Information Society Watch

4 September 2007, The NewYork Times

Microsoft’s bid to get it's OOXML standard ratified as an Open Standard by the International Organisation for Standardization suffered a rude jolt when members of that body voted to reject OOXML as an international standard. Microsoft needed 75% of the members to support the proposal, however it ended up getting a little more than 58% of the votes. One of Microsoft's opponents believes that Microsoft's aggressive lobbying strategy which pushed smaller countries to vote in it's favour went against it. However the battle is not yet over as Microsoft still has time till February to rework it's strategy and bring OOXML to true open standard norms to get it approved as an open standard.

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