Amid lobbying, Microsoft is seen winning an international open standard vote ...NOT!

[A. Maitland Bottoms]

Andre Kesteloot writes:
 > http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/09/03/business/msft.php?WT.mc_id=newsalert

Such optimism. This was a battle in which Microsoft failed to
build consensus.

Now there are results, and the not winner:
http://www.iso.org/iso/pressrelease.htm?refid=Ref1070

Compare to the competition:

The OpenDocument format (ODF, ISO/IEC 26300, full name: OASIS Open
Document Format for Office Applications) passed without negative
votes.

(In a zip file linked from
http://www.jtc1sc34.org/repository/0728revc.htm
is this:
                   Result of voting
 P-Members voting: 23 in favour out of 23 = 100% (requirement >= 66.66%)
   (P-Members having abstained are not counted in this vote.)
Member bodies voting: 0 negative votes out of 32 = 0% (requirement <= 25%)
                           Approved
)
Talk about "Strong Global Support" - The OpenDocument format (ODF,
ISO/IEC 26300) has it!

So, if you are in an organization that values standards compliance
in your document storage format, go to http://www.openoffice.org/
and download some software which supports ODF. Or wait some unknown
length of time until Microsoft implements support for ODF.

Let's see if Microsoft follows up this setback by:
 - spending money to improve the OOXML specification to make it
   easier to approve, or
 - spending money on those who get a vote to change their vote, or
 - just supporting ODF with their products.

-Maitland