Standardized OOXML still under EU Investigation

Microsoft OOXML has although received the ISO approval, tentatively, it continues to be under scrutiny. The European Commission’s antitrust regulatory body is still investigating if Microsoft used market dominance to unfair advantage in clearing passage for the controversial document protocol. Several European Countries are being inquired to see how the standards-setting process was working.

Since the National Standards Body in Norway had recently questioned the voting, it was queried by European regulators to gain details into the local standardization process.

Standards Norway responded that there was heated debate but not any "inappropriate behavior that endangered our process,"

OOXML is a format for word processing documents, presentations and spreadsheets which competes against the OpenDocument standard, which is backed by many open source advocates.

Microsoft, in 2005, first began attempting to standardize Open XML in an effort to appeal to government customers who favor standards-based software and improve interoperability with third-party products.

OOXML was initially standardized by through the European-based ECMA industry association. But it failed to receive an ISO approval last September, when it attracted over 3500 comments.

In February 2008 a second ISO vote was conducted. Before then, "by eliminating redundancies, the comments had been reduced to just over 1,000 individual issues to be considered. Issues considered as priorities by national members (such as accessibility, date formats, conformance issues) were discussed, and the other comments were addressed through a voting process on the remaining items, a system agreed upon by [the] participants," according to a written statement from the ISO.

There was intense promotion by Microsoft, IBM, and their partners to manipulate the international delegates from national standards bodies who participated in the voting.
Also, it is reported that people favorable to Microsoft's pro-Open XML position joined standards bodies late in the process, inviting protests from Microsoft foes.

Irregularities in the most recent voting pattern, which ended Saturday, were also reported.

Microsoft's director of corporate standards, Jason Matusow, said on Tuesday that he expects IBM and its allies will launch "an orchestrated process attack in the hopes of overturning the ratification of Open XML, or at least to discredit what has come out of this long, global process."