<incom> Microsoft Wins "Best Campaigner against OOXML Standardization" Award

[Soenke Zehle]

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 at 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.