Farquhar says that that effort is not directly related to the Open XML announcement: "Some people think we are adopting Microsoft formats as our standard for digital preservation. This is not right; we are striving to make sure that content we receive in MS formats will be preserved." He continued: "What format will we deliver? We deliver a lot of articles and in many formats. We deliver content in PDF, Office Open, ODF, TIFF —whatever format the customer wants."

Until I read that, your article had given me the disturbing impression that the British Library was standardising on OOXML - essentially making MS Office their standard. In light of the quote I've used, I'm hopeful that they're just going to use it as a 'standard' they import from, much as OpenOffice imports from a variety of formats.
I just hope that things haven't changed in the time sime then…

If you want to make a point about issues that were rejected, you might instead look at GB-0256 (Ecma disposition 782). This is the "filesize rounding to kilobytes" issue, and because the disposition was rejected, Office 2007's behaviour now conflicts with the standard.

See also eg. ISO/IEC directive I

F.2.3 The period for voting and the conditions for approval shall be as specified in 2.6 for an enquiry draft and 2.7 for a final draft International Standard.

2.7.3 A final draft International Standard having been circulated for voting is approved if
a) a two-thirds majority of the votes cast by the P-members of the technical committee or subcommittee are in favour, and
b) not more than one-quarter of the total number of votes cast are negative. Abstentions are excluded when the votes are counted, as well as negative votes not accompanied by technical reasons.
Technical reasons for negative votes are submitted to the technical committee or subcommittee secretariat for consideration at the time of the next review of the International Standard.
2.7.4 The secretariat of the technical committee or subcommittee has the responsibility of bringing any errors that may have been introduced in the preparation of the draft to the attention of the office of the CEO [i.e. not the national members that vote!] by the end of the voting period; further editorial or technical amendments are not acceptable at this stage.

Which clearly shows that the voting rules discriminate against disapproval. Cmp who voted "Disapproval" is forced to participate in the BRM. What we found out in the September ballot was that many national bodies were not aware of the rules and false information about deadlines was spread.

And voting needs to meet special new procedural requirements this time again.

1. they've added people you must email, and you must copy yourself, so just writing to Keith Brannon¹ is no longer sufficient. You must add Maho Takahashi and Martine Gaillen as recipients of your email, and CC yourself.
2. you have to have a specific subject line on your email: "Modification to the vote on DIS 29500 - Country (National Body/e.g. JISC)"
3. you have to mention the name of the sender in the email.
4. they also say you must inform ITTF of your intention to change your vote in writing by March 29.

Groklaw comments:

New rules for changing your vote on OOXML. Yup. Like we didn't expect that. I know you don't want your votes to end up ignored, so here's what I think you have to do by March 29, …

Yes, it is okay for ISO to approve a broken standard because you didn't follow their formalities. Or that Sweden gets no vote because of usances on the national level which were dissolved by submitting no vote in the September ballot (non-vote is different from an abstention and kicked Sweden out of the process!)

Everyone is fine with these rules although many national members had problems to meet them and communicate them to their members. A great surprise was also that the BRM decided on its own procedures and O-members voted.

A little personal story: I didn't join my national committee and advised others against because I thought it would be sufficient to submit the technical comments to the professionals at the standard committee and a last minute join (in June or July 07?) just for this standard would play badly reputation wise. And after all why should my association invest money just to prevent an ISO stamp for a standard. I had no clue what would be acceptable practice in the ISO context! Or that a committee would approve a standard that is buggy when issues are filed.

These people could be convinced that the correct vote in March should be "No" with comments that OOXML must become a standard via conventional (non fast-track) process. This is the only technically correct way of voting _for_ a consistent OOXML standard (and _against_ the currently existing buggy draft).

Please update this URL to reflect this information
http://www.noooxml.org/ballotresults

Solo por poner un ejemplo, ciertas (casi todas) las páginas del gobierno solo funcionan correctamente con Internet explorer, mas no con opera firefox konkeror etc.

Triste pero cierto

… A ver si ésto se soluciona con un lindo Salacuartazo, porque según la Constitución cosas como los estándares deben estar al alcanze de todos y no para los pocos que puedan pagarlo!

No al control!

Me gustaria saber quién se hace responsable por el voto emitido; que institucion, entidad, o lo que sea.

Saludos.

Venezuela and Colombia, corrupted politicians and business men, shame on you!

Argentina and Chile, cowards, shame on you!

NO = NO TO MICROSOFT, YES TO OPEN!!

And LOL @ Cuba and Lybia doesn't want to submit their comments using the .doc format. HAHAHAHA