Anony Nyman
No favorite files added yet
(Aug 31, 2007 - 4:07 AM)
IDG, the newspaper, has confirmed receiving the e-mails (it was actually a friend of mine who sent it to IDG). MICROSOFT has officially confirmed sending the e-mails [1], and claims that it was a mistake of one of its employees. They say the e-mail was sent to 2 partners. Still 20+, all Gold Partners, that hadn't showed any interest before, showed up at the vote.
What's wrong with it is that it is a form of bribe, when the offer is connected to this type of service in return: to go and vote YES (the voters are corrupted if motivated by it). You can also say that it was a form of implicit "threat" (how Microsoft "expected a partner to behave"). In addition, many voters did not have sufficient knowledge of the issue (6000 pages of documentation, 0 hours of presens at the meetings preceding the vote) and where handed a set of prearranged arguments from Microsoft. This is not the way we want standards to be established.
[1]
http://blogs.msdn.com/ja...the-vote-in-sweden.aspx
[2]
http://computersweden.idg.se/2.2683/1.118623
However SIS has void the decision now (officially because of an error in the vote counting) and will probably not vote in the international ISO vote.
(Aug 30, 2007 - 4:54 AM)
No, the full content has not been published due to anonymity reasons (for both the company and the employee). But IDG has letters from a couple of sources. Microsoft has confirmed sending the letters, but claims it was a mistake (so, we will have to conclude that the 20+ Microsoft Gold Partes just randomly showed up at the vote without any organization behind it). :)
Anyhow, Microsoft did not pay, or offer to pay, the fee for SIS membership. But they did say what they expected from a "Partner" and they did offer "extra support in forms of Microsoft resources" and "market subsidies" (freely translated) and they gave a bunch of arguments in support for OpenXML, so that the uninitiated partner could answer the committees questions, if asked why they supported the specification.
(Aug 30, 2007 - 4:50 AM)
Bribery is actually a crime in Sweden.