Michael Zenke, a Slashdot editor, put up without comment a submission from realdodgeman, an anonymous but presumably American contributor, last Sunday, about the deliberations of INCITS on OpenXML. Noting that there were apparently insufficient votes for approval, he concluded that “This will mean a huge slowdown in the standardization to the OOXML format”.
realdodgeman was correct on the deadlock in the International Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS) executive commitee which voted 8-7 against approving OpenXML according to the official INCITS site. But the “International” in INCITS is misleading. It is not an international body, it is simply the “National Body” which represents the US at JTC1 which is currently conducting a letter ballot on OpenXML. The INCITS executive committee vote is simply the latest step in the attempts to decide which way the US will vote.
Although the US vote is obviously interesting, it is just one among many. Approval of OpenXML as an ISO/IEC standard requires a 75% majority of those members of ISO that cast a vote (that is a simplification - the full detail is here and in several other articles on this site around the same time.). Moreover, the current letter ballot is most unlikely to be the decisive vote. It is far more likely that there will be a “Ballot Resolution Meeting” which will probably meet several times next year before getting to a final ballot.
It seems quite possible that the US will end up abstaining, in which case it will have no voice in the way this issue is decided. But even if it does vote, its vote has just the same weight as that of the smallest voting country! In some ways that it clearly unreasonable, but that is the way many international bodies work.
Of course, in this case a US company, MS, is clearly having a substantial influence on the votes of many National Bodies, much more than it appears to have had on the US body.
{ 2 } Comments
“Of course, in this case a US company, MS, is clearly having a substantial influence on the votes of many National Bodies, much more than it appears to have had on the US body.”
Many members of national committees are outraged. It will be possible to get Office Open XML through ISO but Microsoft will pay a very high price.
What is required now is that standard experts speak up and stop Office Open XML standardization.
Microsoft went to far.
@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.
{ 1 } Trackback
[…] give a National Body (NB) a ticket to the Ballot Resolution Meeting (BRM). This has recently been clarified by ISO, according to Alex Brown (in Comment 2), who will be the convenor of the BRM. So my earlier […]
Post a Comment