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Computer Experts stage protest

Approximately 60 data experts staged a rare and noisy street demonstration in downtown Oslo, Norway yesterday to protest against the adoption of Microsoft Corp’s document format as an international

standard and against Norway voting for the move.

Last week, the International Standards Organisation narrowly voted in favour of using Microsoft’s Office Open XML, or OOXLM, format as a world standard, despite claims by opponents that it locks out competitors and forces Microsoft customers to keep buying the American software giant’s computer programs.

The peaceful Oslo protest was called by Steve Pepper, who stepped down

as chairperson of the Standards Norway committee on the issue after being out voted in a decision for Norway to support the Microsoft standard. Protesters carried such banners as “Microoft: Support ODF (OpenDocument Format)”.

Pepper claimed the committee ignored the advice of the majority of the Nordic nation’s software experts and displayed “scandalous behaviour”. “People shouldn’t have to pay money to Microsoft to be able to read my documents,” he said.

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