Gosh, what fun!
Almost unheard of, but in this particular case it always seemed unavoidable. South Africa national standards body, a "P" member (P is for Participatory and is the highest level of membership) in the ISO committee responsible for allowing Microsoft's much maligned Office Open XML format for office documents to be approved have appealed against the approval decision. It is widely expected that other national bodies will now follow suit.
The appeal is on the basis of clear breaches of the ISO's procedures for handling the approval process. No mention is made of the highly dubious activities, intended to force an approval vote, that have gone on behind the scenes at a number of national standards bodies...
More detail here:
http://topicmaps.wordpress.com/2008/05/23/support-south-africas-appeal-against-ooxml/
and here:
http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/2008/05/the-south-afric.html
Posted at 12:28PM May 23, 2008 by Chris Puttick in Open Standards | Comments[1]
I'm disappointed that I can't find anything in the news about the attempt to start a judicial review into the BSI voting yes.
If any other countries go the same way, maybe we could petition for Terry Wogan to do a Euro-vision style commentary :)
Posted by Braveheart on May 23, 2008 at 04:30 PM GMT #