Kenya abstains from OOXML vote

NAIROBI/KENYA (03/28/2008) - After days of heated debate, Kenya has decided to abstain from the International Organization for Standardization's (ISO) vote on OOXML.

A committee meeting held at the Kenya Bureau of Standards (KEBS) on Thursday decided that Kenya should abstain from the paper ballot process, due to close Saturday. Microsoft and IBM had top representatives in the meeting.

The debate over whether Kenya should approve, reject or abstain from voting on OOXML has been going on for several months in mailing lists and blogs. Skunkworks, a forum for Kenyan techies, took the lead in the discussions.

Dorcas Muthoni, an expert on open-source software, had issues with the composition of the technical committee hosted by KEBS to review the MS OOXML standard.

"The committee was inappropriately constituted and highly imbalanced. Microsoft recommended business partners to this committee, and the first vote returned a yes resolution because of this imbalance. On March 19, 2008, the committee passed an 'abstain' resolution, which Microsoft is now strongly appealing against," she said.

During the final meeting on Thursday, Louis Otieno, Microsoft East Africa CEO, was present to push for a yes. IBM also sent representatives to the 12-member committee.

The OOXML standard is defined in more than 6,000 pages, and it has been on a fast-track process, Muthoni noted. It is hardly possible to review the standard comprehensively, she said. Her proposal was that this standard should be reviewed through the regular standards process.

Josiah Mugambi, a technology expert in Nairobi, said the case for not adopting OOXML remains simple: It is not as open as it is made out to be by the main proponents of the file format.

"If this standard is to be truly open, it needs to be vendor-independent," Mugambi said.

Ngigi Waithaka, an electronics engineer and chief technology officer of Nairobi systems integration firm Alliance Technologies, takes issue with the composition of the voting entities and wonders "how 15 firms chosen by 'someone' become good representatives of the Kenyan community."

"Kenyans do not have to pay 30,000 shillings (US$470) just to be able to view our own documents. It’s absurd. I am glad the people are realizing that we need to come of the shackles that have been imposed," Waithaka added.