Quick Mention: Microsoft is Hijacking ODF
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2008-10-02 14:20:24 UTC
- Modified: 2008-10-02 14:20:24 UTC
So we were right
all along. Details
in Groklaw:
Guess what the SC 34 committee, the ISO/IEC committee responsible for OOXML, is up to now? I call it a takeover attempt of ODF, according to my reading of the published notes of the most recent meeting held yesterday, October 1st, and starring a document titled "Request to JTC 1 for alignment of OASIS and JTC 1 Maintenance Procedures." Uh oh. That sounds polite, but it is what it is. An attempted coup. They have already sent a "Liaison Statement" to OASIS. Surrender or else, what? SC 34 asks JTC 1 "to establish with OASIS a synchronised mechanism for maintenance of ISO/IEC 26300 and to inform SC 34 of the outcome." I gather they think they can do a better job of maintaining ODF than OASIS. What will JTC 1 do, do you think? You doubt they will hop on to this wonderful plan?
I gather the hope is, if the takeover were to succeed, that SC 34 would get to maintain ODF as well as Microsoft's competing parody "standard," OOXML. How totally smooth and shark-like. Under the guise of "synchronised maintenance", without which they claim SC 34 can't fulfill its responsibilities, they get control of everything. So utterly Microsoft. Microsoft yearns for interoperability, it seems. More like yearning for ODF's air supply to be ... well, you know.
[...]
Why do I say Microsoft, when this is SC 34? Look at this, will you? It has a list of participants in the July meeting in Japan of the SC 34 committee. The committee membership is so tilted by Microsoft employees and such, if it were a boat, it would capsize. In fact, I'd say it already has. Of the 19 attendees, 8 are outright Microsoft employees or consultants, and 2 of them are Ecma TC45 members. So 10 out of 19 are directly controlled by Microsoft/Ecma.
[...]
Mr. Durusau, Mr. Brown, and all you guys, listen up, please. That isn't the goal. Microsoft being "more open" isn't the appropriate end goal. If it's your goal, you have utterly failed. The goal is a standard that anyone can use equally, a truly open standard, available to both proprietary folks and FOSS. Microsoft being "more open" but not really fully interoperable and always a little bit ahead of everyone else in its ability to use a "standard" is by no means enough. We've lived in that kind of Microsoft world a long time now. We don't need "standards" that replicate it.
Recent Techrights' Posts
- The Register MS Has Just Been Paid to Promote the Ponzi Scheme Some More ("AI" Keyword Stuffing)
- This won't end well for The Register MS
- Perpetuating the Lie of "No Red Hat Layoffs" Because of the Bluewashing (Red Hat Became Just "IBM")
- Many Red Hat employees were pushed out and/or removed lately
- EPO People Power - Part XIII - If the EPO's Chief Propagandist (Berenguer) Told the Police He Was a Spanish Tourist (or Similar) or That He Does Not Reside in Munich, Then He May Have Lied to the Police (in Addition to Doing Cocaine in Public)
- Lying to the police in Germany is a criminal offense
- GAFAM "doesn't depend on any sort of lock-in, humans just don't want to be free anymore," according to MinceR
- As many readers are aware, our criticism of UEFI (restricted boot in particular) attracted a lot of online harassment against us, including stalking and libel
-
- Due to 'Secure Boot' (An Anti-Security Measure, a Kill Switch) Computer Users Are Afraid of GNU/Linux
- This is what Microsoft wanted
- 'Crypto' 'Currencies' Are a Ponzi Scheme. So Is "AI". Both Destroy the Planet, Not Just the Economy.
- Believe it or not, millions of these GPUs just sit there boxed, unopened, unconnected, unused
- Microsoft Colonialism in Africa is Not Sustainable
- Microsoft's situation in Nigeria is not
- Links 15/12/2025: Chromebooks as Work Machines, "Americans [Who] Moved to Australia" to Avoid Cheeto
- Links for the day
- Breaking Your Proprietary Router in the Name of "Security"
- Each time they "patch" the router something that previously worked OK is likely to just break
- IBM May be Breaking the Law to Silence Staff It Laid Off
- Observation to add regarding IBM layoffs
- Demonisation Attacks on Richard Matthew Stallman (RMS) - Including Antisemitic Attacks - Have Not Worked
- Name-calling doesn't work
- Slop ("AI") Will Replace People and Take Away Jobs, Say the Slopfarms With Fake (LLM-Generated) Text and Slop Images
- "AI" often means slave labour in a poor country
- More Than a Million Bytes Should be Enough for Most Computer Programs
- Who said computing would improve over time?
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Sunday, December 14, 2025
- IRC logs for Sunday, December 14, 2025
- Another "AI" (Slop) Use Cases Turns Out to be a Fraud
- Those who talk about this fraud get SLAPPed
- They Say Rules Are Made to be Broken, at Microsoft That Became an Imperative (e.g. Accounting Fraud, Bribery and So on)
- Its biggest client is itself
- In Russia, Microsoft is Already a Dying Breed Online
- A lot of Europe also dumps Microsoft. Europe is a big revenue source of Microsoft.
- The Future of News on the World Wide Web
- No "greener pastures" on the Web
- 𝐈𝐁𝐌 𝐂𝐄𝐎 𝐀𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐝 𝐊𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐡𝐧𝐚: Proof That at IBM People Fall Upwards
- IBM is collapsing
- EPO People Power - Part XII - The Mobbing Got So Bad People Were Unable to Work
- What's at stake here isn't just the EPO or the patent system
- Links 14/12/2025: "Chile to ban smartphones in classroom" and "Portugal updates cybercrime law to exempt security researchers"
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 14/12/2025: "GUI TUI CLI" and EmacsConf 2025 Video
- Links for the day
- Links 14/12/2025: Tensions in Asia, US Making Deals With Belarus
- Links for the day
- A Utopian and Very Dumb Vision of Technology, Based on Accounting Fraud
- the "industry" has become insane and a lot of "the media" is going along with it
- Links 14/12/2025: "The Slop of Things to Come", Goldman Sachs Nervous About Slop Bubble
- Links for the day
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Saturday, December 13, 2025
- IRC logs for Saturday, December 13, 2025
- Google News is Google Noise
- Google News is really hopeless, even on weekends
- IBM: We Pay You to be Obedient or Deny You What You're Entitled to If You Don't Act Obediently
- Good luck starting legal battles with a company that has almost as many lawyers (including aggressive patent lawyers) as it has geeks
- Links 13/12/2025: Jimmy Lai and Media Freedom on Trial, "OpenAI Researcher Quits, Saying Company Hiding the Truth"
- Links for the day
- Gemini Links 13/12/2025: Extensive Catchup With Gopherholes
- Links for the day
- Deliberate Lies or Glaring Distortions
- Calling Torvalds anything "Soviet" or "Russian" would overlook the fact he comes from Finland and has Swedish roots
- Canonical and Ubuntu: Working for Microsoft, Promoting Proprietary Surveillance (Dis)Services
- Canonical started with a rich and overambitious Debian Developer. He wanted to become richer.
- Russian "Hybrid Attacks" Are Typically Microsoft TCO and/or Windows TCO (Total Cost of Ownership)
- Information-related warfare relies a lot on computer systems
- EPO People Power - Part XI - The Media in Europe is Ill and Complicit in Ills
- We must all recognise that there's a problem here
- Running With Technology
- At least they always run Linux (all of them, since 2015)
- Dealing With "Tech Cults"
- If you think you identified a "Tech Cult", walk away
- It Seems Like IBM is Firing 'Everybody' (Anywhere, Any Age, No Matter What Team)
- Healthy companies would sack IBM's management (sacked by Board, bylaws etc.) but IBM is a sick company
- Latest Stallman Talk (Event in Argentina) Published
- Less than a day ago they released his talk
- GAFAM is a Financial Problem and Sovereignty Risk, a Policy-Level (National Level) Boycott is Needed
- Europe has plenty of skilled computer engineers
- LLM Slop Becoming Rarer
- Today we've found no LLM slop in our RSS feeds regarding "Linux"
- 2026 Could Very Well be Last Year of XBox, Microsoft Dropped the Ball
- It would be shocking is XBox can stage any kind of comeback
- Links 13/12/2025: Social Control Media Bans and "Could Finland be Hiding a Blue Zone?"
- Links for the day
- Expecting Mass Layoffs, More Microsoft Workers Join Unions
- they see tough times ahead
- Over at Tux Machines...
- GNU/Linux news for the past day
- IRC Proceedings: Friday, December 12, 2025
- IRC logs for Friday, December 12, 2025