Microsoft FUD Watch: OOXML Edition

In all my years working as a journalist, I’ve never seen any technology company spin information the way Microsoft did today. The press release on OOXML ratification is a blueprint for spinning semantics, and the stringing together of truths and half-truths to seemingly make the outcome of one event something else altogether.

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The 51 figure quoted by Microsoft comes from the number of total “yes” votes cast. However, 18 other member countries voted “no” and another 17 abstained. More than 26 percent of votes were, “no,” failing the second measure for fast-track approval. The vote also included the 11 latecomers and other members that had no official P or O (“observer”) standing with ISO/IEC JTC1, the technical committee responsible for the standardization process.

In a cleverly worded piece of FUD, the press release states: “Fifty-one ISO members voicing support at this preliminary stage of the process compares favorably with the 32 ISO members supporting Open Document Format (ODF).” ODF support was much stronger than Microsoft infers. ODF approval was 32-to-0 among voting ISO members and 23-to-0 among P members. Unanimous is a far different result than what Microsoft got this weekend. ISO ratified ODF as a standard last year.

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