It seems that Microsoft's stunt at attempting to force their ooxml
standard through the ISO standardization process was not completely
innocuous.

  Because of Microsoft's lobbying, a lot of member countries which had
previously only an observer status raised themselves to principal status
for the exclusive purpose of being able to vote on the ooxml standard
proposal. After the voting most of these new principal members have
completely lost their interest in voting matters and thus don't participate
in the ISO standardization process anylonger.

  This has effectively halted the ISO standardization process almost
completely. They have the rule that at least half of the principal
members must be present in order for any standard proposal to be handled.
Now there are a lot of more principal members than before, and over a half
of them are the new ones which raised their status just because of ooxml
and which immediately lost interest in ISO standardization afterwards.

  Microsoft has succeeded in putting the ISO standardization committee
in a crisis.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message