The International Organization for Standardization has voted against a proposal to fast-track Microsoft's Office Open XML format as an international standard. Here's how the vote went: all 41 of the of the countries that had worked on the proposal participated in the vote. There were 17 "yes" votes, 15 "no" votes, and 9 abstentions. Without counting the abstentions, that works out to 53.12 percent approval, far short of the two-thirds majority needed. Of the 87 national standards bodies voting, 18 voted against OOXML, leaving OOXML just shy of the 75 percent threshold for that vote.
Andy Updegrove explains the voting process.
Additional perspectives:
ODF and OOXML in Ghana and the developing world
Background information on ODF, OOXML and why It matters
This was an important victory for open standards and will create more opportunities for everyone.
No comments:
Post a Comment