I have had more interest in the story about the attacks on Matthew Holloway's credibility than I imagined. Whilst it is a bit of a side show in the debate about whether OOXML should become an ISO standard it seems worth following up. This will (hopefully) be the last word from me on the subject. We will not be taking the issue any further.

Via Andy Updegrove we see this story about the Opening Address by the Minister of Public Service and Administration, South Africa, Ms. Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi at the third Idlelo African Conference on FOSS and the Digital Commons. Andy calls it a Ray of Light. The address comments on Open Standards and Software Patents amongst other things and is worth a read. There is also a video feed here.

Yoon Kit over on openmalaysiablog appears to be having some challenges. A few days ago he blogged on about a PIKOM meeting and on Friday we have post about the SIRIM Technical Committee meeting. Have a browse through the rest of the links on that site and make up your own minds.

The March 2008 edition of the IEC e-Tech newsletter offers the above headline with the content here.

A very funny read as absolutely no mention of the contention around the bulk ballot is made...

We have discovered that Matthew Holloway was badly slurred by a Microsoft employee in an email to one of the bodies advising an overseas standards NB. It is worth noting that our own national body, Standards New Zealand (SNZ), took the claims so seriously that they responded to parties who received this email.

We discovered the slur by chance, similar information may be circulating in other countries. If you are aware of this please point concerned parties to this article. SNZ have given us permission to quote this email. I have removed names to protect the guilty parties.

And the byline is "Supported open source a hit for businesses and developers".

This Computerworld article may be out of the US but does have some background as to what drives business decisions. We see the same kinds of issues here in New Zealand, admittedly on a lesser scale due to the average size of businesses locally, but at least we know the challenges, and benefits, are applicable worldwide.

There have been three articles appearing in Computerworld NZ recently that highlight the benefits of the Open Source and Open Standards model vs. the stagnant, closed, restrictive, myopic, proprietary business model favoured by some.

The first is "Ohm, Sweet Ohm" which covers Jonathan Oxer in Melbourne and Rob Wilcox in Auckland. The question posed with regards to Jonathan is 'Can you take the smart home concept a little too far?'. As far as I can tell the rfid chip Jonathan has had implanted could be considered as just a slight variation of body piercing...

Stuff is reporting that Wellington based open source company, SilverStripe, have scored the job of running the Democratic National Convention website in the US election year. Anyone following the Obama / Clinton story will realise what a significant coup this is and also what attention there will be on the smooth running of the site.

Now that the Ballot Resolution Meeting (BRM) in Geneva is over I thought people might be interested in the analysis the NZOSS provided on Ecma's responses to Standards NZ comments. Note that last August Microsoft and Ecma promised they would "fix everything" in time for the BRM. Have a look at the document attached to this article.

[Update - I stand slightly corrected, the word "successful" was used in the SNZ press release]

Standards NZ (SNZ) put out a media release a couple of days ago under the title "New Zealand's voice heard at Geneva OOXML meeting". The release, attached to this article, describes how progress was made on two of the 54 SNZ comments made last September on the proposed ISO standard, OOXML.

Computerworld have a slightly different spin on the press release and report Standards NZ claims Geneva success.