Software wars
,----[ Quote ]
| Allegations of committee-stuffing, the outcome of votes overridden by
| political appointees, a final decision that many involved consider tainted:
| this may sound like a discredited election in some third world country. But
| it is actually a description of an ugly fight over international technical
| standards that wrapped up this week. Microsoft came out on top, but at the
| cost of tarnishing its reputation and the credibility of an important
| back-room process that oils the wheels of many global industries.
`----
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/c9743360-01a8-11dd-a323-000077b07658,Authorised=false.html?_i_location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2F0%2Fc9743360-01a8-11dd-a323-000077b07658.html%3Fnclick_check%3D1&_i_referer=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.computerworlduk.com%2Ftool
This one is a reminder of the need to fix ISO ASAP (Microsoft owns it after
driving away opposition):
The ugliness of it all
,----[ Quote ]
| Another way for Microsoft to attack ODF would be to oppose the
| standardization of ODF 1.2. They will use the same tactics they had with
| OOXML, but in the opposite direction. It will be funny to watch how the ISO
| and the national standards bodies will switch all of a sudden to a demanding
| stance on ODF 1.2, which will only be an iteration of an existing ISO
| standard. I am afraid we will witness such a shocking twist in the
| standardization bodies’ attitude.
|
| [...]
|
| Would you believe me if I wrote that I knew what’s in store after XPS? Let’s
| bet I know it. After OOXML shall come XPS. And once Microsoft will have
| locked the whole industry with its document formats, they will try to do the
| same with multimedia formats. Expect the future Windows Media formats, their
| proprietary video codecs to follow the same path. Their glue shall be
| Silverlight, which in turn rests on Windows Presentation Foundation and
| the .NET framework. The license shall be the famous OSP, effectively barring
| GPL implementations and leaving many other issues, such as the RAND mode
| applied on the covered technologies, in the shadows, but always as a critical
| factor to consider. Novell will follow, as usual, with incomplete and
| ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
| patent-riddled implementations that you will only be able to safely use with
| Novell products.
`----
http://standardsandfreedom.net/index.php/2008/04/07/the-ugliness-of-it-all/
Recent:
Microsoft Plummets, Retail Falls While Beauty Gains in CoreBrand 2007 Brand
Power Rankings
,----[ Quote ]
| The annual "CoreBrand Brand Power 100" Branding Index(R) of 1,200 US
| corporations ranks Coca-Cola Company and Johnson & Johnson at #1 and #2
| respectively, unchanged since 2004. Meanwhile, Microsoft's corporate brand
| declined in stunning fashion over the past four years, falling from 11 in
| 2004 to 59 in 2007 Microsoft, a decline of 48 places!
`----
http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release.do?id=834308
Related:
Martin Bryan: we are getting “standardization by corporation”
,----[ Quote ]
| A November informative report of Martin Bryan, Convenor, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC34
| WG1 highlights the fallout of the ECMA-376 fast-track process for ISO. He
| says he is 'glad to be retiring before the situation becomes impossible'
|
| [...]
|
| In what is an astonishingly outspoken report, Martin Bryan, Convenor, ISO/IEC
| JTC1/SC34 WG1 has given us insight into the total mess that Microsoft/ECMA
| have caused during their scandalous, underhand and unremitting attempts to
| get - what is a very poorly written specification {i.e. DIS 29500 aka OOXML,
| AR} - approved as an ISO standard. …
`----
http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-30107/martin-bryan:we-are-getting-standardization-by-corporation
Dysfunctional ISO - Courtesy of Microsoft
http://opendotdotdot.blogspot.com/2007/12/dysfunctional-iso-courtesy-of-microsoft.html
Microsoft accused of stacking ISO committee
,----[ Quote
| In a memo sent following his last meeting as head of the working group on
| WG1, which is handling Microsoft’s application to make the Word format an ISO
| standard as ECMA 376, outgoing Governor Martin Bryan (above), an expert on
| SGML and XML, accused the company of stacking his group.
`----
http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=1777
EU Initiates Investigation Against Microsoft OOXML Push
,----[ Quote ]
| But with Steve Ballmer taking over as CEO, there was supposed to be a kinder,
| gentler Microsoft - one that would play nicely with its competitors. When
| antitrust regulators in turn challenged this new Microsoft, it issued not
| challenges to fight to the end to prove that it had done nothing illegal, but
| statements promising to "cooperate fully."
|
| But at the same time, Microsoft is still a tough competitor. As Microsoft's
| Director of Corporate Standards Jason Matusow famously warned at his blog
| last year:
|
| Make no mistake; all parties are looking at the full picture to find
| strategies that will result in the outcome they desire. Provided - of
| course - that they do so within the context of the rules that apply to
| the process, this is exactly what one should expect to happen. It is
| going to be a very interesting next few months.
|
| Indeed, the months that followed proved to be interesting indeed. Microsoft
| said that some of its employees became over zealous, most flagrantly in
| Sweden, where marketing assists were promised to several business partners as
| incentives to join the national standards committee and vote for OOXM.
`----
http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20080208082501776
EU Commission Investigating Microsoft's MSOOXML Push
,----[ Quote ]
| I hope they think to investigate the smear campaigns that seem to always
| happen to anyone on the other side from Microsoft. What happened to Peter
| Quinn was by no means unique.
`----
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080208151410252
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