The United States member group to the ISO standards body on Wednesday
[2007-08-29] finalized plans to vote in favor of approving Microsoft
Corp.'s Office Open XML document format as an open standard. The
executive board of the Washington D.C.-based InterNational Committee
for Information Technology Standards (INCITS) had its final meeting
on Wednesday morning before its September 2, 2007 vote is due at the
International Organization for Standardization (ISO). "Everyone was
entrenched in their position," said Frank Farance, a longtime INCITS
board member who voted against Open XML's ratification. The INCITS
board plans to stick with the results of a vote last Thursday, in
which it approved a "Yes, with comments" position by a 12-3 margin,
with one abstention. Others that voted against Open XML's approval
in INCITS included habitual Microsoft foes IBM and Oracle Corp. The
September 2 process will tally votes by the 20 countries that are
members of ISO's Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC-1). With countries
such as Brazil and China already announcing plans to vote against
Open XML's approval, the next likely stage is ISO's ballot resolution
meeting in Geneva next February, during which the Open XML
specification will be edited and fixed in order to address the
'comments' submitted by voting nations. At that time, ISO members
can change their vote again, with a two-thirds majority needed to
pass Open XML.
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