Lodahl's blog: It didn't make it !

01 March 2008

It didn't make it !

The BRM meeting in Geneva is over. The plan was, from the Microsoft point of view, that OOXML should now be an ISO standard. It didn't make it.

OOXML was proposed an ISO standard by the industrial organization ECMA in a fast track route. The basic philosophy behind this is, that a standard that has already been prepared by one organization can be submitted to a fast track route in ISO. This requires that the submitting organization does all the work and make the proposal ready to be confirmed before submission. In this case ECMA didn't do their homework properly.

At this BRM meeting there should be no outstandings and the process should have been a core formality. It wasn't. Still there are several open issues and the meeting couldn't even get through all the issues. The head of the U.S. delegation at the meeting, Frank Farance says:

At this week's ballot resolution meeting (BRM) in Geneva, the sponsor of the draft standard, industry consortium ECMA International, presented 1,100 recommendations for changes to the draft.

However, delegates only had time to discuss and modify around 20 percent of those, said Farance, an industry consultant with expertise in standards issues.

http://www.cio.com/article/190752/Changes_to_OOXML_Draft_Standard_Waved_Through

http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20080229055319727

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Do you actually have any idea what you're writing about?
Microsoft never expected "that OOXML should now be an ISO standard." Maybe you did Leif, but that doesn't mean you'd be right.

Microsoft expected that the BRM would vote on whether to accept the proposed dispositions of comments and thereby modify the DIS text so that National Bodies can make a decision about whether their comments have been addressed.

That's exactly what's happened. Nothing more, nothing less.

Leif you guys are spinning so fast you might just spin out of control like the windmill you posted about :-)

Anonymous said...

Leif. I was there and what you write is a misunderstanding.

Maybe this will help you with some more background info:
http://blog.hvorom.dk/post/2008/03/Aring3bben-igen-ndash3b-hjemvendt-fra-Geneve--Back-from-Geneva.aspx