After nearly 14 months of discussion, debate and controversies surrounding them, the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) has finally declared that Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) file format has received the necessary number of votes for approval as an ISO/IEC international standard.
Approval required at least two-thirds (i.e. 66.66 per cent) of the votes cast by national bodies participating in the joint technical committee (ISO/IEC JTC 1), to be positive; and no more than one-fourth (i.e. 25 per cent) of the total number of (ISO/IEC) national body votes cast to be negative.
ISO/IEC DIS 29500 (the technical name for the draft proposal) was originally disapproved in the "fast-track vote" which ended in September 2007, when 3,500 comments were received. India too had said 'no' with comments.
However, the comments were addressed at a ballot resolution meeting (BRM) from 25-29 February, after which the national bodies had 30 days to modify their votes if they wished. India maintained its 'No'. By eliminating redundancies, the comments had been reduced to 1,000 individual issues to be considered.
However, there will reportedly be a two-month period to allow national bodies to lodge any formal appeals before the standard proceeds to official publication. There are already protests over votes cast by Norway and Germany.
There has, perhaps, never been a more intense global industry debate over standards since OOXML is backed by Apple, Novell, and closer home by Wipro, Infosys, TCS, and Nasscom.
The rival Open Document Format or ODF is supported by IBM, Sun Microsystems, Red Hat, Google, and in India, by the Department of Information Technology (DIT), National Informatics Centre (NIC), CDAC, IIT-Bombay and IIM-Ahmedabad.
ISO approval means government business for Microsoft since governments worldwide, including India, prefer standards that are ratified