I found an informationweek article on a recent Ma declaration of OOXML as an "open standard".
The move… was hailed by the Initiative for Software Group, an industry association that supports Microsoft's stance in the issue.
…the association's executive director, Melanie Wyne, said: "(The "positive" developments in Massachusetts) signal in our minds acceptance of an argument we've long advocated — standards used by governments to improve IT for citizens and agencies should remain technologically neutral, and be flexible."
Who is "we"? Did longterm advocacy of Initiative for Software Group for technical neutrality leave "them" no time to set up a website?
But who is Melanie Wyne? We know her from Initiative for Software Choice. Initiative for Software Choice is a CompTIA spin-off and supported by numerous SMEs. On their behalf it supports Microsoft's stance in many issues. The European representative Lueders usually claims to represent "the industry" They educated us why Open Standards is compatible with RAND licensing, ODF is bad for IP owners, Free Software is a bad idea, governments should not follow strategic national interests, or why SMEs urgently need software patents in Europe.
- Nov 2005, Melanie Wyne CNet contribution, Why IP owners should worry
- 2005, The abstract Factory, Melanie Wyne makes no sense
- Wyne Testimony, The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2007
I represent the Initiative for Software Choice (ISC, www.softwarechoice.org) a global
coalition of more than 300 software, hardware and services vendors and industry
associations who are working to promote an open and competitive government
procurement market where companies may do business without fear of discrimination in
government IT procurements due to the model in which their technology was developed.
The informationweek article also quotes Bob Sutor, IBM as follows:
"The Commonwealth has it exactly right, as it describes OOXML as being an ECMA-dictated format, and developed solely to 'ensure the highest levels of fidelity with legacy documents created in proprietary Microsoft Office binary document formats".
Time to set up a CompTIA Campaign for Credibility.
European ISC OOXML support activities: 2007 13 Jun Initiative for Software Choice (Hugo Lueders) letter to the Danish Government
ISC understand that the Danish Open Source Association (OSL) has supported
a Memorandum by “Copenhagen Economics” and the “Copenhagen Business School” on 5
June, which postulates that both ODF and OOXML as standards will not de facto lead to
“open” standards. The Memorandum is not based on a thorough economic analysis and
there is no evidence to support the argument that the adoption of two standards will delay
implementation. Moreover, it does not mention the co-existence of even multiple standards in other areas.
