We have presented more than enough evidence to accuse Microsoft of rigging votes, bribing, manipulating, bullying, lying, blackmailing and so forth. It should not be disputed that Microsoft behaved in the most appalling of ways, so even Standard Norway, whose protest is shown at the top, simply cannot forget how it got nailed by Microsoft shenanigans. In response, there is a letter and a mass exodus there. Well-known people leave in protest.

13 members of the TC in Norway has left their Standards Body in protest. They say that the Standards Body has lost its credibility in the IT area. Remember that Standards Norway was voting Yes with the support of only 2 companies (Microsoft and Statoil), and against the will of the rest of the technical committee.

[...]

Oslo, Monday 29 september 2008

We, the undersigned, are ending our cooperation with Standard Norway.

It is the play when organizations should have our common interest aimed to fail the task. Through the work of OOXML Standard Norway has shown, with a clear margin, that they are not fit to represent Norway in the ISO.

"Standardization of formats for content on the Web is more important than ever. A large part of mankind's communication is done digitally, and all - ALL - to have the ability to read and write these formats," said Haakon Wium Lie.

Standard Norway chose to defy their own technical committee and vote yes to a specification that is immature, useless, and unworthy to is called an ISO standard.

To Standard Norway has carried this process we consider that the organization has lost its credibility in the IT area. Standards Norway has set its own commercial interests ahead of what is most societies server, technological and academic advisable. "By participating in a further work in Standard Norway will we lose our academic credibility," said Arne S. Nielsen.

Therefore, we choose to stay out.

We end our cooperation with Standard Norway because:

* Standard administration has taken the option to emphasize 37 letter from Microsoft partners more than their own technical committee. * Standard process in Norway has been unpredictable and playing rules have been changed by the administration along the way. * SN and ISO have committed a series of violations of their own rules and other irregularities in the OOXML process.

The undersigned:

1. Haakon Wium Lie 2. Martin Bekkelund (NUUG) 3. Petter Reinholdtsen (NUUG) 4. Linpro AS v/ Trond Heier Linpro AS v / Trond Heier 5. Bjørn Venn 6. Steve Pepper 7. Arne Sigurd Rognan Nielsen 8. Henning Kulander 9. Axel Bojer 10. Geir Isene 11. Thomas Malt 12. Anthony Lardahl (NUUG) 13. Knut Olav Bøhmer Knut

We can all thank Microsoft for having achieved the goal of spoiling the establishments of standards.

In better news, countries that adopt ODF will be meeting in South Africa to advance the standard.

Among those attending the workshop will be Peter Strickx on behalf of the government of Belgium, Carlos Machado of Brazil which is well advanced in adopting ODF and Tan King Ing who will talk on the OpenOffice.org migration in the Malaysian public sector.

It turns out that Brazil, which embraced ODF, has also got its own OpenOffice.org derivative and it has already been spread to 2,000 schools.

This is affirmed in practice by articles on BrOffice’s website, describing how the Digital Program of Paraná State has installed 40,000 copies of BrOffice.org at 2,000 state schools, which is 95.24% of the schools of in the state of Paraná. Another impressive number is that the House of Representatives of Brazil saved R$5 Million (USD$3 Million) by adopting BrOffice.org as their office suite.

As sales of Microsoft Office decline, it's clear why Microsoft needed to bet the house and the farm on new lock-ins. Microsoft Office is among the few products from Microsoft that are still very profitable. Much of the rest is a total disaster, financially speaking. ⬆

"Microsoft corrupted many members of ISO in order to win approval for its phony ‘open’ document format, OOXML. This was so governments that keep their documents in a Microsoft-only format can pretend that they are using ‘open standards.’ The government of South Africa has filed an appeal against the decision, citing the irregularities in the process."

--Richard Stallman, June 2008