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● 10.07.08

●● Quick Mention: Brazil Hijacked by Microsoft (Updated)

Posted in Asia, ISO, Microsoft, Open XML, OpenDocument at 9:00 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Outrageous folly

Whilst we angrily keep writing about Microsoft’s apparent attempt to ‘take over’ ODF [1, 2, 3], a warning from Brazil arrives. Microsoft is indeed hijacking the process and now represents an entire very large country in a meeting that involved ODF.

=> 1 | 2 | 3 | ↺ represents an entire very large country

Last week, 1st of October, was held in Seoul (Korea) a meeting of SC34, the JTC1 committee responsible for standards as the ODF and OpenXML.

At this meeting, Brazil was represented by Microsoft.

I and several other members of our committee protested against this indication, but we had our protests silenced by the Director of ABNT (Brazilian NB) that said that this decision was not our prerogative and that if Microsoft would pay for their own representative’s trip, their indication was approved.

Also reminded us that since the beginning of activities of our group at ABNT, he tells us about having a “financial fund” provided by the committee’s organizations, to cover expenses like this. As we do not have that fund and Microsoft has offered to pay their own expenses, their indication was approved by him (rather not comment on anything about it, I get stomach ache by remembering this sad fact). Just to clarify, the other committee’s members did not indicated any representative because we tought that this wasn’t an important meeting to spend our time and money with.

This is not the first time that Microsoft, a selfish and vicious convicted monopolist, is assigned to 'represent' the interests of entire nations. Time for people to stand up and protest? █

=> ↺ selfish and vicious convicted monopolist | 'represent' the interests of entire nations

Update: the stuffed committee (with Microsoft employees) is already having its negative effects. It inches a step closer to Microsoft shenanigans taking control of ODF, slurring OASIS in the process.

=> ↺ inches a step closer to Microsoft shenanigans taking control of ODF

The international standards body ISO has offered to help maintain the ODF document standard alongside its work on the rival Microsoft-originated OOXML specification, saying its creator Oasis is not dealing with defect reports quickly enough.

At a meeting in Korea last week, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) committee for document standards, SC 34, issued a liaison statement to Oasis, the body that created ODF. It requested an “alignment” of maintenance of ODF between the work done at Oasis and that within ISO.

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