OOXML Roundup

The results are coming in, and ISO already announced the outcome of the vote on OOXML. As was predicted here (and elsewhere), the OOXML vote failed - though by quite a narrow margin.



I hope I could provide a valuable service here, allowing everyone to keep track on published votes.

This started out as a private checklist on paper, but as soon as I went online with this, information quickly was added faster than I could have done it myself - partly to better informed sources, partly to my language barriers. So at least for me it has been a valuable experience and I want to express my thanks to all those participating in the process and providing me with the necessary information to fill up the gaps in my list. This would have been nothing without you.



The vote is over, the results are public - so where do we stand now?

Things are lining up for the BRM in February and the situation remains tense. I have seen some interesting ideas about OOXML, notably the proposition of France, effectively splitting the standard into two parts - one basic document part and one extension part - and merging it with ODF. Allowing vendors then to provide backwards compatibility via an ODF-extension would IMHO truly improve customer experience. Alas - that's probably not in the best interest of Microsoft.

So I sincerely hope each country that provided comments will take these comments seriously in February and will not allow itself to be soothed by an half-hearted attempt to solve the problems, but will insist on clean and proper resolution of them.



Let's hope the best for the future.

Greetings

Andreas Fischer (balanceofcowards)