Bureaucracy swamps ISO meeting on Microsoft format

By Georgina Prodhan and David Lawsky

FRANKFURT/BRUSSELS (Reuters) - A meeting to hammer out a consensus on whether a Microsoft (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) document format should become an international standard descended into near chaos this week, people close to the meeting told Reuters.

The closed-door meeting hosted by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in Geneva was supposed to help ISO members address concerns that prevented them from approving the document format as an ISO standard in September.

Instead, the ballot resolution meeting became bogged down in bureaucracy as the delegates struggled with more than a thousand points of order, as well as the 6,000 pages of code that define Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) format.

"They spent an entire day discussing how they would go about the process. With the massive amount of work they have to do, most are frustrated that they spent 20 percent of their time determining how they were going to vote," said one source.

"There just is not enough time to cover the large number of problems in the document. I believe that a lot of the nations are frustrated with the process in general."

Microsoft Corp hopes ratification of OOXML, the default file-saving format of Microsoft Office 2007, will improve its chances of winning contracts from public-sector clients fearful their archives could become hostage to a proprietary format.

Opponents argue that introducing a rival to the already ISO-approved Open Document Format (ODF) defeats the purpose of having standards and say the complexity of OOXML makes full translation of OOXML documents into other formats impossible.

"It's like Betamax and VHS or or Blue Ray and HD-DVD," said the source, referring to battles for home video standards that held up the industry until one prevailed.