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ISO Says ‘No’ to Open XML as a Standard


A majority of ISO Members did not approve Office Open XML

By David Worthington
September 4, 2007 — 
Microsoft’s Office Open XML (OOXML) specification has been detoured off the fast track onto the slow road. On September 2, the ballots closed and the software giant failed to attain support from a sufficient number of Organization for Standardization (ISO) members to fast-track approve OOXML as an ISO standard. The proposal must be reworked to try again next year.

OOXML is a family of document specifications for presentations, spreadsheets and word-processing created by Microsoft. Following review, Ecma International ratified OOXML as ECMA-376 in December 2006; Ecma in turn submitted the standard to ISO/IEC JTC for fast track approval. Open XML cleared a contradiction phase, when perceived contradictions with other standards could be submitted, before the balloting began.

Five months of intense debate and lobbying came to as close when two criteria were not met: A three quarters majority of ISO voting members and ‘P-members’ that participated in the technical committee was not reached.

The ballot was closed, but there was not full participation: 104 ISO members were qualified to vote. Out of those, 87 ISO members that responded to the ballot, 51 voted in favor of the proposal while 18 voted against it and 18 abstained. 17 members that voted ‘yes’ voted ‘yes’ with comments.

Tom Robertson, general manager for interoperability and standards at Microsoft, put a positive spin on the ballot results. “We are extremely delighted to see that 51 ISO members, representing 74 percent of the qualified votes, have already voiced their support for ISO ratification of Open XML, and that many others have indicated they will support ratification once their comments are resolved in the next phase of the ISO process,” Robertson said in a prepared statement.

Going forward, Ecma Technical Committee 45 (TC45), the group steering Open XML, will address comments made by ISO members that took part in reviewing the specification. The proposal must now be revised before ISO reconsiders its approval as a standard.

The ISO/IEC JTC 1 (SC 34, Document description and processing languages) subcommittee will convene February 2006 to discuss the comments during a ballot resolution meeting. ISO members that voted against Open XML’s approval are able to withdraw their negative votes. The objective of the February meeting is to reach consensus on possible modifications.

France’s Association Francaise de Normalisation (AFNOR) proposed splitting the OOXML standard proposal in 2 pieces, OOXML-Core and OOXML-Extensions, separating out proprietary nuances that deal with backward compatibility with legacy Microsoft Office documents. The Core could be compatible with Open Document Format (ODF), a competing group of document specifications that has been recommended by both ISO (ISO/IEC 26300) and OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards).

Microsoft’s Robertson said that technical input would enhance the standard and believes that a second vote, in March, at the close of the ballot resolution period, would result in Open XML’s approval.


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