US votes "Yes with comments", Norway votes "Conditional Approval"
Eric Lai reports "INCITS confirms: U.S. to vote for Open XML in ISO"
Despite an impassioned speech by the representative from IBM criticizing Open XML's technical merit, the INCITS board plans to stick with the results of a vote last Thursday, in which it approved a "Yes, with comments" position by a 12-3 margin, with one abstention
Norway has submitted a "No with comments" vote but has chosen to explicitly call out that this is intended to be seen as "Conditional Approval"
Standard Norge gir et betinget ja til OOXML ISO/DIS 29500
which I am told translates to
Standard Norway votes a conditional yes to OOXML ISO/DIS 29500
In several countries IBM have gone to pains to explain that they support the idea of OpenXML as an ISO standard, and that the best way to reflect that (typically unanimous) intention is with conditional approval as a "No with comments" - the argument goes "We're not opposed to OpenXML, in fact we'd welcome it, if these few comments were addressed".
It's the comments that matter, as Rick Jelliffe points out
What really matters is the particular comments: if they are doable or reasonable and inline with goals of the standard and the proposer’s conception of the standard, (and if no-one’s hair is on fire) then No means Yes. But if the comments are undoable or unreasonable or out-of-scope for the standard’s goals or depart from what is acceptable to the proposer, the No means No.
It's going to be interesting to see how these "No means Yes" votes are viewed next week. The cynic in me suspects the whole "conditional approval" / "we're not opposed" meme will be dropped by IBM like a hot potato.
As for the comments, it will be interesting to see how much duplication there is arising from IBM's global anti-openxml campaign. At least it will be out in the open for what it is then.