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.
A big thanks to Anders Brenna for this news, you can read rest of the story at Anders Brenna's blog