About

Campaign

NoOOXML.org was started by Benjamin Henrion in January 2007 to campaign against Microsoft's push for ISO standardization of their captive document formats. This campaign was part of a global project by the FFII's open standards workgroup that reached standards campaigners in over eighty countries. We thank all those who signed the petition. You gave us the mandate to fight OOXML. We gratefully acknowledge the contributions of many, many people including the FFII open standards workgroup, which has worked on the issue of open document formats for many years, FFII coordinators in many countries who helped communicate the issue to national boards and local standards experts, and standards groups and activists globally, who helped build NoOOXML.org into a global success. We thanks those who helped us eat and pay the rent while we did this campaign. NoOOXML.org was mainly funded by ESOMA, with support from the FFII, Shuttleworth Foundation, the Open Society Institute, OpenForum Europe, FTISA, and iMatix Corporation. We thank Microsoft too, who gave us such amusement with their capers that we were obliged to give them the FFII Kayak Award. But open standards are serious business, and the NoOOXML.org campaign has proven that the Community takes this business very seriously.

Propaganda

This is how the vendor explains who we are (taken from a presentation to the Belarus standards board).

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"Radicals" against OpenXML

Although significant part of open source software development sympathisers are considering OpenXML as just another useful specification, some "radicals" are spreading active counter-campaign.

In Europe, "radical" campaign against OpenXML is coordinated by Benjamin Henrion. He works in CBFA, in parallel he's active member of Belgium Association of Electronic Libre.

Henrion created a website noooxml.org, and called open source sympathisers to "spam" National Bodies with similar petitions. He also declared an award of 2500 Eur for best action of pressure to National Body.

Henrion's initiatives got some support in Russia and Belarus. About 25% of voted on his site are from Russia, and his petition is actively reposted in local blogs.

(on the right of vcard): This is how Henrion prefers to introduce himself

Doug Mahugh, Microsoft Open XML Technical Evangelist:

I've seen the petitions organized by FFII, the people who have offered a cash reward to those who most effectively influence the ISO process. Was there one of those in Portugal as well? Regarding the Portugal technical committee membership, I don't have anything to add to the comments that have appeared on various blogs. (source: MSDN Channel 9)