The request was rejected:
http://www.computeractive.co.uk/personal-computer-world/news/2174199/microsoft-standards-bid-faceshttp://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20070206145620473http://fsfe.org/en/fellows/ciaran/ciaran_s_free_software_notes/iso_won_t_fast_track_ms_ooxml_consideration
I just got off the phone with the NSAI. I was told that the reason Ireland
wasn't among the 19 countries that voiced objections to ISO about this
application because NSAI didn't have a mandate from it's members.
I was also told that 90% of the submissions they received were off-topic.
This is like the software patents issue - on one hand we have to research
the procedure and the issue so that we can make a useful contribution, and
on the other hand we have a deadline and we don't know how we're doing at
any particular point in time.
One thing worth remembering is that this time, the deadline was for when
NSAI will stop discussing the issue. Most people probably treated it as a
submission deadline. So NSAI got nothing to base a discussion on for the
first while, then suddenly got too much to read (and continued getting
submissions even after the vote was over).
At least IFSO's submission was a week before the deadline, thanks to Glenn
Strong. As was ILUG's.
Here's what IFSO wrote to the National Standards Authority of Ireland:
http://ifso.ie/documents/correspondence/20070201iso-ooxml.pdf
I was also told that this was the hottest topic the NSAI had seen in a year,
and before that the last topic of similar scale was 5 years ago. The guy I
talked to also explained the JTC and ISO procedure. For next time, he
mentioned that in future it would be better if we submitted our objections
in "the ISO format" - I'm not sure what that is, it's probably not hard to
find on ISO's site.
--
Ciarán O'Riordan __________________ \ http://fsfeurope.org/projects/gplv3http://ciaran.compsoc.com/ _________ \ GPLv3 and other work supported by
http://fsfe.org/fellows/ciaran/weblog \ Fellowship: http://www.fsfe.org
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