In a reversal, the American representative to the ISO standards body is now <A HREF="http://www.cio.com/article/133202/U.S._Organization_Edging_to_Microsoft_s_Open_XML_Support">tentatively supporting the approval of Microsoft's Office Open XML document format</A> as an open standard this year.

The executive board of the Washington, D.C.-based International Committee for Information Technology Standards voted to approve a "Yes with comments" motion for Open XML, the native document format in Office 2007.

Twelve members voted yes, three voted no, and one abstained. A two-thirds majority is needed to pass.