There seems to be some Oil fire in Norway, Microsoft and their oil company Statoil seems to be responsible for the putch.
None of the members of the technical committee were in favour of OOXML, expect Microsoft and their business partner Statoil. Microsoft is using this company to argue for the backward compatibility, because Statoil has to store DOC files for 50 years.
21 members of the committee were against, 2 were in favour. Groklaw has some details in english:
Here's how they shuffled the deck in Norway. So they put everyone out of the room, and Standards Norway, three people were left in the room, and they usurped the decision and made it their business to decide to approve anyway.
Some members of the committee are shocked:
"I am deeply shocked that Standards Norway has chosen to ignore the large majority in the committee. It is the bureaucrats in the committee who have said yes, not Norway. It is a win for MS and a great loss for the rest of the world," says Pepper. According to Pepper, there were only two in favor of OOXML as an ISO standard: Microsoft and its partner Statoilhydro.
I think people are gonna loose confidence in the ISO image:
Pepper has been a volunteer in standards work for 13 years, but after Friday's decision and the way in which the decision was made he has lost respect for Standards Norway, and it cannot be ruled out that he retires from standards work.
"I am motivated by a moral position for open standards and if it is now market forces which take over ISO work, then that is something completely different. I must sleep on it," says an exhausted Steve Pepper
Now members of Standards Norway can buy a new house.
