Bonum Certa Men Certa

ISO and Microsoft: The Corruption Resumes

"Microsoft corrupted many members of ISO in order to win approval for its phony ‘open’ document format, OOXML. This was so governments that keep their documents in a Microsoft-only format can pretend that they are using ‘open standards.’ The government of South Africa has filed an appeal against the decision, citing the irregularities in the process."

--Richard Stallman, June 2008

W

e wrote about this yesterday and the day before that. It continues to escalate and blow up in ISO's face like bubblegum. First of all, get a load of this ISO leak from WikiLeaks (alluded to before).

An internal document of the International Standards Organization (ISO) that found its way late last week on to the Wikileaks whistle-blower platform raises further questions about the choice of a fast-track certification for Microsoft's OOXML document format. The paper, by Joint Technical Committee No. 1 (JTC 1) of the Geneva standards organization, which dates back to July 2007, says the fast track procedure chosen for certifying Microsoft's document format is only intended for the acceptance of unaltered standards and that a standard not accepted in its original form, while not to be regarded as "2nd class" or illegitimate, should be put through the normal five-stage standardisation process, should necessary corrections be identified in advance. The fast-track process, it says, is intended for making changes to an original draft.


ISO is likely to just ignore the existence of this serious leak, just as it ignores everything that's irregular, if not a 'smoking gun' too. If you want to see more, look at the leaked letters that are circulating at the moments. Responding to Alex Brown and his dismissive remarks (among others), Groklaw writes:

"Believe it or not, that is his [Alex Brown's] response to the ISO recommendation that the appeals be denied. If he wanted to find nits to pick, perhaps he should start with page 3 of the memo [PDF], where Alan Bryden, Secretary-General and CEO, ISO, and Aharon Amit, General Secretary and CEO, IEC, told the TMB that Brazil is not a P country and therefore has no right to appeal. However, Brazil is a P country, as you can see on ISO's own list here and click on the link to "Participating Countries" as opposed to "Observing Countries" and the first country on the P list is Brazil."

It goes on and on. Pay attention to this:

As you can see, Mr Bryden says it is irrelevant, trying to argue that the appeal is about something else. It looks like Mr Bryden don't want to read the JTC1 directives. Mr Bryden is just lobbying for the honor of its institution, and I really doubt the judges who will decide about the rules are really neutral either.


ISO standards for saleWatch the comments attached to this. This seems like quite a fiasco, but most of the world is apathetic because the press won't present the situation properly, if at all.

Meanwhile, ISO is also bragging about that Reuters 'placement' everyone complained about. It now puts up for display that appalling denials interview. Groklaw writes: "Believe it or not, ISO has this interview by Reuters, which Reuters only published some of, in full on their press release page. This is one of the signatories of the memo to the TMB recommending that the appeals be denied."

There are some more interesting reactions to ISO's intent to ignore the formal appeals. From Bob Sutor for example:

I fully support Andy’s conclusions and the opinions of the process that he expresses in his article. While that process is not finished and though many, including the four appealing countries, have pointed how just how deeply flawed it is, the powers at be seem unwilling to admit that anything out the ordinary or inappropriate happened here. That’s a real shame, because it does not demonstrate to the world that these organizations are necessarily the right venues for IT (ICT) standardizations in 2008 and beyond.

[...]

As OOXML continues to move to being no more than a footnote in the history of IT standardization, I hope that ISO and IEC will ultimately stand up, admit that there were clear flaws here, fix the process quickly, and avoid fading into the background for those looking to create and use first class open IT standards in the twenty-first century.


Putting it more bluntly: "ISO chief recommends to throw away the 4 appeals against OOXML"

Alan Bryden, Secretary-General of ISO, has sent a recommendation to all countries members of the TMB (Technical Management Board) asking them to throw away the 4 appeals tabled by South Africa, Brazil, Venezuela and India. He does not however justify its position in regard of the JTC1 directives.


Stephane rips it apart totally, also based on technical grounds.

It's been 3 months since ISO made that April 1st gag when they declared OOXML a valid candidate for an "open standard", even though it's riddled with patents.

Microsoft made the situation even more ridiculous by making available, after April 1st, documents that are absolutely necessary in order to fully implement their file formats. Well, if those documents were not part of the ISO proposal in the first place, then what is the ISO proposal good for? Isn't an "open standard" meant to be implemented by more than one vendor?

Completely, utterly, shamelessly, ridiculous. Typical Microsoft.

Let's get on with the ridicule. Remember the days before April 1st? A day could not pass without a number of so-called independent companies claiming support for OOXML in one way or another, and telling how good it was. Well, since April 1st, it's like not a single freaking person cares about it. Silence. How so? Wasn't it a fraud to begin with?

[...]

How is this project going on? Let's see for yourself on this web page. The project is still a 1st revision source code dump, and it's 4-month old. It's hard not to laugh.

Who thought Microsoft was serious when they started this project? Everyone worth his salt knows that a project like this involves an almost complete rewrite of both engines, and it could take a decade to do so. It's ridiculous to think that a company or independent people would spend their lives essentially rewriting Microsoft Office code base (the non UI part). After all, isn't it what was essentially done already with OpenOffice? Why isn't Microsoft instead pledging support for the OpenOffice suite by helping implement the undocumented stuff? Alternatively, why don't they instead open source their compatibility pack, a component that migrates Office documents back and forth?

It gets better.

Earlier this month, Microsoft released another 5000+ pages of documentation. This additional documentation is a direct acknowledgement that what I have been saying on this blog was spot on, which is that the documentation that was made available earlier was just a fraction of what was needed to implement a full run-time of Office documents. At least Microsoft gives way to a so-called anti-Microsoft person.


A report from Beta News states:

The status code for the ISO's publication of OXML as an international standard has been on hold since four countries appealed the outcome of a ballot resolution meeting. That roadblock may now be lifted as soon as next month.


This short article happens to quote the man who took a trip to Redmond and then became "a new man" [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. It is worth just a quick reminder. We recently wrote about Microsoft's mass-invitation. It was an invitation from a cheating "Elephant in the Room" -- one among people who lack regard for ethics and rules. It's about self-serving moves, a case of money mongering through fake affinity and half-hearted promises.

Speaking of which, RedMonk is being paid by Microsoft now, according to this. Consider it a gentle warning. RedMonk an award-winning open source consultancy, which shows that Microsoft continues to stick its nose everywhere, including what it once daemonised and denounced as "communism". With the 451 Group traveling to Redmond, this is something to watch out for. Don't forget OpenLogic, Black Duck and other Microsoft-esque sources of influence deep inside the FOSS world (other than funding through advertising and sponsorships).

This new ODF project from South Africa will hopefully steer clear off Microsoft's attempt to influence everything, even Blender.

This project builds a converter that allows conversion from the Open Document Format (ODF) to translation files (PO and XLIFF).


This is not paranoia. Assuming you have watched this long enough and delved into the depths of this situation, it seems clear that Microsoft wants to affect ODF for the same reasons it wants to influence open source. It's about Office, Windows and, above all, it is about the shareholders.

"Microsoft looks at new ideas, they don't evaluate whether the idea will move the industry forward, they ask, 'how will it help us sell more copies of Windows?'"

--Bill Gates, The Seattle Weekly, (April 30, 1998)



Protest against OOXML

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Nothing that Microsoft Lunduke claims or says can be trusted
Nothing that Microsoft Lunduke claims of says can be trusted
How Software Patents Were Viewed or Their General Status Changed Over Time
A rough summary
Datamation, Where I Used to Publish Articles, Appears to Have Been Sold to TechnologyAdvice Only to Become a Slopfarm
I'd prefer to not associate with that site anymore
 
Links 04/10/2025: "Privacy Harm Is Harm", Criticism Outlawed in US
Links for the day
Garmin Uses Linux for Some of the Garmin Products, Now It's Sued by Strava Using Software Patents
Software patents should never have been granted in the first place
Richard Stallman Will Give a Talk in Sweden in 6 Days
Dr. Stallman, despite his battle with cancer is still alive and mentally sharp
FSF Turns 40
We'll be focusing on patent-related topics this weekend
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, October 03, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, October 03, 2025
Gemini Links 04/10/2025: Distro Hopping and "Part Time"
Links for the day
We Are Turning 19 in One Month, FSF Turns 40 in 3 Hours (CET)
For our anniversary next month we still have no concrete plans
Patent Docs (or PatentDocs) Learned the Wrong Lessons From the Death of TypePad
Had they gone ahead with an SSG, they'd become a lot more future-proof
USPTO Patent Bubble Already Imploding, After Decades of Artificial Inflation, Entire Offices Close for Good
we can deduce that financial pressures (lack of "demand" for monopolies) play a role
TikTok is Not Harmless (Being CheeTok in the US Will Advance Orange Agenda)
Social control media isn't "fun and games"; it's a digital weapon that lets hostile groups or nations infiltrate others, then turn them against themselves
Andy Farnell and Helen Plews Explain What "Modern" Tech Does to Old People
Imposing terrible tech "religion" on people is not helping them
Tomorrow the Free Software Foundation (FSF) Turns 40 and Its Web Site is Still Slow Due to DDoS by LLM Slop Bots
For an advocacy group, uptime is important (for its message to remain accessible)
Slopwatch: Google News as a Firehose of LLM Slop About "Linux"
Google News is really bad
Links 03/10/2025: "NPR’s Economics Lessons Come With Neoliberal Spin" and Canada Post at Risk
Links for the day
Gemini Links 03/10/2025: Panic Attacks and Food Adulteration
Links for the day
Links 03/10/2025: Lawyers Caught Using LLM Slop Explain Why They Did It, LibreSSL 4.1.1 and 4.0.1 Released
Links for the day
FSF Board Grew 50% Since Last Year, Has New President, Turns 40 in Two Days
It's a good move for the FSF and - by extension - for software freedom
Links 03/10/2025: Conflicts, Death of TypePad, and TikTok/CheeTok Gives a Boost to Far Right Groups in Europe
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, October 02, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, October 02, 2025
Slopwatch: Linux Journal, Google News, and LinuxSecurity
They carry on polluting the Web with fake articles
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: Kubernetes With FreeBSD and robots.txt
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: 'Open' 'AI' Resorting to Gimmicks and Fake Funding, Europe’s ‘Drone Wall’ Discussed
Links for the day
Links 02/10/2025: Brave Passes 100M Users Milestone, Kodak Selling Its Own Film Again
Links for the day
Michael “Monty” Widenius: It Started in 1983 With Richard Stallman (RMS)
The other co-founder of MySQL is a bit notorious for confronting RMS rather viciously
su lisa && rm -rf /home/ibm/power
Novell was ruined by another person from IBM, Ronald Hovsepian
A Record Demand at Microsoft: Demand to Cancel
What we're witnessing is a very ungraceful destruction of XBox
Microsoft is Losing Europe
Hence all the "support" and "discount" offers that are limited to Europe
The Free Software Foundation Starts Fund-raising for 40th Anniversary
New pop-up 2-3 days ahead of the 40th anniversary event
Systemd Breaks Networking in Debian and Microsoft Staff Rushes to Make Face-Saving Excuses in LWN
Microsoft's bluca is already there in the comments, his Microsoft money pays for LWN to let him leave comments early
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 01, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 01, 2025
What the End of XBox Will Look Like: a Fiery Crash
XBox is the next Skype. It won't last much longer. Expect many more layoffs.
Richard Stallman is Going to Finland to Give a Talk Next Thursday
A day later he speaks in Sweden
Gemini Links 02/10/2025: SMTP Pipelining and End of ROOPHLOCH 2025
Links for the day