Lessons learned from a hasty standard

“At the beginning of July, the International Standardisation
Organisation’s (ISO) Joint Technical Committee for standardisation
issues in information technology (JTC001) published changes to its
procedural guidelines. The new approach can be viewed as a reaction
to the large volume of criticism after the expedited adoption of
the Office Open XML (OOXML) document standard, which serves as the
default format in Microsoft Office 2007. In particular, critics
charge that complaints voiced during the expedited proceedings in
2008 were not sufficiently taken into account.

“While Microsoft is working with Germany’s Fraunhofer FOKUS to
document and improve the highly touted interoperability of its
office suite, the global standards committee continues to hear
complaints that Microsoft’s format should not be qualified as an
open standard because the criticism voiced during the proceedings
did not receive proper consideration.”

Complete Story