[Chapter-delegates] ooXML

[Michiel Leenaars]

Hi all,

the final official outcome on DIS 29500 is now public.

http://www.iso.org/iso/pressrelease.htm?refid=Ref1070

The details about the vote will become known over the next couple of
days, but it looks like the larger or economically more important
countries like China, India, Japan, UK, France, Iran, Korea, Canada)
either voted against or abstained. Of the original 30 members of JTC1
it seems almost half (14) voted against. 

For the vote to turn less than a handful of countries will need
to be convinced one way or another, technically the vote of Ireland
counts the same on the ballot as say India or China. It will be
interesting to see what the body count on the comments will be, and how
many countries will join between now and February for that matter. 

Best,
Michiel Leenaars
ISOC.nl

------------------------------------------------
Vote closes on draft ISO/IEC DIS 29500 standard

2007-09-04

A ballot on whether to publish the draft standard ISO/IEC DIS 29500,
Information technology – Office Open XML file formats, as an
International Standard by ISO (International Organization for
Standardization) and IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission)
has not achieved the required number of votes for approval.

The five-month ballot process ended on 2 September and was open to the
IEC and ISO national member bodies from 104 countries, including 41
that are participating members of the joint ISO/IEC technical
committee, JTC 1, Information technology.

Approval requires at least 2/3 (i.e. 66.66 %) of the votes cast by
national bodies participating in ISO/IEC JTC 1 to be positive; and no
more than 1/4 (i.e. 25 %) of the total number of national body votes
cast negative. Neither of these criteria were achieved, with 53 % of
votes cast by national bodies participating in ISO/IEC JTC 1 being
positive and 26 % of national votes cast being negative.

Comments that accompanied the votes will be discussed at a ballot
resolution meeting (BRM) to be organized by the relevant subcommittee
of ISO/IEC JTC 1 (SC 34, Document description and processing languages)
in February 2008 in Geneva, Switzerland.

The objective of the meeting will be to review and seek consensus on
possible modifications to the document in light of the comments
received along with the votes. If the proposed modifications are such
that national bodies then wish to withdraw their negative votes, and
the above acceptance criteria are then met, the standard may proceed to
publication.

Otherwise, the proposal will have failed and this fast-track procedure
will be terminated. This would not preclude subsequent re-submission
under the normal ISO/IEC standards development rules.

ISO/IEC DIS 29500 is a proposed standard for word-processing documents,
presentations and spreadsheets that is intended to be implemented by
multiple applications on multiple platforms. According to the
submitters, one of its objectives is to ensure the long-term
preservation of documents created over the last two decades using
programmes that are becoming incompatible with continuing advances in
the IT field.

ISO/IEC DIS 29500 was originally developed as the Office Open XML
Specification by Microsoft Corporation which submitted it to Ecma
International for transposing into an ECMA standard. Following a
process in which other IT industry players participated, Ecma
International subsequently published the document as ECMA standard 376.

Ecma International then submitted the standard in December 2006 to
ISO/IEC JTC 1, with whom it has category A liaison status, for adoption
as an International Standard under the JTC 1 "fast track" procedure.
This allows a standard developed within the IT industry to be presented
to JTC 1 as a Draft International Standard (DIS) that can be adopted
after a process consisting of a one-month review by the national bodies
of JTC 1 and then a five-month ballot open to all voting national
bodies of ISO and IEC. 

About ISO 

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