We, the undersigned, are ending our work within Standard Norway. It is sad when organisations that work for our common interest fail the task. Through the OOXML work, Standard Norway has shown, with a clear margin, that they are not fit to represent Norway in the ISO.

"Standardization of formats for content on the Internet is more important than ever. A large part of mankind's communication is done digitally, and ALL must have the ability to read and write these formats," said Håkon Wium Lie.

Standard Norway chose to defy their own technical committee and vote yes to a specification that is immature, useless, and more importantly, totally unworthy of being called an ISO standard.

Standard Norway has lost its credibility in the IT industry from the way it has administered the process from day one. Standard Norway has set its own commercial interests ahead of what is best for society, most feasible technologically, and what is professionally advisable, and this is a real shame.

"By participating in further work in Standard Norway we will most assuredly lose our professional credibility," said Arne S. Nielsen.

Therefore, we have chosen to leave the committee, and for good.

We end our work with Standard Norway for the following reasons:

1) The administration of Standard Norway trust 37 identical letters from Microsoft partners more than their own technical committee.

2) The process within Standard Norway has been unpredictable, very flawed and worse, the administration has dediced to change the rules many times along the way, and this without noticing any of this members.

3) Standard Norway and the ISO have committed a series of violations of their own rules and other irregularities in the OOXML process when Microsoft was in the picture.

4) Standard Norway has overruled hundreds of thousands of users in the public and private sectors, says Martin Bekkelund.

The mass-copied Microsoft-letter didn't contain a single professional argument. Standard Norway first said that these kinds of statements would not be given any weight. However, at the end of the process they changed their mind and emphasized the Microsoft letters. Thereby, Standard Norway misled the committee members.

Each and every one of us mentioned in this resignation letter will continue our work for better standards within organizations other than Standard Norway.

The process at Standard Norway is totally unpredictable, subjective and is continuously changed behind the scenes. "There is no way to appeal a decision, neither inside nor outside Standard Norway, since the administrative staff who makes the decisions is the same who reviews appeals and complaints", says Trond Heier.

The undersigned signatures of all the thirteen members that have quit are reproduced here: