Slashdot Mirror
India Decides to Vote "No" For OOXML
Indian writes to mention that after an intense meeting at Delhi's Manak Bhawan the 21-member technical committee has decided to vote against Microsoft's Open Office Extensible Mark Up Language (OOXML) standard at the September meeting of the International Standards Organization (ISO). "Microsoft said it respects the government's decision. 'There were only three options "Yes", "No" and "Abstain" to be taken and we respect the government's decision,' Microsoft's legal affairs head Rakesh Bakshi said. He, however, added that India's 'No' vote will become a 'Yes' if Microsoft is able to resolve all technical issues with OOXML before the ballot resolution committee of ISO."
Sure...
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
I'm pretty sure Microsoft said that it 'respects' not 'respect's'. Respect doesn't own anything. That said, I'm not sure that Microsoft's enthusiasm is unfounded. If they can bribe Universal and Dreamworks, then bribing India doesn't seem too far fetched.
'Loose' is when your pants are three sizes too big. 'Lose' is when you misuse 'loose'.
I guess whoever submitted the article wanted to show that other countries still have balls...
The last time I looked at the OOXML spec, it was the most non-spec spec document I had ever seen. It was chock full of references to Microsoft's proprietary legacy code, failing to provide the details that would really allow for an open implementation. The only thing Microsoft opened up was letting developers know exactly what functionality they weren't being allowed to properly use. If this spec had been passed, it would have been an open invitation for more anti-spec specs down the road. Meanwhile, is it really a coincidence that with the advent of applications like OpenOffice, Office 2007 featured a complete revamp of the Office UI? Methinks not... Microsoft is the functional equivalent of that guy at the bar that can pick up just about any women he pleases, but is cursed with commitment issues that keep anything meaningful from developing. Bring something real to the table, billg.
Won't be surprised if a MAJOR investment from Microsoft in India is announced in the coming weeks and coincidentally the indian opposition to OOXML softened...
Germany's DIN has voted to vote YES (sorry, article in german) at ISO.
This has more to do with OOXML (nerd news) than with India.
Same in Brazil:
Brazil says no
And OpenDocument is now a national standard!
"He, however, added that India's 'No' vote will become a 'Yes' if Microsoft is able to resolve all technical issues with OOXML before the ballot resolution committee of ISO. "
Translation: "Vote 'yes' or the cow gets it."
I'd be willing to wager, knowing Microsoft's history, that political machinations will have more to do with India's final vote than technical issue resolution.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, write technology blogs.
Office Open XML, not Open Office
Ceci n'est pas une
This is the Right Thing to have happened. MS OOXML is not a standard:
- 6000 pages and still not a complete standard
- paraphrased: 'to comply with standard, you must implement these hundreds of features from previous versions, which are not in this standard, and which may be covered by patent'
- WTF!?!
Further evidence of MS's bad faith:KLAATU, BORADA, NIh*ahem*
considering a lot of those nerds will find their job outsourced to india....
not to mention regardless of what americans think they don't live in a bubble and what happens in other countries, even outside of terrorism, has ramifications inside the country.
And? Stuff gets posted to YRO all the time that has nothing to do with YRO. It's just how things are around here.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
It's Office Open XML, not Open Office XML. Love it or hate it, getting the name wrong does nothing for the credibility of Slashdot.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
So, you're saying US politics has no relation to India IT?
Well, that won't be problem. Everyone knows that when the shit has hit the fan and the crunch is on, the MS coders get their act together and just stamp out all the errors and publish a completly fixed solution.
Any of you buying this? Anyone? I don't think even a slashdot editor would fall for that line.
MS has worked on OOXML for a long time, and it still is a mess. Remind you of anything? Like say, everything else ever released by MS?
Maybe MS hopes that the ISO vote will be postponed until MS can release OOXML SP1. After all, that has always worked before. People delayed buying OS/2 because MS promised to release a new windows that would fix everything. People waited with finding alternatives to every single windows release with promise of better things to come.
You will see if MS gets their way if news emerges of the vote being delayed. If that happens, then MS has it in the bag. Then it no longer matters if they ever fix it, if you delayed to wait for a product, you gotta buy that product or admit you were wrong in waiting.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
They swapped the order, not the spelling.
If you'd RTFA, you would notice that, according to Microsoft, indeed respect does own "the government's decision".
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
How do you think "Open Office" came to get that name in the first place?
See also: Pot / Kettle / Hue-based accusations.
erroneous: look me up in a dictionary
Hasn't this happened in the past? I may be wrong, but wasn't the story that India was heavily into using Linux until Bill Gates offered a large charity donation and Microsoft offered investment incentives?
Back in the '90s the UK was a more Linux shop. Then Tony Blair got in and all changed. Amazing what politics can do. The Pointy Haired Boss syndrome on a larger scale.
Reading the article it seems a lot of people voting are voting out of short term self interest rather than long term interest or in the case of a standard like this voting on technical merit. Some people have different standards.
As for the cow - had trouble with that in the UK recently too.
From the article: About 123 counties are participating in the vote. Does anyone here know which countries, and what they voted for, if they have voted already?
-- Cheers!
ODFAlliance India Mirror on Wordprocessing-ML subcommittee discussions
Issue List submitted to the Technical Committee by the WordProcessing ML Sub Committee
Why ECMA OOXML is not a Free Document standard :Paper By Dr. Nagarjuna
My Earlier Post : Defeat M$ efforts to push Ecma OOXML in Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) Economic Times Report says
Shame on You InfosysFrom the previous name "Star Office"
great. another indicator that india has a really developing and conscious i.t. crowd.
Read radical news here
Sorry to be so cynical.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Changing the FAQ to read "news relevant to government and politics" is probably a better way to solve this one. There's really no need for the section to be even nominally limited to United States politics. A general section for science and tech-related political news is/would be very much worth having.
If they consider the tags like "DoSpacingLikeWord3ThoughtWordPerfect2ForCPMDidItB utIsActuallySlightlyWrong" which are useless for a modern format and completely unimplementable by anyone who doesn't know excatly how WP2 for CP/M does its spacing and how Word 3 for DOS differed, as technical issues, then they will never vote yes.
On the other hand, anyone voting for an international standard who doesn't consider that to be a serious problem (as there can be only one proper implementation) is either incompetant or in someone's pocket. I don't really know whichis worse.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Yes. Bashing H1-Bs is sure way to get good Karma on /.
Based on what I have seen, your job is in danger.
I think that we should call it "Office O bscene XML". There are two reasons for this:
1) It breaks the attempted trademark violation against Open Office, and
2) Their proprietary binary blobs really are an obscenity in the context of XML.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
think we'll see the return of Lindows since Microsoft owns the trademark by default? :)
Is ODF really much better as a "standard" on which to build a world or are we really just sticking it to Microsoft here?
I bet ODF has plenty of backwards compatibility issues too.
No sig today...
``That's like calling a Linux distribution SoftMicro Windows LX and saying you don't intend to confuse anyone.''
Did you mean: Lindows?
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
But see, that's just it... They aren't creating an open standard. They are acting like they are creating an open standard, but since it requires several proprietary pieces to work, it is really proprietary. The result is a harder time explaining to non-technical folks the negatives of locking up your content in M$'s proprietary formats and more wasted time for OO.o developers who have to reverse engineer the proprietary elements in OOXML. OOXML is proprietary, plain and simple.
They should be rejected and beaten for trying to pull a fast one on consumers.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5... That's the combination on my luggage!
I seem to remember that only a few no votes are required to sink the "quick-tracking" ("fast-tracking"?) of a proposed standard, but I don't remember how many.
And didn't Poland also vote no?
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
check out a torrent named linux xp, some people seems confused
2/3rds of actual votes (not counting abstentions) need to be Yes in order to pass
I know of people, myself included, who have been after Apple for years to support OpenDocument. (Yeah, it's been that long already.) As far as I can tell, the way their bugreporter is set up it's not possible to view other people's bugs. That means that all requests for supporting open standards get blown of as "duplicate" without being able to see the original or its status.
It'd be really interesting to know the real reasons Apple's still failing to support formats like OpenDocument and Ogg. Ogg entered the double digit marketshare two years back. OpenDocument is recommended by governments around the world for a few years as well. It can't be that M$ is threatening withholding its applications from the platform, because there aren't any left to speak of. Productivity software was the last piece, but faster, better, cheaper, more stable, more interoperable software can be had from everyone else -- again since a few years back. So, what's the hold up at Apple about open formats?
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
The issues are mainly parts of the spec that are not properly defined anywhere. If M$ were to fix the issues then others would be able to implement (read/write) the file format. If others can implement the file format then M$ looses it's main strangle hold on word processors. So it makes no sense at all for M$ to spill the beans and allow other to compete on a level playing field.
Let's say that M$ does properly specify the format, what else can it do ?
Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
Could someone tell me what exactly Microsoft has to do with OpenOffice?
What's worse than cow shit in the street? Rat shit in your house, that's what.
Novell backs this broken standard as-is? That's it! They already have done a lot of bad stuff lately, but this straw really breaks the camels back.
Shame on you Novell for selling out like this!
So apparently the name "Microsoft Office" is not unique enough that they can complain if people use something similar, but Open Office is totally unique and if Microsoft use any part of that it's confusing?
For your next trick, I assume you'll prove black is white and promptly be killed at the next zebra crossing.
Yes, I know that's a quote.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
This is not about Microsoft's monopolistic games nor is it about ODF vs OOXML. If Microsoft used open document formats it would not be very long before Microsoft was forced to reduce the price of Microsoft Office. Come on people, Microsoft Office is a decent program but it not worth the $380-680 that Microsoft charges for it. For Microsoft, ODF vs OOXML is about money and nothing else.
Microsoft Office generates more than 6 billion dollars a year in revenues and Microsoft will do absolutely anything to protect it. Does anyone really believe that referencing patented material is necessary or even accidental? Microsoft knows that OOXML is not a standard but they also know that they have a pretty good shot at ramming this down ISO's throat. If they succeed, they will have simultaneously crippled their competition and the ISO. The resulting confusion will ensure the safety of Microsoft Office for another few years. It's actually rather ingenious in an insidious sort of way...
There are no technical flaws in OOXML. The "standard" is exactly the way Microsoft executives want it. Open enough to bully their way through ISO and closed enough that compatible competitive software cannot be created without reverse engineering patented material...
P.S. Kudos to India!!! Baton down the hatches because Microsoft is going to bring down as much political pressure on you as they possibly can, if they haven't already.