03.25.08
Quick Mention: Brazil Says Nah-ah to Microsoft’s Broken OOXML
Large nations are harder to stack
China and India, the world’s largest nations in terms of their population, said “No” to OOXML (with China yet to repeat this action). A reader has just mailed to inform us that Brazil will join them yet again. It’s another giant nation that is genuinely not interested in OOXML.
It is now official. Brazilian vote was decided by consensus of the entire technical team, including Microsoft crew’s: OOXML does not deserve to be an international ISO standard.
Let Brazil carry on with its migration to Free software and GNU/Linux. Recent stories from the region include:
The following are just months old:
- Ministry of Education from Brazil is buying 3000 Debian GNU Linux computers
- Ministry of Education from Brazil is buying 90,000 Debian GNU Linux computers
This is far from new, but it’s happening quietly, without press releases. █




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.