France change OOXML vote on eve of deadline

April 1, 2008 General 5 Comments

In what I fear may be the start of a stream of bad news today, France have made public their decision to abstain in the OOXML standardisation vote. This comes the day after it was reported in the media that France planned to vote against standardisation.

Like others, I’m disappointed to see these announcements made on the eve of the deadline, since it gives no time to either side to argue their case for a change in vote. One French commentator has commented “it now looks like OOXML will become an ISO standard”. He has more information than me on the subject, but if many more countries change their abstentions to positive votes, or their no votes to abstentions, then the chances are he’s right.

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