Complaints about the national bodies process , Norway , India There have been allegations that the ISO ballot process for Office Open XML was marred with voting irregularities and heavy-handed tactics by some stakeholders. • An
Ars Technica article sources
Groklaw stating that at Portugal's national body TC meeting, "representatives from
Microsoft attempted to argue that
Sun Microsystems, the creators and supporters of the competing
OpenDocument format (ODF), could not be given a seat at the conference table because there was a lack of chairs." Jason Matusow, a Director in the Corporate Standards Strategy Team at Microsoft, stated that the memo was the action of an individual employee acting outside company policy, and that the memo was retracted as soon as it was discovered. SIS have since changed its voting procedure so that a member has to actually participate before being allowed to vote. • Finnish IT journalists described that meeting as raising strong differences in opinions. • In Switzerland, SNV registered a vote of "approval with comments," and there was some criticism about a "conflict of interest" regarding the chairman of the UK 14 sub-committee, who did not allow discussion of licensing, economic and political arguments. In addition, the chairman of the relevant SNV parent committee is also the secretary general of
Ecma International, which approved OOXML as a standard. Further complaints regarded "committee stuffing", which is however allowed by present SNV rules, and non-adherence to SNV rules by the UK 14 chairman, which resulted in a re-vote with the same result. • Australia's national standards body,
Standards Australia, was criticized for its handling of the OOXML process by the
New Zealand Open Source Society, the open source advisory firm Waugh Partners,
Australian National University Professor Roger Clarke, OASIS lawyer Andrew Updegrove, alleging that Jelliffe would not represent the views of those opposing the standardization. Jelliffe had previously been in the news after being offered payment by Microsoft to improve incorrect Wikipedia articles about Office Open XML. after OOXML was ratified by ISO and all appeals were rejected. • The
IDABC community programme (which is managed by the
European Commission) runs the "Open Source Observatory" which is "dedicated to Free/Libre/Open Source Software." Via its "Open Source News", it has reported on reports which criticize the standardization process. • It states that the German IT news site Heise reports that in Germany, two opponents of Office Open XML,
Deutsche Telekom and
Google, were not allowed to vote because they tried to join the committee last-minute. Open Source News says, "Participants described the process as ludicrous." • It relays a report from Michiel Leenaars (director of the
Internet Society Netherlands) that in the Netherlands, "the chair of the national standardization committee deciding on OOXML, protested that the almost unanimous conditional approval was blocked by Microsoft." The vote was invalidated and assigned to KT 182. A member of Poland's
Linux community believes this was due to "reorganisation in the Polish standardisation body." KT 182 voted to approve Office Open XML. • It reports that in
Andalucía, the director of Andalucía's Department for Innovation complained that Microsoft submitted misinformation to
the Spanish National Body stating that it (Andalucía) supported the company's Office Open XML-proposal. • It reports that in Portugal, eleven companies (including
IBM) and open source advocacy groups requested that Portugal's Ministry of Economy and Innovation investigate Portugal's vote on Office Open XML. • In June 2008, the
High Court of Justice in the United Kingdom rejected a complaint by the
UK Unix and Open Systems User Group (UKUUG), requesting a review of the
British Standard Institution's decision to vote in favour of DIS 29500. The judge commented that "this application does not disclose any arguable breach of the procedures of BSI or of rules of procedural fairness".
Other complaints A further letter of protest was filed by
Open Source Leverandørforeningen, a Danish
open source vendor association IBM issued a press release stating: "IBM will continue to be an active supporter of ODF. We look forward to being part of the community that works to harmonize ODF and OOXML for the sake of consumers, companies and governments, when OOXML control and maintenance is fully transferred to JTC1."
Examination of fast track process Deutsches Institut für Normung (DIN, Germany) voted "yes" on DIS 29500, and stated that DIN as a whole "recognised that there has been no serious breach of JTC 1 and ISO rules", but that, "the conclusion has been reached that the rules for the fast-track procedure need to be amended". Resolution 49 was entitled "Clarification on Consistency of Standards vs Competing Specifications" and contained the following text: JTC 1 recognizes its commitment to ISO's and IEC's "one standard" principle; however, it recognizes that neither it nor its SCs are in a position to mandate either the creation or the use of a single standard, and that there are times when multiple standards make the most sense in order to respond to the needs of the marketplace and of society at large. It is not practical to define, a priori, criteria for making these decisions. Therefore each standard must be judged by the National Bodies, based on their markets, on its own merits. At a companion meeting of the Special Working Group on Directives (SWG-Directives) in
Osaka a recommendation was made describing series of "concepts" that would in future be applied to the Ballot Resolution process of future Fast Tracked standards. These mirrored the process that had taken place for ISO/IEC 29500: • The purpose is to review and address ballot comments • The meeting must have a separate agenda and be convened as a separate meeting even if it is in conjunction with/co-located with an SC/WG meeting • The comments must be discussed within a single meeting and NOT distributed over a series of meetings • The meeting is open to the Fast track Submitter and to all National Bodies regardless of whether or not the National Body has voted on the document under review – no limitation on which National Body can participate • The meeting participants represent their National Body and their National Body positions • All National Bodies have an equal say in any decisions made during the meeting • The Project Editor must prepare an Editor's proposed disposition of ballot comments in sufficient time prior to the BRM to allow consideration by National Bodies. This editor's proposed disposition of comments document will be reviewed during the ballot resolution meeting • A disposition of ballot comments approved during the meeting must be circulated following the meeting for the information of all National Bodies • When all comments have been addressed and a disposition of comments has been approved by the meeting, the BRM meeting criteria have been met Standards lawyer Andy Updegrove (whose firm represents
OASIS) commented that he was "startled and dismayed" at these concepts, since they "basically add up to a ratification of the conduct of the Geneva BRM."
Investigation of Microsoft by the European Commission In January 2008, the European Commission started an antitrust investigation into the interoperability of the Office Open XML format on the request of
European Committee for Interoperable Systems, described as "a coalition of Microsoft's largest competitors". IBM led a global campaign urging national bodies to demand that ISO/IEC JTC1 not even consider Open XML, because ODF had made it through ISO/IEC JTC1 first. Nicos Tsilas, Microsoft's senior director of interoperability and intellectual property policy, downplaying Microsoft's American and EU conviction as abusers of monopoly power, expressed concern that IBM and the
Free Software Foundation have been lobbying governments to mandate the use of the rival
OpenDocument format (ODF) to the exclusion of other formats. In his opinion, they are "using government intervention as a way to compete" as they "couldn't compete technically." IBM have asked governments to have an open-source, exclusive purchasing policy. ==Arguments in support and criticism of Office Open XML standard==