Norway Standards has released its decision on OOXML. It's No with Comments. Essentially, they are concerned about too many technical issues and wish to see them fixed before it becomes a standard.

Microsoft admitted Wednesday that an employee at its Swedish subsidiary offered monetary compensation to partners for voting in favor of the Office Open XML document format's approval as an ISO standard.

The day is fast approaching when the comment and voting period for ISO/IEC DIS 29500, the draft ISO specification based upon Microsoft's Office Open XML formats, will either be approved or not. As Sept. 2 comes closer, Microsoft appears to be stuffing the ballot boxes of some countries' ISO organizations while open-source and standard organizations are firing back with furious words.

SIS, the standards body in Sweden, has declared its vote on OOXML invalid. There is no time to start over, so Sweden will abstain. We don't have it translated for you yet, but a reader informs me of the gist.

Seems a slashdot reader has discovered a company using Free Software in their products without complying to the GPL. It seems they've even deliberately tried to hide those, wrapping them in dlls.

I'll predict that there will be few large vendors (with deep pockets) rushing to generously support the FSF/SFLC in this battle versus Microsoft.

Wow. I guess when you have more cash than taste you can afford to buy research reports that say all sorts of nice things about you. Open-source companies have to rely on things like products that please customers; Microsoft can afford to ramrod research down customers' throats.

"There is no question that all over the world the competing interests in the Open XML standardization process are going to use all tactics available to them within the rules." - Microsoft's Director of Corporate Standards Jason Matusow. Well, you have to hand it to Microsoft. They are nothing if not thorough, and leave as little to chance as possible.