US organization set to vote against Open XML's approval

By Eric Lai, Computerworld, 08/13/07

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The U.S. delegate organization to the powerful ISO standards body is now almost sure to vote against approving Microsoft Corp.'s Office Open XML document format as an open standard this year.

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That could sway other member nations of the ISO's JTC-1 technical committee to vote against Open XML's approval by the Sept. 2 deadline.

But at least one insider says that changes to Open XML to which Microsoft has already agreed could help the technology win approval in a new vote in September 2008.

In an internal vote of the Washington-based International Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS) that concluded Thursday, Open XML did not gain sufficient support within the executive board of the organization.

The vote was 8-7 in favor of supporting Open XML, with one abstention. According to Frank Farance, a longtime INCITS technical member who voted against Open XML, the measure needed 10 votes, or two-thirds of those voting, to be approved.

"It was not that close," he said.

But Farance said most INCITS members support Open XML's eventual approval.

"We think it will ultimately become an ISO standard; let's just do it the right way," he said.

Jennifer Garner, the INCITS administrator overseeing the U.S. position on Open XML, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Members that voted against Open XML were longtime Microsoft antagonists IBM and Oracle Corp., printer maker Lexmark International Inc., bar-code standards group GS1 US, federal groups such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the U.S. Department of Defense, and Farance. The IEEE abstained.

Voting for Open XML were longtime Microsoft partners Intel Corp., EMC Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., and Sony Electronics, as well as foe Apple Inc., which is supporting Open XML in its just-released iWork '08 productivity software. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the Electronic Industries Alliance and Microsoft also voted for Open XML, which would join the OpenDocument Format (ODF) as ISO-approved standards.

For more enterprise computing news, visit Computerworld. Story copyright Computerworld, Inc.

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