[equinux] Fwd: Microsoft Wins "Best Campaigner against OOXML Standardization" Award

[Roberto Roggiero]

Aunque resulte irónico, Microsoft se hizo acreedor al premio por mejor
campaña en contra de la estandarización de OOXML !

Sin duda Microsoft hizo "meritos" para ganar ese premio, tanto por los
problemas intrínsecos del formato OOXML, como por la deficiente
defensa que hicieron...

Saludos, Roberto.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Soenke Zehle <s.zehle en kein.org>
Date: 04-oct-2007 9:36
Subject: Microsoft Wins "Best Campaigner against OOXML Standardization" Award


http://www.noooxml.org/irregularities
http://press.ffii.org/Press_releases/FFII_awards_Microsoft_%22Best_Campaigner_against_OOXML_Standardization%22_prize

FFII awards Microsoft "Best Campaigner against OOXML Standardization" prize

Brussels, 1st October 2007 -- Microsoft itself is the surprise winner of
the FFII's "Kayak Prize 2007", offered by the FFII in its <NO>OOXML call
for rejection of Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) standards proposal.
The software monopolist is honored as "Best Campaigner against OOXML
Standardization".

On September 3rd, ISO announced that the Microsoft proposal had not
gathered enough support to be accepted as it is. ISO will now review the
comments made on the proposal, and make a final decision in February
2008. FFII president Pieter Hintjens explains, "we could never have done
this by ourselves. By pushing so hard to get OOXML endorsed, even to the
point of loading the standards boards in Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland,
Portugal, Italy, and beyond, Microsoft showed to the world how poor
their format is. Good standards just don't need that kind of pressure.
All together, countries made over ten thousands technical comments, a
new world record for an ISO vote. Microsoft made a heroic — and costly —
effort to discredit their own proposal, and we're sincerely grateful to
them."

The FFII Board says the monopolist can collect its prize of 2,500 Euros,
minus the cost of registering the noooxml.org domain, 12 euros. FFII
vice-president Alberto Barrionuevo explains, "we ran a cheap campaign,
mostly through that single website. So we're happy with a token
reimbursement of our costs. Several of the Kayak prize nominees told us
they did not want any financial reward for their work. So if Microsoft
does not send someone to the award ceremony, we'll give the money to the
Peruvian earthquake fund."

50,000 people from almost a hundred countries have signed the FFII's
petition against OOXML to date. Hintjens concludes, "OOXML is not yet
dead, even though it's been seriously discredited. Microsoft has one
last chance to fix the design flaws and patent problems, and present a
clean proposal next February. We think they will make cosmetic fixes and
then push all the harder. It's exactly the worst approach and will
alienate many governments, possibly spelling the end of their global
office monopoly."

Background Information

ISO member organizations started on a fast-track process for the
6000-page Microsoft OOXML format, despite problems highlighted by the
FFII in an open letter in January 2007. Among other shortcomings,
Microsoft's proposal damages the adoption of the existing ISO 26300
standard (OpenDocument) that covers similar functionality in just 700
pages. ISO 26300 is being adopted by most of the industry except Microsoft.

The FFII has highlighted serious problems with the proposed standard. It
relies on undisclosed patents, and undisclosed or incomplete licensing
terms that make any independent reimplementation impossible or heavily
risky. It obliges implementors to reverse-engineer the behavior of old
closed Microsoft applications and formats. It uses non-standard formats
for languages and dates, and specifies known bugs, such as treating 1900
as a leap year.

Contact

Benjamin Henrion
FFII Brussels
+32-2-414 84 03
+32-484-566109
bhenrion en ffii.org
(French/English)

About the FFII

The FFII is a not-for-profit association active in over thirty
countries, dedicated to the development of information goods for the
public benefit, based on copyright, free competition, and open
standards. More than 850 members, 3,500 companies and 100,000 supporters
have entrusted the FFII to act as their voice in publicy policy
questions concerning exclusion rights (intellectual property) in data
processing. FFII has lead the campaigns against software patents in
Europe and the <NO>OOXML campaign for a good office documents standard.
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