ISO to announce Microsoft Open XML result Wednesday

That's according to Reuters anyway... The Internet is of course leakier than a leaky thing and information is starting to pop up all over the place. The Register, for example, is running "ISO puts OOXML announcement on ice" as a headline with a link through to a pdf it claims is the official result. If true, it makes for an interesting read.

On a slightly different note, and I'll mention it here as I haven't seen anyone else pick up on it yet, as we all know there have been a number of accusations about ballot stuffing and other manipulation of national bodies to achieve a certain end. These claims are strenuously denied by the parties concerned of course, and I'll leave other more capable people to sort that out, but as an academic exercise...

Have a look at the JTC1 P-Country list as per the September vote (on openmalaysiablog for example) and compare that with the current P-Country list on ISO,org. We see that Cyprus, Lebanon and Trinidad & Tobago were P-Countries that joined in the run up, have all registered 'Yes' votes and are now O-Countries... One of the reasons you drop from P to O status is if you don't continue to participate in the overall standards process. It's a rule that is designed to stop single issue votes.

They aren't all that bad of course. Of the 8 other countries that gained P-Country status that year (and still are P-Countries), only one (Ecuador) voted no in both the initial round and the post-BRM round with another two, Turkey (Yes to Abstain) and Venezuela (Yes to No), changing their votes in the post-BRM round.

At the end of the day it may not really matter as Algeria, Nigeria and the Phillipines are all new P-Counties since September 2007. There doesn't appear to be any information on what opinion Algeria held on OOXML last September but Nigeria and the Phillipines are on record as 'Yes' votes.

Lets see if they all still there in a years time...