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OOXML End Game: Things Start to Become Interesting

Posted by Andy_Updegrove on · Post a comment
ConsortiumInfo.org Standards Blog; By Andy Updegrove
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The progress of a technical specification from development to adoption has a certain, often-lamented glacial quality to it, due to the consensus process involved. But while that process may be slow, it is not inexorable, and that which starts does not always finish.

It was over a year and a half ago that Microsoft first announced that it would offer its Office Open XML specification to Ecma, and it has been pushing the process of adoption as hard as possible ever since. It pursued that plan first through it's choice of Ecma as a vehicle, due to its ability to move OOXML through that organization at the maximum speed possible, and with the minimum risk of change. Once OOXML became Ecma 376, it has been pushed through ISO/IEC as quickly as possible, as witnessed by JTC1's decision to move directly from the one month contradictions phase directly to the five month full review phase without addressing, through changes, any comments received during the contradictions phase. In the United States committee, INCITS V1, Microsoft was even successful in blocking the inclusion of any comments at all. Now we are reaching the end of the five month full review period, and things are getting interesting as reports begin to trickle in from one National Body around the world after the other about how the national votes are going. Here are a few examples.

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