Standards Norway, the organization that manages technical standards for the Scandinavian country, took a serious blow last week when key members resigned in protest over procedural irregularities in the approval process for Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) format. The 23-person technical committee has lost 13 of its members.
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The standardization process for Microsoft's office format has been plagued with controversy. Critics have challenged the validity of its ISO approval and allege that procedural irregularities and outright misconduct marred the voting process in national standards bodies around the world. Norway has faced particularly close scrutiny because the country reversed its vote against approval despite strong opposition to the format by a majority of the members who participated in the technical committee.
Standards Norway has defended its conduct and asserts that its vote in favor of OOXML approval was based on the outcome of a public inquiry in which a majority of the responses it received encouraged support of OOXML. The standards body has also admitted, however, that a significant number of those responses were identical submissions authored by Microsoft.
A letter of resignation written by the departing members and made public by The Inquirer accuses the standards body of folding to pressure from Microsoft, violating its own procedural rules, and ignoring the analysis of the technical committee tasked with evaluating OOXML.
"It is sad when organisations that work for our common interest fail the task. Through the OOXML work, Standard Norway has shown, with a clear margin, that they are not fit to represent Norway in the ISO," the letter says. "Standard Norway chose to defy their own technical committee and vote yes to a specification that is immature, useless, and unworthy of being called an ISO standard."
Opera CTO Håkon Wium Lie is among the technical committee members who are resigning over the OOXML decision. In the letter, he stresses the importance of open standards and the need for formats that are universally accessible to everyone.
"Standardization of formats for content on the Web is more important than ever. A large part of mankind's communication is done digitally, and all—ALL—must have the ability to read and write these formats," he wrote.
Fallout from the OOXML controversy continues to be felt around the world.
ISO is facing a revolt from dissatisfied participants who feel that their technical input was ignored, and national standards bodies from various countries are suffering internal friction over alleged misconduct. The implosion of the Standards Norway technical committee reflects the ongoing turmoil created by the ambiguity surrounding ISO's approval of OOXML.
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