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Everyone’s talking: standards reform
,----[ Quote ]
| Many people working in the area of Internet and Web standards tend to forget
| that there are many areas of standardization where royalty-free licensing is
| not common, or at least not automatic. Some of these areas seem to be on
| their way to royalty-free, though there are powerful, conservative forces
| trying desperately to slow down the movement in this direction.
`----
http://www.sutor.com/newsite/blog-open/?p=2943
Microsoft: where only crime is a standard (proof below).
Related:
Martin Bryan: we are getting “standardization by corporation”
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| 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
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| 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
Has OOXML Broken the British Standards Institution?
,----[ Quote ]
| That the BSI, long the quintessence of standards in this country, should see
| itself dragged through the courts over something as apparently minor as a
| document standard, is truly an extraordinary development. But of course it is
| not a minor issue: at stake is the question of how something as central to
| technology and business as standards should be decided. Unless people have
| complete confidence in the process, the end-result will be deemed worthless –
| truly, little more than a “rubber-stamping”.
|
| A good start along the road of bolstering confidence would be making the
| standards-setting process completely open, which currently it is not. The
| practice of voting on an open standard behind closed doors borders is simply
| not justifiable in the age of the Internet and of increasing openness in
| general. And as the UK government loves to remind us: if you have nothing to
| hide, you have nothing to fear....
`----
http://www.computerworlduk.com/community/blogs/index.cfm?entryid=753&blogid=14
UK standards body taken to court over OOXML
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| The British Standards Institution has been taken to court by a group of Unix
| users in an attempt to get the standards body to recant its approval of
| Microsoft's Office Open XML document format.
|
| The UK Unix & Open Systems User Group (UKUUG) said on Thursday that the
| British Standards Institution's (BSI's) controversial decision to vote for
| approval of OOXML in a recent International Organization for Standardization
| (ISO) ballot followed a flawed decision-making process.
`----
http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39408917,00.htm
BSI faces High Court challenge over OOXML U-turn
,----[ Quote ]
| OSC director Mark Taylor told The Register that the UKUUG and chums
| were "very confident that the BSI has a case to answer". He claimed
| that "they haven’t followed procedures and we want them to explain their
| controversial actions".
|
| However, even if legal action against the BSI leads to the UK standards body
| being forced, in the form of mandatory orders, to withdraw its vote to the
| ISO, its impact could be muted.
|
| Taylor agreed: "Should the BSI be asked to remove its vote, that in itself
| probably won’t change the outcome."
|
| He added that the group hopes to see individuals in other countries mount
| similar challenges against national standards bodies in order to force the
| ISO to "sit up and take notice".
`----
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/05/01/bsi_ooxml_vote_high_court/
MEPs Question Microsoft's Eligibility for Gov't Projects
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| The Commission, which has not responded yet, is allowed a few weeks to reply.
`----
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/144591/meps_question_microsofts_eligibility_for_govt_projects.html
Is Microsoft Now Banned from EU Contracts?
http://www.computerworlduk.com/toolbox/open-source/blogs/index.cfm?entryid=697&blogid=14
Euro MP thinks Microsoft should be banned from government contracts
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/04/10/member-eu-parliament-asks
Green MEP says Microsoft should be excluded from EU contract awarding procedure
http://www.heise.de/english/newsticker/news/106338/from/rss09
EC probes OOXML standards-setting process
,----[ Quote ]
| A spokesman for the European Commissioner for Competition, Neelie Kroes, told
| The Register that regulators were continuing to scrutinise interoperability
| issues related to Microsoft’s products following complaints from the
| Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS) group.
|
| As part of that process, the EC formally contacted a number of national
| standards bodies, including the Norwegian Standards Institute (NSI),
| requesting more details about possible irregularities in the OOXML
| standardisation process.
|
| [...]
|
| “It must be stressed that it is not the Commission's intention to influence
| the outcome of this process, but the Commission considers it essential to
| ensure that European competition law is not violated in the course of the
| standard setting process,” he said in an email to El Reg.
|
| In January the EC began formal anti-trust probes against Microsoft in two
| cases where it was alleged that the multinational firm had abused its strong
| market position. As part of the investigation into the first case, the
| Commission said that it would scrutinise OOXML on the grounds that the
| specification doesn't work with those of competitors.
`----
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/04/ooxml_ec_investigation_iso/
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
Norway and OOXML
,----[ Quote ]
| There is now a report from Norway on how Microsoft rallied its partners to
| try to get a favorable vote on MSOOXML.
`----
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200708301301334
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