As a Norwegian, I've been steaming all weekend over the decision of the Norwegian national body to vote for OOXML against the wishes of the technical committee. Promoting the repair shop philosophy is a good redux on the embarrassing decision. Tthe only votes for were reportedly from Standard Norge bureaucrats, Microsoft, and Statoil - a major Microsoft partner and customer. What do you do then? Of course you excuse all the people who votes against you, and vote again.

Makes you think certain dictators could learn a lot from Standard Norge.

On a related note, Alex Brown, who presided over the poor excuse for a ballot resolution meeting (pitiful despite the hard work of a lot of well meaning delegates who actually did try to make both the proposed standard and the process better - personally I find it hard not to lay a large share of the blame squarely on Alex Brown for that, unless practially all the reports coming out of the meeting are flat out wrong) in the OOXML fast track process, demonstrates that he either just plain can't understand why a lot of people thinks he's sold out, or he is pretending not to.

Yes, I'm bitter. It's extremely sad that an organization like ISO, as well as a large number of national bodies are prepared to let themselves be used as pawns in Microsofts game.

It's not over yet, by a long shot, but so far it's been pretty depressing.