Venezuela has joined the list of countries that have lodged appeals against the adoption of an international standard based on Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) file format. On Friday, IEC spokesman Jonathan Buck said: "By the deadline last night, we had received three appeals, from Brazil, India, and South Africa. … By Monday, though, the IEC had relaxed its interpretation of the directive: Venezuela's appeal, although filed after May 29, "was filed within the two months of the BRM [ballot resolution meeting] closing so that it is being accepted. (The BRM closed on 29 March 2008, so the interpretation is that the last calendar day of May is being applied)," Buck wrote in an e-mail.

There is a TMB meeting today in Geneva where those appeals are discussed. Unfortunately, this happens behind closed doors. Nice transparency. You can suspect that Microsoft is already lobbying the people who will decide on this appeal. Like some anonymous commenter said in Groklaw:

With the way they conducted the DIS29500 affair, ISO went too far to change the course now. They would loose their faces if they said they were mistaken. I wish there was a way to help them get out of this with only minimal loss, but I'm affraid the damage is too big. They would probably even accept total destruction of the organisation, in order to protect their personal interests. My journalist colleague told me that the loss of credibility of ISO and it's standards seems to be a non-issue both for MS and ISO itself. They just won't officially admit anything wrong could be happening.