The OOXML-ISO Kindergarten

There is still no U.S. position on the adoption of Microsofts Office Open XML as an ISO standard. But there are, again, some interesting things happening, as Andy Updegrove reports:

Following the report by V1 that it had failed to achieve consensus, Microsoft requested a place on the agenda at the Executive Board meeting held in California on July 18 – 20, in order to make a short presentation on the V1 events. That presentation occurred on Thursday of last week. However, after giving the brief overview, the Microsoft representative made a motion not provided for on the agenda (which was immediately seconded by the Apple representative) that the Executive Board consider a written ballot of „Approval with Comments,” with the comments in question being the 96 issues that the V1 members had succeeded in agreeing upon before ending their deliberations. That would have meant that some 400 additional comments (the more difficult ones upon which consensus had not been reached) that V1 had received from various sources would not have been submitted to ISO/IEC JTC1 if the ballot passed.
 
This motion was defeated, but the Executive Board did agree to issue a written ballot of Approval that would, if adopted, be accompanied by all 498 comments.

Me, I hope his analysis holds true:

What will happen next remains to be seen, but it has become increasingly clear in the United States as well as elsewhere around the world that the sheer length of the OOXML specification and the speed with which it has been pushed through the process by Microsoft may be working against its sponsor. Many National Body members that do not have an axe to grind on either side of the competitive landscape are simply troubled by the number of technical issues that they believe must be addressed in order to responsibly vote to approve OOXML.

Tagged as: microsoft, office, OOXML, specification, xml | Author: Martin Leyrer
[Dienstag, 20070724, 21:26 | permanent link | 0 Kommentar(e)