Wednesday 29 August 2007

Microsoft's Office coup in Sweden

On Monday, 27 August, the Swedish Standards Institute (SiS) declared its coming vote for the "Office Open XML" (OOXML) standard proposal initiated by Microsoft. All such ISO participants in this matter must vote no later than 2 September.

The working group that recommended this decision to SiS originally had 12 members, where a NO vote was very likely. However, on the meeting appeared 23 new members, most of them Microsoft partners. (Many of those became members even when the meeting was about to start.) As a result, a YES vote was enforced.

This is just a brief update to existing information available from e.g. the FFII Sweden press release and countless blogs and articles.

I was present at this meeting and just received confirmation from SiS of the voting results: (please see the FFII PR for some more details)

Vote results: 25 YES, 6 NO, 4 members absent.

New YES votes: (19 members since 23 Aug. 2007 or later)
  • Camako Data AB
  • Connecta AB
  • Cornerstone
  • Emric AB
  • Exor AB
  • Fishbone Systems AB
  • Formpipe Software
  • FS System AB
  • HP
  • iBizkit AB
  • IDE
  • IT-Vision AB
  • KnowIT
  • Modul1
  • Nordic Station AB
  • Sogeti
  • Solid Park AB
  • SourceTech
  • TietoEnator

New NO vote: (entered 23 Aug. 2007)

  • Google

Old YES votes: (6 members)

  • Diamo AB
  • EPiServer
  • HumanData
  • IAMCP Sweden Chapter
  • Microsoft
  • WM-Data Sverige AB

Old NO votes: (latest member was registered on 9 Aug. 2007)

  • Illuminet
  • Kungliga biblioteket
  • Riksarkivet (chair)
  • Sun
  • Verva
Members leaving the meeting before the vote: (all but IBM (old member) filed applications after 23 Aug. 2007)
  • Cybernetics (Microsoft Gold Partner)
  • IBM (NO)
  • Readsoft AB (Microsoft Certified Partner)
  • Strand Interconnect AB (Microsoft Gold Partner)
I have some more info on the meeting etc., I will try to publish this shortly.

4 comments:

The Wraith said...

So the 'old' NO vote was actually losing anyways ? 6-5

(and 9 august does not seem very old to me btw)

What is missing from the blog is whether the approval vote is with comments or without as a lot of the approval votes by other coutries is still acompanied by the comments

David Vuorio said...

The vote would have been 6-6 with IBM, which would give the chairman an extra vote. Also, there were many factors that would have meant people could have switched to a NO.

"Yes with comments" is IMO an artificial construct. Anyhow, I recall that a vast majority voted yes without comments. The question of submitting comments was never discussed.

David Vuorio said...

I meant: "Yes with technical comments" is IMO an artificial construct. But also, while comments can be appended to a yes vote, they wouldn't be binding.

The Wraith said...

Allthough they wouldn't be binding there is a lot of precedent within ISO standardization that as many comments as possible will be adressed in ballot resolution.

OASIS created a v1.0 second edition for OpenDocument just from comments that were gathered from yes with comments votes during the ballot resolution phase.

Allthough it might not be binding comments that contribute to a better specification will always be welcomed. It would be a waste to throw that away.