[LINK] America likely to maintain 'yes' vote for OOXML

[stephen at melbpc.org.au]

Has Australia got our ISO voting mechanisms up-to-speed now?

--
Update: America likely to maintain 'yes' vote for OOXML in ISO. 
Standing by the Microsoft proposal

<http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&ar
ticleId=9067338>

March 7, 2008 (Computerworld) An esoteric-but-key technical committee will
recommend that the U.S. maintain its support for making Microsoft Corp.'s
Office Open XML document format an ISO-certified open standard, despite
controversy at a meeting last week discussing fixes to the proposed
specification. 

The V1 Technical Committee <http://v1.incits.org/> advises the U.S. tech
standards body, the InterNational Committee for Information Technology 
Standards (INCITS), <http://www.incits.org/> on text processing standards. 

It is made up of employees from 22 companies and governmental
organizations, including Microsoft and its competitors, such as Oracle
Corp., Sun Microsystems Inc., and IBM Corp. 

As the American delegate to ISO, INCITS had supported OOXML's failed
ratification last September.

OOXML got a majority of votes at the time, but not enough to pass.

According to a Friday blog post by Microsoft employee Doug Mahugh, V1
voted to recommend that INCITS maintain its Approve position on DIS 29500,
the name for the OOXML proposal. 

<http://blogs.msdn.com/dmahugh/archive/2008/03/07/us-v1-technical-
committee-votes-to-recommend-approval-of-dis-29500.aspx>

Mahugh is Microsoft's representative in V1. The news was confirmed by by
Patrick Durusau, the V1 chairman, who wrote in an e-mail that the vote was
17 'Yes', 4 'No', zero abstentions, and 1 absent. 

Durusau wrote that with the more than two-thirds consensus among V1
members in favor of passing Open XML, it would be unlikely that INCITS
would override its recommendation and change its vote now. 

"Doesn't mean that it hasn't happened but I suspect it would be pretty
rare," he wrote. 

At last week's Ballot Resolution Meeting (BRM), an ISO committee met to
approve more than 1,100 changes made to the OOXML spec in response to
feedback from ISO members after last September. 

A vote was taken during the BRM to approve or disapprove more than 900
minor changes, in order to make time to discuss more important ones. Also,
'O' Observer countries were allowed to vote. 

Some critics had alleged that those changes to the established ISO
protocol were significant and invalidated the outcome of the BRM, which
was to have approved the changes. 

That paves the way for a re-vote by ISO member nations, who must denote 
whether they plan to change or maintain their positions by March 29. 

Before then, and without meeting again, the INCITS Executive Board will
vote by letter ballot to approve or disapprove V1's recommendation. 

The Executive Board is made up of 19 vendors and government groups,
including Microsoft. It also includes natural Open XML foes such as Adobe
Systems Inc., whose PDF format is an open standard, as well as Sun and
IBM, who both strongly support the competing OpenDocument Format (ODF). 

Despite that, the Executive Board voted for OOXML's approval in ISO last
September. 

That was despite V1 not recommending it. 

Durusau, who also happens to be an editor paid by Sun to oversee ODF,
recently changed his mind and now publicly supports OOXML's ratification.

"As the OpenDocument editor, I think OpenDocument benefits from having a
publicly debated format that MS Office software uses," Durusau wrote in
his blog after the V1 vote. 

"I would prefer that it be OpenDocument but recognize that in a non-clone
culture that opinions differ." 
--



Message sent using MelbPC WebMail Server