Microsoft will have a beta version of the OOXML SDK next month, and a 1.0 release in May, but that won't include the changes currently on the table at ISO, or any subsequent ones.
This means that people who use the kit to build OOXML functionality into applications, won't comply with the formal standard--if OOXML does become one.
Microsoft says this is good: it will "put Microsoft on the hook to keep your app in line with the OOXML standard" according to Miucrosoft evangelist Doug Mahugh. Which is one way of putting it.
Meanwhile, ZDNet reports that the US is likely to keep its recommendation that OOXML be accepted as a standard. At least that's the view of Mahugh, who is on the committee, and the chair, Patrick Durusau, who also edits the rival OpenDocument standard. Durusau has an interesting take: opponents to OOXML are just being nasty: ""What is puzzling in this day and age of quarterly reports and returns is that any corporate-governance structure would long tolerate spite as a business strategy. Or that investors would stay with companies that follow such strategies," he wrote in a PDF.
