The combined forces of the International Standards Organization, the American National Standards Institute and Sun Microsystems Inc have conspired to keep everyone in the dark as to the results of the voting from the 27 countries deciding on Sun’s application to become a submitter of standards through ISO. All we know so far is that five out of the 27 countries have not submitted their votes – the ballot closed Monday – but they get a seven-day grace period. We do know the verdicts of a handful of countries, including of course the US, which voted for No, with comments, as did France and Norway. Austria went for straight Yes; Finland and Netherlands are thought to have opted for straight No’s, though it is not yet certain. The UK is an unknown quantity, while Canada sat firmly on the fence with an Abstain, with comments. It turns out that almost all the votes are qualified with comments, which Sun must address before it can re-submit. The process from here is that all results and comments are sent to Sun and JTC1 members. Sun then has 60 days to respond to the comments, after which JTC1 has 45 days to respond to Sun’s changes. If sun is accepted as what is known as a submitter of Publicly Available Specifications (PAS) it can then submit the Java technology to go through the ISO process. JavaSoft’s VP technology Jim Mitchell said he was cautiously optimistic we are well on our way to Java becoming an industry standard.
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