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The International Organisation for Standardisation, the body that approves technical standards, has voted against granting Microsoft’s Open Office XML document format official standard status.

The company had lobbied hard to secure the votes of the ISO’s member states. In Sweden, the technical committee ruled its own vote invalid, alleging that local Microsoft employees had mentioned cash incentives to committee members. It even claimed an early victory the day before the result of the vote was announced.

But the movement against ratification of the standard, lead by IBM and Sun Microsystems, succeeded in securing 26% of ISO members’ support – just enough to overturn approval. Critics argued that OOXML standard had too many features that were specific to Microsoft software that the company would inevitably end up controlling content of the standard.

Without ISO ratification for OOXML, it will be harder for Microsoft to maintain its current dominance of the format of business documents, as office documents become richer and more interactive. And it would make purchasing Microsoft software less attractive for businesses and government organisations keen to adopt approved standards.

The company was resolutely upbeat following the announcement. There will be another vote on whether OOXML should be fast-tracked to ratification in February 2008, and Microsoft said that it is positive the ISO will find in its favour then.

"Given how encouraging today's results were, we believe that the final tally in early 2008 will result in the ratification of Open XML as an ISO standard,” said Microsoft’s general manger for interoperability and standards, Tim Robertson.

Further reading 

IA Today - India votes 'no' on Microsoft's XML document format
Information Age Last Word - Outdated Microsoft