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The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) has given Microsoft permission to publish the Office Open XML (OOXML) specification. Appeals against accepting OOXML as an international standard from four countries (Brazil, India, South Africa, and Venezuela) were rejected.

The official name of the OOXML specification is ISO/IEC DIS 29500 and it is expected to be published within the next few weeks after final processing assuming there are no further appeals against the decision.

What does this mean to Joe or Judy Laptop? Read on after the jump.

The approval of OOXML as an internation standard (over the normal screaming of the “Anything but Micro$oft” crowd) means is that the decks are now cleared for final development of the next generation of Microsoft Office, codenamed quite catchily as Office 14, which is built around the OOXML standard, which can be seen partially implemented in Office 2007 as the X formats (i.e. .docx). This was a transition form between the upcoming Office 14 and the Pre Office 2007 binary formats, such as .doc. Ther binary formats were notoriously hard for other applications (and sometimes other Microsoft applications) to interoperate. One of the key demands of various European and international standards boards to begin lifting all the anti-trust barriers against Microsoft was the adoption of an XML based, open document standard. Typically Microsoft, rather then settling on the readily available OpenDocument standard developed by Sun (and which Office 2007 SP2 will support natively), Redmond created one of their own and slowly hacked their way through the standards hedges to get it approved. Originally expected to be approved last march, the delays concerning the OOXML stanard will likely push the next version of Office to late 2009. However, we can expect  much more interoperability with Web 2.0 applications, a greater focus on collaboration tools and “role” based interfaces and the merging of SharePoint Server with the other elements of the Office suite.

An excellent and highly technical breakdown of the OOXML standard can be found HERE.