Microsoft Already Plans to 'Extend' Its 'Standard'; ECMA and ISO Named and Shamed
- Dr. Roy Schestowitz
- 2007-07-21 03:50:11 UTC
- Modified: 2007-07-21 03:51:46 UTC
The weekend is almost here. The amount of news that is related the monopoly enabler (OOXML) is fairly large. Here is a quick summary.
Pamela wrote a long article which cites others. It also contains some very alarming piece of information. The takeaway: Miirosoft is
proprietizing standards and 'extending' them. We have
seen this before.
....when you proprietize standards, you touch me. And that is precisely what is happening with OOXML. Microsoft's own expert at the Portugal meeting said so pointblank: Microsoft will add proprietary extensions, he said, to do things ODF can't do.
Rob
takes a look at some unbelievable slides from ECMA. These pretty much confirm that ECMA should be treated as nothing but a
coin-in-the-slot standards organisation.
I've joked about the Ecma process before, but I never thought I'd see it written out officially like this. Standards are made available "on time"? Minimize the "risk" of changes? I thought the whole purpose of technical review was to find the problems and fix them? As always, the man who pays the piper calls the tune.
Bob has more to say about
the questionable voting process.
I mention this because this general issue of stacking committees to force favorable votes is now under examination with respect to OOXML and the ISO/IEC JTC1 Fast Track process.
Mr. Jelliffe
seems rather unhappy. He posted "Bribery Watch!". It seems like a bizarre way of accusing people of inaccuracies or maybe even slander. These arguments needn't get ugly, but where corruption (yes, it's a strong word, I know) is identified and where people
game the system, something simply
must be said. If you say nothing, the consumer will continue to suffer whilst greedy corporation exploit loopholes. Whose side are you on?
Comments
Keep it anonymous
2007-07-21 11:42:10
As seen in Groklaw: http://www.groklaw.net/comment.php?mode=display&sid=2007071812280798&title=Notes%20from%20Portugal%20on%20%20the%20July%2016th%20Meeting%20on%20Ecma-376&type=article&order=&hideanonymous=0&pid=0#c596254
Notes from Portugal on the July 16th Meeting on Ecma-376 Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, July 20 2007 @ 06:48 AM EDT This is as fishy/unfair as it can get.
As a Portuguese, i really don't see the point (besides unfair bullying) of having MS business parters there. In this particular case, these people are mostly sales/account managers who really don't have a clue about what they are talking about. They just wanna have their way (M$ way) through. They are representatives from corporations which their core business is 100% M$ for decades now. Worst even, some these companies have strong political connections thought corporate stock share owned (guess what) by politicians.
I strongly dislike Manuel Cerqueira presence there, who is nothing more than an openly M$ lackey and a clueless wannabe politician. ASSOFT is the Portuguese BSA version strongly focus on fighting software piracy of its two major associates M$ and Autodesk.
ASSOFT is a private association but his tactics and propaganda are strongly backed up the Portuguese government. Being a Software association it should had help ANSOL developing more OSS in Portugal. Instead went through the "money side":It's has done 0%(zero) for OSS and 100% for M$ and Autodesk in Portugal. In fact has damage OSS oportunities here every chance it gets.
The general tactic is the following:
1-MS account managers bury Portuguese companies with expensive "do it all and pay it later" M$ solutions well served with a high poisonous marketing.This is the time and place they say "OSS sucks, go our way". Naivelly, so they do.
2-Most companies here cannot cope with the expensive m$ licencing costs, but as they are all tied up with the M$ solutions, they choose to pay much much later.
3- Meanwhile the extortionists who keep a list a such companies (assoft who else) team up with the portuguese police (in fact on many ocasions they like to pretend they ARE the police) and go to the m$ rescue.
4- The company is then burried in fines and lawsuits, and its managers could face the usual up two 3 years piracy jail sentence, not because they were really software pirates, but because they were defrauded by this kind of ppl, Manuel Cerqueira and his goons.
5-There is a major exception to points 3-4. The Portuguese state and it's public companies.Why? Assoft doesn't want to ruin the beautiful political relationship it has. Ridiculous consequence:The government for instance can use loads of piracy, but the major Portuguese companies don't :)
The same tactic is applied to Autodesk Solutions.
This is the kind of people that they *do really* want in such meetings.
Alex
Skeptic
2007-07-21 13:39:41
Keep it anonymous
2007-07-21 14:51:36