I got sent an e-mail with the subject "did you see this?" and a link to an article with the title "IBM May Quit Technology Standards Bodies". I did some more research and found the following articles about the story
http://management.silicon.com/government/0,39024677,39293016,00.htm?r=1
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/IBM-standards-business-practice,6403.html
http://www.nytimes.com/idg/IDG_852573C400693880002574CD0027DDFF.html?ref=technology
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10048497-92.html
The articles seem to speak around the same general points which I summarize as follows:
1. IBM is concerned about the perceived value of standards that are not widely agreed upon.
2. IBM wants to make sure that they are using their influence to ensure that the standards that are created are ones that a majority of the industry can agree upon and that will get wide adoption.
3. There is a concern that if the standards bodies are not respected there will be a proliferation of standards or an abandonment of standards which would be bad for the entire industry.
I agree that if people loose faith in the standardization process we will soon cease to have standards. I agree with the stance that each standards body (to be respected) needs to have a well documented process for reviewing proposals and resolving differing opinions. Those processes need to have checks and balances that will make sure that minority opinions are not ignored while at the same time not allowing a minority to completely stop progress on a specification. Those rules should be different for each standards body as they are dealing with different topics with differing levels of impact on the industry and differing levels of contention between the participants.
As the cnet article points out IBM has also been accused of manipulating standards bodies for their gain so I don't see this so much as IBM threatening the standards bodies or reacting to the OOXML specification so much as IBM saying that we need to make sure that there is not another instance where a standard is approved without having been properly vetted in the community to the point that different national standards bodies are complaining about the results.