Microsoft has been bombarded with comments on the Office Open XML application

Microsoft's application for accepting the Office Open XML format (the native MS Office 2007 format) as an ISO standard came across a rejection wall. As is known, on September 2, 2007, according to the results of the vote of the ISO national branches, this format scored only 56% of the vote, that is, was failed. But there is still a chance. To overcome the level of 66.6%, the company must consider the comments of all those who voted “against”, try to satisfy everyone individually and persuade him to change his vote. If they manage to do this before January 14, 2008, the standard can be adopted. This is theoretically. In practice, the number of comments received by Microsoft exceeded all possible assumptions.

In the Microsoft corporate blog, the OOXML standard manager for the company today reported on how the process of responding to comments from opponents of Open XML is going. According to him, they received 3,522 comments on the standard. This is a huge amount of work, but only after doing it, Microsoft can count on a repeat vote, the date of which will be appointed at the February 25, 2008 meeting. Repeated voting will definitely be Microsoft’s last chance, this is the standard ISO procedure.

This weekend the first batch of 662 responses to comments was published. Viewing is limited by ISO requirement, but it is known that among the main requirements for OOXML is ensuring greater compatibility with the competitive ODF format, which has already been adopted as an ISO standard, as well as explanations about possible patent infringement.

Updates to the response database will be published every few weeks. The remaining two months should be enough to finish the job.
')
via Computerworld