Open XML Voted Down But Not Out

Microsoft's Office Open XML failed to get enough votes early this month
for approval as an international standard. However, if Microsoft
addresses technical concerns raised by members of the International
Organization for Standardization, the specification could still join
the OpenDocument Format next year as a certified ISO specification for
creating and viewing electronic documents. The deadline for the
five-month, fast-track voting process by 104 countries on whether to
adopt OOXML as an international standard was September 2, 2007. ISO
announced last week that the standard did not receive enough votes for
approval. A ballot resolution meeting to address concerns identified
in this round of balloting is expected to be held by ISO and the
International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) in February 2008. "At
the moment, the ODF and OOXML have two different scopes," said Mike
Hogan, an electrical engineer at NIST who is involved in the standards
process. ODF, which had its origins with Sun Microsystems' Open Office
program, is more generic, and OOXML focuses on opening Microsoft
documents, he said... NIST favors competing document standards, NIST
Director William Jeffrey said. "NIST believes that ODF and OOXML can
coexist as international standards," Jeffrey said. "NIST fully supports
technology-neutral solutions and will support the standard once our
technical concerns are addressed." Hogan said NIST is seeing something
similar to this in U.S. government agencies: "We have CIOs in the
government say we might be buying products that purport to be able to
open documents using either standard. So we're likely to buy [products]
that can handle both standards." The first edition of OOXML is in play,
he said. "There are a lot of changes being requested, let's see how
many they can agree on" at the meeting in February. Aside from the
fast-track ballot receiving a lot of publicity, there's nothing new
in OOXML's journey to standardization, Hogan said. "As a proposed
standard works its way through the many cycles of an ISO committee,
you go through many ballots to get something right..." Further Information