With all the noise about Microsoft’s Office Open XML document formats and the standardisation process through ECMA, there has been a lot of debate about the whole standardisation process. Some people are suggesting that ECMA aren’t really adding any value to the standards process with an effective rubber-stamping of Microsoft’s proposals.

IBM recently voted against the creation of an ECMA technical committee to standardise the formats.

CNet News.com: IBM says “Nay” to Microsoft ECMA committee

IBM voted against the proposal because of its concerns over proprietary extensions to the Office XML formats and questions over intellectual property rights, according to the IBM spokesman. IBM has not yet decided whether it will participate in the technical committee.

Novell, which, like IBM, is backing the rival OpenDocument productivity application standard, had previously indicated that it would participate in the ECMA technical committee.