Editors • About the Site • Comes vs. Microsoft • Using This Web Site • Site Archives • Credibility Index • OOXML • OpenDocument • Patents • Novell • News Digest • Site News • RSS

09.25.07

OOXML in East Europe — More Nations, Same Dirty Tricks (Updated)

Posted in Australia, Europe, Interoperability, ISO, Microsoft, Open XML, OpenDocument, OpenOffice at 2:19 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

How curious. Everywhere you look, it seems as though voting on OOXML involves one form of corruption or another, so the ISO’s credibility is in serious trouble. Last week, for example, we found out that Russia voted blindly on OOXML. This week we find that a supposedly-open voting process was somewhat of an exclusive club in other nations that voted “Yes”.

Microsoft’s secretive standards orgs in Former Yugoslavia

[...]

Croatian laws keep its national body’s votes secret, so the only way for the Croatian public to find out how the process went would be if a board member illegally leaked information out of CSI. This is, of course, unlikely to happen. And the Serbian national standardization body is not officially formed, so those two votes were easy for Microsoft, and probably not only ones around the globe.

Microsoft has admitted resorting to such things simply because of money. This is unacceptable and we shall continue to explore this issue and document the truth. It is frustrating to see that people move on and forget that Microsoft bribed, deceived, lied, pulled people out of their jobs, and even bullied diplomats.

In more positive news, it turns out that Australia has turned to open source and open standards (ODF) for digital preservation.

Xena is free and open source software developed by the National Archives of Australia to aid in the long term preservation of digital records. Xena is an acronym meaning ‘Xml Electronic Normalising for Archives’.

This is a smart move for Australia to make. No country should have its assets tied to a single vendor. In the UK, on the contrast, National Archives is headed by a Microsoft employee, so national assets will be held hostage in the hands of Microsoft, with the proprietary, Windows-only, patent-encumbered, buggy, incomplete, intra-incompatible (between versions of Office) OOXML. This is the result of a conflict of interest and it’s truly a crime giving our precious information away to a monopoly with such a shady history.

The future is open standards, which OOXML is not.

Also of interest:

Update: remember Rob Weir’s essay about critical OOXML bugs that can put life at risk? Have a look at this newly-discovered bug in OOXML (the proprietary format of Excel 2007). It’s receiving a lot of publicity at the moment and it’ll be discussed in days to come.

Share this post: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Reddit
  • co.mments
  • DZone
  • email
  • Google Bookmarks
  • LinkedIn
  • NewsVine
  • Print
  • Technorati
  • TwitThis
  • Facebook

If you liked this post, consider subscribing to the RSS feed or join us now at the IRC channels.

Pages that cross-reference this one

What Else is New

  1. Appalling Patent Quality at the European Patent Office, More Lies About the Unified Patent Court (UPC), and Assault on Those Who Warned About It All Along

    The EPO's management prioritises the litigation 'industry' and promotes its interests at the expense of those of science, technology, health and so on; in the meantime it also attacks scientists whom it employs or employed as examiners while severely harming their health

  2. Germany Likes EPO in Munich, Litigation Factory in Düsseldorf and Mannheim (Like Eastern District of Texas)

    The architectural design of Germany as Europe's patents capital, with billions of euros flowing into the pockets of German law firms, more so with a defunct and unjust Unitary Patent (UPC), which is unconstitutional

  3. Links 19/11/2018: Linux 4.20 RC3, New Fedora ISO, GNU OrgaDoc 1.0

    Links for the day

  4. A Fresh Look at Recent 35 U.S.C. § 101 Cases Reveals Rapid Demise of Software Patents Even in District (Lower) Courts

    Contrary to narratives that are being spread by the patents and litigation 'industry', there's anything but a resurgence of patents on algorithms; in the United States they're almost always rejected by courts at all levels

  5. All the Usual Suspects Are Still Working Hard to Harm the Legitimacy if Not Existence of Patent Quality Control

    With David Ruschke out of his role and other former judges leaving the Office one wonders if the new Office leadership is just scheming to hide a decline in patent quality by simply removing quality assessors

  6. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Must Be Based on Justice, Not Profits

    With obviousness grounds, prior art and tests for how abstract ideas may be, there's no excuse left for patent maximalism; will patent offices listen to courts or defy caselaw (in pursuits of fulfilling greed)?

  7. The European Patent Office is Attracting Patent Trolls

    Enforcement of software patents in Europe by the large patent troll (disguised as a pool) MPEG-LA means that European software developers cannot develop software with full multimedia support (not without sudden disruption to their peace)

  8. Patent Maximalists Are Still Upset at the US Supreme Court (Over Alice) and the US Patent Office Carries on As Usual

    In spite of the courts’ continued rejection of software patents — perfectly in line with what the high courts are saying — abstract ideas are still being covered by newly-granted patents

  9. Links 18/11/2018: Cucumber Linux 2.0 Alpha and Latest Outreachy

    Links for the day

  10. The European Patent Office Comes up With a Plethora of New Buzzwords by Which to Refer to Software Patents

    The permissive attitude towards software patents in Europe is harmful to software developers in Europe; the officials, who never wrote a computer program in their entire life, pretend this is not the case by adopting marketing techniques and surrogate terms

  11. Patent Maximalists in Europe Keep Mentioning China Even Though It Barely Matters to European Patents

    EPO waves a "white flag" in the face of China even though Chinese patents do not matter much to Europe (except when the goal is to encourage low patent quality, attracting humongous patent trolls)

  12. Team UPC Has Been Reduced to Lies, Lies, and More Lies about the Unified Patent Court Agreement

    With the Unified Patent Court Agreement pretty much dead on arrival (an arrival that is never reached, either) the UPC hopefuls -- those looking to profit from lots of frivolous patent litigation in Europe -- resort to bald-faced lying

  13. Links 17/11/2018: Mesa 18.3 RC3, Total War: WARHAMMER II, GNOME 3.31.2

    Links for the day

  14. Links 16/11/2018: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Beta, Mesa 18.2.5, VirtualBox 6.0 Beta 2

    Links for the day

  15. Berkheimer or No Berkheimer, Software Patents Remain Mostly Unenforceable in the United States and the Supreme Court is Fine With That

    35 U.S.C. § 101, which is based on cases like Alice and Mayo, offers the 'perfect storm' against software patents; it doesn't look like any of that will change any time soon (if ever)

  16. Ignoring and Bashing Courts: Is This the Future of Patent Offices in the West?

    Andrei Iancu, who is trying to water down 35 U.S.C. § 101 while Trump ‘waters down’ SCOTUS (which delivered Alice), isn’t alone; António Campinos, the new President of the EPO, is constantly promoting software patents (which European courts reject, citing the EPC) and even Australia’s litigation ‘industry’ is dissenting against Australian courts that stubbornly reject software patents

  17. Patent Maximalists Are Still Trying to Figure Out How to Stop PTAB or Prevent US Patent Quality From Ever Improving

    Improvements are being made to US patents because of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB), which amends/culls/pro-actively rejects (at application phases) bad patents; but the likes of Andrei Iancu cannot stand that because they're patent maximalists, who personally gain from an over-saturation of patents

  18. Links 15/11/2018: Zentyal 6.0, Deepin 15.8, Thunderbird Project Hiring

    Links for the day

  19. A Question of Debt: António Campinos, Lexology, Law Gazette, and Sam Gyimah

    Ineptitude in the media which dominates if not monopolises UPC coverage means that laws detrimental to everyone but patent lawyers are nowadays being pushed even by ministers (not just those whose clandestine vote is used/bought to steal democracy overnight)

  20. Science Minister Sam Gyimah and the EPO Are Eager to Attack Science by Bringing Patent Trolls to Europe/European Union and the United Kingdom

    Team UPC has managed to indoctrinate or hijack key positions, causing those whose job is to promote science to actually promote patent trolls and litigation (suppressing science rather than advancing it)

  21. USF Revisits EPO Abuses, Highlighting an Urgent Need for Action

    “Staff Representation Disciplinary Cases” — a message circulated at the end of last week — reveals the persistence of union-busting agenda and injustice at the EPO

  22. Links 14/11/2018: KDevelop 5.3, Omarine 5.3, Canonical Not for Sale

    Links for the day

  23. Second Day of EPOPIC: Yet More Promotion of Software Patents in Europe in Defiance of Courts, EPC, Parliament and Common Sense

    Using bogus interpretations of the EPC — ones that courts have repeatedly rejected — the EPO continues to grant bogus/fake/bunk patents on abstract ideas, then justifies that practice (when the audience comes from the litigation ‘industry’)

  24. Allegations That António Campinos 'Bought' His Presidency and is Still Paying for it

    Rumours persist that after Battistelli had rigged the election in favour of his compatriot nefarious things related to that were still visible

  25. WIPO Corruption and Coverup Mirror EPO Tactics

    Suppression of staff representatives and whistleblowers carries on at WIPO and the EPO; people who speak out about abuses are themselves being treated like abusers

  26. Links 13/11/2018: HPC Domination (Top 500 All GNU/Linux) and OpenStack News

    Links for the day

  27. The USPTO and EPO Pretend to Care About Patent Quality by Mingling With the Terms “Patent” and “Quality”

    The whole "patent quality" propaganda from EPO and USPTO management continues unabated; they strive to maintain the fiction that quality rather than money is their prime motivator

  28. Yannis Skulikaris Promotes Software Patents at EPOPIC, Defending the Questionable Practice Under António Campinos

    The reckless advocacy for abstract patents on mere algorithms from a new and less familiar face; the EPO is definitely eager to grant software patents and it explains to stakeholders how to do it

  29. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is Working for Patent Trolls and Patent Maximalists

    The patent trolls' propagandists are joining forces and pushing for a patent system that is hostile to science, technology, and innovation in general (so as to enable a bunch of aggressive law firms to tax everybody)

  30. Team UPC, Fronting for Patent Trolls From the US, is Calling Facts “Resistance”

    The tactics of Team UPC have gotten so tastelessly bad and its motivation so shallow (extortion in Europe) that one begins to wonder why these people are willing to tarnish everything that's left of their reputation

CoPilotCo

RSS 64x64RSS Feed: subscribe to the RSS feed for regular updates

Home iconSite Wiki: You can improve this site by helping the extension of the site's content

Home iconSite Home: Background about the site and some key features in the front page

Chat iconIRC Channel: Come and chat with us in real time

CoPilotCo

Recent Posts