I was rather impressed with the Malaysian technical procedures. It appears that the Malaysian committee has devised regulations on its own accord to limit corrupting influences from parties with a vested interest. This seems to have been due to critical reflection on part of the relevant governmental authorities.

This level of reflection has not been attained in the US. Richard@xinnin above [on the comments page of Dough's blog] is writing as both a technical committee member and an MS partner. And he got to vote in that NB. The body is thus corrupted by vested interests. Perhaps academics are a more sensible source of "neutral" technical advice than vendors of mediocre technology?

This business card scam ought to be a source of deep embarrassment to MSFT. On the contrary, the fact that this standard scam, which is apparently totally acceptable in the U.S., did not wash, seems to be a source of suprise rather than regret!

I rather enjoyed this whole ooxml process. In the past, Western corporations could just go around corrupting national governments, swapping business cards, hiring experts, stacking boards etc. These days, we get the benefit of transparency. And the sources of corruption are exposed to ridicule.

Best wishes,

Max Stirner

Elephants have good memories

Of which Ditesh clarified Doug's misconceptins here:

Can I Have A Light, Doug?

And Hasan making a fantastic parody (in Malay)

Tak Mahu tak malu

And Yoonkit responding completely here

Doug Mahugh really dislikes me. Boo hoo.

I was told when I first heard of the meeting that it would be a debate on the technical details of Malaysia's 23 comments on DIS29500, to help PIKOM's members understand the issues of most importance to Malaysia. The concept was that IBM would provide five persons who feel Malaysia's comments hadn't been addressed, and Microsoft would provide five people who felt that Malaysia's concerns had been addressed, and we would debate the 23 comments at a PIKOM meeting on Wednesday evening. But when we arrived Yoon Kit wasn't there, and then I heard he had other plans and couldn't make it. Then on his blog post today YK said the meeting was restricted to PIKOM members, which doesn't make sense because most of the people in the room weren't PIKOM members and instead were representatives of big tech companies like IBM, Oracle, Google, and Microsoft, or members of the Malaysian open-source community like Yusseri Yusoff and Dinesh Nair.

Yoon Kit responded with a blog post to Doug Mahugh:
http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/2008/03/the-elephant-in.html

YK is very concerned about the process and explains what they do in Malaysia to defend their institutions against vendor stuffing and hostile takeovers:

Now, a little bit about IASA. They project themselves to be a neutral party who is only interested in the architecture of software systems. I don't doubt that as their International body is kosher, but judging by the representatives in Malaysia they keep sending to TC4, its certainly NOT looking after the interests of the nation.

More often than not the rep is consistently looking after the interest of his own company, and its business partners. I know that's not abnormal in other nations where TCs are allowed to be stacked, but in Malaysia, we worked hard in making sure that commercial vested interest parties are kept at bay from our standards development.

But he found Doug somewhere else in Malaysia:

Anyway, without thinking much more about it, I turned up at the SIRIM meeting room this morning. The first person I see seated is Mr Doug Mahugh. Yes, he is the "Senior Product Manager" at Microsoft USA. And he is here in the SIRIM building. Its nice to see him here, but … whats going on?

* Is he Malaysian? No.
* Is he a TC4 member? No … SIRIM decided to make Microsoft a co-opted member, and it was made clear that this meeting excluded all co-opted members.
* Is he an expert? Yes, but SIRIM never requested for an expert from a co-opted member.
* Would he have Malaysia's interests before his corporation? I dunno, but I somehow doubt it.

So whom does Doug represent there?

So anyway, I find out, from the business card, that Doug is representing our friends from IASA! He even has a business card and all! Sure, IASA is an international body for software architects, but Doug Mahugh is actually a VP for IASA, specifically, for Malaysia!

Who represented Malaysia at the BRM

MALAYSIA * Dr. Raslan Bin AHMAD Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation
MALAYSIA Ms. Salwa DENAN SIRIM Berhad
MALAYSIA Mr. Yong Kit YONG Federation of Malaysian Manufacturer