Ironically, it's developing countries like the ones that protested the vote that Microsoft was courting when it submitted OOXML to Ecma International, another standards body, in November 2005 in an effort to fast-track it through the ISO's standard-approvals process.

Microsoft created OOXML as an XML-based document format for Office 2007, the latest version of its productivity suite. Office and Microsoft's Windows OS face competition from open-source and open standards-based software in developing countries, where it is often more cost-effective to use alternatives to proprietary software.

At the same time, governments in those countries as well as in more mainstream markets increasingly are drafting mandates requiring IT departments to use only software based on open-standard formats. Prior to becoming approved as an open standard, OOXML's use in Office would preclude that suite from being on the list of acceptable technologies for many of these mandates.

When Microsoft submitted OOXML to Ecma, another XML-based document format, ODF (Open Document Format), was midway through the ISO standards process. The ISO approved ODF as an international standard more than two years ago.

The OOXML fast-track process and subsequent approval vote in the ISO was riddled with complaints that Microsoft acted unscrupulously, the standards process was not implemented properly and the specification approved was too unwieldy to implement. As a result, the national bodies of Brazil, India, South Africa and Venezuela filed protests.