[LINK] Standards Australia defends its decision to abstain from OOXML vote

[Glen Turner]

On Thu, 2007-09-13 at 09:11 +1000, Howard Lowndes wrote:
> http://www.linuxworld.com.au/index.php?id=1462384209&rid=-50
> 
> "Standards Australia has defended it's decision to abstain from the ISO 
> (International Organisation for Standardization) and IEC (International 
> Electrotechnical Commission) ballot to approve Microsoft's Office Open 
> XML format as an international standard, saying Australia still has a 
> chance to approve or disapprove the vote."
> [...]


Interesting. Standards Australia say an Abstain due to a lack
of consensus was "responsible".  Are Standards Australia implying
that the decision of Standards NZ was irresponsible?

SNZ -- which was faced with the same situation as SA -- voted No with
Comments so that the submitted comments would need to be addressed
before DIS 29950 moved further towards approval.

SA are also too cute.  They do have a chance at the end of the
Ballot Resolution Meeting to vote Approve or Disapprove.  But
the Abstain vote means that they have no standing to raise or
otherwise address the issues at that meeting.

This should be compared with the position of SNZ, which has submitted
a list of Comments, has standard to discuss those Comments with
the purpose of resolving them, and also can vote in the final
vote at the end of the BRM.