Denmark Backs Up the OOXML Outrage

The official appeals over OOXML's adoption as an international standard have been coming in left and right over the last week or so, leading up to last Thursday's deadline for appealing the adoption. Now, those appeals are being backed up by a letter of protest from Denmark, delivered directly to the ISO Vice President.

According to the ever-vigilant watchdogs at Groklaw, Denmark's Open Source Leverandørforeningen — the Association for Open Source Vendors — takes issue with the manner in which the OOXML approval was handled by Dansk Standard, and has lodged a formal protest with the ISO. In a letter sent to the head of Dansk Standard, who just happens to be ISO Vice President, OSL alleges a lack of consensus within Dansk Standard and a violation of it's own rules, as well as a violation of the ISO's directives — a charge common to all of the appeals and protests so far. They go on to assert that the fast-track process under which OOXML was considered was not only mismanaged, but rendered void by the ISO's failure to publish a final version of the standard by the end of March.

So far, South Africa and Brazil have lodged formal appeals with the ISO, while several other countries are battling it out against their national standards bodies via their national governments. Jacob Holmblad — the Dansk Standard Director/ISO Vice President — told Computerworld that he will be in Geneva next week, and expects to see the issue addressed while he is there. Something tells us, however, that it will be a long, long time before we finally see the OOXML debacle truly addressed.