Article about OOXML ...

This is a very quick translation of an article in the Danish computer magazine Version2

Microsoft defeated in Danish document technical committee

Despite lots of lobbying among customers and partners, Microsoft didn't succeed in taking a Danish yes-vote to make OOXML an international ISO standard

By Torben R. Simonsen, 27. august 2007 kl. 08:50
http://www.version2.dk/artikel/3697
Translation by Leif Lodahl

The technical subcommittee under Danish Standard couldn't agree on a consensus vote on the matter OOXML. OOXML is Microsofts proposal for an open document standard, that was supposed to become an international ISO standard.

The sub committee has been working all summer on clerify, if the certification from ECMA was good enough to get an ISO certificate too.

But the technical questioning has been too many, that the Danish committee couldn't accept the ECMA certificate as is.

On the meeting in the committee last friday it was up to the members to find consensus about the Danish vote, but the distance between the two camps was too large to reach a proposal to Danish Standards, who is the actually representative in ISO.

Danish Standards must find out how to vote on September 2th. How Danish Standards will vote will not be published before the meeting, so it will be on September 3rd.

But the committee could set up a delegation that will participate in the future work at ISO.

Half a victory
Oracle in Dnemark says that this is good. Oracle has the oppinion, that the overall important issue is, wether OOXML is interoperabel with the compeeting document format ODF, that is already an ISO standard. This has not yet been clarified to the committee, Oracle says. Oracle also concluedes that Dansish Standards can't post a yes-vote.

This is half a victory for open standards. The most important things forus has been, that there is not a yes-vote from Denmark, because the process has given us knowledge about several issues that hinders interoperability. The amount of issues and their character gives us no alternative to pass them on. This is an oppinion we share with the users", says the managing director from Oracle, Thomas Gergers Honorè.

The committee meets again in Danish Standards on September 28th.