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FFII puts up a prize in fight against Microsoft Office standardisation
PRESS RELEASE -- [ Europe / Economy / Innovation ] ======================================================================== FFII puts up a prize in fight against Microsoft Office standardisation ======================================================================== Brussels, June 27, 2007 -- The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII), said that it was putting up a 2,500 Euro prize in its fight against Microsoft's attempt to gain international standardisation for its Office format. Veteran FFII campaigner Benjamin Henrion, founder of the noOOXML.org site, explains: "Microsoft is spending millions on rent-a-crowd support for international certification for its proprietary Office format, OOXML. But we already have an ISO standard for word processing, called ODF (Open Document Format). OOXML is Microsoft's attempt to subvert this existing standard, to keep its strangle-hold on the world of documents. It's time for activists across the world to stand up, to reach out to their national ISO bodies, and to explain why Microsoft's format is not open, not a standard, and not XML." The FFII is putting its money where its mouth is. The team that makes the best effort to helping the International Standardization Organisation (ISO) fight off Microsoft's lobbying stands to win an FFII "Kayak Award", consisting of 2,500 Euro and the chance to present their campaign at the FFII's annual conference in November. FFII president Pieter Hintjens explains: "In July 2005, before the vote on the Software Patents Directive, a group of young campaigners took to kayaks, in the waters outside the Parliament building in Strasbourg. They fought a symbolic battle with industry lobbyists who had rented a yacht. The Kayak symbolises individual skill and collective action." To qualify for nomination for the Kayak Award, a team or campaigner must show how they made a significant impact on the ISO process, "to defend ODF and stop Microsoft's attempts to corrupt the international standards-setting process", as Henrion puts it. "Anything goes: websites, letter-writing campaigns, going to meetings, even kayaks." The deadline for nominations is 31 August, and the award winner will be announced on 30 September 2007. For more details see http://www.noOOxml.org/kayak . ======================================================================== Background Information ======================================================================== Microsoft is pushing for adoption of its Microsoft Office file format as an ISO standard in a fast-track mode. Countries members of ISO has until the 2nd of September to make their mind on the specification. Most of the countries are receiving comments from the public until the end of June or the beginning of July. ======================================================================== Links ======================================================================== * Say NO to Microsoft Office broken standard http://www.noooxml.org * Kayak prize to defeat OOXML to become an ISO standard http://www.noooxml.org/kayak * Microsoft invading Denmark with puppets http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-12377/microsoft-invading-d... * FFII opposes Fasttrack adoption of Microsoft OOXML format as ISO standard http://press.ffii.org/Press_releases/FFII_opposes_Fasttra... * Pictures of the activist kayaks vs. the patent lobby yacht http://gallery.ffii.org/v/BxlStbRizox050706/ * Permanent link to this press release http://press.ffii.org/Press_releases/FFII_puts_up_a_prize... ======================================================================== Contact information ======================================================================== Benjamin Henrion FFII Brussels +32-2-414 84 03 +32-484-566109 bhenrion@ffii.org (French/English) ======================================================================== About the FFII ======================================================================== The FFII is a not-for-profit association registered in twenty European countries, dedicated to the development of information goods for the public benefit, based on copyright, free competition, open standards. More than 850 members, 3,500 companies and 100,000 supporters have entrusted the FFII to act as their voice in public policy questions concerning exclusion rights (intellectual property) in data processing. _______________________________________________ FFII Press Releases. (un)subscribe via https://lists.ffii.org/mailman/listinfo/news, or contact media@ffii.org for more information. (Log in to post comments)
I just don't get this at all. Posted Jul 5, 2007 17:47 UTC (Thu) by dw (subscriber, #12017) [Link] It's an open standard, with potentially higher levels of adoption than ODF. Sure, Microsoft will use all the dirty tactics it can to push its own standard, but I'm starting to view the way some people in open source land are acting as equally, if not dirtier. The diatribe present in this announcement ("stranglehold" is a great one) really puts me off the whole anti-OOXML thing entirely. "Strangehold" is a word I would have accepted 10 years ago, but whoever wrote this release is severely missing the point today.
Viewing http://www.noooxml.org/ I see they list a tiny smattering of patents as rationale for not accepting the standard - 2 of which seem entirely obvious to my eyes. Moving on to the "relevance" section I completely fail to see the point - Microsoft's document formats, whether we like it or not, are de-facto standards, and I think it is commendable that the company is moving from these to an open, published standard. In the meantime this site makes absolutely no claims of technical merit as to why we shouldn't be adopting these standards (I know of a few, but that is besides the point). For me at least, this site is promoting its own enemy.
The whole idea of Microsoft-as-corporate-mammoth is starting to be repulsive for me; I'm not a financial analyst by any standard, but by watching movements in the industry in the past few years, I daresay that Microsoft and the open source/standards/interoperability movements have much more worrying enemies in common than most seem to realize right now.
While we attempt to tear apart OOXML and promote ODF in its place, other parts of the world (in this LWN edition for example, SMB2) are quite happy to copy and seemingly promote Microsoft-controlled standards in favour of existing ones (NFS in this case). In the meantime people still fail to realize just how vulnerable Microsoft is today if it were to get embroiled in a patent war with a community as diverse as our own.
My personal bets are on a new age Internet enabled corporate mammoth, of which there are a few, giving away their online services for free until such a point as most of the world's documents exist in proprietary formats on their servers, possibly inaccessible with the exception of some poorly designed web UI allowing export one doc at a time.
Personally I couldn't care less if my personal data is stored in file formats whose only open documentation contains fields marked "F_UNKNOWN321", as long as I can access it and have control over it. I'm much more concerned over the day coming when I can no longer access my own or a customer's raw e-mail without some crazy web interface - because I demand features provided by only a single proprietary application. Oh wait, damn, that day's already here.
Rant over. I suppose the thing rubbing me most here is what appears to be campaigning without a cause, or with the wrong cause. Show people how utterly difficult it would be to implement a word processor that could read OOXML files, without the resulting app internally resembling Microsoft Word. Don't feed me diatribe and aphorisms about patents or the supposed unsuitability of their standard in the first place.
Bah.
I just don't get this at all. Posted Jul 5, 2007 17:53 UTC (Thu) by dw (subscriber, #12017) [Link] I might add that "IT IS URGENT THAT YOU CONTACT YOUR STANDARDISATION BODY IN YOUR COUNTRY AND EXPLAIN THEM WHY OOXML IS BROKEN" is a dumb instruction by anyone's standard.
"""
CAN HAS NOT MS OOXML CUZ ITS BROKEN!! PATENZ!!! K??
KTHX
DAVID
I could fully expect the above mail to arrive in some delegate's mailbox, simply because that site doesn't give me anything else to go on. In response the personal may simply look and say "damned clueless Linux hippies, I should forward this on to my MS rep, I'm sure it'll tickle him."
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