What will happen next will be complex procedurally, and will be difficult for journalists to follow, particularly since the steps that will be taken between now and the end of August that will result in the final US position will not be visible on a current basis. At the same time, there will likely be statements made and interviews given by various parties (most or all of whom will have a stake in the outcome) throughout this time period, each giving their particular spin on events as they transpire.

[...]

Microsoft may have exacerbated this situation rather than eased it when it decided earlier this year to press forward without productively addressing the issues that were raised during the Contradictions period. Had it chosen to respond to these problems then, it could have shortened the list of issues that are troubling National Body representatives in the United States and elsewhere. I am told that Microsoft has continued its full court press in other National Bodies through the current review period, and has sought to cut comment periods in some countries in an effort to move as quickly as possible to a vote to approve.

Not only has this allowed even less time for responsible review of OOXML, but this "cowboy" effort by a dominant United States IT company to force the local process (and often to populate it with its business partners) has not always sold well abroad. A more sensitive, locally-aware, collaborative approach might have worked better than the heavy handed strategy that appears to be backfiring in countries like Portugal and South Africa.

While majors like IBM, Red Hat, Novell, Apple and the Free Software Foundation (all part of the ODF alliance) support the open document format, Microsoft does not subscribe to the ODF line of thinking.

[...]

Multiple standards create a problem. Take, for instance, a case wherein you want to retrieve an old land record from a government office in India. If the record is in the OOXML format, then ODF document users would need a converter to decode the record. Likewise, OOXML users would have a problem with ODF documents. Microsoft has a tie-up with Novell, so the conversion may be smooth. But that’s not the case with other companies.

We hate format wars. Not because we're afraid of good old-fashioned tech fisticuffs, but because they're often completely unjust. So often, the format that wins isn't technically better than the competition, just cheaper or better marketed. (And no, we're not just sore because we were Betamax owners.)