Rom Feria
As of this writing, the voting for the approval or disapproval of OOXML as an ISO standards has ended. Countries have submitted their votes and ISO will now formally announce the results on Thursday (Wednesday, their time).
Now, it would have been easier had it been clean. However, as Groklaw (<http://groklaw.net>) has reported, there are several irregularities with some countries like Germany, Croatia and Norway. Norway even went to the extent of filing a petition to the ISO to have their vote nullified because of some rather controversial irregularities (members voted NO but ended up sending YES to ISO!). Check out Groklaw for more details.
What about the Philippine vote? The Philippines initially voted NO to OOXML. However, in a rather surprising turn of events, the reflected Philippine vote is now YES. So how did the Bureau of Product Standards arrive at the final vote for the country? Well, it created a technical committee and the committee voted. The result was the Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT), COMDDAP, Philippine Computer Society (PCS), Philippine Software Industry Association (PSIA) and the CIO Forum voted YES to the OOXML approval. The University of the Philippines, CICT, DOST-ASTI and DOST-PCASTRD voted NO. So 5-4 in favor of OOXML.
I have spoken with a member of the PSIA and was told that they were against the OOXML approval AT ITS CURRENT FORM. A letter from Mr. Winston Damarillo, Director of the PSIA, to the BPS also stressed that PSIA votes NO (see letter at <http://www.box.net/shared/3yw2f1c004>). If this is the case, then how on Earth did their votes reflect YES?
In the short span of time that I have known Mr. Damarillo, I believe that it is unlikely for him to have voted YES to OOXML at its current form. I know him as a strong supporter of open standards and open source.
The person I have spoken with, who I will not name since I have not asked her permission yet, is someone I have known for a long time and I trust her. She said that PSIA votes NO to OOXML AT ITS CURRENT FORM.
I do not now what has transpired within PSIA making their final vote to YES and swaying the national vote from NO to YES to OOXML approval. However, if PSIA maintains a NO vote, then something is going on with the counting -- one should only be reminded of "Hello Garci" in this case.
So - "ano ba talaga, kuya?"
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