Bonum Certa Men Certa

Can ISO Be Still Saved from Microsoft?

OOXML protests in India
From the Campaign for Document Freedom



Our previous two posts on this subject were critical of ISO [1, 2]. We did, however, try to emphasise that head changes led to ISO getting captured by Microsoft. Essentially, Microsoft destroyed ISO from the inside over the past year or so (there are similar examples). Those who fought against it seem to have left and those who remained or were appointed (e.g. the Microsoft-friendly Alex Brown [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21]) turned ISO into a 'Microsoft shop'.



Can the world rescue ISO from Microsoft and attempt to restore order to international standards? Or is the damage done irreparable? Confidence has already been shattered. Some believe it may be possible to change this, at least by elucidating the situation and its severity.

ISO members failed to disapprove the Open XML format. Microsoft has compromised the International Standards Organisation (ISO) during the rush to get a stamp for their Office OpenXML (OOXML), using unfair practices such as committee stuffing in several countries and political interventions of ministers in the standardization process.

[...]

Pieter Hintjens, of the European Software Market Association, says:"Nobody wants standards you can buy. Microsoft bought a standard at ECMA, now they bought ISO. Who wants this?"


"Who wants this," asks Pieter Hintjens. Well, surely not the people of Brazil, one of the world's largest populations. From Brazil comes another response and background story about the latest formal complaint (with possible action to ensue).

Thus, managers of the major IT governmental organizations in Brazil, Venezuela and South Africa wrote and co-signed an open letter to ISO, to express their dissatisfaction with the final result of this all.

The letter was also signed by managers of similar entities in Ecuador, Paraguay and Cuba, in a clear signal that this affected more people than I imagined.

Reading the text of the letter, I’ll not summarize anything here because it is worth be read in full, I reminded of Newton’s third law: “For every action there is an equal, but opposite, reaction.”


This news has also just reached IDG.

The OOXML fast-track process and subsequent approval vote in the ISO was riddled with complaints that Microsoft acted unscrupulously, the standards process was not implemented properly and the specification approved was too unwieldy to implement. As a result, the national bodies of Brazil, India, South Africa and Venezuela filed protests.


The world tried to vote properly. Failing that, given the sheer abuse, complaints began to arrive. But perhaps it's time to give ISO another chance to clean up its act, or else it might go the way of the dodo, in due time. This would serve Microsoft ever better.

ISO's reputation has been injured for over a year, based on internal ISO correspondence. The longer it goes on for, the worse it will get. Why is ISO doing this to itself? An admission of failure is damaging indeed, but not quite as damaging as outrageous denials and damage control.

In other news, the South African IEC (not to be confused with another IEC, the Commission Electrotechnique Internationale) has just come under fire. This news may raise a brow coming at this particular time because the 'other' IEC was ISO's partner in crime denials throughout that tiresome OOXML fiasco. The new complaint against IEC is fueled by disregard for standards and strict requirement of Microsoft Internet Explorer.

"37 letters with exactly the same words. Some of the senders didn't even care to remove the 'Type company name here' text.
Simular letters has been circulating in Denmark as an e-mail from the Danish MD Jørgen Bardenfleth to customers and business partners.
I call it fraud, cheating and disgusting. If I wasn't anti-Microsoft before, I am now. Disgusting !"

--Leif Lodahl



OOXML protests in India
From the Campaign for Document Freedom

Recent Techrights' Posts

KillerStartups.com is an LLM Spam Site That Sometimes Covers 'Linux' (Spams the Term)
It only serves to distract from real articles
 
Gemini Links 21/11/2024: Alphabetising 400 Books and Giving the Internet up
Links for the day
Links 21/11/2024: TikTok Fighting Bans, Bluesky Failing Users
Links for the day
Links 21/11/2024: SpaceX Repeatedly Failing (Taxpayers Fund Failure), Russian Disinformation Spreading
Links for the day
Richard Stallman Earned Two More Honorary Doctorates Last Month
Two more doctorate degrees
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, November 20, 2024
IRC logs for Wednesday, November 20, 2024
Gemini Links 20/11/2024: Game Recommendations, Schizo Language
Links for the day
Growing Older and Signs of the Site's Maturity
The EPO material remains our top priority
Did Microsoft 'Buy' Red Hat Without Paying for It? Does It Tell Canonical What to Do Now?
This is what Linus Torvalds once dubbed a "dick-sucking" competition or contest (alluding to Red Hat's promotion of UEFI 'secure boot')
Links 20/11/2024: Politics, Toolkits, and Gemini Journals
Links for the day
Links 20/11/2024: 'The Open Source Definition' and Further Escalations in Ukraine/Russia Battles
Links for the day
[Meme] Many Old Gemini Capsules Go Offline, But So Do Entire Web Sites
Problems cannot be addressed and resolved if merely talking about these problems isn't allowed
Links 20/11/2024: Standing Desks, Broken Cables, and Journalists Attacked Some More
Links for the day
Links 20/11/2024: Debt Issues and Fentanylware (TikTok) Ban
Links for the day
Jérémy Bobbio (Lunar), Magna Carta and Debian Freedoms: RIP
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Jérémy Bobbio (Lunar) & Debian: from Frans Pop to Euthanasia
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
This Article About "AI-Powered" is Itself LLM-Generated Junk
Trying to meet quotas by making fake 'articles' that are - in effect - based on plagiarism?
Recognizing invalid legal judgments: rogue Debianists sought to deceive one of Europe's most neglected regions, Midlands-North-West
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Google-funded group distributed invalid Swiss judgment to deceive Midlands-North-West
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 20/11/2024: BeagleBone Black and Suicide Rates in Switzerland
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, November 19, 2024
IRC logs for Tuesday, November 19, 2024
Links 19/11/2024: War on Cables?
Links for the day
Gemini Links 19/11/2024: Private Journals Online and Spirituality
Links for the day
Drew's Development Mailing Lists and Patches to 'Refine' His Attack Pieces Against the FSF's Founder
Way to bury oneself in one's own grave...
The Free Software Foundation is Looking to Raise Nearly Half a Million Dollars by Year's End
And it really needs the money, unlike the EFF which sits on a humongous pile of oligarchs' and GAFAM cash
What IBMers Say About IBM Causing IBMers to Resign (by Making Life Hard/Impossible) and Why Red Hat Was a Waste of Money to Buy
partnering with GAFAM
In Some Countries, Desktop/Laptop Usage Has Fallen to the Point Where Microsoft and Windows (and Intel) Barely Matter Anymore
Microsoft is the next Intel basically
[Meme] The Web Wasn't Always Proprietary Computer Programs Disguised as 'Web Pages'
The Web is getting worse each year
Re-de-centralisation Should Be Our Goal
Put the users in charge, not governments and corporations in charge of users
Gemini Links 19/11/2024: Rain Music, ClockworkPi DevTerm, and More
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, November 18, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, November 18, 2024