Unix beardies get legal over OOXML

9 Apr 2008 | 16:52 BST

By Mark Ballard

THE UK'S open source community is preparing its challenge to the approval last week of Microsoft's OOXML as an international document standard.

the UK Unix and Open Systems User Group (UKUUG) has sought the advice of a barrister over whether it can mount a legal challenge to a British Standards Institute decision to approve the Microsoft standard. It has also written to the BSI asking for an explanation.

Alain Williams, chairman of the UKUUG, said there were still so many holes in OOXML that the BSI's decision to support it in a vote of the International Standards Organisation (ISO) last week could not be justified.

The BSI's supporting vote had run against the advice of its own technical committee, he said. The UKUUG was exploring whether it could press for a judicial review of the BSI decision.

The BSI said it supported OOXML at the recommendation of its committee.

Williams said the ISO vote had been won with a minority of votes.
Microsoft got approval with 75 per cent of votes cast. But, said Williams, there were more abstentions than votes.

The ISO refused to publish the details of the vote.

Europe's competition watchdog said in September that it expected the ISO should be committed to transparency in its decision making process, as set out in European rules on horizontal co-operation agreements.

It since opened an official investigation into the ISO decision to support OOXML as part of its ongoing interest in how Microsoft might restrict interoperability using its market muscle.

The Danish Unix User group has also filed a complain to the EC's competition watchdog over its national approval of OOXML, the Norwegian National Standards Institute filed a complaint to the ISO and the Mayor of Munich complained to his own Federal government that approval of the standard would restrict competition and hinder international efforts to make interoperability an everyday working reality with the ISO-approved Open Document Format.

It has been reported that 87 countries of a possible 157 countries voted on whether OOXML should be approved as an international standard. Just 16 of the 87 registered abstentions. The ICO said it might be the case that the other 70 countries were simply not required to vote.

Microsoft was unavailable for comment.

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