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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." ...'"
Christian Engström, Former Member of the European Parliament 2009-2014 for The Pirate Party, Sweden
Well it's good to know that, after I commit my first robbery, every robbery after that is no big deal.
Actually, this has significantly worsened Microsofts's reputation in Sweden. IT people here are outraged and, actually, quite embarrassed that something like this could have happened in Sweden. Voices are being raised that the voting process at SIS must be changed so that charlatan companies such as MS can't pull stunts like this - i.e. "encouraging" partners to become SIS members in the last moment to be able to vote - in the future.
For those who speak Swedish, here's the press release by SIS (PDF).
Reading the pdf from SIS directly it doesn't say that.
It says:
"Motivet till styrelsens beslut är att SIS har information som pekar på att en av deltagarna i arbetsgruppen har deltagit i omröstningen med mer än en röst."
which is saying that: one of the participants have used more than one vote.
Nothing about two or three... more than one. This is the diplomatic way NOT to make it even more blatantly clear that it was Microsoft or is about Microsoft. The part "information som pekar" indicates that they don't have 100% written/audio/video proof and thus this rather "meek" abjection of vote.
"We had a situation where an employee sent a communication via e-mail that was inconsistent with our corporate policy"
Said policy probably states that such communication should never happen over a traceable and archivable medium.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master."
You are right; they should not arbitrarily change the rules. However, the official reason why the vote was nullified was not that Microsoft bought themselves a bunch of sock puppets, but that one member at the meeting voted twice. The voting was done by a show of hand, and most likely it was Microsoft themselves, who had three representatives in the room, that by accident and in the excitement of the moment had two of those raise their hands. Reports from the meeting inform us that at that point the mood was ecstatic, the Microsoft goons cheering and applauding as they trumped their line through.
The SIS is now vigorously denying that there is any other reason why the nullified the vote other than this technically proper reason to do so. Of course that is not true; the SIS board saw a way to salvage some of their credibility, built in a century and squandered in a day, by grasping onto this technicality.
That being said, I do think the SIS voting model is fundamentally wrong and broken. The rules do indeed allow the party with the deepest pockets to carry the day. I'm sure this has happened before and it will happen again. I hope the SIS will not get away with this without implementing some thorough reform of how they operate. The same goes for the bodies in other countries that turned out to be easily corruptible.
This is clearly shown by the Google, "Do No Evil" corporate slogan. More a statement of the inability to perform evil due to the concentration gradient and general lack of evil available.
Deleted
Actually, this has significantly worsened Microsofts's reputation in Sweden. IT people here are outraged and, actually, quite embarrassed that something like this could have happened in Sweden.
If that's outrageous, then quite a few people need to open their eyes and wake up. This sort of vote-buying and behind the scenes sleaze happens all the time during standards resolution, not just for OOXML, not even just in IT. Corruption is the standard, not the exception. There's probably not an ISO spec in existence that hasn't in some way been influenced by proprietary interests through bribery or outright threats. In this case the perpetrator happened to be exposed. When international standards touted by multi-billion-dollar corporations come into play, you'd have to be a fool to think such things are not common place.
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
Can anyone with some insight into the matter explain to me why microsoft is trying so badly to get OOXML accepted as a standard, and doesn't simply support ODF? Are there technical reasons (are Microsoft Office documents somehow easier to store in OOXML than ODF)? Political reasons (is Microsoft trying to control/corrupt an open standard, kinda like they did with Internet Explorer and HTML)? Cause in the end both formats try to be the exact same thing: An open standard to store documents. Why go through all the trouble?
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.
No voting without being a member for a set amount of time, and no voting on issues presented before joining come to mind.
I just read Slashdot for the articles.
If there were a drive to get through an ISO specification on ISO corruption (i.e. the recommended way to influence others to get the specification you want), would that also be corrupted? And if so, would the corruption follow the procedure in the specification?
Ask me about repetitive DNA