02.25.08
Week of Corruptions :: Day 2 :: Microsoft Takes Over Colombia
Yesterday we looked back at an incident from June and today we look at back at vote-rigging in Colombia. Here is this older post in full:
Sock Puppets to Vote on Monopoly Enablement in Colombia?
Only days ago we thought we had found this in Denmark, having encountered such madness in many other parts of the world. This is absolutely astounding. Watch this list. Microsoft sets the deck of cards and ensures that (at least) 9 of out 14 chairs in the technical committee are also in its pocket.
Are standards really being earned? How about buying them, essentially by using money to be accredited with proxies?
There are worse sins around, but this amounts to nothing but a broken system or corruption. In Portugal, a giant such as IBM was denied attendance.
In case you wonder how or why this is relevant to this Web site, Microsoft also bought endorsement from Linspire, Xandros, and Novell (if not more companies). It uses money to eliminate (or at least suppress) opposition. This is unacceptable. It’s a good thing that people spot such manipulation, never letting it escape ‘beneath the radar’.
ISO pretends everything is cool and that it’s just ‘business as usual’ in its press release.
National delegations from 37 countries will be participating in a ballot resolution meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, on 25-29 February 2008 on the draft international standard ISO/IEC DIS 29500, Information technology – Office Open XML file formats.
ISO should reach out for comments from those who escaped ISO while Microsoft took over. █
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. 
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. 
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. 
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. 
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. 
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy.