OOXML can’t stand up without support.
Over the last few months I have been following Microsoft’s attempts at getting their badly flawed document specification through as an “Open Standard” using the “fast-track process”.
It appears as though the mighty M$, with their army of expert[English Sarcasm] coders and lawyers, are having to use additional methods to make their spec stand up to robust technical scrutiny.
In the US – Rob Weir reports how a recent vote of one of the bodies that make recommendations with regards to approvals has been rather swamped with new voting members recently, and most of them are M$ Business Partners. This changed the voting pattern dramatically but the attempt failed to get past the final hurdle by just one vote it seems.
In Portugal, three separate reports (here, here, and here) suggest the committee (which has a Microsoft employee as its president!) refused to let representatives from Sun and IBM into the room on voting day due to “lack of seats” – funny that in the days running up to this several new members appeared from Microsoft backed organisations…
New note (18/07/07): Today I read here, that more skulduggery has been going on it Italy too. But it also appears that M$ have failed to win there too! Well done Italy.
I’m sorry but this is getting really, really smelly.
This site has about the best consolidated record of what’s going on around the world.
I’d really like to know this: In whose interests is the approval and development of International Standards for; ours or Microsoft’s? Anyone care to give their opinion?