NoOOXML

Yes, you can tell your national body that its enough and time to disapprove OOXML again. Everything else would ultimately compromise the ISO process.

If Microsoft wants to show that it has changed and really wants to improve on openness, as recently claimed, this is the perfect opportunity.

MS should publish rapidly a press release recognising its defeat, and requiring ISO to stop the approval process. Then either resubmit an improved text in the normal ISO process (rather than fast track), or better, announce that they join OASIS to work on improving ODF and making it suitable to be used in the next release of MS Office. This would be a great move that should be recognised as such by the community. The market share of MS will drop, but they will quite surely remain the Number One player for quite some time.

The alternative is that MS try to persuade some NBs to change their vote and to ram the "beast" through the throat of ISO. But this would show very clearly that MS is desperately trying to salvage its monopoly to be able to continue abusing it (and in any case, I'm quite sure they will not succeed). In this case, shame forever on Microsoft… The company would then deserves to disappear from earth once and for all.

**I would like to report irregularity in Egypt as well. I heard that MS asked as much as its partner to join the Egyptian Organization for Standards committee. MS has used those partners to vote Yes without comments and successfully gained majority inside the committee. They imposed the retaining of last Sept Egypt's vote Yes whatever the result of BRM meeting. This is clearly unclean play that MS used in most countries like in Sweden and other countries.

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

Stegu's comments seem accurate, from a technical prospective, but Microsoft has, unfortunately, mad this into a highly charged political process. Yes, it is clear that — if it is accepted, this 'standard' will be in a highly compromised state, but it is unfortunately very unclear whether or not it will be accepted.

One thing to note it that — at the fall meeting, many delegates gave the proposed standard provisional approval on the presumption that it would be improved upon in this meeting. The rules — as I understand them — allow delegations to change their vote after the BRM. Usually it is only a change from abstain/disapproval to approval but — given how this process has (not) been resolved, it is quite possible that many delegations could decide to modify their 'yes' votes in the aftermath of this process.

If you have any connection with delegations that voted 'yes' earlier, it's probably a good time to get in contact with them.

@niceman,

Can you try to get the list of Members of the Technical Committee in Egypt?

If the Standards Body refuses to give the list to you, file a parliamentary question to the responsible minister in charge of the Standards Body.

given how this process has (not) been resolved, it is quite possible that many delegations could decide to modify their 'yes' votes in the aftermath of this process

In my opinion, that is what any honest NB would do: see the obvious stupidity in the attempt to fast track the huge and very badly prepared DIS29500, and recommend the fast track process to be aborted by voting "No". If this issue was not so political, a "no" would be the natural outcome regardless of the disputed technical merits of MSOOXML as such. If there should be such a thing as an ISO sanctioned version of MSOOXML, it should at least be reasonably well prepared and not full of errors and omissions because of a rushed and unfinished standards process.

Contact your NB now and ask them to do the right thing. "No" is the only honorable way out of this mess for ISO. ECMA has no face left to save, but that's another story.