Australian XML expert Rick Jelliffe leaves the party line and recommends "No with comments". He also lays his business affiliations open. Rick Jellifewas one of the most notorious defenders of Microsoft's OOXML in Australia and developed a new standards doctrine of National Relevance as a replacement for ISO's Global Relevance policy.
Vote “No”? But aren’t I supposed to be Microsoft’s biggest fanboy? Well, what I mean is a conditional approval, not a rejection. There are some things that can be fixed and should be fixed, and an ISO Ballot Resolution Meeting is the best forum to make sure it happens.
Rick again defends his National Relevance doctrine:
In my comments I have attempted to … limit them to comments relevant to Australian industry. I definitely concentrate on getting the high-level issues right: the name of the standard, the organization of it, the conformance section, the over-abundance of non-normative text, the need to allow standard notations, and a future-proofing issue. My view is that getting these high-level issues right takes the sting out of the tail of many individual problems and edge-cases, and addresses many of the technical issues that people have raised piecemeal,.
…and explains his business relations:
One unexpected bonus was that MS give me three weeks work (plus some preparation), traveling around teaching seminars on Open XML and talking to standards people. …. But the stench of the four-paned beast is hard to wash off: I was in New Zealand on completely unrelated business and I was invited to speak at an Open Source meeting, but some of the attendees seemed to think I was there in MS’ employ.
In January Rick openly talked about an offer from Microsoft's Doug Mahugh to improve the Wikipedia article of Open XML that stirred much controversy in the Wikipedia community.
