The European Commission and its member states have been mulling a mandate that all government documents be created in the Open Document Format (ODF)... Representatives from standards bodies in some 37 countries are meeting in Geneva this week to discuss whether Microsoft's OOXML format should be designated as open by ISO. If ISO fails to approve OOXML as a standard, Microsoft could lose more customers than just European governments. The governments could require corporations doing business with them to use ODF instead of Microsoft's standard, says Gartner analyst, [Michael] Silver.

Read the complete article by Jennifer L. Schenker in Business Week.