OOXML Fails to Gain Approval in US
On Friday July 13th, INCITS V1 met via teleconference for 3 hours but failed to reach a 2/3 consensus necessary to recommend an "Approval, with comments" position on Microsoft "Office Open XML" (OOXML) document specification.
Context & Ripple Effects
Microsoft's push to standardize Office Open XML stumbled on home ground: on July 13, the INCITS V1 committee teleconferenced for three hours and could not assemble the two-thirds majority an 'Approval, with comments' recommendation requires, so the committee ends the session without a unified endorsement. The timing matters because the fight over file formats had already moved into procurement politics — reporting from March traced how ODF mandates were spreading through US governments, turning what Microsoft frames as a technical specification into a question of which format public buyers will require.
A failed consensus is not a rejection, but it denies Microsoft the clean US endorsement it would carry into the next stage of the standards process, and it hands ODF's backers visible evidence that the specification does not command easy agreement among the people tasked with reviewing it.
First-order effects
- Microsoft proceeds without the 'Approval, with comments' recommendation from the US committee, entering subsequent review stages with no consolidated domestic position behind the specification.
- Committee members skeptical of OOXML gain immediate leverage: absent a two-thirds consensus, the default outcome is silence rather than endorsement, so opponents need only hold their ground.
Second-order effects
- ODF advocates and the vendors and agencies aligned with it acquire fresh ammunition for state and federal procurement arguments, since the US review body declined to bless the competing format even with comments attached.
- Microsoft is pushed toward more intensive lobbying of national standards bodies to salvage the specification's standing, raising the stakes — and the scrutiny — around each committee vote.
Third-order effects
- If national-body positions keep splitting along procurement and vendor-alignment lines rather than purely technical ones, document-format standardization hardens into a lobbying contest where mobilizing committees matters more than resolving comments.
- Public-sector buyers emerge as the decisive constituency: whichever format wins their mandates gains de facto standard status regardless of what any single standards committee recommends.
The trend: Office-document standardization is shifting from technical committee review to politically contested campaigns fought across national standards bodies, with government procurement power as the prize.