Geir Isene is reporting that there's a demonstration planned for April 9th outside a conference of the ISO group responsible for the OOXML travesty. Wish I could be in Oslo to join in...

Most people who care know by now that OOXML was approved by ISO.

Avi Alkalay wrote a great post that illustrates very clearly the folly behind the OOXLM fast track process: OOXML in NumbersAnd Standard Norge tried hard to make up excuses for their yes to OOXML against the wishes of their own technical committee.

Note particularly fun things like point #4, considering that Microsoft was long ago found to have strongly suggested to partners and customers they copy and paste a letter they provided and sent it in to "support" OOXML. Most of these letters are thus from Micosoft partners and customers, most of which have no basis for knowing anything about the OOXML standard, nor are likely to have read any part of it, nor have bothered explaining in their own words rather than Microsoft's why OOXML should be approved. There's also no indication whether or not the people sending the letters even had authority to submit them on their employers behalf.

Also note #8, where they use as an excuse to overrule the vast majority of the technical committee (excluding Standard Norge employees, Microsoft and Statoil - a major Microsoft partner and customer) that many of them had made up their mind before the meeting. Yes, it's hard not to make up your mind quickly about a standard as broken as OOXML. I'd be extremely worried if committee members considering approval of a standards document of over 6000 pages hadn't spent enough time in advance of the meeting to make a decision about whether the standard was of sufficient quality to approve. They also bring up the letters again, ignoring the same points as above.

All in all the amount of ballot stuffing, intimidation and pressure involved in this process makes Mugage seem almost better qualified to run a fair and open election than ISO currently is. Or maybe the ISO could help resolve the situation in Zimbabwe by offering him a new job overseeing further OOXML work, since they are certainly going to need someone skilled at ignoring reality and getting people to accept vote rigging to try to make all the bad publicity go away - there's no way the current OOXML vote is the end of this.

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.

One of the Brazilian delegates to the BRM for OOXML has posted a lot of details of the charad.

How anyone can seriously think that the OOXML fast track process hasn't been full of undue influence and massive abuse of the ISO process, and quite possibly outright corruption is beyond me.

Groklaw is as usual on top of it, with a number of posts.

Most noteworthy in my mind, though is this post, which describes the process in Poland and notes that the EU Commission is apparently investigating the process.

It's sad that ISO is prepared to let itself be used this way. How can anyone take a standards organization seriously when it can be manipulated for one vendors purposes this easily?