Format Wars – Return of the Jedi – RELOADED – Come to your senses Microsoft

OH HAPPY DAY!!! I’m very happy, relieved and surprised: Microsoft Office Open XML (MSOOXML) has FAILED – yes that is F-A-I-L-E-D – to win approval at the vote in the International Organisation for Standardisation – ISO.

Microsoft is in “Neverland”, and sort of claims victory, and their official press release is titled “Strong Global Support for Open XML as It Enters Final Phase of ISO Standards Process” and the comment from the OOXML community site, OpenXML Community reads:

Results of this ballot:

* 87 countries participated in the process: 69 voted Yes or No (51 countries voted in favor*, 18 voted against) and 18 Abstained.
* 41 of 41 P members took part in the vote, meeting the 50% participation requirement for those members.
* Open XML received 53% (17 of 32) of the required two-thirds voting Yes or No, falling 5 short of this requirement (22 Yes votes out of 32 Yes or No votes would have met the requirement).
* Overall, 26% (18 of 69) of countries voted No, one vote over the threshold of no more than 25% of No votes (17 or fewer No votes out of 69 Yes or No votes would have met this requirement).

Microsoft remains optimistic that Open XML will meet the above ISO/IEC requirements after the comments submitted by the National Bodies have been addressed during the upcoming ballot resolution period.

Notice the asterix (*), yes they snapped out of it, and realised what had actually happened:

* Note: 32 ISO members voted in favor of Open Document Format (ODF) 1.0 at the end of its process and 15 ISO members supported PDF/A-1 at the end of its process.

Groklaw helped doing the math for Microsoft:

Microsoft is, of course, counting P and O members in one bunch. The actual percentages go like this:

• P-Members voting: 17 in favor out of 32 = 53.12% (requirement >= 66.66%)
• Member bodies voting: 18 negative votes out of 69 = 26.08%
• Disapproved

“Return of the Jedi – RELOADED”: The Empire is under pressure, there’s going to be a sequel, stay tuned, we do indeed live in interesting times.

France has an interesting proposal: Simply merge ODF and MSOOXML

My take on this is:

Microsoft: Come to your senses! Admit defeat! Spare the world, and your shareholders the agony of this stupid format war and MOVE ON.

It’s really very simple Microsoft: Just document ALL your formats, including the old binary Office formats, and we can declare victory for humanity in this STUPID war.

More on format wars and “the Jedi of the Internet” from yours truly.