The betting among those who have been tracking Microsoft’s pursuit of international standards recognition for its Open Office XML formats (the voting by national standards bodies closed at the weekend) is that the software company will emerge victorious.
If correct, this is a significant breakthrough for Microsoft. To have lost would have handed a huge victory to the IBM-backed Open Document Format. The blessing of the ISO, on the other hand, would serve to further cement the de-facto standard that already exists around Office.
The official word from the ISO is not due until Wednesday, but Websites that have been trying to piece together the picture from individual national announcements point to what seems a big swing towards Microsoft among those countries that objected to OOXML as a standard when this came up for a vote last September. The Openmalaysia blog claims seven countries that had objected before have now either decided to support Microsoft or abstain - though the sourcing of much of this is far from clear (the UK’s decision to throw its weight behind Microsoft is attributed to open source standards lawyer Andy Updegrove.)
Until the formal count is in it would be rash to predict that this saga is over. But even hard-line opponents like the Groklaw blog now seem to have conceded Microsoft’s victory and have been left muttering about possible appeals against the way the ISO decision was reached.
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