Bonum Certa Men Certa

Watch Out, OASIS

"The disparity of rules for PAS, Fast-Track and ISO committee generated standards is fast making ISO a laughing stock in IT circles."

--Martin Bryan, Former Convenor of OOXML WG1



It might seem as though Microsoft could ruin soon OASIS just as it ruined ISO with ECMA. Even the IEEE and a certain situation irked some observers after it had gotten closer to ISO. OASIS, being one that thrives in openness and transparency, needs none of Microsoft, yet according to this, Microsoft might want to treat it like it already (mis)treats ODF. It gives away money. Has the world forgotten how viciously Microsoft attacked ODF [1, 2] and at a later stage slammed OASIS as well, especially through its 'talking heads'?



GNOME trashRegarding this latest development, Pamela Jones at Groklaw wrote: "I gather OASIS has no sense of irony. It's a Security Challenges for the Information Society conference, September 30 through October 3 in New London: "The Forum will provide a unique opportunity for the security standards community (public sector, private sector and standards developing organizations) to come together to discuss current issues and challenges, strategic approaches, recent successes, and future outlooks." Microsoft is a Gold sponsor, and DTrace is Platinum, which is a higher category, but the OASIS newsletter titles the item, "Microsoft sponsors upcoming OASIS Security Forum near London". And so it begins, I fear."

Does Microsoft suddenly think that OASIS is not all that bad? Is this just presence? Does it want to make it worse, so as to make it "equally ruined" w.r.t. ISO? Speaking of 'talking heads, Patrick Durusau can't help unleashing some outrageous letters. A new rebuttal:

Unlike editors as Durusau Microsoft standardisation participants are loyal drones of their company's standard they edit. SC34 won't be able to do anything which is not approved or developed in the United States. External input would be ignored unless there is a leverage. We saw it during the process. "Vendor capture" as we call it. The whole situation makes a joke out of international standardisation institutions. ISO should be as concerned as industry veterans are.

So why surrender to perpetrators because Durusau finds it more cozy? I have to admit, that is the wrong question. The true evil ISO perpetrator is IBM, a company behind everything...


ODF is not IBM. Far from it. So, what are these letters about anyway [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]?

"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)."

A Memo to Patrick Durusau



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