NoOOXML

It seems that the puppet strategy works fine in Colombia. Of the 12 votes, 7 were of Gold partners of Microsoft, 4 from the Government and 1 was a "call-it-independent". The 2 Universities, 1 Government member and 1 free software association voted NO.

Yesterday Finland decided to abstain on OOXML. Lobbying before the deciding meeting from Microsoft was so intensive that the key ministries were turned to yes-men. Even though a-big-Finn-company-that-must-not-be-named said that a standard this bad should compromise the whole credibility of ISO, the yes-side was too strong. It was a sad day to be a Finn.

Groklaw reports and comments on attempts to influence the ISO-process by spreading false information about the voting process.

National Standard bodies are told that 2nd September was not the deadline and there would be another 30 days. It isn't the first time procedural lies are spread to promote a bad cause, a bad standard.

Mr. Schürmann wants to help its partner Microsoft with the "implementation" of OOXML comments at ECMA. This points to an important question: what is the role of Microsoft and ECMA after the 2 September ballot vote?

It seems that Germany has fallen in the Microsoft trap to address comments with a Yes vote. Germany will support the assumption of Office open XML as international standard - however with a set of improvement suggestions.

OpenXML.info has published the 63 technical comments adopted in Brazil, where the vendor was member of the committee. It means that there is at least one country who has worked on the specification, and at least the decision makers of ABNT were "not approving the technical content of the DIS **as presented**" to quote the JTC1 directives. My question is why other countries are not finding the same technical problems, and thus "not approving the technical content of the DIS **as presented**" ? Maybe the vendor managed to drug the people of the technical committee in order to reinterpret the JTC1 directives like in Germany?

According to a Groklaw article Germany could be a new Portugal. It says that Google and Deutsche Telekom were not allowed to vote at DIN.

The Business Standards of India is reporting that the BIS will vote No with comments. At the same time, the reseller of the vendor in India mentions that they will continue to lobby "the BIS and the committee members on the comments noted during the ballot resolution process”.

Brazil's Associação Brasileira de Normas Técnicas (ABNT) understands how the ISO process works: when you have comments, you need to vote No in order to get them considered. As easy as that. Brazil, China, India and many other nations say No with comments.

The OSS community needs to understand how MS pulled off Yes votes to be better prepared

NEW DELHI: India on Thursday gave Microsoft a thumbs-down in the war of standards for office documents. In a tense meeting at Delhi’s Manak Bhawan, the 21-member technical committee decided that India will vote a ‘no’ against Microsoft’s Open Office Extensible Mark Up Language (OOXML) standard at the International Standards Organisation (ISO) in Geneva on September 2. /photo.cms?msid=2305795 “We unanimously agree on the disapproval of OOXML with comments. The same will be submitted to ISO,” National Informatics Centre head and BIS technical committee chairperson Nita Verma said after a marathon meeting that lasted over six hours. There was no need for a voting as only Infosys Technologies and CSI supported Microsoft. The Open Document Format (ODF) alliance, enjoying widespread support from academia and corporates like Oracle, IBM, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems, Google, were in a jubilant mood having succeeded in stalling OOXML from being accepted as a standard in India.

Sys Con is reporting that "Bill Gates has reportedly been making phone calls to the Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Commerce". Maybe we should ask our US signatories to call ANSI now?

The corruption train has reached a summit with the Jordan Institution for Standards and Metrology (JISM) lobbying on behalf of Microsoft. They have sent an email to all ISO P-members asking them to urgently support OOXML, with some information coming directly from Microsoft. A member of the Lithuanian technical committee is nevertheless raising doubt on the competence of the Jordan experts. Jordan does not has a technical committee, only an industry organisation as advisor where Microsoft is a member.

"Members of the free software community should do more" is the conclusion drawned by Tony Mobily on the OOXML fight in his article published on the Free Software Magazine.

Microsoft has stuffed again one more committee in Kenya (P-member) in order to secure a Yes vote, thanks to their puppets. Yet another committee successfully hijacked by Microsoft and their partners.

The Tanzanian Bureau of Standards (TBS) discussed the DIS29500 proposal, under the presence of Nicol Woodard, an american and not tanzanian Microsoft salesman.

Netherlands will abstain on OOXML, since Microsoft seemed to be the only one in the technical committee to do not support a conditional approval (No with comments). The Internet Society Netherlands is also calling for a reform of the ISO process, to be more resistant to such controversial standards, "in order for ISO to maintain relevant".

Anand Vaidya has made a very good presentation about "Microsoft OOXML / ECMA376: Get The Facts" in about 75 slides. This resumes very well the problems with the Microsoft pseudo-standard.

Any idea what the airspeed velocity of an unladen Microsoft office open specification is?