If you have not already seen the news, the ISO (International Standards Organization) approved the OOXML format, despite numerous cases of what I would consider outright cheating. Just after that, Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu’s founder, said “it’s sad that the ISO was not willing to admit that its process was failing horribly,” according to ZDNet. While he said nothing that has not already been said, I am very happy to see Shuttleworth, a prominent technology person, bluntly state that he does not approve of what the ISO did.

Even if you are in favor of OOXML, I cannot imagine that anyone wants the ISO setting a precedent of ignoring blatant rule violations. If OOXML passed without cheating, fine. I would have no objection to that. If, however, cheating is reported and ignored, I do have a problem with that and that is what is happening.

The implications of letting this go without making the ISO either show that there was no cheating or admit that cheating did occur go beyond setting a precedent of allowing the rules to be broken. It also encourages Microsoft to continue their unfair practices.

We cannot afford to let this go. I am glad Mark Shuttleworth has taken a stand and I hope more prominent figures follow.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 3rd, 2008 at 8:44 pm and is filed under File Formats, Open Standards, Ubuntu. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.