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OOXML is Approved [retitled]

4/01/2008
Categories: OpenDocument and OOXML

Updated:  1. I have now received confirmation from a second source that these results are accurate. 2. Microsoft has issued a press release announcing that OOXML "Appears to Win Approval" (text below) 3. (1:00 PM EDT) I have now received a copy of the ISO communication from a National Body source entitled to receive it, and can confirm the data below. Open Malaysia has posted a final update of their vote registry, based upon an email from the OpenDoc Society to which is attached what they say are the final numbers on the OOXML vote.  The document looks authentic, and I should have an independent verification some time this morning. The summary in the document reads as follows:

        Result of voting

P-Members voting: 24 in favour out of 32 = 75 % (requirement >= 66.66%)

(P-Members having abstained are not counted in this vote.)

Member bodies voting: 10 negative votes out of 71 = 14 % (requirement <= 25%)

Approved

The changes in votes that were not previously recorded here and at Open Malaysia were as follows:

A.   Principal Countries

Gains:

No to Yes:    Japan

Abstain to Yes:  Slovenia,  Trinidad & Tobago

Losses:

Yes to No:  Turkey

Net change, new additions: 2

B.  Observer and Other Countries

Gains:

No to Yes: Phillipines, Thailand

Abstain to Yes: Israel, Mauritius ,Mexico, Peru

Losses:

Yes to Abstain:  Russian Federation, Sri Lanka,

Net change, new additions:  4

 

Note that the above totals include Norway in the approval  column.  However, including that single vote would not affect the final result.


Updated:  Microsoft has now posted a public statement at its Web site acknowledging the approval of OOXML.  That press release reads in part as follows; the full text (minus the standard end material) is pasted in below for archival purposes (the references to “publicly available documents” presumably refer to the information at this blog and Open Malaysia):

While the final vote has not yet been announced formally, publicly available information appears to indicate the proposed Open XML standard received extremely broad support. According to documents available on the Internet, 86 percent of all voting national body members support ISO/IEC standardization, well above the 75 percent requirement for formal acceptance under ISO and IEC rules. In addition, 75 percent of the voting Participating national body members (known as P-members) support standardization, also well above the 66.7 percent requirement for this group. Open XML now joins HTML, PDF and ODF as ISO- and IEC-recognized open document format standards.

“With 86 percent of voting national bodies supporting ratification, there is overwhelming support for Open XML. This outcome is a clear win for the customers, technology providers and governments that want to choose the format that best meets their needs and have a voice in the evolution of this widely adopted standard,” said Tom Robertson, general manager of Interoperability and Standards at Microsoft Corp. “The input from technical experts, customers and governments around the world has greatly improved the Open XML specification and will make it even more useful to developers and customers. Once it is formally approved, we are committed to supporting this specification in our products, and we will continue to work with standards bodies, governments and the industry to promote greater interoperability and innovation.”


[End of update]

And so this particular chapter in the story ends, as regards the official schedule.  Now the reaction will set in to the manner in which the process was conducted.  I expect that this chapter will be long and messy, but hopefully ultimately productive.  Clearly some changes need to be made in how the process works, so that the next time such an important and commercially strategic standard is processed, the process works better than this.

Press Release text:

Ecma Office Open XML Document Format Appears to Win Approval as an ISO/IEC Standard
Final vote appears overwhelmingly in favor; input from 87 national bodies contributed to an improved specification.

REDMOND, Wash. — April 1, 2008 — After more than 14 months of intensive review, a Joint Technical Committee of the International Standardization Organization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) has concluded its formal process to evaluate Ecma International’s submission of the Draft International Standard (DIS) 29500: Office Open XML (Open XML).

While the final vote has not yet been announced formally, publicly available information appears to indicate the proposed Open XML standard received extremely broad support. According to documents available on the Internet, 86 percent of all voting national body members support ISO/IEC standardization, well above the 75 percent requirement for formal acceptance under ISO and IEC rules. In addition, 75 percent of the voting Participating national body members (known as P-members) support standardization, also well above the 66.7 percent requirement for this group. Open XML now joins HTML, PDF and ODF as ISO- and IEC-recognized open document format standards.

“With 86 percent of voting national bodies supporting ratification, there is overwhelming support for Open XML. This outcome is a clear win for the customers, technology providers and governments that want to choose the format that best meets their needs and have a voice in the evolution of this widely adopted standard,” said Tom Robertson, general manager of Interoperability and Standards at Microsoft Corp. “The input from technical experts, customers and governments around the world has greatly improved the Open XML specification and will make it even more useful to developers and customers. Once it is formally approved, we are committed to supporting this specification in our products, and we will continue to work with standards bodies, governments and the industry to promote greater interoperability and innovation.”

The open standard has gained broad adoption across the software industry for use on a variety of platforms — including Linux, Windows, Mac OS and Palm OS. Hundreds of independent software vendors and platform providers around the world — such as Apple Inc., Corel Corp., Sun Microsystems Inc., Microsoft and Novell Inc. — are developing solutions using Open XML that offer real value for IT users around the globe. Independent research has concluded that use of Open XML is likely to expand further over time.* Thousands of companies have expressed support for Open XML and its ratification by ISO (http://www.iso.org) and IEC at http://www.openxmlcommunity.org.

Those working with Open XML can attest to the benefits of this open file format in the areas of file and data management, data recovery, interoperability with line-of-business systems, and the long-term preservation of documents. The formats are optimized for the level of precision and detail that facilitates carrying forward billions of existing files. Open XML file formats are uniquely capable of integrating other types of systems and data with Open XML documents, while maintaining a clean, simple separation of presentation (Open XML markup) and data (custom schemas and instances thereof). This means that organizations can use Open XML formats to report information from other applications and systems without having to translate it first, which is a key innovation for developers seeking to incorporate real-time business information into their documents, or those who seek to “tag” documents with their own categorization system to improve their understanding of the documents’ contents.

Comments (21)

  1. I really really hope this is an April’s Fool joke, a bad joke, not funny at all! Alas, I’m affraid it’s not. It’s really sad to see all this good people losing their time trying to show how this OOXML thing stinks and then their opinion being overriden by nasty corruption. People losing time voting NO only to have their ballot disregarded. It’s sad to see that in 2008 this is still happening and noone is being punished for that.

  2. Utterly disgusting ….

    US Corporate power has become the scourge of the world economy. Governments are mere toys to the whims of CEOs….

    It never ceases to amaze me the ease at which people cannot put aisde their better judgement and take the 30 pieces of silver.

    regards

    seriously annoyed

  3. If this is true (and I have no reason to doubt), then the ISO organizations is worthless, low, disgusting……And microsoft and the other puppets are garbage and disgusting….
    Thanks microsoft for making ISO means NOTHING….

  4. I took a look at the comment files that accompany the decision and they are from september’s vote. At first I thought that they didn’t send any vote and what they submitted in September was "resubmitted" now, but Canada and Turkey supposedly changed their vote. Could this be an April’s fool joke?

    – K.D.

  5. What you’re seeing is the full vote file, which goes back to September.  Technically, this isn’t a new vote, but a chance to alter old votes.  Normally they’d use an electronic system to vote, but apparently it can’t handle changes.  So what you are presumably seeing is the old September data, as added electronically, and then updated, using the email and faxes that were required this time around to make modifications.

    I haven’t poked through all the material myself yet, but you are describing sounds consistent with what I would expect the complete materials would look like.

      –  Andy

  6. We can’t totally blame Microsoft, they are trying to maintain their illegal monopoly to survive. There is too many corrupt companies and too many cheap and low people with no integrity or honesty who can be bought for few Dollars.

    If there is something to learn from this, it is for FOSS and Open Standards organizations to work harder and totally remove such people and eliminate such companies from existence. One can never feel safe from a poisonous snake until its head is paper thin.

    • Microsoft has enough resources at its disposal to survive through normal product development and competition.  It doesn’t need to stack the deck in its favor merely for survival purposes.

      • Your statement above shows you are :

        1- Kidding or joking
        2- IT ignorant or naive in general
        3- Microsoft employee or one of its lackeys
        4- One of the people who should be removed from any decision making process
        5- Low life selfish person.

        Microsoft is filthy rich enough to survive as financial company, but not as an IT company.

      • I’m assuming that you simply misunderstood my comment, and that you chose to fire from the hip rather than ask for clarification.

        It’s obvious from Microsoft’s software product lines that their development culture and/or processes are very badly broken, but those are both solvable problems in the medium and long term. 

        Other IT organizations exist which don’t have those issues.  Microsoft has the money to hire many such people.  Remove the folks who are currently at the top of the key development organizations (OS kernel/shell for sure) and bring in expertise from outside.  Change the culture.  Many MS employees are junior in experience and thus somewhat impressionable/malleable, and it is likely they will fall in line once they see the direction being taken.

         I can see many IBM, Sun, or other senior development people being attracted to the chance to re-engineer Microsoft culture and software from the inside, and an IT industry with a truly FOSS- and standards-friendly Microsoft would be a very good thing, IMSNShO.  Right now, it is neither.
         
        I don’t see them doing it (after following them as a software developer and PC hobbyist for the past 20 years), but it *is* possible for them to do if they have the guts to do it.

        To answer your ill-aimed list of insults:

        1- No, though I think it’s unlikely that MS will change.
        2- No (coming up on 20 years in August).
        3- No (still prefer, use, and make money using Microsoft competitors).
        4- Perhaps, but I’m not the one rushing to rash judgements here.  🙂
        5- No.  An interesting conclusion to come to based on one poorly comprehended posting, though.

      • I’d like to keep comments more civil here, please.  We’ve never had a flaming problem here in the past, and I don’t want to start having one now.

          –  Andy

  8. Oliver,

    Thanks for the pointer to the Standards Norge translation; I had not yet seen that, and will add a pointer to it in the text of my blog entry so it’s more easily found.

      –  Andy

    • And so this particular chapter in the story ends, as regards the official schedule.  Now the reaction will set in to the manner in which the process was conducted.  I expect that this chapter will be long and messy, but hopefully ultimately productive.

  10. now iso standards can be held to the microsoft tax.

    good news!!!

  12. There is a thread going on at Groklaw about the issue that ‘various NBs (including Malaysia and Norway) have stated that as long as their comments were addressed they had to vote "approve"’. Was this a valid instruction given to the NB chairmen? Or did several nations all happen to mishear the same thing?

  14. "Open XML now joins HTML, PDF and ODF as ISO- and IEC-recognized open document format standards."

    I don’t recall anywhere where ISO certifies standards for "openness" as Microsoft is implying.  OOXML remains a closed (albeit ISO-recognized) standard.  Period.

    I find I must always be on guard whenever I read an MS press-release for the disinformation intentionally slipped into their prose that misleads readers into believing that MS is somehow ‘open’ or ‘good’.

    — Ed

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