03.28.08
Brazil Spills the Beans on OOXML, BRM; India’s Story Told Again
Last minute brings truth
Avi Alkalay, the Open Standards, Open Source and Linux advisor at IBM Brazil, has just posted the following pointer:
Finally Jomar, one of the brazilian delegate that went to OOXML’s BRM in Geneva has started to tell all the dirty little details of what really happened in that meeting and the surreal modus operandi of how 120 people can discuss 1027 issues in 5 days. Have fun in english and portuguese.
Oh, and talking about dirty playing, check the domain www.DocumentFreedomDay.com but remember that the original one is www.DocumentFreedom.org. The first one really deserves a DDoS attack.
Alkalay refers to this incident. Revolting indeed.
The above post, together with a pointer from our reader, makes it the perfect timing to present the truth about the broken BRM. Here is an excerpt:
During the debates, some discussions had expanded and covered more than one ECMA’s responses (or sometimes different responses dealt with related themes), and this explains the high degree of items discussed (or as I prefer to call “touched”) during the BRM (withdrawn from this document, the final document of BRM): 189 responses or 18.4% of the total (is that the amount of discussed items expected on an International Evaluation of a so important theme specification? Imagine if your country’s constitution was write using that method, with only 18% of it’s laws discussed).
More information about the BRM you will find in [1, 2, 3], but earlier reports were not quite as detailed.
Meanwhile, ITWire writes about the disturbing situation in various places including India. It explains the reason for some “Yes” votes:
Wipro, Infosys and TCS are the three big companies that accept business process outsourcing from the American and other markets, hence their vote for Microsoft is not a surprise at all. These are companies that maintain the status quo, conservative to the core and willing to do the bidding of the piper. Nasscom represents the interests of the bigger IT companies and it probably had no choice but to fall in line.
Other recent posts about OOXML in India:
- Behind the OOXML “No” Vote in India Remains a Fiasco
- Who Voted “Yes” for OOXML in India Anyway?
- OOXML Defeated Easily in India; Microsoft in Hot Water in New Zealand Over Smear Campaign
- Pro-OOXML Tactic #99: When You Lose, Start Bullying
- Keeping Abreast of Microsoft’s Latest Lies About OOXML
- More Microsoft OOXML Dirty Tricks: PR Lies
Add to this the fact that approving OOXML as an ISO standard could be a violation of anti-trust laws. ISO needs to halt this process immediately of be renamed “Goodb-I S Oh-Oh”. █
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.