So…Microsoft tried to buy the vote on the fast track approval of the ISO/IEC DIS 29500, aka the attempt at making OOXML (.docx) a standard.
And even with their warchest, they still got a No.
Vote closes on draft ISO/IEC DIS 29500 standard 2007-09-04 A ballot on whether to publish the draft standard ISO/IEC DIS 29500, Information technology – Office Open XML file formats, as an International Standard by ISO (International Organization for Standardization) and IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission) has not achieved the required number of votes for approval.
That comes form ISO itself :) You can read the whole ISO press release, as well as Microsoft’s spin on it (”Strong Global Support for Open XML as it Enters Final Phase of ISO Standards Process” is the title of their press release), trying to make it seem like a No is a good thing which implies strong support by the world.
And this is even after it tried to buy the vote of many national organizations, and after many MS supporting organizations made a mess of things in countries that seemed to be ready to vote No, like happened in Mexico (the unofficial vote count was 70 No votes and 50 Yes votes, but it ended up as an Abstention due to a lot of shenanigans that MS alies pulled during the voting meeting last Friday…and yes, I voted No).
Read the Groklaw piece about it, as well as the various articles about the crap MS and its legions tried to pull in different countries during this vote…it’s refreshing to know that even with all of that, ISO voted the right way.
Tags: groklaw, iec, iso, ISO29500, microsoft, ooxml, Tech
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