Bonum Certa Men Certa

ISO Feels OK With Corruption, Officially Approves OOXML (Updated)

I sold out



So, as we already expected and knew yesterday, ISO has just declared Microsoft's OOXML an international chaos standard, despite the fact that stories about misconduct around the world continue to flow in and numerous antitrust concerns have been raised. Let's take another quick look.

Philippines Again



Here is a coverage about the Philippines.

The Manila Bulletin Online tells us how the Philippines changed its No vote on OOXML to Yes. Once again there is an indication that when no consensus was reached, the chairman decided to make it Yes. That blatantly happened in Norway, and I can't help but want more details about the Philippines.


Remember the Philippines? We offered quite an extensive set of links about the Philippines last night. There are too many stories from there which suggest irregularities.

Croatia



For background on OOXML dirty tricks in Croatia, consider the following posts:



Some of the above were highly disturbing for they illustrated just how easily Microsoft had hijacked the entire process. On the bright side of things, Croatian has just accepted ODF as a national standard, perhaps in order to appease the outrage. It all remains to be seen because ISO for OOXML is just a first step in a much larger battle.

Today, after a four hour meeting, Croatian CSI accepted ODF as a national standard.


Poland



Back to Poland now. We covered the situation there on several occasions recently [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. Here is an article about this story, which ought to reach wider circulation.

The events leading up to the ISO's decision on OOXML can best be described as strange.

Take the case of KT 182, the Polish technical committee responsible for the OOXML standardization process, as described on Groklaw: Chairperson Elzbieta Andrukiewicz was instructed that KT 182 should abstain from voting if a consensus was not achieved. Well, it wasn't, and she said the members who were absent could vote by e-mail E-Mail Marketing Software - Free Trial. Click Here. -- but if they didn't vote, she'd take their non-response as a yes.

Later, when presenting the results of the ballot resolution, she showed a slide that claimed 98 percent of the OOXML issues had been resolved during the KT 182 meeting.

When reminded this wasn't true, and told that the author of the PowerPoint file was Paul Pesch, platform strategy manager at Microsoft Netherlands, she threatened to sue anyone who repeated the assertion that Pesch was the author.

That slide had been shown at another meeting, and one of the Brazilian delegates had complained about it.


The list of nations listed here is of course very incomplete and partial. We have seen literally dozens of nations where various levels of abuse were well documented. This includes large and seemingly credible nations such as the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, India and France.

OOXML Not for GNU/Linux Users



The incompatibility with respect to the GNU GPL remains, despite the many repeated lies from Microsoft, which sought to deny this by escaping the question at hand. Even the Microsoft press bothered to mention this problem, albeit 'second hand'.

Jim Zemlin, executive director of the Linux Foundation, says Microsoft simply fails to go far enough to indemnify developers who hope to write software based on Microsoft's opened intellectual property (IP). He complains that protections often exist only for what Microsoft terms "non-commercial developers."

"Unless it addresses the entire supply chain, it doesn't make a lot of difference," Zemlin says, arguing that ill-defined boundaries of legal protection under the Microsoft scheme may expose open source developers to threat of litigation.

"Think of it like ant poison. People who are non-commercial developers think, 'I'm safe.' They then integrate a patented protocol into the upstream code they're working on. Then that code somehow gets into the downstream," Zemlin explains. "Well, that's like taking poison back into the [nest]. What happens is, inadvertently, an open source developer brings insecticide with a patent license requirement into an open source project."


And that's just how one gets a whole platform approved as an international standard. It's sad to see ISO entering this vortex of global corruption, which makes it part of the problem rather than the solution it strives to deliver (uniformity, competition).

"Since when has the world of computer software design been about what people want? This is a simple question of evolution. The day is quickly coming when every knee will bow down to a silicon fist, and you will all beg your binary gods for mercy."

--Bill Gates



Update adds more information about the Philippines. Gist below:

The general pattern, like Malaysia, is the same: Government agencies and Academia reject OOXML as an ISO standard. These represent the vast majority of its citizens' interests. Just what percentage of the population do the "pro-OOXML" Associations represent?


Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

European Patent Office Illegally Gutting and Outsourcing Its Functions, Acting Like an Above-the-Law Commercial Business (It Won't Stop at Formalities Officers (FOs) and Classification Slop at the EPO)
breaking/violating laws and conventions
Links 19/09/2025: Lobbyist of American GAFAM Becomes Data Protection Commissioner in Europe
Links for the day
The Right to Punch People (Apparently)
At Brett Wilson, Brett's job title is "Head of Crime" and Wilson normalises calls for violence
Brett Wilson LLP Seem to Have Had Only One Litigation Client in 2025, He Was Previously Charged, Just Like the Serial Strangler From Microsoft (Whom They Now Represent)
Karma is superstition, regulators are not
Project 2030 to Cover How "Project 2025"-Styled Anti-Media Zealots From America Targeted Techrights and Tux Machines
The common denominator is also their attacks on women
Brett Wilson LLP Failed to Meet Deadlines Set by Judge 7 Months Earlier, Tried to Ruin Our Holiday, Then Had the Audacity to Ask Us for Over 3,000 Pounds for Its Own Lateness
As a matter of principle we will never respond to assassin while we are on holiday
 
Links 19/09/2025: Press Freedom Dying in US, Anti-Austerity Strikes in France, and Alan Rusbridger to Leave 'Prospect'
Links for the day
Offloading to the Sister Site
In the interest of not overwhelming readers
Links 19/09/2025: Coffee Club and "SpellBinding is Now Absurdly Fast"
Links for the day
Links 19/09/2025: Media Freedom Ceases to Exist in US, "Consider Dropping Twitter/X"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 19/09/2025: Thinking and Insect Bites
Links for the day
Microsoft E.E.E.: Git Will Now (or Very Soon) Fully Depend on Rust, Which is Controlled by Microsoft
Microsoft now makes Git dependent on Rust, or making Git dependent on GitHub, which is proprietary
Slop or Fake Articles Have Turned Linux Journal From a Pioneering/Trailblazing "Linux" Magazine Into a Nuisance
some sites with former reputation - good reputation - turn into cesspools
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, September 18, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, September 18, 2025
On Claims That After Bluewashing Red Hat Will Increasingly Become an Indian Company
Discussed this week (long and detailed)
Americans Attacking British Sites Only Months After They Leave America
We find it kind of funny if not ironic that this site, originally an American site, got legal harassment only from Americans and only months after it had moved to the UK
Despite Losing Over a Quarter Million Dollars a Year Software in the Public Interest (SPI) Gives Helping Hand to Libreboot
SPI's financial state depends a lot on its public image or its reputation
Slopwatch: Google Helps Plagiarism and Sends Traffic to Ripoff Artists
That Google as a company helps spamfarms is noteworthy
If You Want to Know the Future, Listen to the Free Software Foundation (FSF) and Andy Farnell
We're sure the FSF will have plenty of its own output
Links 18/09/2025: A Taliban Ban on Internet Access and Troubled US Job Market
Links for the day
Gemini Links 18/09/2025: Computer Literacy and Accessing Alhena's Database
Links for the day
Links 18/09/2025: US War on Media (Truth Banned, Cancel Culture by the Hard Right), NYT Chief Executive Warns Cheeto is Deploying ‘Anti-press Playbook'
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, September 17, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, September 17, 2025
Slopwatch: Fake Articles, Fake Text, Fake Images, Negative Slant on "Linux"
Google News has lost its value; the signal-to-noise ratio has fallen off a cliff
Gemini Links 17/09/2025: Relax-and-Recover on Proxmox and New Smolweb File Transfer Service
Links for the day
Fact: EFF Got Corrupted by Corporate Money. Microsoft Lunduke (Political Noise): The Issue With EFF is, It Kills Babies.
Microsoft Lunduke - as usual - finds a way to make it about abortions
Pacing Publication Up a Bit
The news cycles have gotten rather light and slow
Links 17/09/2025: Power Outages, Digital Controls, and Attacks on the Mainstream Media (by Insecure and Corrupt Dictators)
Links for the day
Gemini Links 17/09/2025: Flashing LineageOS and ROOPHLOCH
Links for the day
Links 17/09/2025: Long COVID Study, "Exposing Pegasus", and Chatbots Exposing Sensitive Data
Links for the day
Links 17/09/2025: Secret Settlement for Internet Archive and Google’s LLM Slop Summaries Attracting Lawsuits
Links for the day
The True Cost of 'Generative Models'
Funded and promoted by the companies that profit from the waste
'Big Slop' Attacks Contemporary Information/Knowledge and Creative Works, 'Big Copyright' (Cartel) Attacks the Old
Someone at IA will hopefully "blow the whistle" on what they actually agreed
Why We Find It Difficult to Trust Rust
A comparison between C/C++ and Rust
Slop Nihilism is Funded by Big Oil
Eventually human civilisation will destroy itself
Watching the OSI: Our Series Will Carry on Irrespective of the Chief's 'Resignation'
the OSI isn't even the real guardian of the term "Open Source"
Professor Eben Moglen Recovering From Open Heart Surgery
From his public pages (this is not secret)
Just What LibreOffice Needs? Another Language? (Rust)
what's all this concern about memory safety?
Many Microsoft Managers Are Leaving
"Hey hi" chaff or chaff about "hey hi" cannot eternally distract from the difficulties inside the company
There Are Red Hat (IBM) Layoffs, But Google News is Infested With Slopfarms
It contributes a lot to misinformation and it encourages plagiarism
Tomorrow, Microsoft's Tim Anderson's 'The Register MS' Offshoot Will Have Been Inactive for 2 Months (There's Also a Slop Problem)
We've already caught The Register MS using LLM slop for articles
Microsoft's Chief Legal Officer Leaves Microsoft After Nearly 30 Years
And not retiring
Even Windows Users Are Having Problems With "Secure Boot"
When it comes to security - Microsoft strives for the very opposite
Another Competition Crime of Microsoft, Long Facilitated and Advocated by a Bad Actor, Who is Funded by a Third Party to Commit Extortion Against People Who Have Correctly and Repeatedly Warned About It for Over 13 Year
We must always go back to the core issues
3 More Reasons to Replace Mozilla Firefox With LibreWolf
Thankfully there are de-enshittified versions of Firefox
USA Not a Place for Free Speech
In America, as in the US, the attacks seem more enhanced or advanced these days
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 16, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 16, 2025
Links 17/09/2025: Google Layoffs in "Hey Hi" (AI), Perplexity Hit With More "Hey Hi" (Plagiarism) Lawsuits
Links for the day
Gemini Links 17/09/2025: Reclaiming Things in a Digital Age and Moon Phases in CGI
Links for the day