Microsoft OOXML proposal falls short

 

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Posted on 5 Sep 2007 at 11:06

The ISO has clarified that Microsoft failed to gain enough votes for approval of its Office file format.

Microsoft yesterday hailed its success in the ballot of the OOXML specification, claiming 74% support from the 104 national member bodies of the ISO.

Crucially, however, Microsoft required 66% support from the 41 members of the joint ISO/IEC technical committee to have its Office standard fast-tracked, which it did not achieve. ISO says that the proposal only received received a 53% "yes" vote from participating national bodies.

"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 Organisation for Standardisation) and IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission) has not achieved the required number of votes for approval," the ISO said in its statement.

The vote is split into two: the first vote among 41 national bodies must register a two-thirds "yes" majority for a standard application to be approved; the second, wider vote of the 104 nations, must register fewer than 25% "no" votes.

"Neither of these criteria were achieved, with 53% of votes cast by national bodies participating in ISO/IEC JTC 1 being positive and 26% of national votes cast being negative," the ISO explained

So in one sense Microsoft did indeed gain 74% of the votes, but not in the vote where it most matters.

Nonetheless Microsoft's Steve McGibbons says that the results suggest "there's substantial support for OpenXML to be an ISO standard". He notes that the OOXML proposal needs just five of the "no" votes to switch to "yes" in order to meet the 66% threshold, or a number of abstaining countries to register a "yes" vote when the ISO meets again in February 2008.

Microsoft believes the proposed modifications will persuade sufficient national bodies to withdraw their negative votes to enable the standard to be passed.

If not, Microsoft's fast-track application will have failed, but it will be permitted to resubmit the specification to the normal standards approval process.

PC Pro would like to apologise for any confusion caused by its report of the vote yesterday.

Author: Simon Aughton