Tech Center Current

OOXML, Microsoft’s new document format which I have written about here and here, appears to have failed to achieve the number of votes necessary for ISO standard fast-track approval. This means that additional review will be required before determining whether the OOXML specification should qualify as an ISO international standard.

While the vote is not yet final, it appears that the specification has already failed to receive the 2/3 majority vote it needed. Of the 41 participating countries, 13 have so far announced “no” votes and 5 have announced that they are abstaining. From the remaining votes, 16 of which are not yet publicly known, the highest possible “yes” count would be 23, although 24 are required for the 2/3 majority among the voting members.

After the results are final, the next step will be to address the comments left by the countries who voted “no, with comments”. After this process, those countries will have the ability to change their votes to “yes” if they believe their comments have been adequately addressed. So this standardization process is still far from over.

Update: The official vote is in, and OOXML fast-track received only 17 “yes” votes out of the 32 countries which cast votes (9 participating countries decided to abstain). This amounts to 53.125%, 5 votes short of the 2/3 majority needed for fast-track approval. Of those 17 “yes” votes, only 6 expressed full satisfaction with the OOXML specification.

In contrast, the OpenDocument Format (ODF, which OOXML was designed to rival) was approved by ISO last year with unanimous “yes” votes.

Of course, Microsoft is spinning the numbers as much as they can, but it seems the technical problems with the OOXML specification are gaining more and more attention due in large part to the scandals surrounding this voting process.

Microsoft and ECMA International will now have a chance to address the concerns that were raised about OOXML, and then the final vote will take place in the last week of February 2008.

Update: Google has issued an official response to the OOXML fast-track vote, strongly agreeing with the decision to not approve it. In the response, Google reiterates a number of the concerns with OOXML and expresses Google’s own positive experience implementing ODF support in its Google Docs service.