The following six questions relate to the application of the ECMA/MS-OOXML format to be accepted as an IEC/ISO standard. Unless a national standardisation body has conclusive answers to all of them, it should vote no in IEC/ISO and request that Microsoft incorporate its work on MS-OOXML into ISO/IEC 26300:2006 (Open Document Format).

It's been a while now, and I'm still trying to enforce HZN (Croatian national standards body, or CSI) to disclose the information on members of their TC that voted unconditional yes for Microsoft OOXML. It's no more about OOXML. It's about transparency, about my right to know who are the people that declare standards, and about my right to hold them responsible for their actions.

Next month, national standards bodies will vote for the second time on whether to adopt the Office Open XML (OOXML) document format as an international standard.

Readers are encouraged to phone their standards bodies now, in order to pull another nail off OOXML's ISO coffin.

SIS, the standards body in Sweden, has declared its vote on OOXML invalid. There is no time to start over, so Sweden will abstain. We don't have it translated for you yet, but a reader informs me of the gist.

The campaign herein asks you to do 3 (three) actions :

1. sign the campaign herebelow for open standards by answering the IDABC request for comment before September 15, 2007
2. answer the request for comment of the European Commission request for comments on its websites, on CampaignECwebsites
3. ask your friends to do the same.

As I reported on July 23, INCITS, the US balloting body on the OOXML vote, put out a ballot to see whether the US should vote to approve OOXML, with the ballot to close on August 9.

Recently at OpenOffice.org we have decided to give more highlight to our many native-language communities, who are in charge not just of localization, but also QA, users support, documentation translation and marketing. This month, we start with the Irish native-language project, lead by Kevin Scannell.

Microsoft’s position is hardening as the ISO vote on OOXML (DIS 29500) in Geneva approaches at the end of this month. We know more clearly now how Microsoft and its proxy group, ECMA, will position Microsoft’s OOXML specification in advance of the vote. In short, Microsoft is betting that its influence with National Bodies will allow it to push through a specification which elevates its own interests over that of truly competitive, open international standards. In the end, it will be Microsoft’s own inflexibility that will be its undoing, and that undoing means knocking the OOXML out of approval for ISO status.