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Sweden's Vote on OOXML Invalidated
Groklaw Reader writes "Just days after Microsoft's attempt to buy the Swedish vote on OOXML came to light, SIS declared its own vote invalid. The post at Groklaw references a ComputerWorld article with revelations from Microsoft: 'Microsoft Corp. admitted Wednesday that an employee at its Swedish subsidiary offered monetary compensation to partners for voting in favor of the Office Open XML document format's approval as an ISO standard. Microsoft said the offer, when discovered, was quickly retracted and that its Sweden managers voluntarily notified the SIS, the national standards body. "We had a situation where an employee sent a communication via e-mail that was inconsistent with our corporate policy," said Tom Robertson, general manager for interoperability and standards at Microsoft. "That communication had no impact on the final vote." ...'"
What is interesting to me is that Microsoft still gets caught cheating in email all these years after the anti-trust scandals. I'm sure their lawyers are pulling their hair out trying to get the managers to stop sending things like this by email. They have a corporate culture of cheating, and they reward it internally, and it is indisputably part of what made them successful, but it has also become such a normal state of affairs that they have problems hiding it. Pretty amusing that such a relatively old technology is their continual downfall.
I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a congress -J Adams
Bottom line:
Microsoft failed in it's attempt to buy a 'YES' vote from Sweden.
Microsoft successfully used it's money to turn Sweden's 'NO' vote into an 'ABSTAIN' vote.
Miles
At least they're fixing it. Sure, it'd be great if nothing had gone wrong to begin with, but things will and it's important to know that someone will do something about it, so I'll give Sweden some respect for that.
Meanwhile, something like 40 countries have just decided that they want "P" status in the ISO (i.e. to be able to vote). Most, if not all, of them have gotten stuffed to the gills with Microsoft Partners who joined recently.
So it's not just Sweden, and it remains to be seen whether these other countries will be able to do anything in time, or whether the ISO will get turned into a Microsoft puppet. Now *there* is a scary thought. No further standards without Microsoft's blessing? Ouch! I don't think they'll give up on the power they're gaining from this any time soon, not given how much money it must've cost to run a global campaign like this.