Comments on: Quick Mention: Brazil Hijacked by Microsoft (Updated)

By: Roy Schestowitz

Roy Schestowitz — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 09:13:44 +0000

Some people at ECMA are also Microsoft employees and ECMA is also paid by Microsoft. You are attempting to downplay this issue.

By: Dave

Dave — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 08:24:11 +0000

@Luc
Actually it is 8 plus the Ecma people
Ecma has no voting rights within ISO/IEC so less than a quarter of the SC34 attendees would be correct. That would not account for a unanymous descision being taken.

On a sidenote: as SC34 is the committee that deals with electronic documents and Microsoft products are the largest producer of such documents their input is likely to be both expert and welcome. Also it should be noted that some members of the OASIS ODF TC were present at the SC34 meeting and not just Ecma. howeverthe IBM members were notably absent.

By: Roy Schestowitz

Roy Schestowitz — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 22:10:22 +0000

Thanks. There's is a rumour now that the Commission won't investigate the ISO scandals . They are too afraid to intervene in an international organisation. I'll stay up late tonight and blog some more.

By: Luc Bollen

Luc Bollen — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 22:05:30 +0000

We now have a partial response to the question above, straight from the horse’s mouth: According to Alex Brown:
“By my (rough, unconfirmed) count, there were eight MS employees in 15 NB delegations (+ 4 people in the Ecma group) out of the 35 or so attendees.”
(http://www.robweir.com/blog/2008/10/wheres-rob.html)

12 Microsoft + Ecma people out of 35 people ! Isn’t this a record ? But of course Microsoft is NOT hijacking SC 34, as “Delegates are charged with representing national positions” (from the same horse’s mouth).

By: Roy Schestowitz

Roy Schestowitz — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 21:53:57 +0000

They ‘bribe’ the committee with food now.

“…The company from Redmond is heavily investing in the ISO SC34 committee. Thanks to a brazilian blogger who manage to shed some light on what was going on in there, we hear now that Microsoft Korea was paying for dinner.”

http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-95230/sc34-thanked-microsoft-korea-for-the-dinner

By: pcole

pcole — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 21:23:55 +0000

This is one of the scenarios most didn’t see coming. Aside from the ‘FACT’ that microsoft can’t fix it’s own document format, ooxml, it will taint ODF with bloddy binaries blobs.

It’s like visiting someone’s house to defecate in their living room.

By: Roy Schestowitz

Roy Schestowitz — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 15:03:04 +0000

Noteworthy comment that I found (among other good ones):

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/talkback/0,1000001161,39498926-20097639o,00.htm

“It would be interesting to know how many of the 15 national standards bodies were represented by Microsoft employees, but ISO do not publish this information…”

By: Roy Schestowitz

Roy Schestowitz — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:39:43 +0000

I take your point, but this is merely the making of an observation, not its explanation. IBM’s partial absence in that meeting was probably caused by its formal protest against crooked standards bodies like ISO. That was a fortnight ago.

If bodies like these are abandoned, as Brazil and several other South American nations have considered doing (India seems likely to join soon), then we ought to show why. We ought to show how ISO gets stuffed and manipulated, then bypass it with reasonable justification.

By: Penny Lane

Penny Lane — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:32:17 +0000

To be fair, that sounds a lot like the situation in quite a few countries. In many cases attending meetings like the one in Korea is open to all TC members, but Microsoft ends up going because no other commitee members will put their money where their mouth is.

When it comes to doing more than just shouting and complaing, most people don’t seem to be all that interested.

It isn’t as if other commitee members can’t afford to participate, in many cases companies like Google, IBM etc are at the table.