ZDNet has a nice article titled "Microsoft admits to standards ignorance pre-OOXML" pointing to the fact that Microsoft was a bit clueless about the standardisation process:
We found ourselves so far down the path of the standardisation process with no knowledge. We don't have a standards office. We didn't have a standards department in the company," said McKee. "I think the one thing that we would acknowledge and that we were frustrated with is that, by the time we realised what was going on and the competitive environment that was underway, we were late and there was a lot of catch-up.
Microsoft do not regret the committee stuffing practice:
The comments came partly in response to a question concerning whether the company regretted actions reportedly taken to try and encourage partners and allies to join national standards bodies in the run-up to voting around OOXML.
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However, McKee said Microsoft did not regret any of its actions during the voting process and claimed the company was merely trying to catch up with a process that it had very little experience of. "I think the thing is that Microsoft was really, really late to this game," he said. "It was very difficult to enter into conversations around the world where the debate had already been framed."
The Microsoft Business Partners were a typical pattern in the standardisation process:
"Membership of the Swiss body saw a surprising growth before the vote, while in Sweden a very similar thing happened; suddenly the room was overcrowded with Microsoft partners," Free Software Foundation Europe president Georg Greve told ZDNet.co.uk in August 2007. "Microsoft stuffed the ballot boxes in Sweden; the room was crammed with Microsoft 'yes' men. Special interest groups were formed in Germany to speed up the process."