“Microsoft has been accused of rigging a vote on the ratification of Office Open XML (OOXML) as an international standard at a government body in Sweden,” Gavin Clarke reports for The Register.
“Swedish internet pioneer Patrik Falstrom has accused Microsoft of bussing in local partners to a Swedish Standards Institute (SIS) meeting on OSI ratification of OOXML. The specification is already used by Microsoft in Office 2003, 2007 and XP,” Clarke reports.
“The partners had not participated in the SIS’s earlier OOXML discussions but paid their admission fee and gave OOXML a resounding 25 ‘yes’ votes compared to six ‘no’ votes and three abstentions. It was believed OOXML was heading to a certain defeat had Microsoft’s supporters not turned out en masse,” Clarke reports.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “en” for the heads up.]
MacDailyNews Take: Microsoft? Cheat? Come on.
Deliberately skew a poll? We, the erstwhile and uspstanding readers of MDN, would never stoop so low.
Remember “If it don’t fit, you must acquit.”?
M$/Windoze version: “If you can’t compete, you must cheat.”
If it’s Microsoft’s proprietary standards, it’s cool; if it’s open standards, M$ is like a vampire at dawn: “Noooooooooo!!”
Peace.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”cool smile” style=”border:0;” />
Olmecmystic
It’s just a scum bag company aping scum bag politicians at election time.
I would have sent similar links about the latest twists in Microsoft’s criminal enterprises to MDN earlier but they seem to have been less keen recently.
Here’s one with a cartoon for the reading skills impaired folks
http://www.noooxml.org/
And as ever keeping their eyes on the misdeeds of the beast
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070829070630660
And for lovers of fantasy cartoons here’s some fabulous 19thC stuff including a two-headed dragon!
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=110161104247
The accusation is reason enogh to reject OOXML.
The fact that it sucks, is a better reason.
“…25 ‘yes’ votes compared to six ‘no’ votes and three abstentions. It was believed OOXML was heading to a certain defeat had Microsoft’s supporters not turned out en masse,”
25 votes is turning out EN MASSE? Wow
This from the company who tried to create a “grassroots” letter writing campaign to get the DOJ lawsuit tossed out a few years ago, and also made a ficticious ‘switch from Mac” campaign using stock photos of phony professionals.
yeah, MS, cheat? Never!
No,no. Johnnie Cochran said “If the glove won’t fit, you must acquit”.
Race will never go away, will it???
Citizen Kane – “Fraud at Polls”
Mr. Arbuckle – you can’t “stoop” anyway…
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One day all these antics will be regretted by Microsoft…
the acts of a dying monopolist who can’t take the heat of genuine competition.
Die Microsoft, die.
Then the world will wonder what it ever saw in you.
Have no idea how this “Standards” process works, and didn’t get any more insight from the source article than the summary here. (And don’t have the time to do any web research on it at this moment.)
But any vote that could be manipulated simply by paying the price of admission – or requires having to pay an admission TO vote – calls into question, imho, the validity of that “Standard”.
Thank You
BC Kelly
Tallahassee Fla
MDN Magic Word: “law” – The Standard by which we live and are governed; not people, money, nor anything which may be popular or persuasive at any given moment.
How about we decide never to use the .docx, pptx, or xlsx formats (otherwise known as OOXML by Microsoft). Anytime anyone sends you a file in that format, kindly write back to them and ask for a different format, such as a .doc, .pdf, or .odf. Obviously, please don’t actually send out this format.
The format war need to start now with consumers saying no to propriety formats. The war needs to end with an open standard that multiple platforms and software packages can freely save to.
@Quevar: Has anyone actually upgraded to Office 2007 in order to use those shitty formats?
@Spark: Seriously, if Microsoft hadn’t brought their 25 developers to the meeting then all of 9 people would be deciding on a “standard”. Christ. As much as I like a good anti-Microsoft story, 9 people in Sweden determining an international standard is by far the most disturbing part of this story.
@MDN: Have you actually used your site on your iPhone? I tried posting my reply when I was at lunch and would’ve been the first or second responder and the site blocked my post telling me there was an “error”.
Spark: “25 votes is turning out EN MASSE? Wow”
It is if you consider that before 23 brand new members joined, there were only 11 members (3 voted yes – 5 voted no – 3 abstained). 22 brand new members voting for MS would have been enough to defeat the “no” votes even if all original members + Google had voted no.
<ahref=”http://www.os2world.com/content/view/14868/1/”>Check out</a> how many Gold Certified Partners there are in the new members:
Camako Data AB (Microsoft Gold Certified Partner)
Connecta AB (Microsoft Gold Certified Partner)
Cornerstone Sweden AB (Microsoft Gold Certified Partner), Cybernetics (Microsoft Gold Certified Partner)
Emric AB
Exor AB (Microsoft Certified Partner)
Fishbone Systems AB (Microsoft Gold Certified Partner)
Formpipe Software (Microsoft Gold Certified Partner)
FS System AB
Google
HP (Microsoft Gold Certified Partner)
IBizkit AB (Microsoft Certified Partner)
IDE Nätverkskonsulterna (Microsoft Gold Certified Partner)
IT-Vision AB
Know IT (Microsoft Gold Certified Partner)
Modul1 (Microsoft Gold Certified Partner)
Nordic Station AB (Microsoft Certified Partner)
ReadSoft AB (Microsoft Certified Partner)
Sogeti (Microsoft Gold Certified Partner)
Solid Park AB (Microsoft Gold Certified Partner)
SourceTech AB
Strand Interconnect AB (Microsoft Gold Certified Partner)
TietoEnator (Microsoft Gold Certified Partner)
Damn, I missed a space. MDN needs a preview and I am a bad typist!
The link to OS2 World listing the new members.
Microsoft cheat? Have severe ethical problems? Give me a second to put on my surprised face.
This is why everybody who uses a Mac write Apple and insist that they support the Open Document Format in iWork. OOXML is a joke and its only purpose is to keep government’s from choosing ODF as their standard format for documents.
Throw the vote out! Legacy stuff:
From: Bill Gates
Sent: Saturday, December 5 1998
To: Bob Muglia, Jon DeVann, Steven Sinofsky
Subject : Office rendering
One thing we have got to change in our strategy – allowing Office documents to be rendered very well by other peoples browsers is one of the most destructive things we could do to the company.
We have to stop putting any effort into this and make sure that Office documents very well depends on PROPRIETARY IE capabilities.
Anything else is suicide for our platform. This is a case where Office has to avoid doing something to destroy Windows.
I would be glad to explain at a greater length.
Likewise this love of DAV in Office/Exchange is a huge problem. I would also like to make sure people understand this as well.
Tommy Boy: “Has anyone actually upgraded to Office 2007 in order to use those shitty formats?”
Yes, I received a .docx file about a week ago. I don’t have anything on my computer to read it, so I did what I encourage everyone to do, asked nicely for another format. I was shocked that they just sent it and expected me to be able to open it.
@Gandalf @Jeff
http://www.noooxml.org/
In the cartoon contained in the above link, Apple voted for OOXML!?
MDN magic word: “married”, as in Apple is married to M$
Apple knows better than you what is a golden standard:
Open for business.
Import your Microsoft Word documents into Pages ’08 with ease. Whether they’re Microsoft Office 2007 (Office Open XML) or earlier Word files, Pages will open them.
And what is not:
1 result found for ‘odf’
Did you mean ‘of’?
Drop the Bomb On Me
O.D.F.X.
Why are you Apple bashers fighting against ooxml?
ooxml today, OS X tomorrow.
Steve is VERY disappointed in you.
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070811-microsoft-one-vote-short-of-fast-track-ooxml-iso-standardization.html
Of the organizations that participated in the poll, Apple, the Department of Homeland Security, EIA, EMC, HP, Intel, Microsoft, and Sony all voted in favor of OOXML fast-track approval. Votes opposing approval came from Farance, GS1 US, IBM, Lexmark, NIST, Oracle, and the US Department of Defense. IEEE—which is comprised of numerous organizations including the companies that are on the INCITS executive board—abstained, citing internal disagreement.