South Africa has lodged an appeal against the decision to manufacture Microsoft Corp.’s Open XML format an internationally recognized standard for electronic documents, officials said Wednesday.

The South African Bureau of Standards sent a letter of protest to two Geneva-based organizations that held a worldwide ballot on Microsoft’s application last month, complaining that the process was poorly conducted and rushed.

SABS Chief Executive Martin Kuscus sent the letter to the worldly Standards Organization and the worldly Electrotechnical Commission. The letter is dated May 22.

“We challenge the validity of a process that, from beginning to end, due all parties to analyze far too much data in far too little duration,” Kuscus said.

Supporters of the rival format ODF have claimed that Microsoft used strong-arm tactics to win approval from the national committees that voted on the new standard last month.

“It is our opinion that the process followed during all stages of that fast track has harmed the

reputations of both ISO and IEC,” Kuscus said, adding that “negative publicity has, in turn, additionally harmed the reputation of all member bodies of ISO and IEC.”

The appeal means Microsoft will have to wait at least another month before knowing for certain whether the file format — known as OOXML — is approved as an open standard. Many lucrative government contracts require the use of open formats.

Microsoft argues that it has opened up the once-proprietary technology used by its Office 2007 software to work smoothly with competing programs. But opponents say OOXML still locks out competitors and gives Microsoft customers no choice but to keep buying its programs forever.

Microsoft declined to comment on the complaint Wednesday.

“This is an issue amidst ISO/IEC and the South African member standards body, so it would not be appropriate for us to comment on that specific situation,” the Redmond-based software giant said…

Original post by Top Tech News