After OOXML-Gate, a distasteful and anomalous affair wherein a proprietary and flawed format was somehow declared a “standard”, observers predicted a backlash against the standards bodies involved. It would seem that, at the very least, the credibility of the culprits would be tarnished. At worst, they could become irrelevant.
Well, Microsoft got what it wanted in the OOXML vote, but the radioactive fallout from that fiasco is still fouling the air, so to speak. As reported in Norwegian standards body implodes over OOXML controversy by Ars Technica just last week, things have been unravelling in Norway:
Standards Norway, the organization that manages technical standards for the Scandinavian country, took a serious blow last week when key members resigned in protest over procedural irregularities in the approval process for Microsoft’s Office Open XML (OOXML) format. The 23-person technical committee has lost 13 of its members.
The standardization process for Microsoft’s office format has been plagued with controversy. Critics have challenged the validity of its ISO approval and allege that procedural irregularities and outright misconduct marred the voting process in national standards bodies around the world. Norway has faced particularly close scrutiny because the country reversed its vote against approval despite strong opposition to the format by a majority of the members who participated in the technical committee.
In Sweden, where there was also controversy over the way the Swedish Standards Institute (SIS) participated in the OOXML approval process, things have taken an interesting twist: the body has now throw its support behind ODF, which is often seen as a competing format to OOXML. That’s poetic justice, after what happened in the OOXML vote. An SIS official commented on the sorry affair, as reported in SE: ODF made national standard in Sweden:
SIS CEO Lars Flink explains that in August 2007, SIS decided to abstain from voting on OOXML at ISO, after finding out some of the members in its OOXML committee had voted more than once. “Also, at the day of the vote, the SIS committee had also gotten between 25 and 27 new members, most of which were in favour of OOXML. At the time, our rules allowed such late-comers at the time. We have changed those rules.”
I wonder… will there be any such justice in the Philippines?
