OOXML limps on to the next stage of the ISO process
update: some of my figures were wrong, there are more than 69 P and O countries in total, but 69 non-abstaining countries.
Well the good news is that the many comments and technical criticisms of Microsoft’s flawed standard will now actually get read. It hasn’t been kicked out altogether, there will be a meeting in Geneva in March of representatives of all the national bodies who voted “disapproval with comments” plus representatives of all national bodies who are members of the SC34 committee (they can send 1 or more representatives, I am not sure how many countries this involves, it could be anything from the 34 P members listed in the SC34 secretariat’s report to the 69 P and O members who just voted), plus any of the national bodies who voted approval with comments who want to go. It could be a big meeting.
The countries who abstained but are a member of SC34 are an interesting group. Sweden SIS is a member of the SC34 committee so they can turn up, however they abstained so their comments won’t be on the agenda (there is no “abstained with comments” vote). Sweden were going to vote disapproval with comments, but Microsoft saw which way it was going, didn’t like it, and fixed the vote. They got caught and SIS invalidated the vote and abstained.
Microsoft gave their view on the result in a press release today. Sounds good:
“The results show that 51 ISO members, representing 74 percent of all qualified votes, stated their support for ratification of Open XML”
Well they think that 51 out of 69 countries voted for them. Not quite. It is a bit misleading to mix up the important P members with the slightly less important O members and call them ‘qualified votes’, it glosses over the fact that many countries who voted “approval with comments” really want their comments addressed (they should have voted disapproval with comments) but that isn’t the big problem.
Microsoft are counting in their 51 “supporting votes” 16 countries who abstained from the vote. This includes countries, like Sweden, who abstained because they uncovered corruption by Microsoft.
I compiled the almost full list of votes (Hungary seems to be absent without leave) into a spreadsheet, it is of course in ODF format.