Anders Brenna

Opera Software’s CTO, Håkon Wium Lie, is shocked, and the OOXML-debate rages in Norway.

Standard Norge, the Norwegian standardisation organisation representing Norway could not finish the meeting on time. They were supposed to have reached a decision by 01:00pm  friday, Norwegian time. That was not possible, as the parties could not agree.

Because of that, Standard Norge decided that three representatives from Standard Norge would make the final decision.  The press release came at 05:53pm. Norway says yes to OOXML.

- This is a scandal! I’m shocked. 21 members of the committee says no, but Microsoft still trumps the decition through, says Håkon Wium Lie, CTO in Opera Software, to Computerworld Norway.

Håkon Wium Lie and the 20 other committee members who opposed, had written an open letter to Standard Norge the day before, where they strongly encouraged Norway to vote no to Microsofts document format, partly because there supposedly were 4 Norwegian comments that OOXML had not addressed.

Microsoft Norway got a lot of criticism because they got partners and customers to sign and send in 37 standard letters to Standard Norge. I have talked to several of the people who signed these documents during my reporting, and most of them did not know much about neither OOXML or ODF. They signed because they were asked to sign.

This has led the opponents of OOXML to accuse Microsoft of foul play, and they are angry that Standard Norge did not report this incident to the EU-committee when they asked  for information on any irregularities in the process.

Microsoft Norway responded that they felt that this was a fully legit way to argument for their point of view, and they made public the cover letters that came with the standardized letters.

Norway said “No, with comments” in the first round, but will now say yes. It seems that Microsoft will get enough Yes-votes this time, but that remains to be seen on the 31.st of March.

The Norwegian debate rages on the article I wrote at digi.no friday afternoon. There are a lot of anger, and many have declared their loss of faith in both the system and in Standard Norge.

Earlier this year, Norway decided that all public information must be presented in open formats such as HTML, PDF and ODF. If ISO accepts OOXML as an open standard, then this will put a pressure on the government to also allow for public information to be published in OOXML.

The significance of this is important. Any Norwegian governmental body can publish in any format they want, as long as the same information is published in at least one of those formats. If OOXML is accepted, then they will not need to also publish in ODF.

It remains to see however, whether OOXML is accepted, and whether it is enough to get the Norwegian government to allow publication in the OOXML-format as well.

I apologize for all the links to Norwegian articles. I feel it is important to link to the sources, but as I work as a Norwegian journalist, I only write in Norwegian.