SIS nixes OOXML approval
PrintVoting irregularities, it appears
Posted in Developer, 31st August 2007 10:55 GMT
Free whitepaper – Unified Server Configurator
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. ®
Analyst Keynote: The Register Agile Data Center Summit
Managing desktop software for fun and profit
Enabling the Agile Data Center
Windows 95 to Windows 7: How Microsoft lost its vision
Ubuntu's Karmic Koala bares fangs at Windows 7
Change your views: OS X tags exploited
Sun preps cell-phone Java plan for netbooks