NoOOXML

van der Beld characterizes the Geneva meeting as typical: "The cheering and applause that I could hear OUTDOORS at the end of the meeting – I did NOT attend the BRM itself – gave me confirmation that it must have been a normal BRM, although a large one. The spirit of the FT process must have been in that room: seeking an ever broadening support for an FT proposal, first in Ecma, and then on a global scale in ISO/IEC in a fully open process. Also there I’m fully in line with Patrick Durusau’s article about that."

According to a Friday blog post by Microsoft employee Doug Mahugh, V1 voted to recommend that INCITS maintain its Approve position on DIS 29500, the name for the OOXML proposal. [...] The news was confirmed by by Patrick Durusau, the V1 chairman, who wrote in an e-mail that the vote was 17 'Yes', 4 'No', zero abstentions, and 1 absent. Durusau wrote that [...] it would be unlikely that INCITS would override its recommendation and change its vote now.

A summary of the BRM and some reactions. Nice quote of Tim Bray of Sun an Canada's rep atthe BRM: "The process was complete, utter, unadulterated bullshit. I'm not an ISO expert, but whatever their 'Fast Track' process was designed for, it sure wasn't this."

Leap Year Babies born on 29 February are attacking Microsoft for trying to standardise their leap year bug in OOXML. I guess the leap year is still in the standard after the BRM because standards needs to be tailored for a large dominant vendor.

Jeremy Allison discusses the responses to the comments on OOXML. Illustrates the "mainly lipservice" nature of the responses by the "date-formats bug". He //couldn't find any agreed change that would cause a single service pack for Microsoft Office to be released.//

Article on why two standards, bad - one standard, good

IBM responds to MSFT's accusations that it leading a campaign againgst OOXML, telling Ars instead that Microsoft is leading a fight against truly open standards.

PJ discusses the recent decisio by a US court to extend the judicial oversight of MSFT for two more years and, in particular, its relevance to interoperability with OOXML and the upcoming BRM. Bottom line: don't trust promises.

As a true friend of Mr. Gates, Romania participates at the Governments forum in Berlin.

Questioned about Open XML irregularities by a Dutch MEP the Commission encourages ISO to respect the World Trade Organisation principles of international standardisation, namely transparency, openness, inclusiveness, impartiality and consensus, effectiveness, relevance and coherence.

I have yet to see creativity from M$. Ask yourself, are you M$ Guinea Pig? Do you know one? Do you want M$ to suppress ODF?

The end of the year 1899 is approaching. It is time to congratulate all the great standard bodies and ECMA members that voted 'Yes without comments' with a nice post card generated with DIS29500, the worst ISO standard ever made.

TC45 at ECMA is working through the comments on the proposed ISO standard.

More FUD for those who don't understand

n this document, the problem of "standards" is presented from the position of the artist, in particular, with the issue of a second vote on the ISO adoption of Microsoft's OOXML.

... and backs the W3C-format "CDF" instead, citing both technical and IP-related reasons.

Philipp Schmidt, the most active campaigner against OOXML in Africa, is telling us a bit of his experience with the standard in African countries.

It has recently been proposed by the Globalisation Institute think tank that Microsoft should be forced to unbundle their OS from new OEM PCs, thus giving choice for consumers and breathing air for competitors in a market closed de facto, as it has been overwhelmingly dominated dy Microsoft for more than 20 years now. The approval of OOXML as an ISO standard would only solidify Microsoft already huge dominant market position. The proposal of unbundling Windows has automatically meet with many critics, but in this article, Con Zymarils refutes every objection and makes solid arguments in favor of the unbundling measure:

Mr. Virgil Vinţan has perished in a car crash.

Mr. Lassi Nirhamo, who chaired Finnish Standards Associations OOXML vote was laid off due to "lack of trust".