According to Janimo's blog, four new Microsoft's business partners have joined the committee today 18 march:
The date of the local vote is not yet set by ASRO (Romanian Standards Organization) which apparently gives plenty of time to other companies to subscribe. Today four have joined the committee, all of them seem to be MS partners (Fujitsu-Siemens is one of them, the others are local software companies). The sad thing is that these companies or people have not shown interest in the subject so far, have not participated in the 6 months online debate but are probably going to cast their vote in favor of OOXML . What they are doing is perfectly legal, after all anyone can join the committee, but it's sad to see attempts at public debate and the chances of it changing something getting offset by throwing money at the problem at the last minute.
For the record:
In the last weeks, CT210 at ASRO (Romanian NB debating on OOXML) has 5 new members, 3 of which applied in a single day (March 17, 2008):
ZANDO COMPUTER - Linux consultant
STARTX - Ubuntu consultant
FUJITSU-SIEMENS COMPUTER
DIMSOFT SRL - Microsoft Gold Partner
MONTERO SOFT
It is possible that more will apply in the next days, until the debate on OOXML is held.
One hour later, two more joined the committee:
INFOWORLD - Microsoft partner
GECADNET - also a Microsoft partner
Also on March 18, 2008, another member joined:
HEWLETT-PACKARD ROMANIA
Vote for Microsoft!