Venezuela joins OOXML opposition
Venezuela has become the fourth country to appeal the approval of Microsoft’s OOXML document format as an international standard. Denmark has also filed a protest though that has not been confirmed by the ISO/IEC yet.
LinuxInsider reports that although Venezuela’s appeal was filed after the ISO deadline, the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) have accepted the appeal.
Denmark has also filed a protest against the approval which raises concerns over the validity of the standard and the fact that the final standard has not been published yet.
To date appeals against the approval of OOXML have been filed by South Africa, India, Brazil, Venezuela and Denmark.
All of the appeals claim the Ballot Resolution Meeting that fast tracked the approval process was flawed. This is the first time that a BRM-approved standard has been appealed.
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2 Responses to “Venezuela joins OOXML opposition”
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June 3rd, 2008 @ 9:15 am
I don’t think that the appeal from Denmark can be considered by IEC/ISO as it did not come from a National Body, but rather an open source organisation within Denmark. In this sense it probably enjoys a similar statues to Norway’s earlier protest. All these are still important because they are provide a good indication of how unhappy many are with their own National Bodies which might hopefully lead to some reform in those bodies in the future. There have been similar rumblings in the UK.
A protest which is less written about, but which carries significantly greater importance is the text of the final position statement submitted by Canada when they voted back in March. If we are counting countries who have made formal protests to ISO/IEC I think we should realistically say that we have see 5 to date: Canada, SA, Brazil, India and Venezuela.
Regards
Bob
ISO/IEC DIS 29500 OOXML Fast Track Canadian Final Position Statement
Canada has carefully reviewed the results of the ISO/IEC DIS 29500 OOXML Fast Track Ballot Resolution Meeting and determined after detailed analysis that Canada will maintain its Disapprove vote.
Canada notes that major enhancements had been made to ISO/IEC 29500 during the Ballot Resolution Meeting, but the general quality of the standard was not yet what was expected of an ISO/IEC Standard, and that there were still too many unknowns.
Canada states that the inappropriate use of the fast track process for this DIS has rendered it impossible to ascertain whether in fact 29500 meets the standard of quality and correctness required in an International Standard.
Canada further recommends that the ISO/IEC JTC 1 Fast Track procedures and processes be reviewed and enhanced to ensure that this situation does not arise again in the future, and bring disrepute to the whole ISO and IEC International Standards process.
Finally, Canada recommends that the ISO/IEC DIS 29500 OOXML Fast Track documents and materials, plus the enhancements made at the Ballot Resolution Meeting be submitted to ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34 as a New Work Item for processing via the normal standards development processes.
June 10th, 2008 @ 9:06 pm
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