ISO mutiny over OOXML fast-track

 

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Posted on 1 Sep 2008 at 15:50

A decision to dismiss appeals against the controversial fast-track approval of Microsoft Office Open XML format has provoked six members of the global standards-setting body ISO to question its relevance.

Brazil, India, South Africa and Venezuela - countries with fast-growing IT markets - had appealed against ISO's stamp of approval OOXML, an endorsement likely to help the software giant win more public-sector contracts.

A significant minority of national standards bodies had voted against approving the Microsoft format, which is an alternative to the open-source Open Document Format that has been a published ISO standard since 2006.

But ISO, together with the International Electrotechnical Commission, decided earlier this month that those appeals were not worth pursuing - meaning OOXML will soon become an ISO standard, provided no new appeals are lodged.

This weekend, the state IT organisations of Brazil, South Africa, Venezuela, Ecuador, Cuba and Paraguay published a declaration saying they were no longer confident that ISO would be a vendor-neutral organisation.

"Whereas in the past it has been assumed that an ISO/IEC standard should automatically be considered for use within government, clearly this position no longer stands," they wrote on the .