06.15.08
Despite ISO and Microsoft Apologists, ODF Rises in Europe
The following article, “ISO process slammed”, was spotted a couple of days ago. While it bothers to explain clearly enough that OOXML has been “a mockery of the system” (Rob Weir’s words), it uses for ‘balance’ the words of another mysterious mind.
Rob Weir, co-chairman of the OASIS Open Document Format (ODF) technical committee, says the blatant committee backing around the world to have the standard ratified was disconcerting. He says in several countries, countries voted yes at the last minute and were “heard of no more. It makes a mockery of the system.”
Patrick Durusau, as quoted in the same article, once again (c/f [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]) urges everyone to just ignore the sheer abuse and corruption in this process. Is this a man who given power to influence ODF’s direction?
However, Patrick Durusau, co-editor of ISO ODF and OASIS ODF, says halting OOXML publication is good for no one. “Some 61 countries voted in favour of OOXML and only four have lodged appeals. With all due deference to the concerns of the four appellants, consensus does not mean that the majority should be held hostage by a determined minority.”
Using the same logic, if ‘only’ four people in a classroom got mugged and reported the incident, the police should assume that theft is not a problem. Well done, Patrick. Well done. The folks from Open Malasia had a message for him too just a couple of weeks back:
“That particular meeting was followed by an anonymous smear campaign against one of the TC members. A letter was faxed to the organization of the TC member in question, accusing the TC member in question of helping politicize the issue (which is, of course, untrue). I too had the dubious pleasure of hearing first hand how Microsoft attempted to remove me from the TC (they did not succeed, thanks to integrity and cojones of the organization I am affiliated with).”
“If this unethical behaviour by Microsoft was not sufficiently despicable, they did the unthinkable by involving politics in what should have been a technical evaluation of the standard by writing to the head of the Malaysian standards organization and getting its business partners to engage in a negative letter writing campaign to indicate lack of support of ODF in the Malaysian market. Every single negative letter on ODF received by the Malaysian standards organization was written either by Microsoft, or a Microsoft business partner or a Microsoft affiliated organization (Initiative for Software Choice and IASA).“
In other document formats news, Europe’s support of ODF seems strong.
Standards body the Open Document Format (ODF) Alliance closed ranks with the European Commission (EC) against Microsoft today, issuing a statement applauding the commission’s vociferous endorsement of the ODF standard in an effort to avoid vendor lock-in on document formats.
An important day is soon coming too.
The European Commission, Directorate General for Informatics (IDABC), is organising a special event aiming to present and inform on the new version of the European Interoperability Framework. This EIF Info Day is to take place on 25 June 2008 in Brussels.
Be very careful of those who pretend Microsoft's crime was no crime. They are usually part of it [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21]. █
