I have the latest news from Denmark, where Groklaw member elhaard tells me that the recent news about irregularities in the OOXML voting process in Sweden has caused a reaction now in Denmark.

China has unanimously voted "no, with comments" on OOXML. As I had noted in an earlier blog entry, China had been signalling some displeasure with Microsoft and OOXML in recent weeks, via Xinhua, the official government news agency, so this is not totally a surprise.

ComputerWorld Denmark is reporting that a strong letter of protest has been sent to ISO from Open Source Leverandørforeningen in Denmark (OSL): President Morten Kjærsgaard from OSL have today lodged an official complaint to the ISO Vice President Jacob Holmblad, who also sits as managing director of Danish Standard.

As you will recall, the Executive Board (EB) of INCITS, the US voting body on OOXML in the ISO/IEC JTC1, posted two simultaneous, seven day written ballots - one to approve, with comments, and one to abstain, again with comments. The votes have now been received back. and are as follows:

THERE seems to be some revisionist forgetfulness over in Denmark, which neglects to account for the OOXML fiasco

"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.

I'm hearing now that Kenya has changed its vote from Yes to Abstain! Kenya is a P-Member. There's also an unconfirmed report that the committee in Denmark has asked Denmark Standards to vote No, after the considerable pressure to change the vote to yes reportedly failed.

I think I see a way we could be really helpful to the ISO folks having to sort through all the 10,000 comments the various countries filed with their votes on MS OOXML.

Where are we now?