NoOOXML

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.

Microsoft failed to get approval for its "Yes with comments" in the technical committee in the United States for one puppet. Buy more puppets now!

OpenXML.info is reporting that IBM and Sun were excluded from participation in the discussions in Portugal on OOXML, because there were no seats available in the room. Microsoft had nevertheless many people representing them in the room, not counting their puppets.

Few comments submitted by mr. Pavel Janik were translated.

It is clear that Microsoft is behind OpenXML, however ECMA is the one who should answer the comments to the delegations.

As it is happening in other countries such as Denmark and Italy, Microsoft is invading the technical committees of each National Standardisation Bodies with their Business Partners puppets.