Executive board members of the International Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS), the organization that represents the United States in ISO standardization deliberations, recently held an internal poll to determine the position that the United States should take on Microsoft's request for Office Open XML (OOXML) approval. With eight votes in favor, seven against, and one abstention, the group was one vote short of the nine votes required for approving OOXML ISO standardization. This does not mean that OOXML is dead in the water, however.
As we have previously reported, many ISO member nations are similarly rejecting the OOXML fast-track proposal. Although this is a considerable setback for Microsoft, it merely slows down the ISO standardization process for OOXML; it does not halt it completely. Now we are in for a protracted debate as standards organizations around the world engage in broad discussion and conduct analysis of the controversial document format.
Of the organizations that participated in the poll, Apple, the Department of Homeland Security, EIA, EMC, HP, Intel, Microsoft, and Sony all voted in favor of OOXML fast-track approval. Votes opposing approval came from Farance, GS1 US, IBM, Lexmark, NIST, Oracle, and the US Department of Defense. IEEE—which is comprised of numerous organizations including the companies that are on the INCITS executive board—abstained, citing internal disagreement.
NIST's vote opposing OOXML fast-track approval may seem peculiar in light of a statement issued by the organization affirming "conditional" support for the OOXML format. We contacted NIST for clarification on the organization's position. NIST representative Ben Stein responded by drawing our attention to section 9.8 of the ISO/IEC JTC 1 procedural documentation, which notes that "conditional approval should be submitted as a disapproval vote."
Standards expert Andy Updegrove provides more insight into NIST's position in a blog entry. As Updegrove explains, a vote of approval with comments is procedurally equivalent to unconditional approval, because it doesn't necessitate evaluation of comments and criticisms. Organizations that wish to make approval contingent on fulfillment of specific criteria necessarily have to vote against fast-track approval.
Looking at the comments issued with the votes, it appears as though several other organizations that voted against fast-track approval share NIST's position. Oracle's official comment, for instance, states that INCITS should "make approval of the [OOXML] specification conditional upon the satisfactory resolution of the large number of issues identified during the public review period." Likewise, the US Department of Defense—which also voted against fast-track approval—states that its position "is based on the requirement to first resolve existing comments and further develop/mature the present state of the standard." The Department of Defense cites several potential problems with the OOXML standard, including the use of binary information that "would lead to security concerns," references to undocumented backward compatibility formatting features that some have argued could potentially impede third-party implementation of the standard, and "the use of proprietary file formats within the open standard [that] appear to cause potential intellectual property ownership concerns."
Given the controversial nature, relative complexity, and significant importance of the standard, the results of INCIT's vote is unsurprising. An INCITS technical committee also voted against fast-track OOXML approval last month prior to the executive board's vote. Further deliberation is clearly needed as well as further refinement of the format. It seems as though many of the organizations participating in the approval process are generally supportive of the standard itself, but are unwilling to voice unconditional support until their concerns are resolved. OOXML may be down, but it's certainly not out.
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