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[News] Microsoft OOXML Fiasco in Norway: 6-7-Person Committee Grows to 30

2008-04 OOXML irregularities in Norway

,----[ Quote ]
| [...]
| 
|     * 2007: committee stuffing: the NS/K 185 committee grew from 6-7 persons 
|     to 30 persons due to the OOXML case... 
`----

http://wiki.efn.no/2008-04_OOXML_irregularities_in_Norway


Recent:

Martin Bryan: we are getting “standardization by corporation”

,----[ Quote ]
| A November informative report of Martin Bryan, Convenor, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC34 
| WG1 highlights the fallout of the ECMA-376 fast-track process for ISO. He 
| says he is 'glad to be retiring before the situation becomes impossible'  
| 
| [...]
| 
| In what is an astonishingly outspoken report, Martin Bryan, Convenor, ISO/IEC 
| JTC1/SC34 WG1 has given us insight into the total mess that Microsoft/ECMA 
| have caused during their scandalous, underhand and unremitting attempts to 
| get - what is a very poorly written specification {i.e. DIS 29500 aka OOXML, 
| AR} - approved as an ISO standard. …    
`----

http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-30107/martin-bryan:we-are-getting-standardization-by-corporation


Dysfunctional ISO - Courtesy of Microsoft

http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2007/12/dysfunctional-iso-courtesy-of-microsoft.html


Microsoft accused of stacking ISO committee

,----[ Quote
| In a memo sent following his last meeting as head of the working group on 
| WG1, which is handling Microsoft’s application to make the Word format an ISO 
| standard as ECMA 376, outgoing Governor Martin Bryan (above), an expert on 
| SGML and XML, accused the company of stacking his group.   
`----

http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=1777


EU Initiates Investigation Against Microsoft OOXML Push

,----[ Quote ]
| But with Steve Ballmer taking over as CEO, there was supposed to be a kinder, 
| gentler Microsoft - one that would play nicely with its competitors.  When 
| antitrust regulators in turn challenged this new Microsoft, it issued not 
| challenges to fight to the end to prove that it had done nothing illegal, but 
| statements promising to "cooperate fully."    
| 
| But at the same time, Microsoft is still a tough competitor.  As Microsoft's 
| Director of Corporate Standards Jason Matusow famously warned at his blog 
| last year:  
| 
|     Make no mistake; all parties are looking at the full picture to find 
|     strategies that will result in the outcome they desire. Provided - of 
|     course - that they do so within the context of the rules that apply to 
|     the process, this is exactly what one should expect to happen. It is 
|     going to be a very interesting next few months.    
| 
| Indeed, the months that followed proved to be interesting indeed.  Microsoft 
| said that some of its employees became over zealous, most flagrantly in 
| Sweden, where marketing assists were promised to several business partners as 
| incentives to join the national standards committee and vote for OOXM.   
`----

http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20080208082501776


EU Commission Investigating Microsoft's MSOOXML Push

,----[ Quote ]
| I hope they think to investigate the smear campaigns that seem to always 
| happen to anyone on the other side from Microsoft. What happened to Peter 
| Quinn was by no means unique.  
`----

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080208151410252


Related:

Norway: ODF Must Be Used on Government Websites' Forms

,----[ Quote ]
| Everyone should have equal access to public information: Open standards 
| become compulsory within the government 
| 
| The government has decided that all information on governmental websites 
| should be available in the open formats HTML, PDF or ODF. With this decision 
| the times when public documents where only available in Microsoft's 
| Word-format is coming to an end.   
| 
| - Everybody should have equal access to public information. From 2009 the 
| citizens will be able to chose which software to use in order to gain access 
| to public information. The government's decision will also improve the 
| competition between suppliers of office applications, says IT-minister Heidi 
| Grande Røys.    
| 
| This is the decision of the government:
| 
| * HTML should be the primary format for publication of public information on 
| the Internet. 
| 
| * PDF (1.4 or newer, or PDF/A - ISO 19005-1) is compulsory when you wish to 
| preserve the original layout of a document. 
| 
| * ODF (ISO/IEC 26300) must be used when publishing documents that are meant 
| to be changed after downloading, eg. forms that are to be filled in by the 
| user.   
`----

http://www.groklaw.net/newsitems.php
http://www.regjeringen.no/en/dep/fad/pressesenter/pressemeldinger/2007/Apne-dokumentstandarder-blir-obligatoris.html?id=494810


Norway and OOXML

,----[ Quote ]
| "There is now a report from Norway on how Microsoft rallied its partners to
| try to get a favorable vote on MSOOXML."
`----

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200708301301334


Norway Decides: No with Comments on OOXML and a Hint from Hungary

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070831115138106


norway says no to ooxml

,----[ Quote ]
| Standard Norge actually gives a conditioned yes to OOXML, but that's a big NO 
| with comments. What does it mean? It means that Microsoft have to fix all the 
| comments before it can be approved as a ISO standard.  
`----

http://phun-ky.net/2007/08/norway-says-no-to-ooxml


Microsoft admits Swedish employee promised incentives for Open XML support

,----[ Quote ]
| Microsoft Corp. admitted Wednesday that an employee at its Swedish subsidiary 
| offered monetary compensation to partners for voting in favor of the Office 
| Open XML document format's approval as an ISO standard.  
`----

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9033701


ODF vs. OOXML: Microsoft Has Mastered the Art of Unfair Play (Updated)

,----[ Quote ]
| The adoption of a standard is supposed to be an open, transparent process. 
| Any companies interested in participating in the standard setting process in 
| any significant way have to pay a fee to get a seat at the table. Many 
| companies played by the rules and participated in the process. And it was 
| becoming clear that Microsoft was not getting there way. In the recent vote 
| in Sweden, it looked like Microsoft was going to lose. So what does Microsoft 
| do? They pull the cards out of their sleeve and in a way that competing 
| interests have no time to react. . Out of nowhere, Microsoft Business 
| Partners are ponying up the $US2,444 to get a vote just in time for the vote. 
| The final vote was in favor of Microsoft: 25 Yes, 6 No and 3 Abstentions.         
`----

http://www.controlscaddy.com/A55A69/bccaddyblog.nsf/plinks/CBYE-76JGCQ


ISO boards face OOXML deadline pressure 

,----[ Quote ]
| In Denmark, a source reportedly said that Microsoft pressured him to send an 
| expression of support to Dansk Standard, the Danish standards board. By 
| Groklaw's translation, Version2 reported: "'If I had not sent in a positive 
| comment, it would have had consequences for our relations with Microsoft', he 
| says. Our source points to e.g. leads, support and seminars as areas that 
| might be jeopardised if 'he did not behave'."     
| 
| The Danish MP reportedly wants assurance that only technical factors were 
| considered by Dansk Standard and that political or economic influences were 
| not brought to bear.  
| 
| Also, a member of the Danish parliament has reportedly lodged a pointed 
| question with a government minister as to whether the government has had any 
| contact with Dansk Standard with regard to the ISO vote on OOXML.  
| 
| In Norway, Microsoft apparently mounted an astroturfing campaign against the 
| Norwegian standards body Standard Norge. Out of 59 comments received by 
| Standard Norge, 37 were a Vole form letter that many of its Norwegian 
| business partners didn't even bother to sign before sending them in.   
`----

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=42055


Microsoft Hires Programmer to edit Wikipedia Entry For OOXML

http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/79130/index.html


Microsoft Looks for the Big Guns in OOXML In-Fighting

,----[ Quote ]
| Bill Gates has reportedly been making phone calls to the Secretary of Defense 
| and the Secretary of Commerce to push the American National Standards 
| Institute to ignore the votes of its advisory committees and vote "yes" on 
| ISO standardizing Microsoft's Open Office XML (OOXML) format, the one in 
| competition with the OpenDocument Format (ODF) pushed by IBM and Sun.    
| 
| Gates reportedly picked up the phone when the last INCITS ballot failed by 
| one vote to support Microsoft. 
`----

http://xml.sys-con.com/read/419573_p.htm


,----[ Quote ]
| Everyone is in the same boat with this: KOffice, Corel, Google, IBM, anyone 
| who has applications that work with Microsoft documents. We’re all faced with 
| the prospect of significant expenses to rewrite our file format support with 
| no net benefit to our customers. This is the toll we all must pay to 
| Microsoft just for the ability to fight for the scraps their monopoly may 
| leave behind. If Microsoft jerks their format around, we all must run and 
| chase after it, reallocating resources away from feature work, becoming in 
| the process less competitive in the marketplace, while Microsoft forges ahead 
| with new features. They can easily repeat this game every few years, just to 
| keep competitors busy. This is what a death spiral looks like.         
| 
| Giving absolute control of a standard document format to a monopolist that is 
| notorious for abusing their control of file formats in the past is insanity. 
| It doesn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to figure that out.   
`----

http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/08/dog-that-didnt-bark.html


IBM is still locked out of the Portuguese OOXML meeting

,----[ Quote ]
| In spite of various communications, we [IBM] are still locked out and will 
| not be allowed to participate. Microsoft will be there, as well as a special 
| Microsoft guest, as will various Microsoft business partners, and others.  
`----

http://www.sutor.com/newsite/blog-open/?p=1755


Packing The Court At The ISO?

,----[ Quote ]
|      ...P member countries ('participating member' countries) sending 
|     representatives, and I am interested to note the majority of
|     their representatives are, as individuals, also Microsoft employees.
| 
| [...]
| 
| How can they not see that OOXML (ECMA 376) is unwanted by anyone outside of 
| Microsoft? How about it Brian Jones? Are you really so desperate that you
| have to resort to that?
`----

http://lnxwalt.wordpress.com/2007/03/23/packing-the-court-at-the-iso/

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