Bonum Certa Men Certa

The Confessions of a Microsoft Lobbyist in ECMA

As obligatory background about Jan van den Beld consider the following:



Noooxml.org, having done some further research on this, brings this latest scoop:

On a Microsoft event in Portugal, called TechDays 2008, ex-ECMA and now CompTIA (Microsoft lobbyst group) member, Jan van den Beld explains how multiple standards come to be on ECMA

[...]

What does Jan van den Beld - former Secretary General of ECMA - have to say about multiple standards? He seems to be puzzled himself!

Quote from his presentation:

Q: Why do you want to have 5 [DVD related] formats? Do you still call that standardization? A: You are well paid. Shut up

Check out the video at 4:10 and amaze yourself!

This was on Microsoft Techdays 2008, in Portugal.


As we have seen before, the same lobbyist, who used to work at ECMA, does a lot of 'legwork' in a fairly aggressive fashion. Here is some more information.

Jan van den Beld 'sents love letters' to the ISO system and leaches out against parties who want to appeal.


Money offerWhere does Microsoft find these people and how much does it cost the company to abuse the system in the most careless of ways? As the case of Jan van den Beld demonstrates, it's almost as though Microsoft has insiders at every level of this process.

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