What is OOXML (ECMA-376)?

Via ECMA, Microsoft has submitted documentation for the XML-based file
formats used by the company's "Excel 2007", "PowerPoint 2007" and
"Word 2007" products for "fast track" approval as an "international
standard".

Why is this so controversial?

There is already an international standard for XML-based file formats
for office documents, known as the "OpenDocument Format" (ODF;
standardized as ISO/IEC 29300). Nobody denies Microsoft's right to
freely decide that the company does not want to support this
international standard in their products, and nobody denies that
computer users have the freedom to choose office software which
supports this standard, such as e.g. OpenOffice, KOffice or Google Docs.
However many people feel that Microsoft's initiative to get their file
formats also recognized as an "international standard" is an abuse of
the system of international standardization and should in fact be seen
as an anti-competitive attack against the company's competitors,
especially against Free Software like OpenOffice. In fact when
Microsoft chose the name "Office Open XML" for their file formats,
they must have been aware that choosing this name must necessarily
create confusion with "OpenOffice", the name of the leading competing
software package which has been using an open XML-based office
documents format since long before Microsoft started pushing "Office
Open XML".

What has happened?

Microsoft has intensively lobbied the various national member
organizations of ISO/IEC and encouraged a large number of economically
dependent partner companies to acquire voting rights in the concerned
national decision-making committees. Nevertheless, in the
international vote, the required qualified majority for approval of
the OOXML specification as an "international standard" has not been
reached.

What happens next?

There will be a "Ballot Resolution Meeting" in Geneva on February
25-29, 2008, with the goal of deciding changes to the OOXML
specification which could make it acceptable in the eyes of the
national ISO/IEC member organizations that have voted against
approval of OOXML as an international standard. If (as can be
expected) some changes are adopted at the "Ballot Resolution Meeting",
the national member bodies will have 30 days time to review the
changes and decide whether to change their vote, e.g. from "APPROVE"
to "DISAPPROVE" or vice versa. The national standardization
organizations can at that stage change their vote for any reason, and
they are not required to provide a justification for changing their
vote.

What is OpenISO.org's role?

Since it is clear from preliminary discussions that OOXML does not
fulfil OpenISO.org's criteria for an open standard, OpenISO.org will
prepare a "problem report" document explaining the main problems why
from the perspective of OpenISO.org's criteria, OOXML cannot be
accepted as an open standard, and should not be approved as an
"international standard". This "problem report" document should be
ready by mid-February 2008 so that it can help guide the discussions
at the "Ballot Resolution Meeting" to focusing on the most important
questions, and so that after "Ballot Resolution Meeting" the "problem
report" can assist the national standardization organizations in
evaluating whether or not the important issues have been appropriately
resolved.

Who can participate in the OpenISO.org Review of OOXML?

Everyone is welcome to participate who is able to participate in a
constructive manner in a fact-oriented discussion that is conducted
via email, in the English language. (Unfortunately currently no
resources are available for facilitating participation in other
languages.)

Participation by people with disabilities and other accessibility
experts is especially requested, since the evaluation of information
technology standards with regard to their effect of people with
disabilities is of the utmost moral importance!

How to participate:

Subscribe to the OpenISO.org "discuss" mailing list where the
OpenISO.org Review of OOXML will be conducted:
http://www.openiso.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
Please join in and contribute!
Norbert Bollow
Founder of OpenISO.org

P.S. Here are some further links:
OOXML specification in HTML format: http://OpenISO.org/Ecma/376/
OpenISO.org Core Guidelines http://OpenISO.org/OI/A200

The website of http://www.openiso.org also is beyond preview mode now. I would say: We welcome OpenISO back in the important stages ahead that require all means to stop the further obstruction of the vulnerable ISO process and the adoption of a standard that was backed in the last round without comments by a coalition of:

Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Congo, Costa Rica, Côte-d'Ivoire, Croatia, Cyprus, Egypt, Fiji, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Morocco, Kuwait, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Sri Lanka, Syria, Tanzania, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan

It will be crucial that in the BRM round the OOXML standard is disapproved or that all the comments are resolved.