Have a look where i learned my stuff:

http://www.noooxml.org/irregularities

The Federal Court of Auditors found that about 300 people are working in government agencies and the federal administration while 100% on the payroll of private companies and interest groups. Having said that, perhaps IBM could disclose the names and the affiliation of the people on the national standards bodies and show (!) the connections to Microsoft. If that has already been done, perhaps The Inquirer could give us the juicy details. Personally I would like to understand why countries like Germany voted in favor of a file format that is orthogonal to the already approved ISO Standard ODF.

http://www.tagesschau.de/inland/externemitarbeiter6.html

So, in view of the fact that Office isn't even compliant with the ISO standard for OOXML, how long will Microsoft take to become OOXML compliant. Once they are OOXML compliant, how long before they make changes that break their compliance? 

While the Open Source community will do everything they can to comply with the standard, will Microsoft? I'd bet a large sum that future discussions with governments requiring open standards will be beset by accusations of non-compliance with standards. Microsoft will find it very hard (based on their past) to remain compliant with their own standard.

If governments demand standards compliance for their documents then Microsoft will be stuffed.
It will never implement a standard even if it is its own. 
If their software saves/reads documents in standard format then other peoples software will be able to read and write it too - they'd never let that happen!

OOXML = Office Open XML not Open Office XML

Hey it was officially approved and largely announced since yesterday, why is this so hard do admit?

Certainly this leaves a bitter taste in our mouth since the Word format is one of the pillars of M$ monopoly.

But, as a second thought, this could turn into a good thing. Maybe now our open source alternatives will try harder to work with Microsoft Office files since most of our classmates and workmates will continue using them anyway.

Open Office, for example, had always a hard time when a DOC file is somewhat more complex than a simple letter and has a few tables and images. Now they cannot moan that M$ files aren't a standard. This may be another small step towards wiping that little Windows partition in a corner of our harddisk.


Office Open XML
Office Open XML
Office Open XML

I wonder what possessed you to uses "crushes" in that headline. The vote was rather close -- 75% yes when 67% was required for approval. That doesn't qualify as a crushing victory in my book.

And although you did mention that there were irregularities in you procedures and voting, your article doesn't give a very good picture of how horribly Microsoft subverted the standardization processes.

All in all, a much less than accurate account of the event.

The problem with OOXML as a "standard" and Microsoft is that Microsoft has a poor record of sticking with standards. If it's convenient for them, they'll stick with the standard for seven, eight or nine years, then declare that they need to "extend" the standard, or some other rubbish, and will release software that no longer supports the older version of their "standard", leaving users wondering how they'll access their archives. Pfffft to Microsoft and their "standards"!