04.01.08
British Standards Institute (BSI) Under Fire After Possible ‘Inside Job’
“It is not BSI’s policy to make public the details of how it votes on International Standards”
It has been just over a month since we started to spot irregularities in the BSI’s handling of the process and even claimed that it had been corrupted. This was a long time before anyone even knew about an unexplained flip of vote, which was by no means justified.
The BSI did not escape this unhurt. Other than its already-stagnant reputation among relevant circles, here comes a formal complaint, riding is on top of an ongoing investigation by the European Commission.
The delay on making any official announcement suggests the ISO is taking a cautious approach before telling Microsoft it can pop open the bubbly.
Meanwhile, the Open Source Consortium (OSC) has bemoaned the British Standards Institute’s (BSI) own apparent change of heart on OOXML.
Last week the BSI adjusted its stance on Microsoft’s somewhat controversial file format.
OSC president Mark Taylor said: “Once the BSI finally own up to what they’ve done, we will be lodging a formal complaint in the UK, as will many others…”
Quite a few people are involved by now. The BSI mustn’t just get away what it has done. You will find in the links at the bottom some more information about what happened. Upon initial inquiry, here is what the BSI had to say:
Update 3: To help you understand what Taylor means that once BSI owns up to what it has done, then there will be a complaint filed, here’s an email that a reader just sent me, a response to his request to understand why the UK changed its vote at the last minute, which we have permission to publish:
---- Original Message ------------ Subject: RE: no information re: dis 29500 From: "Lucy Fulton" [redacted email] Date: Tue, April 1, 2008 12:34 pm To: [redacted email] ----------------------------------- Dear Mr Wright, Many thanks for your email. It is not BSI's policy to make public the details of how it votes on International Standards. BSI sent a delegation to the ballot resolution meeting which took place in Geneva in February 2008 and subsequently requested that its technical committee carry out a review of its position on ISO/IEC DIS 29500. The technical committee did so, made a consensus decision and advised BSI on its vote. This is the procedure with any international ballot. Best wishes, Lucy Fulton
Is this transparency? What are they trying to hide if they are deciding on supposedly ‘open’ standards? █
Related posts:
- ISO Frozen. Too Much Corruption?
- OOXML Roundup; BSI's Sellout Did Not Go Unnoticed
- OOXML Irregularities in Germany (and Britain Again)
- Microsoft Gold-certified Partners in Charge of the United Kingdom? (Updated)
Related articles (external):
Dark day for the BSI
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.