Sunday is an important date for Microsoft's future.

It's the deadline for votes on whether Microsoft's office document format, Office OpenXML, will be approved as an international standard by the International Standards Organization, or ISO.

Office OpenXML, or OOXML as it's commonly known, is the native file format for Microsoft's Office 2007 suite. It can hold data from word processors, spreadsheets and other office applications.

The final decision won't be made until February 2008, but in the meantime, Microsoft's lobbying of the ISO has prompted one of the most contentious arguments about open standards in recent memory.

Both those for and against OOXML's approval have resorted to name-calling, finger pointing and muckraking of the highest order, setting off a debate about current standards approval procedures and the ease with which they can be bent by corporate influence.

Try running a Google search on OOXML. The first hit is the Wikipedia entry, the neutrality and accuracy of which is under dispute.

The second hit is for a website urging members of national voting boards to reject OOXML's standardization. On that site, text branding the format as "immature" appears next to a graphic showing OOXML supporters sitting on fat bags of cash. After those top two hits, Google points us to 50 or so recent news articles outlining how Microsoft has employed ballot stuffing and other shady tactics to win approval for its format.

Further down the page, a blog post by IBM's Rob Weir is called "The Formula for Failure." Keep scrolling, it gets worse.

The whole debacle started two years ago when Microsoft began campaigning to get OOXML approved as an international standard.

This was seen as a move to speed worldwide adoption of the document format by governments. Some governments have mandates requiring them to use only ISO-approved file formats for communications and data archiving. Winning ISO approval would give Microsoft Office 2007 the stamp of approval it needs to be adopted by governments and large institutions.

Advocates of open standards sent up two red flags about OOXML. First: an open-document standard already exists. It's called the OpenDocument Format, or ODF, and is the format used by IBM's Lotus Notes, Google Docs and Spreadsheets and the free and cross-platform OpenOffice suite.

Second, critics say OOXML is rife with technical problems, which inhibits its ability to work with non-Microsoft office products and to be used by non-English-speakers. Blogger Stephane Rodriguez has posted an in-depth look at OOXML's supposed technical shortcomings.

These arguments haven't slowed Microsoft, which has been aggressively working to gain approval from standards bodies. Last December, OOXML won standards approval from ECMA, and shortly thereafter, it was submitted to the ISO's fast-track process.

Many say that's when the skulduggery began.

In order to get ISO Fast Track approval, OOXML needs to win at least a two-thirds majority vote from the countries involved in the vote. Inexplicably, a number of countries recently upgraded their status to the "P" level, at which point their votes on the OOXML issue becomes the most influential. In August, the number of "P" status countries swelled from 30 to 40, with Cyprus, Turkey, Lebanon, Ecuador, Pakistan, Uruguay, Venezuela and Trinidad-Tobago among those joining the party at the last minute.

Law blogger Andrew Updegrove suspects Microsoft's influence in the sudden upgrades: "As someone who has spent a great part of my life working to support open standards over the past 20 years, I have to say that this is the most egregious, and far-reaching, example of playing the system to the advantage of a single company that I have ever seen. Breathtaking, in fact."

Indeed, he isn't alone in his suspicions. And there is little question that most of these newcomers will vote "yes," even though many of them have had only a few days to debate their decision. (It's worth noting that Microsoft's standards proposal is a whopping 6,000 pages long. One could argue that more information is a good thing when you're trying to write software to meet a specification. One could also argue that asking a voting body to digest 6,000 pages in less than a week is equivalent to asking a human to drink six gallons of orange juice in an hour. Possible, but Herculean – and you will probably feel like vomiting long before you're through.)

The drama continues. Last week, "yes" votes placed by Hungary and Sweden were called into question by authorities in those countries over concerns about voting irregularities. In Sweden's case, a leaked e-mail from a Microsoft employee promised "market benefits" and increased access to Microsoft resources to members if they voted in favor of approval. Hungary is redoing its vote after allegations that Microsoft seeded its panel with yes-men.

For the record, the United States voted, "Yes, with comments," but it was tight. The voting record shows eight in favor, seven against and one abstention.

So what happens now? If Microsoft wins enough votes, comments amended to "No" votes will be considered at a week-long ballot resolution meeting scheduled for February 25-29, 2008 in Geneva, where the ISO will try to reach a consensus. If Microsoft doesn't win the two-thirds majority it needs, the vote is halted and the ballot resolution meeting won't take place.

Either way, the ISO's current state is likely to be seen as a quagmire when viewed through history's lens.

As IBM vice president of open source and standards Bob Sutor, an outspoken opponent of OOXML writes on his blog, "ISO's rules aren't supposed to allow one group to stymie or block another and up to now they've been able to assume, and have relied on, a level of good-faith interaction that may not be sustainable in the future."

Microsoft did not respond to several calls requesting comment.