<incom> ISO on OOXML

[Soenke Zehle]

you have probably seen this already (ISO release below), people in 
attendance have published some ugly details about the process, unclear 
whether this can/will change the vote though, Soenke

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080328090328998
http://homembit.com/2008/03/finally-the-details-about-the-final-results-of-the-brm.html


http://www.iso.org/iso/pressrelease.htm?refid=Ref1123

Ref.: 1123

ISO/IEC DIS 29500 receives necessary votes for approval as an 
International Standard

2008-04-02

ISO/IEC DIS 29500, Information technology – Office Open XML file 
formats, has received the necessary number of votes for approval as an 
ISO/IEC International Standard.

Approval required at least 2/3 (i.e. 66.66 %) of the votes cast by 
national bodies participating in the joint technical committee ISO/IEC 
JTC 1, Information technology, to be positive; and no more than 1/4 
(i.e. 25 %) of the total number of ISO/IEC national body votes cast to 
be negative. These criteria have now been met with 75 % of the JTC 1 
participating member votes cast positive and 14 % of the total of 
national member body votes cast negative.

The 30-day period during which ISO/IEC national bodies had the 
opportunity to reconsider their votes on the draft ISO/IEC DIS 29500 
closed at midnight on Saturday, 29 March 2008, with the result that the 
criteria for approval of the document as an ISO/IEC International 
Standard have now been met.

ISO/IEC DIS 29500 was originally disapproved in the "fast-track 
vote"which ended in September 2007, when 3 500 comments were received. 
However, under the rules of ISO/IEC JTC 1, the DIS vote was followed by 
a ballot resolution meeting (BRM) at which the comments were addressed. 
After the meeting, the ISO/IEC national bodies had 30 days to modify 
their votes if they wished.

The BRM was held in Geneva during the week 25-29 February 2008. By 
eliminating redundancies, the comments had been reduced to just over 1 
000 individual issues to be considered. Issues considered as priorities 
by national members (such as accessibility, date formats, conformance 
issues) were discussed, and the other comments were addressed through a 
voting process on the remaining items, a system agreed by the BRM 
participants.

The issues addressed and revised have resulted in sufficient national 
bodies withdrawing their earlier disapproval votes, or transforming them 
into positive votes, so that the criteria for approval of the document 
as an International Standard have now been met. Subject to there being 
no formal appeals from ISO/IEC national bodies in the next two months, 
the International Standard will accordingly proceed to publication.

ISO/IEC 29500 is a standard for word-processing documents, presentations 
and spreadsheets that is intended to be implemented by multiple 
applications on multiple platforms. According to the submitters of the 
document, one of its objectives is to ensure the long-term preservation 
of documents created over the last two decades using programmes that are 
becoming incompatible with continuing advances in the field of 
information technology.

ISO/IEC DIS 29500 was originally developed as the Office Open XML 
Specification by Microsoft Corporation which submitted it to Ecma 
International, an information technology industry association, for 
transposing into an ECMA standard. Following a process in which other IT 
industry players participated, Ecma International subsequently published 
the document as ECMA standard 376.

Ecma International then submitted the standard in December 2006 to 
ISO/IEC JTC 1, with whom it has category A liaison status, for adoption 
as an International Standard under the JTC 1 "fast track" procedure. 
This allows a standard developed within the IT industry to be presented 
to JTC 1 as a draft international standard (DIS) that can be adopted 
after a process of review and balloting. This process has now been 
concluded with the end of the 30-day period following the ballot 
resolution meeting.

The process was open to the IEC and ISO national member bodies from 104 
countries, including 41 that are participating members of the joint 
ISO/IEC JTC 1.


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