Apache OpenOffice Community Forum

On 2 September 2007, ISO national bodies voted on Ecma 376, "OOXML". The ISO secretariat has decided to move forward with a Ballot Resolution Meeting in February 2008 to make the final decision.

Microsoft got to pass with 19 "difficulties" round one (fast-track OOXML) and lost round two (vote on OOXML), and now the fight moves to round three, the definitive one.

From February 25 to 29, 2008, national boards will meet in Geneva to discuss OOXML. The final vote is scheduled for end-March 2007, 30 days after the BRM. All countries that voted in the September ballot will be eligible to vote in March.

On March, 29th. Groklaw wrote:OOXML Vote: Irregularities in Germany & Croatia and a Call for an Investigation of Norway

If Microsoft gets this OOXML format "approved", it will be by irregularities in the voting, it seems. Here's more on what happened in Germany and a report on what is being called a scandal in Norway. And another odd process in Croatia.

(...) when they went to vote, they [German members] were not allowed to vote disapprove, so the choice was to approve or to abstain. It was a tie, 6:6, which means no consensus. So under the rules I've read, that would have meant that they should send a vote of Abstain.

But surprise, surprise!! A solution helpful to Microsoft: the representative from DIN decided to cast a vote, which isn't the process.

Norway's at least as bad. (...) The article says there should be an investigation of the irregularities there, because while there were only two votes to approve, from Microsoft and a business partner, Statoilhydro, and all the others voted no, 21 votes, they approved anyway. Here's how they shuffled the deck in Norway. So they put everyone out of the room, and Standards Norway, three people were left in the room, and they usurped the decision and made it their business to decide to approve anyway.

(...)

Here's an account regarding Croatia from the oddparity blog. They voted Yes with comments in September. When they wanted to vote again after the BRM, Microsoft refused to participate, claiming no revote after the BRM was mandatory. The result was overwhelming rejection, 14 to 3, but one vote short of being able to overturn their September Yes vote, if you calculate that not enough votes were cast, which is the claim. There are 35 members, but only 17 showed up to vote. One thought, according to the account, is that some didn't show up, thinking the vote was not supposed to happen, thanks to Microsoft. So Croatia stays, kicking and screaming or wondering how did it happen, in the Approve column, despite clearly wishing not to be there

(...)

Why OOo 3.0 should be delivered with OOXML by default?

Villeroy wrote:it will be the most requested file format.

Villeroy wrote:I will uninstall OOo as soon as 1900 is a leap year.

suguruhirahara wrote:And is there no way to integrate them, keeping a new one absolute open?

Miguel de Icaza wrote:OOXML is a superb standard and yet, it has been
FUDed so badly by its competitors that serious people believe that
there is something fundamentally wrong with it. This is at a time when
OOXML as a spec is in much better shape than any other spec on that
space.

Miguel de Icaza wrote:OOXML is a superb standard and yet, it has been
FUDed[*][/b] so badly by its competitors that serious people believe that
there is something fundamentally wrong with it. This is at a time when
OOXML as a spec is in much better shape than any other spec on that
space.

On April 21, 2008, Peter Judge from CNET News.com wrote:Office 2007 fails OOXML conformance test

Word documents generated by today's version of Microsoft Office 2007 do not conform to the Office Open XML standard under development by the International Organization for Standardization, according to tests run by a document standards specialist.

(...)

Commentators, including Tim Bray, the inventor of XML, have suggested that Microsoft is unlikely to bother to keep conformant with the OOXML standard as it develops within ISO, but Brown was more optimistic.

...

Hagar de l'Est wrote:Less than 3 weeks after the OOXML certification, MS Office is already not compliant with its own format

On May 21, 2008, David Worthington from SDTimes wrote:Office 2007 won't support ISO's OOXML

(...) the company is not quick to embrace its own creation. Mahugh stated that Microsoft would not implement the final ISO version of OOXML until Office 14 ships at an unstated date in the future. This variant of OOXML was designated ISO/IEC 29500 at the time it was certified as an ISO International standard in April.

(...)

ODF support was a priority for Microsoft, Mahugh noted, adding that “real world” customers say that there is a pressing need for PDF support. “At this point there are no products using [ISO/IEC 29500] in the marketplace.”

...

Villeroy wrote:This seems to become a roll-back movement.

ODF (Open Document Format) has benefited from the two-year battle over the ratification of Microsoft's rival OOXML (Open Office XML) standard, which is native to its Office 2007 suite, Microsoft's national technology officer said Thursday during a panel discussion at the Red Hat Summit in Boston.
"ODF has clearly won," said Stuart McKee, referring to Microsoft's recent announcement that it would begin natively supporting ODF in Office next year and join the technical committee overseeing the next version of the format.