India, Brazil next to take issue with Open XML

By Ed Oswald, BetaNews

May 30, 2008, 12:06 PM

After South Africa voiced its objections to how the Open XML standards ratification proceedings were conducted, the standards bodies of both India and Brazil are registering similar complaints.

The IEC has confirmed that it received two additional appeals from India and Brazil before the deadline. A fourth country is said to have considered filing an appeal, but the standards body has not confirmed this, and declined to say how many appeals it had received.

It should be noted that the deadline was actually last night, and not Saturday as originally reported by BetaNews: there was some confusion both among the standardization bodies and in the media over when the appeals needed to be received. Thus, some say additional appeals could arrive late: it is not clear whether or not they will be accepted, however.

"At the [ballot resolution meeting], the Brazilian delegation was not allowed to present an important proposal regarding the legacy binary mapping," reads an important paragraph from the Brazilian letter of objection, published yesterday by ConsortiumInfo.org. "This proposal was a complementary part of USA delegation proposal regarding the new organization of the ISO/IEC DIS 29500. It also shall complement the scope change proposal approved at the BRM."

Brazil's appeal was improperly addressed, as a single appeals letter was sent to both CEOs of the IEC and ISO -- copies are to be sent to each CEO -- but the groups said they would waive the requirement.

Like the South African dispute, India and Brazil are also challenging the validity of the "fast track " process. Again, officials are pointing out that there was just too much information to look over in too little time.