Disenfranchisement [lying for OOXML]
,----[ Quote
| I just received an email from someone in a national standards committee
| considering the OOXML ballot, concerning false information given to his
| committee which suggested the Sept. 2nd ballot deadline was not real, that
| they actually had 30 more days to decide. I'm not going to name names in this
| post, but I will say that this isn't the first note I've received regarding
| such tactics. Some of the other ploys I've heard of include...
|
| [...]
|
| I'm expecting that such shenanigans are only going to increase as we go into
| the final week of this 5-month ballot.
`----
http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/08/disenfranchisement.html
US organization edging to Microsoft's Open XML support
,----[ Quote ]
| In a reversal, the American representative to the ISO standards body is now
| tentatively supporting the approval of Microsoft's Office Open XML document
| format as an open standard this year.
`----
http://www.linuxworld.com.au/index.php?id=28362908&rid=-50
Remember Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer making secret phonecalls to the "Big
Guns"? They flip votes and stack panels. Crooks. Nation by nation they pull
the same tricks.
Same game in Vietnam?
http://boycottnovell.com/2007/08/27/vietnam-ooxml/
Related:
Latest INCITS Voting Results on OOXML; JTC1 Vote Begins to be Stacked
,----[ Quote ]
| The government decided to vote together, and to follow NIST (Homeland
| Security had voted in favor of approval in the previous ballot), so DoD fell
| in line as well. NIST, you may recall, is an agency of the Department of
| Commerce (as I reported Steve Ballmer personally called the Secretary of the
| DOC to urge this result). GS1is a technical association.
`----
http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=2007082413463944
Microsoft Looks for the Big Guns in OOXML In-Fighting
,----[ Quote ]
| Bill Gates has reportedly been making phone calls to the Secretary of Defense
| and the Secretary of Commerce to push the American National Standards
| Institute to ignore the votes of its advisory committees and vote "yes" on
| ISO standardizing Microsoft's Open Office XML (OOXML) format, the one in
| competition with the OpenDocument Format (ODF) pushed by IBM and Sun.
|
| Gates reportedly picked up the phone when the last INCITS ballot failed by
| one vote to support Microsoft.
`----
http://xml.sys-con.com/read/419573_p.htm
,----[ Quote ]
| Everyone is in the same boat with this: KOffice, Corel, Google, IBM, anyone
| who has applications that work with Microsoft documents. We’re all faced with
| the prospect of significant expenses to rewrite our file format support with
| no net benefit to our customers. This is the toll we all must pay to
| Microsoft just for the ability to fight for the scraps their monopoly may
| leave behind. If Microsoft jerks their format around, we all must run and
| chase after it, reallocating resources away from feature work, becoming in
| the process less competitive in the marketplace, while Microsoft forges ahead
| with new features. They can easily repeat this game every few years, just to
| keep competitors busy. This is what a death spiral looks like.
|
| Giving absolute control of a standard document format to a monopolist that is
| notorious for abusing their control of file formats in the past is insanity.
| It doesn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to figure that out.
`----
http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/08/dog-that-didnt-bark.html
Related:
Fighting Megatron: five steps to freedom
,----[ Quote ]
| The free software world is being attacked by a large, wealthy, brutal
| monopolist, who I’ll call “Megatron” for today. As I wrote last month,
| Megatron is driving its OOXML tank through the village church of open
| standards, doing unspeakable things to the ISO process, with the intention of
| locking in a generation of computer users to its stack of patented,
| restricted, and undocumented formats. It’s about freedom, some of us want it,
| others want to take it away from us.
`----
http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/blogs/fighting_megatron_five_steps_to_freedom
Packing The Court At The ISO?
,----[ Quote ]
| ...P member countries ('participating member' countries) sending
| representatives, and I am interested to note the majority of
| their representatives are, as individuals, also Microsoft employees.
|
| [...]
|
| How can they not see that OOXML (ECMA 376) is unwanted by anyone outside of
| Microsoft? How about it Brian Jones? Are you really so desperate that you
| have to resort to that?
`----
http://lnxwalt.wordpress.com/2007/03/23/packing-the-court-at-the-iso/
,----[ Quote ]
| "Sadly, many of these brilliant people have been blinded by the stock
| price and unable to see that Microsoft is also the key architect of
| the greatest financial pyramid scheme this century.
|
| It is not uncommon for participants in pyramid schemes to lose their
| emotional bearings. My close friends who work at Microsoft are
| particularly upset over my work and it is possible that even Bill
| Gates and Steve Ballmer do not realize the implications of their
| financial practices."
`----
http://www.billparish.com/msftfraudfacts.html
,----[ Quote ]
| "As with all pyramid schemes, it is important to get as close to tier
| 1 as possible. From a practical standpoint, usually only tiers 1 and 2
| will derive significant long-term economic rewards from such schemes."
|
| "Microsoft has clearly entered a phase of self destructive behavior
| that began with the "tissue paper campaign" in 1995. This report will
| document this campaign for the first time."
`----
http://reactor-core.org/microsoft-pyramid.html
|
|
