It is good to see India providing policy leadership in this space. Just last week, the national board voted 13 to 5 to confirm its “No” vote against OOXML. Infosys, Wipro and TCS sided with Microsoft. Those voting “No” included the

Department of Information Technology (DIT), National Informatics Centre (NIC), Centre for the Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC), IIT-Mumbai, IIM-Ahmedabad, Red Hat, IBM and Sun Microsystems.

Regardless of which way the ISO vote on OOXML goes, there are two reasons to celebrate. One, policy-makers across the globe are increasingly aware of the importance of open standards in ensuring vendor independence, interoperability and healthy competition in the marketplace. And two, the overall march towards openness in electronic documents seems almost irreversible.

The writer is a Delhi-based free software campaigner sunil@mahiti.org