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.

The U.S. delegate organization to the powerful ISO standards body is now almost sure to vote against approving Microsoft Corp.'s Office Open XML document format as an open standard this year.

The U.S. delegate organization to the powerful ISO standards body is now almost sure to vote against approving Microsoft Corp.'s Office Open XML document format as an open standard this year.

Bill Gates has reportedly been making phone calls to the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Commerce to push the American National Standards Institute to ignore the votes of its advisory committees and vote "yes" on ISO standardizing Microsoft's Open Office XML (OOXML) format, the one in competition with the OpenDocument Format (ODF) pushed by IBM and Sun.

Although digital works are ubiquitous and easily duplicated, they are also ephemeral and at risk of disappearing unless preservation efforts begin soon after they are created, according to a study by the Library of Congress and three international partners.

"we could never have done this by ourselves. By pushing so hard to get OOXML endorsed, even to the point of loading the standards boards in Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, Portugal, Italy, and beyond, Microsoft showed to the world how poor their format is. Good standards just don't need that kind of pressure.

Microsoft has won an international standards designation for its open-document format, according to voting results obtained Tuesday, apparently ending a divisive yearlong battle with software rivals before a global standards-setting organization.

Microsoft is flaunting a new Windows Vista total cost of ownership study that—no surprise—presents rosy findings.

A detailed scientific study about Debian Project governance and social organization from the management perspective.

How a big non-commercial non-paying community evolved and actualy produces some of the most respectable Operating Systems and applications packages available?