Is Microsoft Paying To Influence UN Standards? 298
PizzaFace writes "Microsoft is reported to be spending strategically to influence the United Nations' standards for business data exchange. A UN standards-setting body, UN/CEFACT, and an industry-standards group, OASIS, had developed an open standard format for data interchange, called ebXML. Microsoft hired two people from UN/CEFACT, and a few months later the body decided to stop working on ebXML and instead to work on a Business Collaboration Framework for web services, promoted by Microsoft and IBM. Microsoft then paid for three UN committee members to travel to six countries to promote the BCF."
Similar story last August (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What? The UN? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:UN - The Best International Organization... (Score:3, Informative)
Nothing that spell check would pick up. A "currier" is a person who prepares leather hides e.g. - by tanning them. Therefore, an International Currier would be a perfectly valid phrase referring to one who prepares leather hides around the world.
Of course... (Score:4, Informative)
Normal operating procedure.. why act suprised?
Re:No - the price is too cheap (Score:1, Informative)
I doubt it. The bulk of any large organization's workforce are paper pushers.
https://jobs.un.org/release1/vacancy/vacancy.as
Not too many rice distributor positions there...but I see Administration - 20, Conference services - 10, programme management -19...
Re:This is not surprising (Score:0, Informative)
Re:Weird (Score:5, Informative)
His take seemed to be that this standard was complete in name only, just to have something to show for their efforts. But most of the specialists stopped contributing to it after the MS mess became known.
He understood Microsoft's desire to influence the standards, but most lobbying is done explicitly. I think they reacted so negatively because they were obviously trying to hide their influence, yet pretend to be having an open and impartial standards setting group.
Most of the technology people involved were primarily concerned with making the standard open to even the smallest and poorest businesses and countries worldwide, and when they found out about this they just weren't happy at all.
Correction : Any Bowers, not Bob Garfield (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Why are they working on this (Score:3, Informative)
So when you go to Wal-Mart or JC Penney or even Dell and buy something, the whole business process behind that revolves around electronic documents. An electronic Purchase Order is created by Company X, which sends it to it's supplier, Company Y. Company Y acknowledges it and eventually sends back Ship Notification and an Invoice electronically. Saving both companies money.
ebXML was a proposed format to replace a lot of the old standards by using their own flavor of XML and their own comms stuff.
Re:No - the price is too cheap (Score:3, Informative)
A Dutch member of parliament has a salary of 7100 euro gross per month. The Socialist Party (SP) politicians give that to the party.
The SP will return a part of the money to the politician: 1900 net plus 100 euro expenses per month.
M$ is definately paying to influence in the US (Score:4, Informative)
The site is sponsored by a group called Public Citzen, a 30 year old organization established with Ralph Nader that among other tracks the funding of all canidates, regardless of party:
Microsoft is on the list of contributors to the Bush reelection campaign.
Steve
Re:No - the price is too cheap (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, but there is a big difference between local government and national government. The fact that people like your father are willing to serve their communities regardless of compensation is an example of why the USA was originally a very highly decentralized nation.
Re:Maybe it's better... (Score:2, Informative)
Nice rant, but the facts say otherwise. Check out the ebXML web site [ebxml.org] for some facts and you'll find it has wide support, was created under the chairmanship of IBM and is supported by key current electronic business project RosettaNet, a range of current players like CommerceOne and Documentum and of course OASIS, which is huge consortium [oasis-open.org] with wide membership including Microsoft and IBM.
Maybe closer to the truth is that the openness of ebXML is a huge threat to the market strategy of Microsoft, offering among other things a standardised XML markup for business transactions (UBL) that undermines the standard-connections, proprietary-content trojan horse that their web services strategy is creating.