How the Swedish OOXML Vote Was Bought for $57,000

Sweden is represented in the ISO through the Swedish Standards Institute (SIS). This means that our country has one of the 100 or so votes.

The member countries have had six months to consider if the Office Open XML (OOXML) format should become an ISO standard. In Sweden, SIS arranged a working group that have looked through the material. As you may know the OOXML format has been heavily criticized (by many e.g. Google (PDF)) for allowing embedding of closed Microsoft-specific objects in the document standard and thus making it difficult for non-Microsoft software to read OOXML documents.

Unfortunately, SIS is an organisation where anyone can become a member. Member organizations can send participants to a working group for a fee. The current rate is 17,000 SEK (~$2,500). The day before the vote that decided if SIS would say yes to OOXML in the ISO there were a couple of new members in the SIS/TK321/AG17 working group:

And so, Sweden will be voting yes to make OOXML an ISO standard.

For more information see:

• Patrik Fälström’s post “Microsoft managed to buy the vote of Sweden in ISO?”.
• Slashdot.
• Dagens Nyheter (in swedish).
• noooxml.org.
• Matusow: Open XML - The Vote in Sweden .