Microsoft wins ISO vote on Office Open XML

FRANKFURT, GERMANY: Microsoft Corp has won enough support to have its OOXML text and spreadsheet format certified as a global industry standard, Microsoft and the OpenDoc Society, which had opposed approval, said on Tuesday.

Microsoft had pushed hard for international ratification of Office Open XML (OOXML), a version of the default file-saving format of Microsoft Office 2007, to improve its chances of winning government contracts and to woo developers working on new software applications and content.

Opponents of the Microsoft certification had argued that introducing a rival to the already ISO-approved Open Document Format (ODF), developed by a consortium around Sun Microsystems, defeated the purpose of having standards.

Microsoft did not get the two-thirds majority of the participating national body members of the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) needed to clinch the standard in an original vote in September.

But it won 75 percent of those votes in a second ballot that closed on March 29, the OpenDoc Society said.

ISO had originally planned to publish the vote results on Monday but then postponed it to Wednesday, saying it wanted to inform national standards bodies first.

The OpenDoc Society said it collected its information from those national bodies and Microsoft said in a statement welcoming the decision that the publicly available information indicated it had won the necessary support.