DCI's many clients over the years have included General Motors, Exxon Mobil, Verizon and Morgan Stanley, according to federal disclosure forms. The firm is expert in targeting voters and persuading them to contact their elected officials, a mechanism called grass-roots lobbying. But it has also lobbied lawmakers directly and has registered to lobby for a long list of clients at the federal level.

The man picked by the John McCain campaign to run the 2008 Republican National Convention resigned Saturday after a report that his lobbying firm used to represent the military regime in Myanmar. [aka Burma]

and

Doug Davenport, the regional campaign manager for the mid-Atlantic states, founded the DCI Group's lobbying practice and oversaw the contract with Myanmar in 2002. "Doug has tendered his resignation and we have accepted it," Jill Hazelbaker, McCain's communications director, wrote in a e-mail. ( Atlantic.com)

The lobby firm behind the person Doug Goodyear, the DCI group is for us, although we reside across the Atlantic, a well-known propaganda firm with strong ties to the right wing of the US-republican party. It participated as an organiser of the Bush-Cheney presidential campaign and is a known astroturfing specialist with slanderous communication tactics. In the selection of its present and past clients it was not very selective. Among them Exxon, Tobacco and Microsoft. All this is generally known including the Washington representation for the rogue regime in Burma.

In Europe DCI runs a network of think tanks and it took responsibility for the weird journo-lobbying website TechCentralStation that spread hate propaganda against the French government, the EU, Muslims and also issued offensive slanderous communication against the FFII, the community that backs <no>OOXML and sided against Microsoft in its EU software patents lobby campaign.

The group is waging an ideological continuation of Karl Marx's crusade against capitalism and private property. … The people who run FFII are enemies of private property, the free-market and capitalism… Why should Europeans let the FFII create a world in which innovators are exploited by pirates and plagiarizers? Rather, we should give Hartmut Pilch, the FFII president, the same advice as George Bush gave to Michael Moore in Fahrenheit 9/11: "Go get a real job!"

Many observers were shocked about the sillyness of the DCI propaganda machine that was totally unable to adapt to European discourse standards.

More on sourcewatch:

Microsoft’s decision to hire DCI came as the company faced an antitrust lawsuit from the U.S. Justice Department in the 1990s. By 2000, Microsoft was spending millions of dollars on contributions to Republican and Democratic campaign war chest, think tanks, and ostensibly independent trade associations as well as on payments to high-powered lobbyists, public relations, and political operatives. Hoping to sway public opinion and the opinion of state and federal officials, the software giant built up a wide network of supporters, with its sponsorship of those groups mostly invisible to the public.

Also ACT lobbyist Jonathan Zuck was involved with DCI, sourcewatch again:

Americans for Technology Leadership was founded by Jonathan Zuck in 1999 as a "grassroots" organisations for concerned consumers who want less regulation in the technology sector. … ATL's domain name, techleadership.org, is registered to the Association for Competitive Technology. The site is hosted by Thomas E. Stock and Thomas J. Synhorst's LLC, TSE Enterprises. Synhorst is a founding member of the DCI Group, a Washington DC-based strategic consulting and lobbying firm which has counted Microsoft as a prime client for a number of years. … According to the Times, the campaign was discovered when Utah's Attorney General at the time Mark Shurtleff received letters "purportedly written by at least two dead people … imploring him to go easy on Microsoft Corp. for its conduct as a monopoly."

Here for instance an ATL (Jim Prendergast) opinion article:
Foxnews: Massachusetts Should Close Down OpenDocument

The technology trades, blogs and industry are buzzing about a monumental policy shift in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Officials in the state have proposed a new policy that mandates that every state technology system use only applications designed around OpenDocument file formats …, the policy represents an attack on market-based competition, which in turn will hurt innovation. The state has a disaster in the making.

In DCI's journo-lobbying online-magazine TechCentralStation Jonathan Zuck was interviewed by Craig Winneker of TCS:

CW: [Las time Gates visited Brussels he got a pie in the face]. And this time, it was kind of figurative pie in the face because as soon as he [Bill Gates] left, the European Parliament starts shooting down software patents. I mean, is there any point to this or
JZ: Well, software patents is the really important battle that we've got on the horizon. And I think that Microsoft is right to continue to use all means of negotiation and just presence in these debates. You know, I don't think any one of them is going to be the magic bullet or the ultimate blunder. I think that it's an ongoing and continuous discussion that needs to happen with European governments and I think they're looking to starting to do. So I think that's the right strategy. I just don't think anything is going to happen over night. … I think as it becomes a more global corporation, then there's more of an understanding that what's good for Microsoft is good for Europe.

Note: DCI group's work for the Myramar regime was well known in advance to everyone. Why does it really need a scandal and a political context to cut relations with 'mucky pups' of the lobby scene. DCI group is not only unbearable because it defended the interests of the Burma rogue regime in Washington but also because it did interfere in internal matters of foreign nations, e.g. in the EU on behalf of American clients. European stakeholders were not amused about DCI's covert operations and slander communication.

With respect to Blender, what can you tell me about your community/user feedback that you have heard regarding file formats? Specifically, Microsoft is slowly shifting toward a more open standards based approach to its file formats. The ISO standard Office Open XML is an example of the direction we are moving towards.
A good user experience of Blender on Windows is good for your project/community and good for Microsoft. What we are trying to understand is what file formats, which are not open or not fully open, are impeding the optimal experience with your community. If this is an important issue to your users then it also accrues to the experience in Windows. I would like to know what feedback you might have received regarding the files your users most often import and those they might be having a sub-optimal experience with. Please also include in that list any Microsoft files that you might have trouble with.

• Blender Project

• The Image below was created a few years ago to raise awareness about the EU software patent laws sponsored by Microsoft that threatened open source projects such as Blender. Fortunately the software patent directive was rejected but the Microsoft continues to aggressively lobby governments abroad and apply for software patents in the European Union:

Recently, a few figures about this contract has been published by ComputerWorld. For Romanian readers, the original is here: http://www.computerworld.ro/?page=node&id=13973

Basically, a frame contract has been drafted in 2004 for lending 50,155 Microsoft licenses to Romanian administration, on a value of $54,567,465, payable until 2009. Since Romanian administration aquired new computers, another 39,385 licenses were needed, on a value of $26,172,156. This last amount is due to be paid until 2011.

We still hope in Free Software (free as in speech): GNU/Linux, OpenOffice.org, etc.

Details about how OOXML vote went in Romania are available at http://aranea.zuavra.net/index.php/97/ (English) and http://rsandu.myblog.ro (Romanian).

SC 34 expresses its appreciation to the following organizations for sponsoring this meeting.

* Linpro AS
* Mamut ASA
* Software Innovation ASA
* StatoilHydro ASA
* Questpoint AS
* Microsoft Norge AS

CompTIA urges Governments to allow consumers and users to decide which standards are best.

The “South African Bureau of Standards” (SABS) approved the Open Document Format (ODF) on Friday 18 April as an official national standard. This adoption, if implemented, will reduce choice, decrease the benefits of open competition and thwart innovation. …
Governments should not restrict themselves to working with one standard, and should urge legislators to refrain from any kind of mandatory regulation and discriminatory interventions in the market. The global ICT industry recommends Governments to embrace the reality and logic of choice and to devote their energies to ensuring interoperability through this choice.

Isn't it funny that he thinks he could still do it? In his usual lobby schizophrenia Mr. Lueders likes to speak for 'the industry', get his emotional 'we' into a public policy debate and oracles about 'eSkill's. Here he speaks unprecedented for the 'global ICT industry'. Will he be the 'initiative for software choice' or the voice of European smes next time again? How long will his clients let him carry on? Will he get away with it?

Glynn Mody comprehended:

And which bunch of geniuses put this nonsense together? Why, our old friends CompTIA, which has by now given up any pretense of offering objective comment on the computer market, and is simply a vehicle for crude Microsoft propaganda.

Rob Weir even tried to argue with the punchbag:

Consumers don't want a bag of adapters to convert between different formats and protocols. That is giving consumers a choice in a solution to a interoperability problem they didn't ask for and they don't want. Consumers want a choice of goods and services.

You don't have to convince press speakers and hired guns. But can you imagine that Jan 'the answer is always the same, you are well paid, shut up' van den Belt was hired for the comptia lobby after leaving as an ecma international general secretary? What an upgrade for the person to which the ISO jtc1 rewrite was dedicated. Will standards people also let his collegue Mr. Lueders rewrite the essentials of international standardisation? Or could the Dutch nihilist provide some technical assistance? Fast-track Lueders interpretations to the ISO directives?

The “South African Bureau of Standards” (SABS) approved the Open Document Format (ODF) on Friday 18 April as an official national standard. This adoption, if implemented, will reduce choice, decrease the benefits of open competition and thwart innovation. The irony here is that South Africa is moving in a direction which stands in stark relief to the reality of the highly dynamic market, with some 40 different formats available today. …
Governments should not restrict themselves to working with one electrical standard, and should urge legislators to refrain from any kind of mandatory regulation and discriminatory interventions in the market. The global electrical industry recommends Governments to embrace the reality and logic of choice and to devote their energies to ensuring interoperability through this choice.

Isn't it funny that he thinks he can still do it? In his usual lobby schizophrenia Mr. Lueders likes to speak for 'the industry', get his emotional 'we' into a public debate and oracles about 'eSkill's. Here he speaks unprecedented for the 'global electrical industry'. Will he be the 'initiative for software choice' or the voice of European smes next time again? How long will his clients let him carry on?

Glynn Mody comprehended:

And which bunch of geniuses put this nonsense together? Why, our old friends CompTIA, which has by now given up any pretense of offering objective comment on the computer market, and is simply a vehicle for crude Microsoft propaganda.

Rob Weir even tried to argue with the propaganda punchbag:

Consumers don't want a bag of adapters to convert between different formats and protocols. That is giving consumers a choice in a solution to a interoperability problem they didn't ask for and they don't want. Consumers want a choice of goods and services.

But you don't have to convince press speakers and hired guns. But can you imagine that Jan 'the answer is always the same, you are well paid, shut up' van den Belt works for comptia after leaving as an ecma international secretary? What a shame for the person to which the jtc1 rewrite was dedicated. Will people let also his collegue Mr. Lueders rewrite the essence of international standardisation? Or can the Dutch nihilist provide some technical assistance?

"Proprietary protocols are anathema to network computing and a deliberate hindrance to innovation and competition in computing environments. Few of the players, or users, maintain the illusion that a Microsoft-only world is either desirable or attractive - and the accusations of ballot stuffing, bribery, and undue political influence that surrounded the acceptance of OOXML as a standard by the ISO has only served to emphasise this reality."

Perhaps it might be relevant at this point to remind one and all that Alan Cox (of Red Hat and Linux Kernel hacking fame) is Welsh speaking. We may be comparatively small, but we do know which century we're in.

:-)

Peter

1. There should always be नहीं (with anusvara) instead of नही.
2. ISO 639 is for coutry (states) codes and language codes, not name codes. It should therefore say राष्ट्र और भाषा, not नाम और भाषा.

Z. Wagner / ज़्देन्येक वाग्नेर

The Danish Unix User Group DKUUG has made a formal complaint to the EU commission over the Danish state, for breach of the EC Treaty article 81 on unfair competition.

The complaint concerns the internal regulation in the Danish state to prescribe the use of a mandatory standard, namely the specification ECMA-376 or ISO/IEC DIS 29500 OOXML, which describes a format that is used in the Microsoft Office 2007 product.

The stated goal of ECMA 376 is:
"The goal is to enable the implementation of the Office Open XML formats by the widest set of tools and
platforms, fostering interoperability across office productivity applications and line-of-business systems, as well
as to support and strengthen document archival and preservation, all in a way that is fully compatible with the
large existing investments in Microsoft Office documents."
(from ECMA-376 Introduction, page 12).
http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-376.htm
Thus the ECMA 376 specification favours a specific product of a specific company.
The Danish state represented by ITST has made ECMA 376 mandatory from the 1 of January 2008 for cartain procurements in the Danish state, thus making the procurement unacceptably favouring a specific company and their product, and setting their competitors in the field of office software at a competitive disadvantage.

• Inquirer article
• original complaint and rpress release

Why did I ignore the story? Because it was known to us that ECMA OOXML was not identical with the Microsoft 2007 format which comprises "tags not found in the spec", a viral phrase. Or OOXML burnout? Or because you lose respect for an impartial BRM chairman who consults the British Library and supports OOXML?

To repeat the exercise with ISO/IEC 26300:2006 (ODF 1.0) and a popular implementation of OpenDocument. Will anybody be brave enough to predict what kind of result that exercise will have?

Spooky! It feels like a PR machine would soon spread the message that ODF implementations are equally bad.

Given Microsoft's proven ability to tinker with the Office XML file format between service packs, I am hoping that MS Office will shortly be brought into line with the 29500 specification, and will stay that way.

Other media overtook the news from Brown, including the usual suspects as Slashdot, Groklaw, ZDNET. Journalist are professionals for the transformation of facts into narratives. One narrative was: Alex Brown admits he was fouled. I suggest: "Microsoft's ability to tinker" — OOXML is the next Vista.

Wikipedia OOXML expert HAl commented:

Groklaw is amused. Propably their tiny brains cannot grasp the idea that documents created in the past which were correctly validating against schema's do not nescesairly validate against totally new strict XML schema's that have a lot of transitional items removed from them.

It is his criticism, not 'Baroque Castle' inspections which entertain me. It is advocacy for braindeads featuring John Obeto:

Jason [Matusow] tells about the extreme measures (my kind words, not his) that the anti-OOXML clique are taking to attack the process since the results were not to their liking. In fact, you might, as I was, be surprised to note that IBM alone made up 85% of those very same comments about OOXML that their mouthpiece Tudor, and surrogates, Updegrove, Groklaw, etc., have been touting as evidence of problems with the OOXML specification.

or

What everyone seems to have forgotten, and I shall point out here, is that it was those dolts at the EU that advised Microsoft to submit the OOXML to a standards body in the first place, fearing that Microsoft's rightfully earned dominance in that space might lead into a lock-in. Isn't it now very odd that the same EU would attempt to rain on OOXML's parade, and attempt to taint the process? Actually, it is not odd. The EU has shown itself to be an arrogant and incompetent institution. At least when it comes to Microsoft products and technologies. That, however, is a topic for another day.

Freaky!

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The report applies the Brinkburn Analysis™ to evaluate the validity of Ecma's privileged status within ISO, one not enjoyed by any other Consortia, and criticises ECMA for having “virtually no representation for many points of view” and “no outreach and no liasons with other consortia”. Most damning of all is the conclusion in respect of OOXML - “It is a breach, almost, of common sense. Ecma, through its members, has created, with the exploitation of a loophole, a precedent that may well enable the breakdown of the formal standards process”.

We conducted another inspection of the process and share the views. In his note to the European Parliament conference OFE's Graham Taylor reportedly called for a revocation of ECMA International's A relationship at ISO JTC1. Of course this is the most obvious solution. It needs to be investigated how that would be done.

A nasty nightmare: ISO 9000 certified quality management as the placebo solution for the International Standards Institution reform…

Brinkburn report (commercial)

• The Brinkburn Analysis Examines Ecma International

Ecma International has facilitated, via its A-liaison status with JTC1, the fast tracking of Microsoft's OOXML into an ISO-approved standard. What does Ecma do to deserve such a perk, and what does the future hold for standardization now that Ecma has so publicly undermined every procedure that formal standards rest on?"

The process which led to Norway’s Yes vote on OOXML was so surrealistic that it deserves to be recorded for posterity. Here’s my version of the story. It is not impartial. I was the Chairman of the Norwegian mirror committee for SC34 (K185) for 13 years until resigning a couple of weeks ago in protest against Standard Norway’s decision to vote Yes. On the other hand, I was present throughout the whole process and have more first-hand knowledge of what went on than anyone (excepting two employees of Standard Norway). Here I describe the fateful meeting on Friday March 28.

It is so important that we now publish our notes about what really happened. Not only in Norway but in standard committees worldwide. So many untold stories are out there. Stories which explain the outrage. Stories we shared with our peers but not the general public. It is a whole mess made out of international standardisation but that does not mean we should'nt feel entertained.

…at this point, the “rules” were changed. The VP asserted that “Ecma has clearly made steps in the right direction.” The most important thing now was to ensure that OOXML came under ISO’s control so that it could be “further improved”. However, the committee was not allowed to discuss this.
The VP thereupon declared that there was no consensus, so the decision would be taken by Standard Norway.
Halfway through the proceedings, a committee member had asked for (and received) assurance that the Chairman would take part in the final decision, as he had for the DIS vote back in August. It now transpired that the BRM participants had also been invited to stay behind. 23 people were therefore dismissed and we were down to seven. In addition to Standard Norway’s three, there were four “experts”: Microsoft Norway’s chief lobbyist, a guy from StatoilHydro (national oil company; big MS Office user), a K185 old-timer, and me. In one fell swoop the balance of forces had changed from 80/20 to 50/50 and the remaining experts discussed back and forth for 20 minutes or so without reaching any agreement.
The VP thereupon declared that there was still no consensus, so the decision would be taken by Standard Norway.
The experts were dismissed and the VP asked the opinion of the Secretary (who said “Yes”) and the JTC1 rep (who said “No”).
The VP thereupon declared that there was still no consensus, so the decision would be taken by him.
And his decision was to vote Yes.

To overcome a potential bias of that story about what really happened you can find the other side of the story in Stephen McGibbon's Blog: Norway and Germany, There Are No Irregularities. Ironically the Microsoft employee posted it 1st of April.

ISO spokesperson Roger Frost was quoted by the NYTimes:

Mr. Frost …upon investigation considered the Norwegian dispute to be an internal matter. “We have received background information from them and have no reason to question the validity of their vote,” Mr. Frost said.

This weeks conference in the European Parliament featured many speakers who provided first hand insights how to break free from vendor lock-in. The conference was very well attended.

Participatory democracy relies increasingly on the ability of citizens and stakeholders to access public information and to communicate with officials and elected politicians electronically. The conference looks at the situation where public institutions are locked into the ICT products of a single vendor, discusses the implications of this for participative democracy and fair competition, and considered the prospects for the European Parliament to adopt the use of open standards and open source software and to promote interoperability in the European ICT sector.

Prof. Luc Soete from the United Nations University Maastricht explained the economical aspects of vendor lock-ins and the need to apply a strategic approach to overcome dependencies.

Anne-Catherine Lorrain (TACD) explained the full support of consumer organisations on both sides of the Atlantic for an open standards agenda.

Alberto Barrionuevo, the president of the FFII, believes it is a right of citizens to communicate with their government using electronic means, without discrimination regarding their choice of software solutions. He derives it as a democratic right from the constitutional requirements transferred to the digital age. Societal change lead to changes of requirements for public administration. He explicitely conducted his speech in Spanish. In Spain a promising law was adopted for eGovernment that also features a definition of open standards.

MEP Margrete Aucken suggested a more aggressive approach. She feels Microsoft as a "monster" taking control of public software and urged participants to take the steps to break free from this particular vendor. She contrasts the call for open standards in public government with the aim to fence off a vendor that openly combats open standards. However, the whole lock-in of EU institutions extends to more than Microsoft and includes products as Adobe ColdFusion.

Rolf Schuster, as an IT strategist from the German Foreign office, stressed the interests of public administration to reduce costs. The German Foreign office took a strategic approach to both modernise its IT infrastructure and build it on an open standards and open source stack. He presented a IT per seat cost comparison (p.7) with other German federal administrations that demonstrated that the strategic approach of the German Foreign Office really pays off. Participants asked why the success model is not adopted by other administrations in Germany.

Benoit Müller from the Business Software Alliance intervened against Open Standards. The lobbyist claimed there was a German definition that permitted patent licensing conditions under "reasonable and non-discriminatory" terms.

Martin Mollema explained the Dutch plan Netherlands in Open Connections, the current European poster child of governmental activities in the field.

Graham Taylor from Openforum Europe who co-organised the conference and is the mastermind behind the OpenParliament petition stressed the gain of freedom. In particular he highlighted the 'Freedom to leave' as the essential aspect. Lock-ins restrict that freedom and increase the costs for the tax payers.

Erik Josefsson made a point of order and asked particular speakers to disclose their affiliations.

Benjamin Henrion, the founder of the <no>OOXML campaign expressed his concerns regarding the HTML5 process and the inclusion of multimedia standards covered by exclusive rights. The use of patented multimedia formats by EU audiovisual services has been a concern of citizens who use the Linux operating system before.

Many participants and speakers referenced to the OOXML standardisation process, in particular were intrigued by the French AFNOR developments. Generally speakers feel concerned about OOXML to become a standard in governmental procurement. In private a government delegate compared Microsoft's public affairs methods with the scientology cult.

• Video interview conducted by MEP Lichtenberger with Martin Mollema about the Netherlands Action Plan
• Video interview conducted by MEP Lichtenberger with Rolf Schuster about the German Foreign Office approach
• Video interview conducted by MEP Hammerstein with Alberto Barrionuevo from the FFII