Bonum Certa Men Certa

It's Almost Official: ISO is Controlled by Microsoft, by Insiders

Protests in Norway (OOXML)



ISO can twist, shout or even whine about personal attacks all it wants. It knows very well that it has too much to hide and its damage control attempts have thus far done more harm than good [1, 2, 3, 4, 5].

When it comes to actual proof, too much evidence was gathered which shows that it had probably been corrupted (just like most parties that were involved in this saga since the early days). Here is some of the latest.

Recall our previous post about Alex Brown and the British Library. For some reason, anti-FOSS brigadier Jeff Gould has just reposted this copy of one press release that serves as another smoking gun against ISO, which has conflicting interests where Microsoft is concerned. This was also caught by linux.com just hours ago. We append this press release to this item for future reference.

The same press release was sent to us yesterday by someone whose name shall not be disclosed but whose level of authority is high. He added:

"As Dr Alex Brown says in his own words:

"Alex Brown was convenor of the ISO/IEC DIS 29500 Ballot Resolution Process, and has recently been appointed to the panel to advise the British Library"

"So, the guy stands to make a bundle out of doing Microsoft's dirty work, he was responsible for the BSI change of position, and he's been given an advisory post to the British Library (known Microsoft glove-puppet) as well.

"No conflict of interest there then..."

According to this new post from ZDNet, plenty of time remains for an appeal. How much more evidence is needed to show the extent of this fiasco?

Outspoken OOXML opponents Sun and IBM have not commented on possible plans for an appeal. But at least one spokesman for the ODF Alliance said it’s too early to tell.

“I wouldn’t be surprised, given the number of documented irregularities, if an [national standard body] formally appeals. ISO rules require that an appeal be fully documented so I would expect an NB considering such a appeal to use more of the time (two months) allotted,” said Marino Marcich, a spokesman for the ODF Allliance, in an e-mail to ZDNet.


If in doubt, watch this older post about Alex Brown and the British Library. Then consider the gradually-accumulating findings about the BSI. Yes, again. It's almost as though the man handling OOXML at ISO and the BSI is a Microsoft pawn. And he's probably not alone according to the previous convenor who fled to retire. ISO should come out of its bunker and make some confessions already. It's its duty as a body that used to thrive in trust and integrity before getting captured by a predatory vendor.




As OOXML gains approval to become an International Standard, XML is poised to take centre stage for the future of high value data content storage

Press Release



17 April 2008

As OOXML gains approval to become an International Standard, XML is poised to take centre stage for the future of high value data content storage

Valuable business data held in Microsoft Office documents now visible and usable

XML is now poised to consolidate its position as the dominant format for high value business data according to Dr Alex Brown, director of Griffin Brown, an industry leading data quality specialist and convenor of the ISO/IEC DIS 29500 Ballot Resolution Process.

Dr Brown commented, “Despite the huge controversy surrounding it, the standardisation of Open Office XML (OOXML) is great news for business. As the large majority of organisations in the developed world use Microsoft desktop applications, it is a significant step forward that data held within these documents can now be accessed by any XML tool. This finally opens the way for legacy documents to be accessible for compliance, audit trail, archiving and even migration to other, non-Microsoft, systems.”

ISO/IEC DIS 29500 was originally developed as the Office Open XML Specification by Microsoft Corporation which submitted it to Ecma International, an information technology industry association, for transposing into an ECMA standard and subsequently published as ECMA standard 376.



Ecma International then submitted the standard in December 2006 to ISO/IEC JTC 1, with whom it has category A liaison status, for adoption as an International Standard.

Since it is based on XML, Office Open XML is a platform-independent standard for word-processing documents, presentations and spreadsheets. The standard, which has been trialed by hundreds of organisations, has now received the necessary votes for approval as an International Standard. Independent software vendors, including Apple, Corel, Microsoft and Novell have already shipped implementations of the Open XML standard within popular applications such as iWork, iPhone, WordPerfect, Open Office and Microsoft Office 2007. The new standard will ensure that billions of documents created during the last twenty years, will continue to be forwards compatible with new technologies and applications.

Dr Brown went on to say, “We are reaching the mature stage of the Information Economy where successful organisations rely upon data to support their core business. Now that OOXML is to become one of ISO’s standard document formats alongside PDF and ODF, it brings previously opaque office content into a format where it can reused and repurposed, while monitoring and improving its quality.”

-ends-

NOTES TO EDITORS:

About Dr Alex Brown



Alex Brown was convenor of the ISO/IEC DIS 29500 Ballot Resolution Process, and has recently been appointed to the panel to advise the British Library on how to handle digital submission of journal articles.

About Griffin Brown

Founded in 1997, Griffin Brown is based in the heart of ‘Silicon Fen’ in Cambridgeshire, UK. Griffin Brown provides Data Quality solutions and services to commercial publishers, financial, legal and research organisations and government departments.

XMLProbe offers breakthrough technology for automated XML quality management by providing an effective and flexible XML quality assurance system.

XMLProbe enables organisations to:

€· Reduce costs caused by poor-quality XML data



€· Ensure standards compliance for submission and receipting systems

€· Go beyond the level of validation that XML DTDs and Schemas offer

€· Have the means to implement an effective XML data quality policy

€· Manage content by producing informative at-a-glance quality reports

Some of the world's largest publishers use Griffin Brown Data Quality software to improve the quality of their structured content and drive down processing costs, including Cambridge University Press, Blackwell Publishing and the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain.

Griffin Brown is privately owned, backed by seed capital from current and former employees.



For more information please visit: www.griffinbrown.co.uk

Editors Contacts:

Dr Alex Brown
Director
Griffin Brown
Tel: +44 (1223) 425730
Email: alex@griffinbrown.co.uk



Andreina West
PR Artistry Limited
Tel: +44 1491 639500
email: andreina@pra-ltd.co.uk



I sold out

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

New Paper From the EPO Highlights Large-Scale Discrimination at the Office, Where People Are Rewarded for Granting More and More Illegal Patents
Even the Kremlin is probably more competent than this
The Ultimate and Inevitable Fall of OpenAI (Even Brave is 'Bigger' Now)
"When you advertise at the Super Bowl, you’ve reached just about every consumer in America. It’s the last stop. If you’re not profitable yet, you never will be."
 
When the Livestream of Richard Stallman is Apparently Bury-Brigaded Offline You Finally Learn to Avoid Google/YouTube for Streaming
Please, people, stop uploading to Google/YouTube
Links 10/02/2025: Ban on D.E.I. Language, Listeria Risk/Outbreak
Links for the day
Links 10/02/2025: Announcing "Stringless" and Mental Health Improvement
Links for the day
Links 10/02/2025: Facebook Mass Layoffs, "Meta" Did What Aaron Swartz Had Done But to the Tune of 81.7 Terabytes
Links for the day
Microsoft Tarnishing the Brand of Arch
Of course Arch can do whatever it wants, but being associated with Microsoft is a badge of shame
Adding Slop to Your Blog Only Makes One Assume All the Text is LLM Slop
Simon Coter from Oracle has turned to slop
Macao is Leaving Microsoft Behind
Windows is falling to new all-time lows
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, February 09, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, February 09, 2025
Microsoft's WSL (LSW) Shows That It Can Never Love Linux, Only Windows
that's just how Microsoft rolls
Activism in Times of War and a Coup
'Linux' Foundation works for fascism
What the Silencing of Neatnik Tells Us About Linus Torvalds Inside a Microsoft-Dominated 'Linux' Foundation
Is Linus Torvalds free to express his mind as he wishes about every topic, even just any technical topic?
Windows Down to 11.35% in Senegal, as Measured by statCounter
Another all-time low (Windows was at 99% in 2009)
"Latest Technology News" in BetaNews is LLM Slop Promoting OOXML and Proprietary Software at the Expense of LibreOffice and OpenDocument Format (ODF)
Remember that "open-source" and Open Source aren't the same; the former is fake
Links 09/02/2025: Coffee, Toxic Productivity, and Programming
Links for the day
Debian's Human Rights violations & Swiss women Nazi symbolism
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 09/02/2025: Software Patents on MP3 and Another Scam Dressed Up as "Crypto"
Links for the day
Links 09/02/2025: Russian Energy Cut Off, LLM Pushers Show Signs of Desperation
Links for the day
Richard Stallman (RMS) Does Not Have Media Companies and Lobbyists on His Side, But His Message Spreads Regardless
The message of RMS is spreading in spite of all the smears
GNU/Linux Rises to All-Time High in Chile
sharp rise for GNU/Linux in Chile
Links 09/02/2025: Hottest January on Record, Panama Blackmailed
Links for the day
Why We Still Love Gemini Protocol
Gemini Protocol may seem like something "old" (it's actually very new) and something "nobody would use", but many people use it
Gemini Links 09/02/2025: "Died as a Mineral" and Game Interface for a Non-Game
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, February 08, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, February 08, 2025
Links 08/02/2025: UK Back Doors and Religious Fundamentalists in Positions of Higher Power
Links for the day
Today's IBM (Red Hat) Isn't the Company That Fought a Microsoft-Sponsored SCO in Court
IBM is nowadays in a state of rapid disintegration
When You Simply Rebrand Almost Everything as "Hey Hi" ("AI"), "Hey Hi Workloads", "Hey Hi Datacentres" and Whatnot
The "growth" has been a growing lie for years if not decades
Microsoft Windows Falls to 12% in Myanmar
Remember that Microsoft is virtually 0% in mobile
This is the Man Who's Attacking Linus Torvalds et al in "a Disease" (Social Control Media)
One thing that Richard M. Stallman and Torvalds can agree on is that Social Control Media should be avoided
Gemini Links 08/02/2025: "Thought Leaders" and Returns to Gemini Protocol
Links for the day
Links 08/02/2025: MElon Coup, Mass Layoffs at Facebook, and PlayStation Network Down
Links for the day
Unlike GAFAM, Free Software Serves You, It Does Not Serve Governments and MElons (Overlapping Forces)
Tired of oligarchy controlling your life through gadgets and "apps"?
On Wars Against Founders
We need to insist that founders remain
When It Comes to Social Control Media, Linus Torvalds is Channeling Techrights
GAFAM workers know exactly who to aim at
New EPO Paper: Promoting (Rewarding) People Who Grant Many Illegal European Patents to Make More Money (at Europeans' Expense) While Patent Courts in the EU Are Themselves Illegal
now the coup is sort of complete and even the "courts" are part of the corruption
Slopwatch: Carnival of LLM Slop and FUD Spewed by Bots, Pasted in by MaKenna Hensley and Day
Welcome to the Web in 2025. Articles about "Linux", "Security", and the Web (e.g. "Firefox") are fake.
Links 08/02/2025: News Corp Admits Traffic Declines, Wildlife Trafficking Tackled
Links for the day
Gemini Links 08/02/2025: Lamp and Notions
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, February 07, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, February 07, 2025