abstain: 393,549,780 inhabitants
no: 3,252,323,818 inhabitants
yes: 1,379,994,887 inhabitants

Feel better ?

Link :http://www.lemondeinformatique.fr/actualites/lire-open-xml-la-france-dit-non-23833.html

Translation : "No with comments, this is the position of France on OOXML. AFNOR, ISO NB for France, just made the results available after two storm sessions held on august 28 and 29. France joins the ranks of No voters, with India, Denmark, New-Zealand, Norway and Brazil".

-Stephane Rodriguez

PS : there was actually no vote. The consensus was 70% against OOXML based on a preliminary phase that allowed many actors of the industry to provide feedback directly to AFNOR. On august 28 and 29, Microsoft and their business partners wanted to object this, presumably they wanted a vote. Also, no less than 93 companies sent non-technical letters in favor of OOXML on behalf of Microsoft (companies such as Caisse D'epargne, …). AFNOR has not disclosed whether those non-technical letters have had any effect on the position.

PS 2 : the president of committee in AFNOR was no other than CleverAge, Microsoft contractor who worked on a (useless and broken) file format converter for Microsoft. Many of their partners were part of the voting committee (again, the vote did not occur, ultimately), including AFDEL (pro-software patent org, funded by Microsoft and BSA), Wygwam (Microsoft regional director), SoftFluent (ex-Microsoft), Microsoft France, …

PS 3 : according to the AFNOR mailing list, Microsoft is reported to try to destroy comments against OOXML that were pushed by industry in the preliminary phase. My guess is that they are trying to reduce the effect of the No vote as much as they can.

However, Microsoft asked for another meeting. This meeting was held on the 27th. I do not know if they managed to change the committee's position so I do not know what the final vote will be.

I feel that the TTBS may have been used in this regard as we have only just upgraded to P status. I suspect that we were expected to vote Yes.

On a point of process detail, ISO have clarified that a "vote" of abstention in the five-month ballot will allow a country to attend the BRM, where that vote may be changed to either yes or no…

Yay! So now we can get to work and make sure the newcomers in the Swedish committee read up on the standard and actually consider what they are voting for, not just blindly follow Microsoft's lead. Thanks for that piece of information, now I know I can do something locally!

actually, this is not the case, read the words of the BRM convenor:

"
#Alex Brown | 16 August 2007 at 5:43 pm
@John,

On a point of process detail, ISO have clarified that a "vote" of
abstention in the five-month ballot will allow a country to attend the
BRM, where that vote may be changed to either yes or no…

- Alex."

( http://doyoulovems.com/archives/69#comment-93 )

Peter.

Whatever country you're in, today is a great day to write a letter to your national board

Unless, of course, you live in a country where the vote was "abstain" (like me, I'm from Sweden). In that case, your NB has defeated their right to participate in the further process and has no further voice in ISO in this matter.

But you can still make a difference by getting involved in international efforts such as the one represented by this website. I trust that concerned people from Australia, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Hungary, Netherlands, Argentina, Chile and other "abstain" countries will continue to care about this issue and not just cave in to the indecision of their NB. I know I will keep at it, despite SIS not reaching the vote we were expecting before the irregularities set in.

Over the next months, expect the map to change! Microsoft will be lobbying the green countries very heavily to get them to change their vote. Whatever country you're in, today is a great day to write a letter to your national board expressing your support for open standards and your desire to see the 300-plus bugs in the Microsoft format, as well as its patent problems, fixed before it is reconsidered for a vote.