OOXML: Go To Hell!
Demonstration against OOXML, originally uploaded by Martin Bekkelund.
It is a day after the Go Open conference in Oslo and I am still holed up in a hotel nearby. Blearily stumbling down to breakfast, I was confronted with a mix of lukewarm meatballs, easy listening radio — both of which are common enough to encounter in hotels — and most surprisingly, a loud and rousing chant from the radio of "OOXML: Go To Hell!"
The chant in question — with the help of the Norwegian media — was still echoing from a demonstration held yesterday outside of the annual plenary meeting of JTC1 - the ISO standards committee responsible for OOXML.
Led by Steve Pepper (chairman of the Norwegian mirror committee of JTC1), the protest attracted over 150 people, including some of Norway's leading technologists, such as Håkon Wium Lie (who proposed Cascading Style Sheets in 1994), Linpro CEO Trond Heier and FreeBSD hacker Dag-Erling Smørgrav.
The protest has certainly caught the attention of the Norwegian media, with a broad mix of online, print media, television and radio. Norwegian television station DNtv has even posted video of the protest online and Martin Bekkelund has a roundup of Go Open links that includes many links to media coverage of the protest. Martin also has a blog post on the protest that includes some great photos.
It is fascinating to see how awareness of digital civil liberties has become white enough that we now see real protests in addition to online action. For my part, this marks the second technology protest that I've attended in person — the first one was some years back in Strasbourg protesting against irregularities in the software patent legislation process in the EU when I was with MySQL.
Update: AP has picked up the story - they report 60 people and seem to have a milder tone than other reports.
Update: Simon Phipps, Sun's Chief Open Source Officer, blogged about the protest and was entrepreneurial enough to interview Trond Heier about his part in the protest.
Update: <no>ooxml has their own report (including Steve's speech) and a good link roundup (which I've nabbed:
- http://atvs.vg.no/player/index.php?id=15735
- http://blog.borud.no/2008/04/ooxml-debate.html
- http://flickr.com/groups/750232@N22/pool/
- http://grimstveit.no/jakob/blog/2008/04/08/ooxml-demonstration-in-oslo-wednesday-1200/
- http://www.computerworld.dk/art/45252
- http://www.dagbladet.no/kultur/2008/04/09/532046.html
- http://www.dagensit.no/bransje/article1376549.ece?jgo=c1_re_&WT.svl=article_title
- http://www.digi.no/php/art.php?id=519531
- http://www.dn.no/dntv/teknologi/article1376558.ece?WT.mc_id=dntv_rel
- http://www.raffee.co.za/
- http://www.raffee.co.za/post/31234325
- http://www.raffee.co.za/post/31234592
- http://www.tectonic.co.za/?p=2340
- http://www.tranexp.com:2000/InterTran?url=http%3A%2%2Fwww.digi.no%2Fphp%2Fart.php%3Fid%3D519531&type=text&text=&from=nor&to=eng
- http://www.tu.no/it/article151272.ece
- http://www.vg.no/teknologi/artikkel.php?artid=531467
Link Summary
- photo sharing
- http://www.flickr.com/people/martinbekkelund/
- Norwegian Free Softwa...pen Source conference
- http://noooxml.com
- http://www.itscj.ipsj...34/open/0991draft.htm
- Standards, SGML and Topic Map expert.
- Norwegian technologis.... Opera Software CTO.
- http://www.w3.org/Peo...owcome/p/cascade.html
- Progressive Norwegian...ftware services firm.
- CEO of Linpro AS.
- http://des.no
- http://www.dn.no/dntv...gi/article1376558.ece
- Norwegian Electronic Frontierist
- http://www.bekkelund....open-08-oppsummering/
- http://www.bekkelund....monstrerer-mot-ooxml/
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strasbourg
- http://www.iht.com/ar...tal-Demonstration.php
- http://www.webmink.net/
- http://blogs.sun.com/...ry/driven_to_extremes
- http://www.noooxml.org
- http://www.noooxml.or...hrow-ooxml-out-of-iso
- http://atvs.vg.no/player/index.php?id=15735
- http://blog.borud.no/.../04/ooxml-debate.html
- http://flickr.com/groups/750232@N22/pool/
- http://grimstveit.no/...-oslo-wednesday-1200/
- http://www.computerworld.dk/art/45252
- http://www.dagbladet....008/04/09/532046.html
- http://www.dagensit.n...;WT.svl=article_title
- http://www.digi.no/php/art.php?id=519531
- http://www.dn.no/dntv...ece?WT.mc_id=dntv_rel
- http://www.raffee.co.za/
- http://www.raffee.co.za/post/31234325
- http://www.raffee.co.za/post/31234592
- http://www.tectonic.co.za/?p=2340
- http://www.tranexp.co...p;from=nor&to=eng
- http://www.tu.no/it/article151272.ece
- http://www.vg.no/tekn...kkel.php?artid=531467
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Posted on Thursday, April 10th, 2008 at 0:27
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April 10th, 2008 at 2:20
It's "Håkon" not "Håkan
April 10th, 2008 at 2:27
Fixed - thanks for the note!
April 10th, 2008 at 19:33
Cheers and congratulations to all Norwegian folks that was on that protest from Brazil !!!
April 11th, 2008 at 1:20
[...] Photos by Martin Bekkelund. More info on Zak Greant's blog. [...]
April 11th, 2008 at 1:25
I wish I could be there too.