and see who gets the last laugh. ("hahahaha") :-( !

[huttarl]

appeared Wednesday morning?

"The PDF document appeared on at least two Web sites Wednesday morning."
Wait a minute... it's still Tuesday morning here in CDT zone. Does CNET have a time machine? or is this an April Fool's joke?

[mlamonica]

correct, it is Tuesday

The reference to the document appearing Wednesday has been corrected to Tuesday, today. No joke.

[Commander_Spock]

BEAM US UP SCOTTY!

"Unofficial document shows that Open XML passes ISO vote..." ??? Let us wait and see how "EXCEL" (with It's "ERR" ACHILLES HEEL) walks into this meeting:

"Government and Business Leaders to attend IDB Group Annual Meeting in Miami, April 4?8"

"Microsoft's Bill Gates and IDB President Moreno will hold special session"

"The IDB is the world?s largest regional development bank and the leading source of multilateral financing for Latin America and the Caribbean. In 2007 the IDB Group approved new operations totaling more than $9.6 billion".

http://www.iadb.org/NEWS/articledetail.cfm?artid=4477&language=En

If "EXCEL" does not walk with a "limp" then and only then it will appear that "The Fat Lady Has Sung" :-$ !

[The_Decider]

The ISO is no longer a credible standards organization

I hope it was worth it.

What a sad and pathetic day for standards.

[Vegaman_Dan]

ISO standards have long since failed to be 'standard'

It's a set of guidelines- you don't have to follow them. Nobody is forcing you to follow those guidelines.

If you want to claim it's ISO compliant, then that's one thing. If you don't like it, then don't use it. Use your own flavor.

ISO's are largely a laughing stock in many areas of industry. I don't see why computer formats should be anything different.

It's a free market.

[CredulousDolt]

All Your XML Are Belong to Us

Now, children, none of these companies is in business to make the world a shiny, happy place; they're in business to make money.

Neither MS nor the ODF crowd is particularly concerned with "choice," nor should they be: they should be much more concerned with wide-spread adoption of their respective formats and the ensuing flow of shekels, dinars, piasters, drachmas, yen, yuan, and, of course, dollars--even the relatively worthless American kind.

Each camp would *like* for you to argue abstractions: sustained consideration of concrete facts will only gum up the works.

[bedo39]

sad sad day !

to approve a specifications that's not complete to become a standard is beyond me.

I guess money can buy love after all.