Microsoft Working On 3,500 Open XML Concerns

Microsoft’s battle to get Open XML approved as an international standard continues, with them working their asses off to clear three thousand, five hundred twenty two comments from international voting members. The members of Ecma have addressed their concerns, and if Microsoft wants their votes, they have to address those concerns. Microsoft’s Brian Jones, who is Microsoft’s sole Ecma member, explains what the company is currently doing to whittle those down.

There are 3522 comments in total, but when you group them into similar buckets it narrows down pretty quickly into a more manageable list… but still pretty impressive!
There are currently 662 responses, and the plan is to provide updates to this list every few weeks. We still have almost 2 months until the deadline, but given that we have a lot of issues to work though, we thought it would be best to provide the responses earlier than the Jan deadline to allow for more time to discuss the issues.
So far I think we’re doing a pretty good job of doing what the national body is asking for. Most of the comments were accompanied by a proposed resolution, and most of them are great suggestions, so our response back is often that we’ll do exactly what they are asking for.