You’ve read how Microsoft drove its tank through the international standardization process last year and this year, finally winning ISO approval for its legacy OOXML format. The OOXML event proved that we’re in a real fight, and that money and power can break down the existing polite rules and agreements that constitute the international standardization process.

When OOXML was first launched through its “no questions asked” fast track process, people did not believe that ISO would collude with such an obvious play. Each time another scandal emerged, people thought, “this is too much, surely someone will stop this process”. And yet it went on, and the legacy format got ISO’s blessing, and moved in as a sword dangling over ODF’s head.

What we witnessed was the first major world-wide fight over open standards. Not just office documents, not just Massachusetts, but a fight over what it means to be a standard, what it means to be an “open standard”.

Does this fight matter to free software developers, and if so, how do we win it? Let me quote from an open letter we published today on www.digistan.org:

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