Open Malaysia

Continuing from my Part 3 post, Ecma has yesterday sent to ISO/IEC JTC 1 their response to the 20 National Bodies' comments on the contradictions to the Ecma-approved Microsoft Office OpenXML (OOXML) standard submission to ISO for "fast track" standardization.

National Bodies would have received now the JTC 1 files containing the Ecma response and all the 20 countries' comments. We await for them to be made public.

Andy Updergrove has given an initial analysis of the breakdown of National Bodies' comments. I encourage you to read it there, and note Andy's highlight of 14 countries with negative comments (with regards to fast-tracking the ISO standardization of OOXML), 2 divided, 2 neutral/inconclusive and 1 favourable.

Like I said in Part 3, Malaysia spoke up, and Malaysia's 4 pages of comments is second to Kenya (12 pages!) in terms of length of comments. UK and Singapore (3 pages each), too, submitted long responses.

JTC 1 would now need to take heed of the countries' comments and the Ecma response. What's next, as Andy said, is that "after internal [JTC 1] consultation, next steps will be communicated to the National Bodies in the very near future."