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Please let us get the facts straight here.

Denmark did not protest, appeal, or in any way change its official vote. The official Danish ISO vote is controlled by Dansk Standard, who voted "Yes" in the final OOXML specification vote (after initially voting "No with comments").

The reason Denmark keeps sneaking into the list of countries who "appealed" is probably because a local pro-Open Source lobby organization named "Foreningen for Open Source Leverandører i Danmark" (OSL) (their name in English is "The Danish Open Source Business Association") has submitted a protest and that is by many people mistakenly translated into an "official appeal".

Since the protest is not submitted by Dansk Standard (who holds the official ISO vote) but is in fact from a local lobby organization, the vote can not be considered "official" in any way. And it is important to note in this context, that the official Danish vote is still "Yes".

The protest is available in Danish on the OSL website and I also found a copy of the letter in English on Groklaw (its not on the OSL website for some reason). The original Groklaw artikle on the subject is here, in case you want to read the comments yourself.

The complaint criticises both the way Dansk Standard handled the OOXML approval process and a few formal errors in the ISO process.

The story was first announced by Computer World Denmark (Danish only, sorry). It was first mentioned on slashdot on June 1st where sadly it was also mistakenly described as an "official" protest.

- Jesper

Please let us get the facts straight here.

Denmark did not protest, appeal, or in any way change its official vote. The official Danish ISO vote is controlled by Dansk Standard, who voted "Yes" in the final OOXML specification vote (after initially voting "No with comments").

The reason Denmark keeps sneaking into the list of countries who "appealed" is probably because a local pro-Open Source lobby organization named "Foreningen for Open Source Leverandører i Danmark" (OSL) (their name in English is "The Danish Open Source Business Association") has submitted a protest and that is by many people mistakenly translated into an "official appeal".

Since the protest is not submitted by Dansk Standard (who holds the official ISO vote) but is in fact from a local lobby organization, the vote can not be considered "official" in any way. And it is important to note in this context, that the official Danish vote is still "Yes".

The protest is available in Danish on the OSL website and I also found a copy of the letter in English on Groklaw (its not on the OSL website for some reason). The original Groklaw artikle on the subject is here, in case you want to read the comments yourself.

The complaint criticises both the way Dansk Standard handled the OOXML approval process and a few formal errors in the ISO process.

The story was first announced by Computer World Denmark (Danish only, sorry). It was first mentioned on slashdot on June 1st where sadly it was also mistakenly described as an "official" protest.

- Jesper

PJ sang the praises of file sharing years ago but well. We are all richer if we share and artists benefit most of all through well earned fame. If we don't share all we are left with 19th century distribution efficiency and ratings. Many people do share their work and P2P of the same is perfectly legitimate, but idiotic laws make that difficult.

I'm not going to bother reading this article because I know enough already. We have already seen how the Media Defender dirt bags attack trackers by stuffing them with RIAA crap and DoS attack. Big publishers have no place in the P2P world and would rather eliminate free press than give up their position in the world. They may be punished for that but that won't cure copyright laws that are equally obsolete.

Copyright needs to allow us to share our culture without worry. To that end, non commercial personal copy should be allowed.

The outage affected key standards sites covering the OOXML problem. The outage suddenly lifted hours after the OOXML vote.

The blockage was marketed as an attempt to break net neutrality. However, choosing a network hosting key information sites at a crucial period just prior to an important decision was a bit of cleverness.

Telia-Sonera could have easily routed around the outage, but chose not to. As a result, Telia-Sonera's customers (both business and private) were blocked by actions/inactions by Telia-Sonera from accessing sites which were hosted by or used DNS services on that other network.

I've followed the reports on http://www.groklaw.net/, and it seems to me that it was SCO which abused the legal system. As in

-making public threats to Linux users without providing evidence for their claims
-using all sorts of delay tactics in court to prevent a quick trial
-filing for bankruptcy a few days before an important court decison, which smacks of an attempt to get a venue change (because the bankruptcy court gets jurisdiction)

IBM's and Novell's legal teams looked much more respectable by comparison. If they have gamed the legal system themselves at a few points, it was insignificant beside SCO's behavior.

In other words, even a moderately sleazy lawyer will look good compared to SCO's legal team. So don't be surprised if some minor abuses from SCO's opponents were overlooked (I'm not saying there were such abuses, I merely consider the possibility).

Yes, but Telia-Sonera blocked many Open Standards sites (both pro- and neutral-) from their subscribers during the weeks leading up to the latest OOXML scandal at ISO. That was for all of Telia-Sonera, not just Sweden.

I'm not Twitter but you probably believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, Vista and SP1 too.

Not quite, the money's already been paid in its own form recently for this marketshare (aka bribes:

It's Microsoft's "OnMyWay". Groklaw has coverage. So yeah, the bribes are pretty much out in the open on this. It's just a continuation of the OOXML bribes fiasco for marketshare.

"PJ: This article is either slightly offensive due to the fear mongering, or funny, depending on your mood, but the bottom line is, at least they begin to comprehend that the GPL does have to be respected. You can't just grab the code and do whatever you want with it. So that's progress.

But imagine an article that noticed the Microsoft EULA and decided that the risk of using the software was too high because you can't do whatever you want with the software, due to the EULA. You can't do whatever you want with most software, proprietary or open source/free software. Anyway, be aware of a couple of things.

One, Linux comes to you under GPLv2, not v3. Second, under either license, there are no restrictions on internal use, only for distribution. Three, the rules for certain embedded products are not the same as for software that is intended to continue to be developed and modified. Finally, the 'payment', so to speak, for mixing GPL'd software in your own code in your distribution or product isn't money. It's code. That's the deal. There are no hidden gotchas. Just read the license.]

Thanks for the pdf link. Important passages of it are available in text here. The most delicious text is this:

From: James Plamondon
Sent: Tuesday, January 11,2000 4:32 PM

.... I'm leaving the company In early March, and indeed will be on vacation until then, starting at the end of next week. Upon departure from Microsoft. I'm moving my family to Australia, where I will sit on the beach, drink pina coladas, and laugh at the world.
Here are some documents from the Good Old Days that you might find to be handy in starting this new group. Don't worry about them leaking; they were already entered into the public record by Bristol Technologies as part of their private anti-trust case.
[Timeline.doc]
Hoping that these will help you keep the flame alive after the old war-horses like me go out to pasture, I remain Yours

His regret for releasing these documents was as complete as his company's contempt for anti-trust rulings and records. M$'s legal team had managed to mop up a lot of damaging email from previous anti-trust cases, then these dopes go and brag about what a bunch of assholes they really are. The author apologized and tried to act like times had changed, but it should be obvious times will never change at that company. Somehow, I think he's still sitting on that beach laughing at everyone, especially M$ as it collapses. There must be thousands of people who feel like suckers for signing LOAs, taking grants and otherwise acting like pawns, that will never ever trust the Soft again.

Bzzzt. Thanks for playing. That was in the early 80's

Since then they've moved to being an company which hires good marketing companies. Then a company which hires good lobbying firms. Then a full-blown political movement/sect.

Notice Ozzie's playing by the by the rules in the link above. No technical comparisons allowed, just FUD, disinformation, misinformation and name calling. That's so 1990's.

Entirely correct but the good news is that it's now been made true: Brazil Formally Appeals OOXML!

You're probably right that it was wrong when it was written, but it's correct now because they've finally, actually appealed instead of just protesting:

Source:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080529202924937
http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20080529150227123

- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property

Both filings are up on Groklaw as text, as well as PDFs.

This is bigger than YouTube and that's what Google is talking about when they mention the DMCA safe harbor.

YouTube is just one site but it's already bigger than Viacom will ever be. The world should be filled with sites like YouTube and nicer. I'd like to see YouTube embrace Ogg Theora format and make it easier to download videos. YouTube might not do that but a competitor may. A free internet looks more like that than it looks like NBC or Viacom.

Copyright has not done much for the arts. It has made a very few artists money but now works for big publishers who want to control your press. People who make paintings get no benefit from copyright because their work can not be mass produced, but the world is full of them. Patronage is nice, but most are independent and sell their works directly to the public through galleries. People were singing and dancing before copyright and will do so after copyright because they like to entertain each other. The ability to mass produce music and movies cheaply and then distribute them freely will make the world a much richer place than it is today. If top 40 music is enough for you, copyright is enough for you. The rich world of free music was well explained here and you can find something close here. There's more good music there than you can listen to in a life time, just like there's more good painting you can look at and more good plays than you can watch and so on and so forth.

Anyone can be shut down with this, not just "thugs". Google's YouTube service has been in the crosshairs for a while now. All the legacy copyright owners have to do is stuff the channel to shut it down. Copyright must be changed to prevent that kind of denial of service. One of PJ's first entries was about P2P and industry's fear of a richer world.

Actually StarOffice and OpenOffice have always had better support for legacy formats, including those legacy formats from MS. Now both have VBA support as mentioned in other posts here. And now that MS has dropped support from its old formats, it's not a question of if businesses are going to drop MS Office, but only a matter of when... unless they get the fishook called SharePoint in their gullet. If you have old MS documents, rely on those old MS documents and you can't keep old versions of MS Office or extend the 'rental period', then you have to switch suites to one that can read the old formats.

A further advantage of StarOffice/ OpenOffice is that macros can be written in python or javascript. That means you can have your macro programmers with a comp sci background. And you can have them participate in web development and other projects. You are at the same time then less likely to hire MS boosters who will run their little MS anti-technology jihadz against you from inside your own office, work is so much easier without them around. You get programmers that can participate in more than one area.

So it kills two birds (or three) with one stone. Both javascript and python are used in web development and XML tools handle OpenOffice's main format, the OpenDocument Format, there is much less overhead in integrating document management and web apps and less need for disparate skill sets. Win-win situation.

Further, in addition to all of the above advantages, you then gain a position where you can change platforms or maintenance contract at will.

Because as Steve Balmer said last year we should be paying M$ if we dare use a Red Hat distro. So we have to wait until they set the price :-(

Who do I write in the EU to get an injunction?

Your analysis is sort of on target for how the case started. However, if you take a look at Groklaw's IBM timeline, you'll note that IBM's counterclaims (as amended) which have been waiting to be settled since March of 2004(?!?), lean very heavily on the concept of FOSS and the GPL in particular. The first 18 pages or so spend a great deal of time laying the groundwork. The specific counterclaims that I referred to in my previous post; the sixth, seventh, and eighth, start on page 33:

Breach of the GNU General Public License

SEVENTH COUNTERCLAIM

Promissory Estoppel (basically asserts that SCO broke a promise to abide by the GPL and should be forced to meet their original promise)

EIGHTH COUNTERCLAIM

Copyright Infringement (asserts that since SCO is in violation of the GPL, they have infringed IBM's copyright)

As I understand it, all legal actions have to be settled as part of winding down SCO's affairs even if Novell forces SCO into chapter 7 bankruptcy. After IBM spent all this time and money grinding SCO's case into the dust, I can't imagine that they'll settle for anything less than a ruling from the bench on these points. I don't think that they'd be happy even if a trustee for what's left of SCO offered to beg forgiveness of the court's time.

I think that IBM wants to settle the legal question that the GPL is a valid license under U.S. law once and for all. I don't think they want anybody to try this kind of legal shenanigans against them ever again.

Of course, what do I know? I'm just some semi-anonymous poster on Slashdot. :)

Your analysis is sort of on target for how the case started. However, if you take a look at Groklaw's IBM timeline, you'll note that IBM's counterclaims (as amended) which have been waiting to be settled since March of 2004(?!?), lean very heavily on the concept of FOSS and the GPL in particular. The first 18 pages or so spend a great deal of time laying the groundwork. The specific counterclaims that I referred to in my previous post; the sixth, seventh, and eighth, start on page 33:

Breach of the GNU General Public License

SEVENTH COUNTERCLAIM

Promissory Estoppel (basically asserts that SCO broke a promise to abide by the GPL and should be forced to meet their original promise)

EIGHTH COUNTERCLAIM

Copyright Infringement (asserts that since SCO is in violation of the GPL, they have infringed IBM's copyright)

As I understand it, all legal actions have to be settled as part of winding down SCO's affairs even if Novell forces SCO into chapter 7 bankruptcy. After IBM spent all this time and money grinding SCO's case into the dust, I can't imagine that they'll settle for anything less than a ruling from the bench on these points. I don't think that they'd be happy even if a trustee for what's left of SCO offered to beg forgiveness of the court's time.

I think that IBM wants to settle the legal question that the GPL is a valid license under U.S. law once and for all. I don't think they want anybody to try this kind of legal shenanigans against them ever again.

Of course, what do I know? I'm just some semi-anonymous poster on Slashdot. :)

Groklaw has the scoop: after their experience at oral argument, Skype decided to drop their appeal. Notch another win to Harald Welte!

I wonder what they're going to do about Wallace v. FSF which already decided that the GPL does not violate any anti-trust laws?

IANAL, but it would seem that a court having already decided this exact issue would pretty much kill their case. Wallace lost on summary judgment, which means that the court in that case found that, even if everything he said was true (and that was doubtful), he could not prevail.

In other words, that claim is very likely to go nowhere, fast. The judge in the Wallace case was a well-respected anti-trust expert, too.

I see your link and respond with another? :) Cross examination of Andrew Nagle, "Senior Director of Product Development." He's been associated with UNIX development since 1984:

Q. Let's talk about OpenSolaris again. OpenSolaris is released under a license that allows the public to see the OpenSolaris code, isn't that right?

A. Yes.

Q. If I wanted to, I could go to Sun's web site, download the OpenSolaris code and look at it myself?

A. Yes.

Q. And it's Sun's 2003 SCOsource license that gave Sun the right to expose SVRX source code to the public; isn't that right?

A. It's my understanding that it gave Sun the right to expose the UnixWare code as well.

Q. But it gave -- the answer is: Yes, it gave Sun the right to expose to the public the SVR 4.0 code that you have admitted is in OpenSolaris.

Isn't that right?

A. That's correct.

Q. And you and I can agree, can't we, that the right to release code under an open source license, the right to say to the public that you can come and download this code as you will, that's something that has market value, doesn't it?

659 (page number)

A. That's a debatable point, I would have to say. There are those who would say that the ability to expose code for people to download and review at-will does have market value, that -- and certainly Sun hoped that it had market value. Sun hoped to garner a better position in the marketplace by publishing their code. There are others that would say that it has no particular market value, that, in fact, protected code has as much market value or more than open source code.

So, I will concede that it might have market value but, that it absolutely does, I would probably side on the -- with those that would say that it has less market value than others.

Further on, we get to Novell's arguments in the case:

So, what Sun has done is they have taken 4.0, which is listed on the APA, they have made that the base of their Solaris operating system and they have stopped taking refreshers, or they have stopped taking new code.

And Mr. Maciaszek continued:

"Q. You are right. I didn't actually ask that quite precisely enough. In so far as the UNIX code is concerned, once they're frozen in time as of their latest schedule, that is the UNIX code on which they were relying, correct?

A. Correct.

Q. And as to Sun in that case, that UNIX code has substantial value, doesn't it?

A. Well, you'd to have ask Sun that. I mean, I can't answer that question."

And here's the telling part, Your Honor. Mr. Jacobs asks Mr. Maciaszek, who I submit was a very credible witness:

"Q. And if you went to them and say -- after the Asset Purchase Agreement, went to them in 1996 and you said; you know what, we want to strip out all of that UNIX System V Release 4 code from Sun Solaris. What do you think their reaction would have been?"

And the answer, and he got a chuckle from the gallery:

"A. It wouldn't have been favorable."

Sun has built their operating system on that code, Your Honor. For them to go in and rip it all out, it has huge commercial value to them, and Mr. Maciaszek confirmed that:

"Q. Because it would have been a substantial injury to their business, would it not, sir?

A. Yes."

In addition, Mr. Patterson(sic), when he realized what it was that Sun was able to do with the new license, when he saw this article in August of 2003, he wrote an e-mail to his boss, Chris Sontag and said:

"Hey, Chris, it looks like Sun intends to use its broader license to protect its Linux customers. That is fine, but I hope they don't decide to go after the rest of

You get the Blackberry answer because I'm remote.

stupid enough? I don't know about the characterization.

They had the rights to SVR4 that Solaris is based on to use it, to develop their own OS based on it, to sell it under trade secret and copyright protection but not to make it open. They then bought that right for a song from SCO because at that moment the latter needed a cash infusion to continue their jihad against Linux.

The judge in te SCO V Novell case ruled last August that SCO does not own the copyright to SVR4 and it follows had no right to sell the right to make it open. Novell owns that right and reserved it in a document called th APA. You can read about it on groklaw.

The reason why Novell reserved that right - and why the rights to unix were split so badly as to make it irretrievably dead had to do with Ransom Love's hubris. Hubris is the arrogance of pride.

Mr. Love was president and founder of one of the earliest commercial Linux companies, the Santa Cruz Operation (not to be confused with SCO). When his IPO went bizarrely huge for no good reason its treasury stock was worth several more digits than he was used to dealing with. Paid in equity grew to half a billion and they never sold the majority of treasury stock. Marke cap was several times that early on. Of course he bought all the toys the bubble millionaires like and threw huge company parties, but he was also an old school geek like you find here on slashdot now and then.

It happened that at that precise moment the company that had purchased the rights, code and business of unix from bell labs in their breakup (but not the trademark oddly enough), Novell was finding no success with unix and needed a cash infusion to retake ownership of the network, which had been their genesis. (Some will get the irony of this!). Being an old school geek Ransom wanted to "buy unix" as a trophy for having built a successful Linux business.

Unfortunately he didn't have enough to buy the whole thing and being as he was still wet behind the ears in corporate goverment and his company had never ever turned a quarterly profit, Novell insisted on terms. Here's where the hubris come in. He bought the right to market unix for 5% of the gross with the rest going to Novell plus the right to develop a new and better unix he could keep all of the profits from. For rhis he paid in company stock that I hope Novell sold right away because within a year it was nearly wothless. I think he really believed he could mix in GNU/Linux and come out with something like this Open Solaris and buy up the rest of the rights and take over the server market. It didn't work out because he didn't have the rights to open it fully to attract open developers, his ipo money bled out too fast and eventually his company was bought out by an investment group (this one is the SCO we know and loathe)

By making the attempt he fractured the rights to unix in such a way that the OS languished for over a decade, much to the glee of Microsoft which spent that decade taking ownership of the desktop network client and nearly half of servers. In software a decade is a very long time.

I hope this explains it well enough. My thumbs hurt now.

Hey. Ease up with the slurs against the US. MS is not a US corporation any more than it is a European, African, East Asian or Indian. Though one could make a case for each based on how much taxes are dodged in each region. But if you want to split hairs about what MS is, you can see that it is more about power and isolation than about profit. Notice how many divisions are failing to run a profit. You can can also look at the behavior of its employees and large numbers of minions and come quickly to the conclusion that it is more of a cult.

Also look at how much damage MS has caused not just the IT sector, and not just the private sector, but also the public sector. Notice as desktop usage OS X and Linux, among others, increase the overall cost goes down.

As far as the Kubuntu CDs go, that's a great idea. Just be sure you are doing it for the right reasons.

It may be they listed it under scosource to show that scosource wasn't an unmitigated failure. A public relations stunt that is backfiring on them badly now.

Dude, this is a technology forum. If you want politics or religion then go elsewhere. You see the slams on that company because not only can't it deliver, it goes through great acrobatics and effort to avoid delivering. Brand recognition cuts both ways, and in a technology forum if a company consistently and persistently for decades makes bottom of the line technology and is bad about fixes and causes trouble, then of course you will see 'anti-' view points: it's called experience.

Why don't we, through /., set up a site, aggregate information about similiar cases and build up a body of evidence to "[...] show that the RIAA engaged in serial bad-faith lawsuits [...]". In the long run, the space could serve as a place for debate on the current copyright regime, the inflated monetary value assigned to the songs/movies downloaded, etc.

Groklaw also has information on this story for those interested. But some may have missed it because it's part of the update in this story.

A great example of that sort of thing currently being done for the SCO litigation is at http://groklaw.net/

Found my 10.4 retail box. It informs the buyer on the outside of the box that use of the software inside is subject to agreement to the included software license(s). I know that when you go to install the software, you specifically have to click an agree button before installation proceeds. As I understand it, 10.5 has hardened language concerning using it on non-Apple computers. So, I think courts will really frown on the violation of copyright this Microsoft-funded initiative is undertaking.

Finally, of course, there are not yet any ISO OOXML implementations in the wild. But there aren't any full implementations of ODF in the wild either. Here's a list of ODF apps, scored on their ODF functionality, and no app achieves a perfect score, not even OO.o.
http://opendocumentfellowship.com/applications [opendocume...owship.com]

In summary, many here talk of how horrible OOXML is by citing problems that have been resolved in the approved ISO revision. (I'm amazed that so many here are under the illusion that the problems cited with ECMA OOXML weren't addressed at all in the final ISO version. Under that misunerstanding, I can see where one might be tempted to believe that NO votes switching to YES votes could only be the result of bribery and corruption.)

Norway, Germany, Poland Romania and many others are reporting irregularities and stacking in their committees. The memo from Comes v Microsoft [pdf warning] describes pretty excatly what happened in those meetings.

Considerable poltiical influence was brought to bear too. Bill Gates campaigned in Denmark, where he is a friend of the Prime Minister. Sarkozy himself intervened on Microsoft's behalf in France.

This topic has started to expose just how much influence Microsoft has with governments, and shows they're willing to meddle with national sovereignty.

It's not going to take too much to turn it into a cause celebre.

GPLv2 or GPLv3... most of it is GPLv2, and with the Microsoft deal couple be laced with patents. see Novells SEC filing about the GPL version 3

There are two I can think of off the top of my head:
Lots of small African nations suddenly sign-up and favour Microsoft.
Some countries change their vote from "decline" to "abstain", for no good reason.
Also, see:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080327231223154
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2008032913190768

As well, this is coming from the not-so-open-standards company of Microsoft. If they had produced a complete, clean, open standard that was truly better than the already-approved ODF (and not significantly worse), not many people would really be complaining. We'd probably be saying "wow, MS really did it up this time. Times change."

And, as for "fixed the technical problems", I'll just quote Holloway and say that it's "inconsistent, buggy, inflexible, ugly... technically awful, broken, not-cross-platform, designed to confer the appearance of standardisation but without the detail necessary."

There are two I can think of off the top of my head:
Lots of small African nations suddenly sign-up and favour Microsoft.
Some countries change their vote from "decline" to "abstain", for no good reason.
Also, see:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080327231223154
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2008032913190768

As well, this is coming from the not-so-open-standards company of Microsoft. If they had produced a complete, clean, open standard that was truly better than the already-approved ODF (and not significantly worse), not many people would really be complaining. We'd probably be saying "wow, MS really did it up this time. Times change."

And, as for "fixed the technical problems", I'll just quote Holloway and say that it's "inconsistent, buggy, inflexible, ugly... technically awful, broken, not-cross-platform, designed to confer the appearance of standardisation but without the detail necessary."

However, how valid are those votes? For example, the ISO/IEC JTC1 directives seem to pretty explicitly forbid changing the vote from "disapprove" to "abstain" like AFNOR (the French standardization organization) did (under the influence of heavy lobbying from Microsoft and HP).

About the corruption - how about Microsoft Sweden and buying of votes?

This is becoming a /. favorite untrue fact. The whole story is: an MS employee wrote an email to two Swedish partner vendors which made it appear that MS would in some way reimburse them for the $2500 cost of joining the Swedish National Body (NB). Within hours Microsoft realized that the phrasing of that mail looked bad, and wrote again to the partner vendors, rescinding any perceived offer and being clear to say that MS would not be paying them in any way to join the NB. MS themselves then reported this gaffe to the Swedish NB. It's very possible that no one would ever have known about the incident if MS had not taken it upon themselves to say (essentially) 'We did this thing. It wasn't our intention to subvert the process, and we have corrected our error, but we want you to be aware of what happened because we know that it could look bad.'

In the end, Sweden's NB invalidated its own vote for different reasons altogether. Even PJ at Groklaw more or less dismissed what otherwise would have been the kind of juicy tidbit she loves to trumpet.

On Groklaw we learned today that Hewlett Packard participated in overt political interference along side Microsoft

"Here's the scoop from Les Echos.fr on France's sudden change from its No vote to Abstain. Microsoft France's President Eric Boustouller sent AFNOR a letter [PDF] in French, of course. He tells a tale about OOXML and ODF progressing side by side and how if OOXML is approved, a group will be working hard to make the two more interoperable. Attached was a HP statement of support for OOXML. HP sings the same song. And AFNOR?"

Take a look at HP's Ethics and Compliance Page and you will see how concerned HP is of public perceptions after recent events connected with HP's investigation into leaks of confidential information from the Board of Directors tarnished HP's reputation in this area.

HP tells us they have a long-standing commitment to conducting business with uncompromising integrity, which is core to everything they stand for as a company. I am sure that if they really understood that by supporting MSOOXML they are headed for another scandal, they would distance themselves from OOXML. Even more, since their ambition is to provide a leadership role in corporate ethics, they would help to turn the tide against OOXML.

In light of this, you may wish to help them understand the errors presented by the "HP Position Statement on Standardization of Office Document Formats" and you may comment directly to their Board of Ethics on the Comments page. That is where I just posted the following letter...

Dear members of the Board of Ethics and Compliance at HP

It is clear that your company is deeply concerned about conducting business with uncompromising integrity. In light of your commitment to being a leader in global citizenship and corporate ethics, I wish to direct your attention to a serious error in judgment by somebody there at HP who formulated the "HP Position Statement on Standardization of Office Document Formats".

I refer to the following statements...

"HP believes that the international standardization process is working."

It is now blatantly obvious that quite the contrary is true, specifically, that the standardization process was seriously flawed. Please see the current discussion on Groklaw about this at http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080331212042460#c684749 and you will quickly realize that your statement is a serious error.

"additional evolution of it will take place under control of the global community"

...another error - in no way whatsoever could we conclude that the decision for MSOOXML to become an ISO standard was made by the "global community". I believe that decision was made by Microsoft and its partners who overwhelmed the ISO voting process, and AFAIK, additional evolution will be done by ECMA, who is controlled by Microsoft.

"Hewlett-Packard Company ...believe[s] that the two standards will co-exist interoperably, and that customers should have the opportunity to select the standards which best fit their needs."

The phrase boggles the mind when you try to parse it. Let us imagine that the two standards, MSOOXML and ODF are interoperable - then why would we need both? Why would the end user choose one over the other if they both do the same job? Interoperability implies that we could easily convert from one to the other. If this were possible, than that in itself is a demonstration that MSOOXML is a duplication of an existing standard - ODF - and therefore should not be/have been approved.

...and if they do

On Groklaw we learned today that Hewlett Packard participated in overt political interference along side Microsoft

"Here's the scoop from Les Echos.fr on France's sudden change from its No vote to Abstain. Microsoft France's President Eric Boustouller sent AFNOR a letter [PDF] in French, of course. He tells a tale about OOXML and ODF progressing side by side and how if OOXML is approved, a group will be working hard to make the two more interoperable. Attached was a HP statement of support for OOXML. HP sings the same song. And AFNOR?"

Take a look at HP's Ethics and Compliance Page and you will see how concerned HP is of public perceptions after recent events connected with HP's investigation into leaks of confidential information from the Board of Directors tarnished HP's reputation in this area.

HP tells us they have a long-standing commitment to conducting business with uncompromising integrity, which is core to everything they stand for as a company. I am sure that if they really understood that by supporting MSOOXML they are headed for another scandal, they would distance themselves from OOXML. Even more, since their ambition is to provide a leadership role in corporate ethics, they would help to turn the tide against OOXML.

In light of this, you may wish to help them understand the errors presented by the "HP Position Statement on Standardization of Office Document Formats" and you may comment directly to their Board of Ethics on the Comments page. That is where I just posted the following letter...

Dear members of the Board of Ethics and Compliance at HP

It is clear that your company is deeply concerned about conducting business with uncompromising integrity. In light of your commitment to being a leader in global citizenship and corporate ethics, I wish to direct your attention to a serious error in judgment by somebody there at HP who formulated the "HP Position Statement on Standardization of Office Document Formats".

I refer to the following statements...

"HP believes that the international standardization process is working."

It is now blatantly obvious that quite the contrary is true, specifically, that the standardization process was seriously flawed. Please see the current discussion on Groklaw about this at http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080331212042460#c684749 and you will quickly realize that your statement is a serious error.

"additional evolution of it will take place under control of the global community"

...another error - in no way whatsoever could we conclude that the decision for MSOOXML to become an ISO standard was made by the "global community". I believe that decision was made by Microsoft and its partners who overwhelmed the ISO voting process, and AFAIK, additional evolution will be done by ECMA, who is controlled by Microsoft.

"Hewlett-Packard Company ...believe[s] that the two standards will co-exist interoperably, and that customers should have the opportunity to select the standards which best fit their needs."

The phrase boggles the mind when you try to parse it. Let us imagine that the two standards, MSOOXML and ODF are interoperable - then why would we need both? Why would the end user choose one over the other if they both do the same job? Interoperability implies that we could easily convert from one to the other. If this were possible, than that in itself is a demonstration that MSOOXML is a duplication of an existing standard - ODF - and therefore should not be/have been approved.

...and if they do

Sadly, i do think that's what actually happened... at least according to groklaw.

It is quite sad that even 80% Against wasn't enough to dissuade the the oversight committee from changing the vote to Yes. I also find the justicication to be questionable, 'specially since MS have basically said that they probably won't even follow Ecma recommendations (which they basically have control over anyway), let alone the ISO standard.

Formal protest regarding the Norwegian vote on ISO/IEC DIS 29500

I am writing to you in my capacity as Chairman (of 13 years standing) of the Norwegian mirror committee to ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34. I wish to inform you of serious irregularities in connection with the Norwegian vote on ISO/IEC DIS 29500 (Office Open XML) and to lodge a formal protest.

You will have been notified that Norway voted to approve OOXML in this ballot. This decision does not reflect the view of the vast majority of the Norwegian committee, 80% of which was against changing Norway's vote from No with comments to Yes.

Because of this irregularity, a call has been made for an investigation by the Norwegian Ministry of Trade and Industry with a view to changing the vote.

I hereby request that the Norwegian decision be suspended pending the results of this investigation.

Yours sincerely,
Steve Pepper
Chairman, SN/K185 (ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34 mirror committee)
(sign.)

Or truth or science. A lie is a lie no matter how many people you pay to repeat it. Corruption has no place in any technical organization that will be litened to and respected.

Groklaw predicts more challenges

Irregularities and political decisions in ISO DIS 29500 March 2008 votes:

Germany

In a steering committee of 20 people a vote was taken to answer this question: "did the process run according to the rules and without irregularities?"

6 answered no and 7 abstained!

http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-49525/limited-choice-at-german-din http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2008032913190768

Norway

21 members of the committee voted NO to fast-track this DIS but it was decided to vote yes anyway.

http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-50031/oil-fire-in-norway-microsoft-buys-another-standards-body

Denmark

The technical committee didn't agree to change the disapproval vote but it was "decided" to vote yes anyway.

The committee S-142/U-34 under Danish Standards could not agree to change their vote from No to Yes.

A couple of hours later:

http://www.version2.dk/artikel/6718 says that the announcement from Danish Standards will not be made until Friday and that the Chair of the committee has been barred from speaking about the result of yesterday's meeting.

After some Microsoft political intervention to revert this ( the Prime Minister of Denmark is a Microsoft friend ), we have this: http://www.en.ds.dk/4227

Another political decision, influenced by Microsoft lobbyists.

Malaysia

The Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation decided on Malaysia's final position on OOXML ("abstain" ), overturning the 81% "Disapprove" position by ISC-G and TC4.

http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/2008/03/the-minister-of.html http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/2008/03/malaysian-indus.html

Poland

On March 20, 2008, Technical Committee (KT 182) of PKN was supposed to either accept the recommendation (which was to vote YES for the proposed standard) or not accept it, and thus recommend PKN to vote NO or abstain from voting. Of 45 members, 24 appeared on the meeting. And the votes looked like this:

• 12 votes supporting the reccomendation,
• 10 votes rejecting it,
• 2 abstaining to vote.

No consensus has been achieved concerning the recommendation. Thus, the chairman of KT 182, Elzbieta Andrukiewicz, decided to allow the missing members to vote by e-mail during the next 10 days (till the end of March).

The email vote was taken, counting a "no mail sended" as an "approval" !!!

Clearly, there was no technical consensus in Poland, but the chairman forced the rules to favour an approval.

http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-49455/polish-chairwoman-distributes-microsoft-propaganda http://polishlinux.org/poland/possible-manipulation-around-ooxml-process-in-poland/ http://polishlinux.org/poland/poland-confirms-its-approval-for-ooxml-in-iso/

Croatia

Out of 35 members of TO Z1, 17 sent a vote, and there were three votes for, and fourteen against fast-tracking OOXML, which is relative rejection rate of 82%. Members who voted were individual experts, IBM, CLUG and HrOpen. However, since there were less than 51% of votes, the voting process was declared invalid, and the previous vote holds ( "approve" ) !

M

Microsoft is approving its own "standard", I'd say. We count 20 direct Microsoft participants:
1 BELGIUM Mr. Bruno SCHRODER MICROSOFT
2 BRAZIL Mr. Fernando GEBARA Microsoft Brazil
3 CANADA Mr. Paul COTTON Microsoft Canada
4 COTE D'IVOIRE * Mr. Wemba OPOTA MICROSOFT West and central Africa
5 CZECH REPUBLIC Mr. tepán BECHYNSKÝ Microsoft Czech Republic, Ltd
6 DENMARK Mr. Jasper Hedegaard BOJSEN Microsoft Denmark
7 FINLAND Mr. Kimmo BERGIUS Microsoft Ltd
8 GERMANY Mr. Mario WENDT Microsoft Deutschland GmbH
9 ISRAEL Mr. Shmuel YAIR Microsoft
10 ITALY Ing. Andrea VALBONI Microsoft Italy
11 JAPAN Mr. Naoki ISHIZAKA Microsoft
12 KENYA Mr. Emmanuel BIRECH Microsoft East Africa
13 NEW ZEALAND Mr. Brett ROBERTS Microsoft New Zealand
14 NORWAY Mr. Shahzad Rana Microsoft Norge AS
15 PORTUGAL * Prof. Miguel Sales DIAS MICROSOFT Portugal
16 SWITZERLAND Mr. Marc HOLITSCHER Microsoft Schweiz GmbH
17 UNITED STATES Mr. Doug MAHUGH Microsoft Corporation
18 Ecma International Mr. Brian JONES Microsoft
19 Ecma International * Mr. Jean PAOLI Microsoft Corporation
20 Assistant to Project Editor Mr. Tristan DAVIS Microsoft

Nope, there's no conflict of interest or ethics issues here. I don't know how anybody could think that Microsoft is influencing the ISO standards process.

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080327170359776

"the president of the European Academy for Standardisation, Tineke Egyedi, is critical of OOXML being made a standard when ODF exists already, and she believes duplicative standards conflict with WTO rules"

Not that stuff like rules or laws ever stopped msft.