For better or for worse, you can’t keep Microsoft’s Office Open XML down. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has rejected appeals from Brazil, India, South Africa, and Venezuela, and approved the format as an international standard.
Opponents don’t have to take the development as a complete defeat; in a statement, the ISO admitted that they put up a good fight, writing, “The adoption process of Office Open XML (OOXML) as an ISO/IEC Standard has generated significant debate related to both technical and procedural issues which have been addressed according to ISO and IEC procedures.”
Also, “Experiences from the ISO/IEC 29500 process will . . . provide important input to ISO and IEC and their respective national bodies and national committees in their efforts to continually improve standards development policies and procedures.”
Just the same, though, none of the recent appeals got the support of two-thirds of the ISO Technical Management Board and IEC Standardization Management Board, so the standard should be published within a few weeks’ time. No further appeals are being allowed.
Microsoft’s shareholders should be happy, at least, considering how much time, effort, and money the company invested in this cause.
