ODF vs OOXML: Microsoft Strong-Arm Tactics Appear to Have Succeeded…

Balloting has ended on the fast-tracked measure to adopt Microsoft’s proprietary Office Open XML (often incorrectly called “Open Office XML” ) document standard as an international ISO-certified standard.

There are two criteria necessary for the measure to pass:

1. Two-thirds of the voting P-Member countries must vote in favour of approval, and
2. No more than one-quarter of votes cast must be opposed to approval of the standard.

The first criterion has been met for some time – no big change there, however the second criterion passed the test at the last minute.

The entire process has been marred by deceptive and manipulative interference by Microsoft – you can learn more here:

Groklaw

The voting process is under investigation by several countries, and also the European Union Commission:

UPDATE: An Open Letter to the Standards Council of Canada re: MS, OOXML vs ODF…

See the original letter here.

Sent March 25, 2008:

Dear Mr. Hopkinson,

My most sincere thanks for your prompt reply, but more particularly for the stance you and your team have taken. I’ll be raising that fine Canadian beer now…

Best regards,

Martin Lynch

———————–
John Hopkinson wrote:

Dear Mr. Lynch,

Your message was passed to me to respond to. I am the Chair of the
Canadian JTC 1 Committee and Head of the Canadian Delegation to JTC 1.
As such I was HoD for the 29500 Ballot Resolution Meeting.

An Open Letter to the Standards Council of Canada re: MS, OOXML vs ODF…

See the UPDATE (or see the Comments section):

Sent Tuesday, March 25, 2008:

ATTN: Standards Council of Canada.

Dear Sirs and Mesdames,

It’s with considerable interest that I’ve been following developments (such as is possible, given the meetings are behind closed doors with a media gag…) of the above referenced Technical Committee, to which Canada, as I understand it, is one of the 40 participating countries. Lately, things appear to be getting increasingly interesting.

Most notable is my concern with the influence being exerted by Microsoft Corporation in attempting to persuade member countries to adopt the OOXML language in favour of the truly open and free ODF format.