The International Organization for Standardization has voted against a proposal to fast-track Microsoft's Office Open XML format as an international standard. Here's how the vote went: all 41 of the of the countries that had worked on the proposal participated in the vote. There were 17 "yes" votes, 15 "no" votes, and 9 abstentions.

Four national standards body members of ISO and IEC – Brazil, India, South Africa and Venezuela – have submitted appeals against the recent approval of ISO/IEC DIS 29500, Information technology – Office Open XML formats, as an ISO/IEC International Standard.

Venezuela became the latest in a string of countries to appeal the approval of Microsoft's Office Open XML file format as an international standard. The format was approved in an international vote after a fast-track process that several participating countries say was flawed.

"With the polls now closed and the early results in (some public, some not), think it's time to predict with assurance that ISO will announce tomorrow that ISO/IEC DIS 29500, the draft specification based upon Microsoft’s Office Open XML formats, has failed to achieve enough yes votes to gain approval at this time..."

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has not received a formal appeal of its approval of Office Open XML as a standard, but it looks more unlikely with each day that passes.

The Russian IT-community has been surprised at Russia to approve of using Office OpenXML, developed by Microsoft in cooperation with other companies, as an international standard. However, the most striking was the fact that the Russian representatives proposed no remarks and supplements to the standard.

Like it or not, Microsoft’s OOXML – now known as IS 29500 — has received the proper number of votes to become an ISO standard.

The Office Open XML (OOXML) file format is probably destined to be an international standard under International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). And Andy Updegrove, for one, is not happy about it.

The UK has submitted its comments on the adoption of the draft of ISO/IEC DIS 29500 OOXML (also known as ECMA 376) to JTC1, the joint technical committee of ISO, the International Organization for Standardization, and IEC, the International Electrotechnical Commission. The comments were collated after several months of technical review by industry experts.