Bonum Certa Men Certa

A Look Back at Well-documented Microsoft Briberies

It would be worth taking a quick look back for those who resort to using insults like "conspiracy theorist". There are two new articles that happen to mention what Microsoft got caught doing just a few months ago. Here is the first.

The most egregious incident occurred when local Microsoft officials in Sweden were caught essentially trying to bribe business partners into joining a committee whose task was to decide whether to endorse Microsoft's Office Open XML, the default format for Office 2007, as an international standard. It turned out that Microsoft managers in Sweden offered "joint marketing support" and other incentives to local VARs if they joined the committee and voted for OOXML.


Another short mention is here:

The business of establishing standards is ugly stuff, complete with politicking and dirty tricks and all that. Just look at Microsoft's effort to get OOXML approved by the ISO.


As we emphasised quite recently, Microsoft's dirty tricks for OOXML are far from over. The tricks, including the briberies -- however subtle they may be (c/f Novell) -- will never end because it's innate. All we can do is find them, document them and present them. As long as Microsoft is above the law, nobody can actually punish them, except for the collective power of the consumer.

OOXML is fraud

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