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SIS nixes OOXML approval

Voting irregularities, it appears

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The Swedish Institute of Standards (SIS) has invalidated the vote that controversially approved the OOXML standard at a meeting this week.

The organisation issued a statement saying that it had seen evidence suggesting one of the participants in the workgroup had broken the rules and voted with more than one vote. This procedural irregularity, and not any concerns over the merit of the OOMXL proposal, is the only reason behind the decision, the group said.

SIS added that it would be impossible to reconvene for a re-run of the ballot ahead of the global vote this weekend, and so it would abstain from that vote.

The vote at this week's SIS workgroup meeting raised eyebrows across the open source community because a number of Microsoft partners - who had not been involved up to this point - registered at the meeting in time to offer their support to the Microsoft-backed OOXML standard.

The standard, which was not expected to be approved, was waved through by 25 votes to six, with three abstentions.

Swedish internet pioneer Patrik Falstrom had accused Microsoft of bussing in the local partners to ensure that the vote was carried in its favour.

The SIS statement is here. In Swedish. ®

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Latest Comments

Superb! Well done SIS...

... for discovering a voting irregularity that provides with an opportunity to abstain with grace and a clear conscience at the ISO vote.

This appalling incident should serve as a salutary lesson to all who value open standards - be ever vigilant, do not let any standard get hijacked by commercial self-interest

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SIS has burnt them self....

It's quite interesting to see how SIS manage to make a totally mess of this ballot since it's an organisation that publish literature and other material regarding ISO and by that works with quality systems. They even have consultants to help companies with implementation, but they can clearly not count well enough!

There is a partly translated press release here:

http://www.os2world.com/content/view/14874/2/

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