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OOXML Won't Get Fast-Track ISO Standardization
realdodgeman writes "The International Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS) recently held an internal poll to determine the position that the United States should take on Microsoft's request for Office Open XML (OOXML) approval. With eight votes in favor, seven against, and one abstention, the group was one vote short of the nine votes required for approving OOXLM ISO standardization. This will mean a huge slowdown to the standardization to the OOXML format. 'Given the controversial nature, relative complexity, and significant importance of the standard, the results of INCIT's vote is unsurprising. An INCITS technical committee also voted against fast-track OOXML approval last month prior to the executive board's vote. Further deliberation is clearly needed as well as further refinement of the format. It seems as though many of the organizations participating in the approval process are generally supportive of the standard itself, but are unwilling to voice unconditional support until their concerns are resolved. OOXML may be down, but it's certainly not out.'"
Its by Microsoft, they cant even make their various versions of office forwards and backwards compatible and people expect them to put a standard out that will hold to the same?
Also why doesnt Open Office.org sue Microsoft for trademark infringement or something for their obviously deceptively labeled standard that is being proposed?
09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
+2 Troll is Slashdot's way of saying groupthink is confused
In Soviet Russia, ISO standardization fast tracks YOU and I for one welcome our new OOXML over.. oh wait.
What is...?
it is disgusting that it came out with: "With eight votes in favor". i think these 8 members of the board need re-evaluated. This is a sad reflection on how big business can mess-up wonderful things made by society.
I don't think this standardization is being passed for the benefit of the consumers. Microsoft has had a firm grasp on business establishments with MS Office for quite a long time. There was competition, but nothing ever really came close to worry Microsoft. I find it not all that coincidental that now Microsoft has real competition (Google, Open Office, etc.) that they're trying to pass a standard. Microsoft is trying to reinstate a strong presence in the office. It hasn't really lost the one it has, but its teetering over the edge. Especially with all the relatively recent reports of various government offices going to open source, free software suites.
Given the speed with which Microsoft attempted to ram through their "standard" and the dubiousness of the tactics employed (see discussions over on Groklaw), that was far too close to take any comfort from.
The real questions now are:
(a) how to ensure that the various standards organizations around the world really sit up and pay attention so that the obvious technical deficiencies and the crippling lack of open-ness in the proposal -- which were pointed out over and over again by individuals and companies opposed to the fast-tracking -- will be truly taken into account?
(b) how to keep Microsoft from succeeding with their tactic of stacking attendance at national standards organizations meetings to carry the day for them?
They almost succeeded the last time. If something doesn't change, they won't fail next time.
licet differant, aequabitur
people have to digest this standard, the more they will come to realize that it is anything but. It is obviously designed to choke the competition in a pile of meaningless drivel. Most of things it "specifies" is that the result should be the name as Microsoft Word XXXX. Therefore, the majority of the specification is external to the specification. You could not implement the specification without referencing the behavior of each of the major revisions of Word. IMHO, a specification, such as this should stand alone. Open Office can do this, why can't Microsoft?
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
Way to sensationalize the title, Zonk. The organization which will form the official position of the US voted against approving the standard. That's quite a leap from saying "OOXML Won't Get Fast-Track ISO Standardization". Guess what the "I" in "ISO" stands for? (Although if MS can't even get the US to vote for them, it's hopefully doubtful that they'll get most other countries...)
What happened to all the funny little Microsoft partners that were voting last time? They didn't seem to show up on the list this time.
My canonical reference for these things is Andy Updegrove's blog (http://consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/).
Why does the Department of Homeland Security vote on computer document standards?
Do they have some special expertise in the area or what?
Isn't MS' OOXML relatively complex when compared with ODF? I've read that MS' xml is filled with tags specific to their current and past versions of office formatting. Now ODF isn't loaded with that kind of cruft; its much more streamlined in it's tags. With this in mind, which xml format should be adopted as a starting-base - keeping in mind that whatever is chosen will be extended as time passes leading to even more complexity?
Shh.
OOXML is not important at all, until after those essential refinements are in place. Right now all it is, is DEFECTIVE.
I don't mind this becoming a standard if it is truly "standard", which means that in the implementation documentation, EVERYTHING about it is disclosed, with no NDA, or proprietary "features". If that happens, I support OOXML for standardization. I (and many others) would welcome MS disclosing how it will work, as well as how all parts are suppose to work, which means explaining how to make something "work the way Office 97 cell format spacing" works and all other definitions in the standard which state it will the same way something else already works in previous Word and Excel versions. Tell us how to do everything and I will give MS full support for it being a recognized ISO standard.
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Why is an international committee deciding the US position? Should it not be a US committee, probably under the auspices of ANSI as I believe that it is the national standards organisations which are members of ISO.
> OOXML Won't Get Fast-Track ISO Standardization
;-)
If Rupert Murdoch can buy The Wall Street Journal, why can't Microsoft buy ISO?
PS. Bill, US$680K plus options a year and I'm yours! I've even got a plan to bring that pesky Slashdot into line.
This decision was only for the U.S. and it's not over there. Look carefully at the comments by those who voted, and you'll see there is room for changes. Look at Lexmark's comment...
It's very important to understand that the OOXML fight is not over. Microsoft are doing a fantastic job of explaining to committees why this format deserves to be an international standard, and of ensuring no-one gets onto the committees who can raise this dreamy proposition.
We are looking at a lot of votes between now and end-August, across the world, and it's still not too late to submit comments to - for example - the Australian Standards Authority, which will almost certainly vote YES to OOXML.
On NoOOXML.org the FFII is coordinating the fight. If you've not signed the petition, please do so.
My blog
Of the 15 that voted, it got 53% of the vote, only needed one more (which could have been achieved as there was one abstention) to be given ISO standardisation - and this is "unsurprising"?
What this says to me is that the people doing the voting do not understand the issues at hand. If they did, then there should have been no-where near that number of votes for this format.
Avantslash - View Slashdot cleanly on your mobile phone.
We should lobby ISO to reject based on OOXML misleading name alone. Microsoft has figured out how to embrace, extend and extinguish open standards and open source. They're adopting the word 'open' in an attempt to change it's definition. A standard that references proprietary implementations is not open by any current definition.
We have to take a stand somewhere or Microsoft will be pushing it's 'open' (meaning closed) solutions to the CxO as having all the benefits of F/OSS.
And understand. The companies that voted for OOXML are:
- Apple
- The Department of Homeland Security
- EIA
- EMC
- HP
- Intel
- Microsoft(!)
- Sony
How many of those are Microsoft partners, retailers, or Microsoft itself?
In a late breaking development,Microsoft announced the creation of a new Open International Committee for Information Technology. Microsoft spokesman affirmed the commitment of Microsoft for providing choice for its customers. Mr Toungei N Cheek said, "We have always promoted the idea of choice for the customers. They should be able to choose between multiple standards. But we realized we were all supporting the standards issued by a single international agency. We decided we need choice there too. So the customers will be able choose between multiple standards from multiple agencies. To provide for consistency and reliability the customers should use just a single vendor, us. Apart from that all these standards and standard creating agencies are just so many bullet points for the dumb CIOs and Pointy Haired Bosses to justify continuing to send billions of dollars to Redmond. So let us see it in the proper perspective."
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The ISO's position on OOXML is determined by a poll of the National Bodies. INCTIS is merely the USA National Body. It can be voted down by "approve" votes from other countries.
The thing is, it's a piece of crap standard, in that it shows nothing of structure, it only shows formatting. It's pretty much .doc in xml format, without any structure in it.
If you'd like to have an xml format for more than just word processing, i.e. you'd like to get content out of and into the file format, choosing ODF over MSOXML is a no brainer.
Bart
P.S. i refuse to call it Open Office XML, the proper name should be Microsoft Office XML
Even if or when it becomes a standard I don't think Microsoft themselves could fully support it in the long term. Part of the reason many of us programmers re-invent even our own wheel is our old wheels get real mucked up over time with patches enhancements and exceptions, etc, periodically it is time to re-think and re-tool the concept to better integrate the whole idea.
From reading about MS's OOXML they are long overdue for a reinvention of the wheel (and thinking about it, whats to stop them? I can see them with OOXML as ISO saying "we have an ISO standard" and then put in something that's truly fixed (also proprietary and designed to automatically be native), much of the public won't know it is not 'the standard' but believe it is because thats how PR wants it. And then we have this mess again.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
I'll quote here from "Microsoft Windows 2000 TCP/IP Implementation details" because it's an important and convenient example:
This is only one example out of a great many. Microsoft implements (embraces), extends, and to the extent possible extinguishes other people's standards for their bread and butter. Some people feel it's the only business model they have.
I'm sure in those groups are some individuals who would object to your characterization of them as controlled by Microsoft. No doubt some of them think they're choosing the best platform and that they can change their choice when they find a better one. To the extent they suffer from Microsoft's control many of them resent it. A rebellion is brewing. Regardless, it is amazing how little quality they achieve with so much talent isn't it?
The XML representation of a document does indeed shed some light. Have a look at the most trivial letter as an OOXML Word document for an example of why Microsoft programmers should sit quietly in a darkened room until their minds achieve clarity.
One downmod and you're back to trolling at 1.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
- Open Document Format lacks some features expected from modern office applications. As a result, many applications use their own extensions. These, of course, make the files incompatible: While other applications can read the document, some of the formatting is simply lost. Office Open XML has a complete feature set. It's actually based on a full word processing application, not on the lowest common denominator.
- Open Document Format is underspecified. It does not speficy exactly how to lay out the elements of a document. As a result, the same document looks different in different applications. Office Open XML exactly specifies all of that. This ensures that applications can actually share documents but makes the specification much longer and harder to implement.
- While Open Document Format is an open standard, one usually uses the OpenOffice.org flavour. This is not really different from Office Open XML and its Microsoft Office flavour. The OpenOffice.org flavour is only documented as OpenOffice.org's source code, the Microsoft Office flavour is mostly documented in the standard.
- Open Document Format allows easy upgrading from StarOffice/OpenOffice.org documents. Office Open XML allows easy upgrading from Microsoft Office documents.
- Open Document Format has a longer history as an open standard and is already an ISO standard. Office Open XML is derived from a proprietary format.
- Open Document Format has more existing implementations. Office Open XML has currently just a single implementation - Microsoft Office. There's the risk that something is missing in the standard making it unimplementable by competitors.
The best thing, IMO, would be to combine the two specifications: There should be a profile/extension for ODF that adds the things missing from ODF but present in OOXML: missing features and missing depth of the specification.Claus
The vote tally: http://ballot.itic.org/itic/tallyvote.taf?function =vote&committee=INCITS&ballot_id=2212
I found the vote very interesting and suspect "eight votes in favor, seven against, and one abstention".
... be involved in such a nice neat split decision?
...] have a corporatist welfare economy). M$ keeps customers from coalescing around any other OEM/OSD industry format/product. M$ is not the lone institution (include Congress and EU Parliament) in maintaining an exploitive corporatist welfare economy.
Can M$ lobbyist, nepotism, payola
I agree, M$-Tactics and Biz-Model, has always been based on maintaining no industry (or any type of) standard that may allow innovative competitor products to diminish M$ customer hostage base. The M$ Biz-Model should be considered monopolistic (to include software patents) tactics that are highly disruptive to software innovation and software entrepreneurs in a free and open market economy (but we [US, EU
I have no doubt that the intent of M$ (and others) is always to delay any open/global standardizations, and support any proprietary industry standards (like a DRM/IPR de-facto/de-jure standard) that supports holding customers hostage, and/or preventing (via DRM/IPR... virtual Iron Curtain) immigration by customers to other Corporate States' formats/products. Wow, when I say it this way it sound really sinister and monopolistic (but all perfectly legal or ignored?).
I object to M$ BizTactics, not their products which I never use at home.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Who was it that said, "If Apple didn't exist, Microsoft would have to invent them?" I'm also really frustrated that the IEEE (to which I belong) wouldn't take a stand against a standard that blatantly references commercial products.
$640K should be enough for anyone!
it allows for binary large objects (BLOBS) of undefined format so doesn't actually solve the problem at all.
Its not hard to guess that Microsoft will just go on using their old closed proprietary formats, just as a BLOB encapsulated in a thin OOXML wrapper.
OOXML used this way would be a quick solution to give a fake legal veneer of openness rather than a real attempt at an actually open format.
Not much to choose from, (though if it were only "Nukes ML", sigh), but the first has a bit of an edge.
http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=25994 1&cid=20099653
http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2007/feb0 7/02-01OpenXMLPR.mspx
Anybody else feel like this is the case with the ODF/OOXML issue?
If you're going to tout expertise regarding a formula, then please apply it correctly:
In Soviet Russia, tired old meme regurgitates formula on YOU !!