Microsoft Bought Sweden's ISO Vote on OOXML?

Posted on August 28th, 2007 in Geeky,Politics by Chooch

Just another example of the bullying and strong arm tactics that Microsoft resorts to when they can’t get what they want based on merit. The sad part is that this isn’t even surprising anymore since they’ve pulled so many similar tricks in the past.

From Slashdot:

a_n_d_e_r_s writes “The vote on OOXML looked fairly secured. Most in the Working Group in Sweden was against the vote to approve OOXML. The day of the vote, though, more companies showed up at the door. Some 20 new companies — each one payed about $2500 to be allowed to vote — and vote they did … for Microsoft. Most of the new companies were partners from Microsoft who suddenly out of the blue joined the Working Group, payed membership fees and voted yes for approval. From the OS2World story: ‘The final result was 25 Yes, 6 No and 3 Abs and this would from the start be a done deal of saying No! Jonas Bosson who participated in today’s meeting on behalf on FFII said that he left the meeting in protest and so did also IBM’s Swedish local representative Johan Westman.’”

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