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RE: Microsoft buys the Swedish vote on OOXML?

• From: Len Bullard <len.bullard@u...>
• To: Gause_Brian@e..., jonathan.robie@r...
• Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2007 16:00:53 -0500

I am saying something simpler:

Will the rat bastards please consider the good of their customers instead of
building walls around them for their own comfort?  Document formats can't
change what exemplary leadership can.  No one gets out of a Chinese finger
puzzle pulling to the outside.

Again, if ODF is better, it will grow and evolve.  Customers will migrate as
they can afford to.  If OOXML is terrible, it will become unaffordable.  If
it isn't, implementations will improve the lot of the customers. 

All anyone here needs is patience.

But if we we lose faith in standards as vehicles of consensus formation and
maintenance, we gate everything good the web as a community has accomplished
and we amplify everything bad that it could not avoid becoming.  Then lord
help us, it is 1989 again and the cold war is back on.

len


From: Gause_Brian@e... [mailto:Gause_Brian@e...] 
 
I disagree that Len is arguing against the idea of one vote per company.
This does not follow. As I read his text, I thought it was a cynical dig
at MS, not a conclusion regarding "the way it should be".

I also disagree that Len is "implying that the proper remedy is for
every other company to try to stuff the ballot box..." What I see in
Len's text is a rhetorical question. He could be implying that the
standards committee needs to institute a membership policy barring
one-day-old members from voting. To say that he's implying one
particular solution is a mistake that simply doesn't follow from his
words.

For my part, I believe these standards committees should have membership
policies to prevent such clear attempts to push through such decisions.
But does it really matter? MS has found their solution...be prepared for
this sort of behavior over and over again... 

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