It is really nice to see that the ISO WILL NOT PUBLISH the broken ooxml as an ISO standard because of the appeals by National Bodies. Unfortunately, Singapore did not appeal – I would have loved to have the ITSC appeal the decision – but, four countries appealing it perhaps is good enough.

There is another consideration to this as well. Since the ISO has YET TO DELIVER the finalized ooxml documents, the fact that there is a delay, means that there will never be one until the appeals are heard. So, is that a good thing? I think so. ooxml is broken to begin with and the abuses by Microsoft is well documented.

Probably the best thing to come out of all of this is that MS Office will support ODF natively for it is far too difficult for MS engineers to support ooxml in the first place! We know how this native support would be in any case – broken, so as to make it look like it is just as difficult to make ODF work properly. But, I guess, it is better than nothing!