“The rumors of a fourth OOXML complaint turned out to be true. Denmark has become the fourth nation to protest the ISO’s acceptance of OOXML, and Groklaw has a translation of their complaint. They now join India, Brazil, and South Africa. There are going to be plenty of questions about deadlines, because people have been given two different deadlines for appeals, and the final DIS of OOXML was late in being distributed and not widely available. In fact, that seems to be one of Denmark’s complaints, along with missing XML schemas, contradictory wording, lack of interoperability, and troubles with the maintenance of DIS29500. In other words, we should expect a lot of wrangling over untested rules from here on out, and Microsoft knows how to deal with that.”

The Association for Open Source Vendors [OSL] hereby lodges a formal complaint to ISO over the certification process after the meetings in Dansk Standard‘s committee S-445 (former S-142/U34) as well as the decision to change the Danish vote to a yes in connection with the processing of DIS 29500. Thus I write to you in your capacity as vice president for ISO and as your capacity as executive director in Dansk Standard. I will send this complaint in English before the end of the month.

On the 22nd of May, the Association for Open Source Vendors made Dansk Standard aware that the Danish requirements for DIS29500 had not been fulfilled. We summarized our views in the following 5 main points (see attached letter)

1. Microsoft Office formats stand in the way of interoperability
2. XML schemas are missing
3. The finished specification is not available
4. Contradictory wording
5. The maintenance of DIS29500 has not been decided

• Slashdot | Denmark Becomes Fourth Nation To Protest OOXML