08.28.07
OOXML Watch: Since Only Microsoft Partners Speak Out, The World Has Begun Voting Against Itself
“Self nuke, ISO-style”
“Remember how hard Andy worked on Massachusetts, only to see it bullied, battered, and defeated by an aggressive monopoly abuser”
Isn’t it truly amazing that the world’s collective voice is being hijacked by a minority group that is very well paid and very self serving? That is exactly what you’ll find any time you turn your attention to technical committees (and panel chairmen in particular) that discuss OOXML around the world.
The decision on standards — everyone’s standards — is made not by those who are affected by them, but only those who might benefit at the expense of everyone else. From a personal perspective, this is truly disgraceful and some find it too intolerable to watch. I can only imagine the sort of disgust and endless disappointment Andy Updegrove needs to cope with. He has watched the world (represented by the ISO in this case) getting abducted by a single vicious company. It’s ruthless to one’s mind. Remember how hard Andy worked on Massachusetts, only to see it bullied, battered, and defeated by an aggressive monopoly abuser. The citizens of Massachusetts are being punished because of one company’s investors. In any event, here is the latest:
As someone who has spent a great part of my life working to support open standards over the past 20 years, I have to say that this is the most egregious, and far-reaching, example of playing the system to the advantage of a single company that I have ever seen. Breathtaking, in fact. That’s assuming, of course, that I am right in supposing that all of these newbie countries vote “yes.”
Watch the comments. ISO is virtually being killed by a single company. Microsoft should be ashamed, not flattered. It’s a sign of a criminal mind, not strength. The good news is that OOXML won’t be approved for a long time to come, despite plenty of information which is being spread by you-know-who.
It’s clear that whatever the vote, OOXML will not be a JTC1 standard for a long, long time, no matter what people say next week. It’s also clear that unless the process is quickly terminated with OOXML being rejected as unsuitable with comments unresolvable, it will churn on and on and on, no matter what you feel about it or the OOXML spec.
Reuters, which has always been biased in Microsoft’s favour, has been kind enough to give ‘the other side’ a change to speak.
A Microsoft document format that may be adopted as an international standard this weekend is a ploy to lock in customers, who could lose control over their own data in a worst-case scenario, critics say.
Remember the so-called propaganda what Microsoft unleashed two days ago? According to Matt Asay, this says a lot about ethics.
A thought hit me this morning while I was reading through Microsoft’s latest garbage-fodder (also known as “research”) on OOXML and Sharepoint. Here is the world’s largest software company taking potshots at open source, which maybe affects 0.001% of its revenues today. If that.
Now look at Oracle, SAP, IBM, etc. You won’t find a single other company making a concerted effort to fight open source.
On that questionably uplifting note, let us just end this post. Heh. And Jim Zemlin, head of the Linux Foundation, wants us to welcome and respect Microsoft.
