The war that is ODF vs OOXML. As you know, OOXML was approved as an ISO standard but not without controversies. If you wish to know the controversies, go to GrokLaw (<http://groklaw.net>) and you’d be surprised to know that there are irregularities even in developed countries such as Norway and Germany.

You’d say shame on them, huh? Well, unfortunately, there seem to be some issues with the way our official stand was derived as well. If I remember correctly, the Feb 2008 stand of the Philippines is NO to the approval of the OOXML as an ISO standard. The only way this can change if there is a consensus among the members of the committee in charge of evaluating the technical merits of OOXML. However, based on the report, there was a 5-4 margin in favor of OOXML approval, which basically means NO CONSENSUS unless there is a new definition of consensus that I am not aware of.

The votes of the Commission on Information and Communications Technology (CICT), CICT-National Computer Center, CIO Forum,

Philippine Computer Society and COMDDAP were counted as in favor of the OOXML approval. They cited "CHOICE" as their reason - apparently, the choice is between MS Office Standard or MS Office Professional! I kid, of course (but maybe it is true? hehe).

The University of the Philippines, DOST-ASTI, DOST-PCASTRD and the Philippine Software Industry Association (PSIA) voted No, citing that until the issues in the proposed standard are resolved, the OOXML, at the its current state, should not be approved.

As of this writing, Dr. Prospero C. Naval, Jr., of the University of the Philippines is waiting for confirmation regarding issues on how the final decision was made from NO to YES instead of a possible ABSTAIN, if there was no consensus in the final voting.

Whilst I do not really know what is happening in the Bureau of Products Standards, I believe that they owe it to the general public to explain, in full detail, what has happened that lead to the change of vote.

With the irregularities in different countries such as Germany, Croatia, Norway and even Malaysia, I think the BPS should come clean and tell us what has happened. Let us all be transparent or risk being labelled as something nasty. Confidence in the current administration is waning and I hope that the silence of BPS will not add to it.

The ISO has a 60-day period where national bodies can post their appeals. I am not confident that the BPS will be one of those who will change their vote from YES to ABSTAIN but who knows? I might just be proven wrong.

So what next? Well, don’t use OOXML as a standard and it will die a natural death. Heck, I am betting that it will not be long before the current Microsoft Office extends OOXML to its liking, rendering its default file format completely non-compliant with the ISO/IEC/ECMA OOXML version... wait, I think they did it already! :P