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.

[Update - Rick Jelliffe has taken down most of his BRM report which I refer to below, the quote I reference was cut and pasted from his original.]

I am a little loath to comment on outcomes of the OOXML BRM that took place last week. However there has been a blog entry from Standards Australia delegate, Rick Jelliffe that has simply astounded me.

Please read this disclaimer before continuing...

Rick has his comments switched off so folks are unable to respond to his version of events, hence this response.

This brings the total to 1.4 billion euros.

Interestingly this last fine covers the period of non-compliance with EU anti-trust rulings from June 21, 2006 to October 21, 2007.

The AFP article goes on to say:

Despite the court ruling, Microsoft's troubles with EU competition regulators are far from over.

Since its court victory, the European Commission has launched a new investigation targeting the interoperability of a broad range of software, including Microsoft's popular Office package, with rival products.

There is plenty of media interest in this story right now. I have received many calls and there is also a lot of blogging going on. Unfortunately the way the NZOSS is participating in Standards New Zealand's OOXML Advisory Committee is occasionally misunderstood or misreported.

It has been far too long since the last NZOSS newsletter went out.

Attached to this article is the pretty PDF version.

Comments are welcome and encouraged.