Polishlinux reports: No consensus over OOXML in Poland, yet, addendum 25 March:
A letter from Tomasz Schweitzer, president of PKN has been published[1]. In it, Schweitzer asks KT 182 to "abstain from voting" in case of not achieving a consensus over OOXML during the meeting.
And in the letter Schweitzer suggested:
"[…]Polish stance on OOXML should be a result of a consensus, that is no significant opposition from any interestedparty. I believe that in the existing situation, the most fair and neutral decision KT 182 could make is to abstain from voting. I would like to however emphasize once again that the final decision belongs to the committee."
Evil! "Abstain from voting" means no new vote will get submitted, so the September vote will be carried! In the case of Poland it was an approval vote for the OOOXML standard with comments attached. Yes, Poland felt it could support the approval of a standard candidate that got more than 2300 pages of dispositions of comments. And now the logic I fail to get is: if we fail to approve we do nothing and carry the previous approval vote. ISO procudures sometimes feel like a witch test.
"Abstain from voting" != submission of an "Abstain" vote.
I wonder why Poland should not say: No, we want a real abstain vote to get submitted! Or a real disapproval because this is the only appropriate voting decision in the interest of Poland that deserves persons in the committee who play fair and recognize the facts. OOXML is no ready to become an ISO standard, yet. Not even close.
The fun part is that apparently the members of the committee have not been shown the letter before the actual voting (unconfirmed, but highly likely to be true, according to a source close to KT 182).
More fun to come! After all it's voting time again.