Open Malaysia

The title of this post comes from a quote attributed to Doug Mahugh, Senior Product Manager of MSOOXML at Microsoft. He was giving a talk to us Malaysians at the last Microsoft TechEd 2007 which I attended. A few days later, he denied having said that in Brian Jones blog comments.

"... no, I didn't say that, and I also didn't say many of the other things that the Open Malaysia blog attributed to me.  It seems they took snippets of things I said, as well as many things they apparently wish I had said, and tried to stitch them all together to make some points."

And there I was commending him on his honesty and frankness in my blog post. Duh silly me.

Unfortunately I did not have the foresight and was not prepared to do my own audio recording. I guess I would have had to rely on the event managers who may have recorded the talk itself, but unfortunately he said those words after the official talk, while he was addressing a small group of 10 people.

I guess then it's his word against mine, and this matter would never be proven either way.

However the latest whine from Microsoft blaming IBM for its misfortune of OOXML at ISO revealed something interesting. Read what the Senior Directors for XML Technology said:

"Let's be very clear," [Jean] Paoli said. "It has been fostered by a single company — IBM. If it was not for IBM, it would have been business as usual for this standard."

Business as usual for this standard? If he thinks it's usual to fast track a 6000 page document with thousands of criticisms and due for a huge overhaul after the BRM, he must be deluded. Unless he meant "Business as usual for our cash cow?" - the cash cow being Microsoft Office. Yes, conjecture I know, but  that makes much more sense.

Nicolas Tsilas then goes on to contradict his colleague. Mr Paoli said it was "a single company - IBM" disrupting their standard. Mr Tsilas expands on this and says it's IBM and the FSF. Which is strange, because the FSF (Free Software Foundation) hasn't been involved much in this debate. Maybe he meant FFII (The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure).

Those crazy Europeans are the ones driving the NOOOXML.com site. Who have (at this point in time) 80,000 names of individuals rejecting OOXML. Who are assisted by hundreds of volunteers around the world. Who have no corporate overlord. Who are definitely not defined by 'a single company'.

But any I digress...  back to Mr Tsilas:

"IBM have asked governments to have an open-source, exclusive purchasing policy," Tsilas said. "Our competitors have targeted this one product — mandating one document format over others to harm Microsoft's profit stream."

I know for a fact that IBM is against an open-source exclusive purchasing policy. How would it flog off its warez like DB2, Lotus Notes, WebSphere and all its other proprietary software to fat government contracts if there was an exclusive purchasing policy for open source?

What I do see IBM pushing are true Open Standards. And that, I believe is what the senior folk at Microsoft are scared of.

Please read the last sentence again.

"Our competitors have targeted this one product — mandating one document format over others to harm Microsoft's profit stream."

I don't know if Brett Winterford, the journalist made a recording, just in case, but this comment is certainly consistent with Doug Mahugh's quote. So it's all about the money. The fat juicy profits. Go on. Be honest. Just say it. Its OK. Don't try to pretend you are doing this for the benefit of mankind. Its about protecting your "profit stream". Come clean. Admit it. Its alright, we understand.

"It's a simple matter of commercial interests!"
       - Doug Mahugh, on "why Microsoft is pushing OOXML" at TechEd 2007 Kuala Lumpur.