On Monday, March 3, 2008 at 10:53 +0000, Ciaran O'Riordan wrote:
It seems my Friday night reading of the ISO BRM coverage was overly optimistic. It's true that the national bodies didn't have time to even look at 80% of the problems with the spec, and the vote confirmed that the national bodies do not see the issues as having been resolved by the BRM, but despite this, people who were in Geneva tell me that it still looks realistic that OOXML *will* get ISO approval.
Rob Weir from IBM has a description of the process inside the meeting.
http://www.robweir.com/blog/2008/03/art-of-being-mugged.html
If the vote on the final standard approval is as botched as the vote on the technical contents then I think there is a very real chance it could be approved. (on the other hand, it should be clear now to many of the voting bodies that the document they are faced with is horribly flawed. Of course, it's still rolling on despite those flaws, so this might not mean anything)