Yesterday we showed how Alex Brown had entered 'damage control' mode amid a lot of internal trouble which ISO tries to hide, primarily by means of secrecy [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. We must never forget how ISO got subverted (hijacked) some months ago. It's scandalous, but people seem to have forgotten all these infuriating incidents.

In this new article from ComputerWorld, ISO continues to do its damage control. Given what we already know, however, ISO's argument of defense are far from compelling. Mind the quote at the very bottom.

The ISO official who was in charge of a meeting held last week to discuss possible changes to the Office Open XML standards proposal is hitting back at claims by critics that established rules were disregarded in a bid to hasten the adoption of the Microsoft Corp. file format as an open standard.

Remember Australia [1, 2, 3, 4]? It's appalling. And this same uncertainty continues.

With the countdown on to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) ballot on OOXML, Australia and New Zealand's representatives are keeping their cards close to their chests on which way they will vote.

If you choose not to believe this Web site, take it from somebody else. How about the father of XML? ⬆

"This was horrible, egregious, process abuse and ISO should hang their heads in shame for allowing it to happen. Their reputation, in my eyes, is in tatters. My opinion of ECMA was already very negative; this hasn’t improved it, and if ISO doesn’t figure out away to detach this toxic leech, this kind of abuse is going to happen again and again."

--Tim Bray