Flashback time!

Forget and forgive? No. Time is not a cure for a crime. Microsoft was never punished, either. This is unacceptable and it clearly shows the sad state of the legal system.

It it highly important that we raise awareness about events that have happened over the past year (and even prior to it). We have already covered 'dirty business' in places like Massachusetts, but there is no single page that contains a good directory and index to all such stories. The least one can do is search the Web.

In the latest of posts, someone seems prepared and determined to take legal action.

It's been a while now, and I'm still trying to enforce HZN (Croatian national standards body, or CSI) to disclose the information on members of their TC that voted unconditional yes for Microsoft OOXML. (more about that on Croatian blog Fuzzy on www.linux.hr) It's no more about OOXML. It's about transparency, about my right to know who are the people that declare standards, and about my right to hold them responsible for their actions. They're stubborn. So am I. I have reached the point where the only sensible thing to do is to - sue them. Which is what I'm set up to.

This is far from the first case that legal action is mentioned. Remember Switzerland?

Just yesterday I was sitting in the relevant meeting of SNV/UK14 (http://www.snv.ch/), that decides how Switzerland will vote. The chairman (Hans-Rudolf Thomann) explained the following rules:

• we are here to create standards, not to reject them
• if we reach consensus (>=75%) to vote for Microsoft, we will vote for Microsoft
• if we only reach a majority (>=50%) to vote for Microsoft, we will vote for Microsoft
• if we reach a majority to vote against Microsoft, we will vote for Microsoft
• if we reach consensus to vote against Microsoft, we will abstain

Legal action is requested or suggested at the end of this discussion. OpenISO was born in Switzerland for these reason as well.

Related articles:

• Evidence of Microsoft Influencing OOXML Votes in Nordic States



• Microsoft Memo to Partners in Sweden Surfaces: Vote Yes for OOXML



• The OOXML Problem



• Corrupt countries were more likely to support the OOXML document format



• Microsoft accused of more OOXML standards fiddling



• Microsoft Tech Ed 2007: OpenXML



• Microsoft’s secretive standards orgs in Former Yugoslavia