NoOOXML

While the vendor tries to beat "OOXML is great" into everyone's head, its own Mac Business Unit can't implement OOXML convertors on time to ship with Office 2008 for Mac. Originally promised for spring 2007, the converters won't even ship with Mac Office 2008, says a vendor spokesman.

Italy, a "P" member of ISO/IEC whose subcommittee in charge of DIS 29500 was invaded by Microsoft partners, finally has got an ABSTENTION and won't back OOXML as Microsoft looked for.

An anonymous coward explains how the Swiss national board will vote, in a fair and free decision that will think carefully before saying "YES" to Microsoft.

EU competition policy is a lame duck but it is alive. However, Kroes won't sanitize OOXML patent and disclosure problems.

Microsoft has put in the Brazilian committee more than 2/3 of the currently existing 54 members. The technical debate about DIS 29500 does not matter now. Only matters who puts more members in the committee for the final vote at the end August. ISO and ABNT are being hijacked by Microsoft and its partners.

A generous contributor gave us the list of members of the Technical Committee in Colombia. The vendor is also invading Colombia.

In a press release, the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) warns that the OOXML vote is one of only two major decisions in September that will define the future of interoperability in the key desktop computing market.

Our correspondent writes, "…our politicians here are corrupt as hell, the general view around is that they are "yes-men" when it comes to lining their pockets or lack of knowledge of the technology… One of the Members of the government is famously known for looking desperately for the Internet Explorer icon when Nicholas Negroponte introduced the OLPC Laptop to the government."

Microsoft has been defeated in Spain (a place that they were expecting to win) for 4 votes against 3 including one from Microsoft itself. The rejection won by a majority of votes, but the final vote of Spain will be an ABSTENTION because the internal rules of AENOR require a 2/3 majority either way. Spain is a "P" (principal) member at ISO/IEC.

BoycottNovell is mentioning that the Microsoft puppets have reached the number of 17 our of 31 in the Danish technical committee. Is there a Dane reading us to officially complain about this joke?

"ISO standards are like the old ladies of the standards world, respectable, prim, a bit musty, but irreproachable. No-one ever got fired for implementing an ISO standard. And with good reason—ISO has always been a careful process of assembling diverse opinion, negotiating away conflict, and reaching consensus. Membership of ISO committees is voluntary and unpaid. In other words, ISO is a sitting duck for someone with the money and the will to abuse the system. "

You have 2 kind of secretaries: those who write binary and those who don't.

Our correspondent from the Caucasus reports on his efforts to shed some light on the OOXML vote in Azerbaijan, a P-Member. Seems Microsoft 'arranged' the vote already...

Microsoft is continuing its lobbying on OOXML in the United States towards the members of INCITS, namelly HP, Apple, Intel, Lexmark, etc...

The Andalusian Government denounces that Microsoft has fakely reported officially that Andalusia was backing the ISO DIS 29500 approval in AENOR (Spanish NSB). Andalusia reports that it has already choosen ISO/IEC 26300 (OpenDocument).

Some rumors are saying that Microsoft's representative has blackmailed the Government and the Standardisation body in New Zealand with something like "If you don't say Yes to OOXML, we will revise our license terms with the Government for all Microsoft products you use. There will be sanctions". We are looking for some people from New Zealand to investigate this.

Microsoft is looking for puppets to represent themselves in the Australian Standardization Body: "We need more Aussie companies supporting Office Open XML". Maybe Microsoft is interested in technical comments on their broken standard?

Microsoft OOXML has been rejected yesterday in South Africa by 13 NO votes against 2 YES votes with comments and 2 YES votes without comments.

Jon Bosak, the Sun Microsystems XML guru, is mentionning that Sun is supporting the ISO standardisation of OOXML. But maybe not at any price.

Rui Seabra of ANSOL has published a summary of the meeting in Portugal.