« Sony confirms security problem | Home | Recent Comments | Categories | Senate blocks mandatory ID implants in employees »
Microsoft Favored to Win Open Document Vote
[Quote:]
Amid intense lobbying, Microsoft is expected to squeak out a victory this week to have its open document format, Office Open XML, recognized as an international standard, people tracking the vote said Monday.
The move would help Microsoft, the world’s largest software maker, maintain its competitive advantage in the expanding field of open document formats.
“After what basically has amounted to unprecedented lobbying, I think that Microsoft’s standard is going to get the necessary amount of support,” said Pieter Hintjens, president of Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure, a Brussels group that led the opposition.
The proposal would already have failed, but the last weeks a large number of countries upgraded their status from Observer to Participating member. Despite that, it appears the vote is failing anyway. Here’s the current situation:
[Quote:]
Summary:
Votes P-M JTC1 (41) P-M SC34 (36) Others Total yes 7 8 1 11 no 13 9 1 15 abstain 5 5 2 9 unclear 16 14 0 20
This process should be evaluated very, very carefully, so that a single vendor cannot fuck up the process like this:
[Quote:]
The result of this intensive process was that during the last meeting on the subject on August 16th 2007 in Delft – where the vote was to be cast – after a majority rejection of a proposal for an “Approval” a final proposal for a so called conditional approval (i.e.: a no vote that would turn into a yes vote if a number of reasonable and already determined conditions were met at the next stage) almost got unanimous support – from all but the local support branch of Microsoft. This isolated position caused the vote to fail and the Netherlands to automatically vote for an “Abstain”.
|