Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

EU's Anti-Trust Investigation of OOXML Continues

Posted by kdawson on from the listening-for-the-sound-of-the-fat-lady dept.

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Since January, the EU has been investigating whether Microsoft broke anti-trust laws while advocating OOXML. That investigation continues following its passage as a standard. Meanwhile, the ISO approval of OOXML is being appealed, so Microsoft hasn't won just yet."

2 of 111 comments (clear)

  1. Interesting quote from groklaw link by firefly4f4 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    PJ posted a link to http://government.zdnet.com/?p=3745 in her latest update on OOXML, and it contained an interesting quote from news.com:

    Microsoft's general manager of standards and interoperability Tom Robertson said that Microsoft, too, has been queried as part of the investigation.

    He said that Microsoft will "fully cooperate" with any investigation from the Commission. In response to the accusations of stacking committees, Robertson said that IBM and other competitors have done exactly what Microsoft is accused of doing. For example, an employee from Google, which opposed Open XML standardization, joined the Finnish national committee only three days before a vote.

    "It seems that one of the main concerns that people have raised about the process is the broad-based participation in the standards body deliberation," he said. "I think it's ironic IBM is complaining about new members in national standards bodies when they have been working around the clock to get people to join."

    Two wrongs do not make a right, and if IBM and other companies were wrong as he suggest, then so was Microsoft if they did the same, and it just goes to support the argument that the process was tampered with and the results discarded. By making that statement, he actually argued against his own position that everything went fine.

    Note: I work for IBM, but this opinion is my own

  2. Re:I hope MS gets rebuffed harshly by Eternal+Annoyance · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Microsoft did this to discredit ISO. Think about it, Microsoft sabotages the voting process and everyone "inconviniently" discovers the voting fraud. As a consequence ISO isn't trusted anymore.

    What happens? Everyone scrambles to consolidate "their" (read: Microsoft's) idea of standard. "Unfortunately" this will mean that each and every standard breakable by Microsoft will be broken in such a way that it's very convenient for... Microsoft.

    Microsoft is pushing OOXML simply to sabotage ISO and not to provide a "competitor" to ODF, that's only the front.

    At this point criminal prosecution of the Microsoft execs responsible for this would be very desirable (corruption, fraud and forgery of documents (yes, it might just apply here)).

    The companies aiding Microsoft in the irregularities deserve to get punished severely over this.