Here is an interesting little tidbit regarding Microsoft and how they are trying to change the ISO standard by migrating from an ‘open’ influence to a ‘proprietary’ influence.  For those of you who are not familiar with the ISO standard, it is one of those standards that has a significant impact on the hardware and software installed on your computer.  So, by changing it from an ‘open’ (as in, anyone can improve on it) to ‘proprietary’ (as in, intellectual property) influence, you can probably tell that there will be significant changes and impacts on pretty much everything that uses the ISO standard.

The result of Microsoft trying to ram through MSOOXML as an ISO standard by breaking the voting process of ISO are actually much more severe than anyone seems to realise.  Where MS has touched ISO, it has simply STOPPED functioning altogether.

To recap, the problem started in Massachusetts where a government official decided to require Open Document Format (ODF) for documentation as it’s the only standard that is ISO compliant and thus unencumbered and promoting competition.  The problem is, such a totally open standard was NOT supported Microsoft first tried the good guy sacked, then found that this decision started a bit of an avalanche globally.  Microsoft normally argues that ODF is “not good enough”, casually ignoring the fact that “Open ” means “you can participate in a process to improve it”
- and they WERE invited.  So, to protect the Microsoft Office franchise it had to define its own standard.  It produced a 6000 (yes, that’s six
THOUSAND) page specification which was found extremely deficient and (surprise, surprise) contained proprietary elements to prevent other vendors from implementing it - i.e. not ISO compliant.  It then rigged the ISO voting process by “encouraged” vendors in various countries to join on the day of voting (and that’s just one of the various strange things that took place).  Those ‘fresh’ members have not participated in any other ISO activity as they are required to do, and the results are devastating for ISO.[more]

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