"They're dropping like flies"

Remember what Martin Bryan recently said about Microsoft's 'scandalous' affairs inside ISO? This was an admission that got accidentally leaked and went lose. It came from the inside of the whole rotten process, which to Microsoft is war.

Martin Bryan may not be the only person to raise his arms and give up. Have a look at Ken Holman's action. [via Andy Updegrove]

Ken Holman, who this week steps down from the role as the international secretary of the ISO subcommittee responsible for the Standard Generalized Markup Language(SGML), gave a briefing on ISO and related matters during the conference's lightening round sessions Tuesday night.

[...]

Now there is talk of making a fourth working group to handle office documents formats. While now they are usually handled by WG 1 or WG 2, the volume of work required of ODF and OOXML is threatening to overwhelm the members of those groups.

"Is there going to be a WG 4? Stay tuned," Holman said.

Why is Ken Holman stepping down? Who will have him replaced (or inherit his position)? We have already seen people losing their jobs and possibly being pressured to the point of deciding to quit. Why? Because their stance was problematic to Microsoft, which prefers to set up the game the way that suits it best. In Massachusetts, for example, two CIOs were pressured out of their role only to be replaced by a Microsoft lobbyist.

The big mess continues, with comments like this one arriving just hours ago.

They have also closed the process of allowing NB's to review "resolved" comments from ECMA and will make sure the NBs will not have adequate time to review proposed changes. It has become a closed process completely..

They can only resort to all type of covert operations and shenanigans because MS knows their format is completely flawed. It depends on all types of proprietary software, impossible to implement, patent incumbent, many language problems and the list can go on and on.

OOXML might be one the worst fiascos known to standards body in recent history. It is, as one reliable source might pus it, "standardisation by corporation". ISO seems to have officially been hijacked. S-O-S. ⬆