Swedish Spillover: OOXML's Cascading Failure

It looks from PJ's Groklaw report of fresh action in the Danish Parliament that Microsoft's mistakes in Sweden have spilled over to other countries.

Denmark's was a TWO STANDARDS position (paradoxical as that may be) for evaluating both OOXML and ODF; yet now in the echoes of Swedish standards process tampering by Microsoft, the Danish ministers are asking for a technical assessment of OOXML to be advised by the government technology ministry so that Standards Denmark may make its September 2nd (Monday) judgment on OOXML based upon OOXML's actual technical interoperability.

This is odd this late in the game. It suggests to me that the Danish government was taking Microsoft's word on OOXML's interop qualities at face value. Conversely that means the Danish government was taking our claims about OOXML's lack of fitness as rhetorical IBM-based corporate gamesmanship.

Now, the events in Sweden (Microsoft offering payment to partners to attend meetings and vote) puts OOXML's quality into question for those who have not read the technical specification yet or trusted the transparency of earlier analysis. Sweden illuminates that Microsoft has no faith in the technical merit of OOXML and feels the need to purchase its passage -- even with every other advantage attending its ISO Fast-Track.

I'd like to hear John Gotze's view from Denmark...unless that's what's up on Groklaw ;-)

John?

Comments

[Santhosh]

Pingback from http://blogs.sun.com/sdsouza/entry/it_is_the_process

[John Gøtze]

A member of Parliament has posed a formal question (so-called $20-question) about what the minister of science thinks about what's happened in Sweden, and whether he has seen anything the like in Denmark.

Link:

As such, there is no "political intervention" in the process.

The ministry is represented by the National IT and Telecom Agency in the Danish Standards committee, but as an observer.

The Danish vote will be announced on Monday. The information published is that the committee has a made a unanimous decision about a number of comments, and authorised Danish Standards to send over these to ISO. As I understand it, the vote itself is decided by Danish Standards. Assuming they listen to the committe, the vote would be "one with comments" (i.e., not unconditional Yes, nor Abstain). We'll see on Monday ...

[John Gøtze]

Didn't have to wait until monday:

Denmark Says No With Comments

[Giacomo]

The link to Groklaw's article is broken, there's an "h" missing in "h"ttp.

Thanks for the entry and the information
gp

[Stephen ( controlling minds of others )]

Yes these politicians, you guys must see what the ANC are up to in SA. Crime is through the roof and the government doesn't care. All the ANC is interested is lining their pockets.