In order to do not break the backward compatibility with its running product, Microsoft has decided to move the hot potatoes in another 'optional' basket. Here is what their ECMA proxy is saying about the closed discussion with ISO members:
Issues related to the “leap year bug”, VML, compatibility settings such as “AutoSpaceLikeWord95” and others will be extracted from the main specification and relocated to an independent annex in DIS 29500 for deprecated functionality.
Furthermore:
The intent of this Annex is to enable a transitional period during which existing binary documents being migrated to DIS 29500 can make use of those deprecated features, while noting that new documents should not use them. Accordingly, the conformance clause will also be changed to state that new documents created from scratch should not use functionality described in the new annex. This will ensure that existing content can still be successfully migrated, but will also ensure that bugs or legacy semantics will not be perpetuated by the Open XML standard.
Moving the hot potato in an 'optional' annex is not a solution. The solution is to remove those horrors out of the standard, not to sideline with a solution that please the vendor.
This is not an hazard if ECMA sidelines with Microsoft on how to solve the rotten VML potato:
Many National Bodies commented about the role of VML in the specification. Some have asked for it to be removed completely, whereas others have asked for VML to be treated in an annex only. Ecma agrees and will remove VML from the main specification. As suggested by many National Bodies, we will also make the necessary changes to enable the usage of DrawingML everywhere VML was previously used.
Waouw, Microsoft will remove VML from the specification, great news, euh, wait here:
VML will be moved to the new annex for deprecated functionality. This will ensure that new documents will fully utilize DrawingML, as provided for by the new conformance clause. This will also enable a transitional period during which existing binary documents being migrated to DIS 29500 can make use of VML. This is a significant change for DIS 29500.
We were also predicting the deprecation trick some time ago, some kind of a "we flag the buggy function as deprecated, we create a new function in order to do not break backward compatibility with Microsoft running products". This is exactly what Microsoft is proposing for the not solving the time format:
ECMA-376, the original Open XML standard adopted by Ecma, treats 1900 as a leap year in order to maintain compatibility with earlier spreadsheet applications that included this error. This is an important compatibility consideration, but based on the comments received by many National Bodies on this issue, Ecma acknowledges that the date system should be correct. The newly defined date system described in the previous item treats 1900 correctly. The leap-year bug will be deprecated, as described in the next item.
Where is Terminator to wipe out this deprecated stuff out of the ISO planet?