March 10th, 2008
Open XML takes another step forward
Looks like Microsoft’s OOXML is continuing its march towards approval. Doug Mahugh of Microsoft posted Friday that:
“I and the other members of the US delegation to the BRM … are recommending that the US maintain its Approve position on DIS 29500. The next step will be for the INCITS Executive Board to conduct a letter ballot to approve this result.
Ars Technica explains the process:
The recent US decision is of course only one of many and, unfortunately for Microsoft, it isn’t enough to tip the scale. By the end of the ongoing ISO meeting in Geneva, two-thirds of the countries participating in the decision will need to vote “yes” in order for the format to gain standardization approval.
News.com cited Patrick Durusau, chairman of the committee and editor of the rival OpenDocument standard, said opposition to Open XML is based on spite.
“What is puzzling in this day and age of quarterly reports and returns is that any corporate-governance structure would long tolerate spite as a business strategy. Or that investors would stay with companies that follow such strategies,” Durusau wrote Friday (PDF).
Opposition was in evidence on Mahugh’s blog, where Conrad Mazian wrote:
Methinks that the USA has made a mistake on this issue. I’ve been involved with standard in the past with Underwriters Laboratories, Industrial Truck Standards Development Foundation, and ISO. The rule is that when there are serious problems with a standard, you bounce it back. And there are serious problems with this standard. References to things that are not in the standard (or in any other standard) are probably the biggest issue, but there are others.
