Update on OpenXML at ISO

I'm heading out to New York for a few days, but I wanted to send out a quick note around the ISO standardization process for OpenXML.

The 1 month contradiction phase of the 6 month fast track process is now complete. It sounds like about 18 of the 100+ countries reviewing the standard came back with comments. It will most likely turn out that some of comments are in support, and others will seek further clarification. So the next step will be to get together with the rest of Ecma TC45 and go through the comments and provide feedback. Not sure how long that will take, but given the caliber of folks on the technical committee I don't think it will take too long.

Once that is done, then we would move into the next stage of the process which is the 5 month technical review. I'm sure there will be a bunch of great discussions that get kicked off during this period. While there have been public copies of the specs for over a year now, it will be interesting to see what other feedback we get during this period.

If you're interested in following along with more of the standards politics side of things, you should check out Jason Matusow's blog. He a senior director in the Microsoft standards group, and is intimately familiar with all the processes behind the ISO submission, as well as the political games that often pop up.

Talk to you all next week.

-Brian