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ISO Says No To Microsoft's OOXML Standard
qcomp writes "The votes are in and Microsoft has lost for now, reports the FFII's campaign website OOXML. The 2/3 majority needed to proceed with the fast-track standardization has not been achieved. Now the standard will head to the ballot resolution meeting to address the hundreds of technical comments submitted along with the votes." Here is yesterday's speculation as to how the vote would turn out.
This move is a non-story because regardless of what the ISO approves or disapproves, Microsoft will continue to go the way they want to go and the 90% of the Office customer base will follow them, just as will the pre-install bundled customers. Other office suites are advised to ignore the upcoming de facto standard at their own peril.
A small victory, but an important one. Maybe Massachusetts can now be persuaded to move to an actual open, easy-to-implement and reliable standard to preserve government records. It can join Russia and Norway in using ODF.
Indeed. We may have won the battle, but the war isn't over.
What is particularly interesting about the result is the "new" members of the voting body (you know the ones that don't normally voted but suspiciously wanted to this time) all voted for YES. Its obvious Microsoft has been bribing voters, surely this won't go unnoticed by the heads of ISO? Perhaps it's time the changed the rules to prevent this happening again?
If Microsoft did force their "standard" on people, how much would it cripple the marketplace? Already at work we are dealing with Microsoft's proprietory components causing a severe case of "haves vs have-nots" in file sharing. And what is most fustrating, is how people do not grasp what they are doing, in that using the proprietory components, they are locking out their co-workers, reducing work output as we have to get them to export their documents into a more generally accepted form. And they turn around and blame the majority of the office. Too sad.
Karma Whoring for Fun and Profit.
The linked article above states the presumed "No" vote to be unofficial and according to unamed "sources". This could well go the other way and in fact be approved. Any celebration should wait until ISO offically releases the voting results.
I no longer presume "sources" to have any credibility.
"Insanity is doing the same thing over again expecting a different result."
The first time they chose ODF, that was about doing a standard. Now the OOXML is about buyouts, and has nothing to do with standards.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I submit though, that the job isn't over, but incomplete. The ISO seriously needs to look at fixing how Microsoft attempted to hijack the process to suit their own gain, and ignore the real purpose of International Standards.
Until this fixed, we'll see more of the same, on a greater scale. And not just by Microsoft. The end result would be the weakening of the usefulness of real standards, if the current system is left as it is.
Good luck to the ISO.
The best way to predict the future is to create it. - Peter Drucker.
...Microsoft doesn't have the air of legitimacy that ISO approval would have brought.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
If Microsoft addressed all the concerns, then they would likely have an open standard. Microsoft won't do that, because within a few months of them having an open standard, OpenOffice and KOffice will have OOXML support.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Fair enough. I'm no fan of ODF, and I think OOXML has gotten a lot of crap for bogus reasons. But OOXML is a buggy, broken standard. Hopefully Microsoft will clean up some of the issues and we'll see a better standard as a result.
In the mean time, I'm going to continue sending PDFs around. Neither OOXML nor ODF provide the level of consistency in layout that PDF provides.
Perhaps that's why they engage in these practices? Surely if developers and end users were aware of the "actual benefits of Microsoft technology", they'd switch to a platform that benefits them rather than Microsoft.
So the official line from you shills is still going to be "It was rogue employees" eh?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I fail to see the fuss, both formats suck and really have no place as a desktop publishing format. They are crappy WYSIWYG data dumps that are heavily tied to rendering algorithms of their respective editor and really are not archival safe.
I can take 20 year old TeX documents and render them just fine. But you give me even a 10 year old WYSIWYG file and there is a good chance I won't be able to do anything with the file.
What is it going to be like 50 years from now when you try to pull up an old manuscript? You know how Popular Science likes to pull up magazine issues from 40+ years ago, I wonder how they are going to manage that 40 years from now when the proprietary and open file formats are unsupported and "obsolete".
Really the only safe choice is to make a hard copy and hope the OCR of the future is better than it is now.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
France, and I think some more, has suggested to split OOXML in two parts, one which is ODF compatible, one which deals with the old Office formats.
What is your view as being a MS developer, do you think Microsoft are able to do this?
(I don't mean technically, merely politically) For my own I think that is a great idea.I think MS were stuck, really. The new format had to be sufficiently similar to the old binary format to allow relatively simple conversion of files.
I wonder if Microsoft's scandalous misbehavior in regard to this vote will follow them permanently? It seems as if people with deep roots in any field, be it literature or science, have longer memories than the population at large. Hopefully we have been reminded (again) that Microsoft's business model is currently dependent on leveraging its monopoly on the desktop, and that it will do *anything* to preserve that monopoly. Microsoft has shown only average or sub-par performance in driving revenue in sectors where its monopoly does not serve it as well, such as the Zune or the X-box or search or SaaS (Software as a Service). Microsoft's genius is not really engineering, where it is merely an average company, readily eclipsed by Apple or Google, for example. Microsoft's genius is really in marketing strategy, and until now, that strategy has been asserting a value proposition that has proven difficult to refuse by the various supply-side and demand-side players in the desktop space.
Now that a little polish has been taken off its faux standards, perhaps we will see a bit more free market competition enter into a previously broken market. I wonder how well Microsoft would compete in the Office productivity market if it were unable to charge exorbitant prices for its commodity office productivity solutions? I am betting that a large segment of the market is going say that OpenOffice.org is "good enough" for them, and abandon Microsoft.
At any rate, Microsoft's most recent round of bullying will serve as a visible reminder to the world why it is dangerous to allow Microsoft to continue to hold its monopoly: because it will abuse its power.
By your logic, bribing a Senator is no worse than giving money to the AARP.
We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex—but Congress can. – Cullen Hightower
As a disgruntled Microsoft customer, I'd like to ask "WTF?!"
Seriously, I don't believe the devs working within the company are bad, but you guys need to stage an uprising or something. The people running your company seem to be total dicks.
as a Microsoft dev myself I like to think the technology field I base myself in is popular based on technical merits rather than stupid market hacking. Tactics like the OOXML fiasco only distract people from the actual benefits of MS technology.
There's a saying where I live that goes... "You just need to sample a single grain of rice to judge an entire pot..." Microsoft's dubious and nefarious tactics wrt OOXML have shown them to be ruthless cowards; and enemies of technical merit; as software developers like you must know.
Other than rewriting the same code every 3 years when MS decides to rebrand an technology and stop supporting old versions... what are these 'benefits' you see in MS technology? Spreading disinformation amongst the developer community is a very grave sin, in my book... much worse than 'Get the Facts' aimed at consumers.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
The minute that Microsoft accepts ODF, particularly through easy integration via "Save As..." and allowing it to be set as the default document format, they have started down the path to the ending of their monopoly. At some point, some manager is going to ask "Why are we paying $xxx,xxx in licensing to Microsoft when this OpenOffice my brother-in-law installed on my computer can save in this OpenDocument format costs nothing?"
Once you break the Office lock-in, the potential for Windows itself to be compromised, because moving away from Office means having the capacity to move away from the entire Windows platform. For Microsoft, ODF is an enormous threat. Not today, not tomorrow, but within the next five to ten years, particularly if the trend of various governments and other groups to push for documents being stored in open formats continues. Microsoft has to find a way to get OOXML defined as an open format, and now it has made it clear that it is willing to pay to make sure that standards body are undermined so that it can do so.
It has failed in the fast-track, which, I'd say, reduces the possibility of OOXML as it now stands ever getting an ISO stamp. However, it has sent the message to its business partners throughout the world, and likely to a many nations themselves, that if they are willing to be bribed, it's willing to put money in their hands.
It's shown a rather ugly side of ISO, and international standards in general, but here's the real problem. No one cares. Where is the BBC, CNN or any major news site picking up on the story of a major corporation attempting to undermine the ISO to get a standard which even the most generous experts are calling flawed passed? Where are the investigative reporters looking into attempts to undermine open document adoption in places like Massachussetts? Where are the editorials condemning Microsoft for undue influence over public policy? I mean, every time Sony so much as appears that it's going to do something nasty, the BBC tech site has a writeup on it. When some director at AT&T burps, it's over the financial pages?
Is it just that open document concerns aren't as sexy as network neutrality or rootkits?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I think the approach is flawed. You should not be working on the ISO committee - you should be working on industry and government. A numerically small membership can be bought and/or coerced and is thus de facto vulnerable to process abuse and vote rigging.
Let's turn this one on its head. I'm perfectly happy with MS ratifying a 6000+ page spec, because the moment they have the ISO standard status they will to abide by it to be compliant.
I don't think it would be wildly unfair to ask MS to then ensure AND PROVE BEYOND DOUBT that the product they supply is FULLY compliant with their ISO standard.
To me, that would mean:
(1) A full test suite needs to be constructed of which independent scrutiny is paid for by MS. MS Office needs to be fully compliant with statements as made in the specifications. No ifs, no buts, no maybe. Only full compliance means an acceptable product, but that's only 50% of the requirement - there's more, mainly addressing the reason the whole ISO standard compliance is required:
(2) The identification and demonstration of a mature, competing product that can read, edit and write the documents produced by the above compliant suite to a standard that makes it clear there is 100% interoperability.
The latter proves to the evaluating entity that:
(1) the standard is complied with, and is not just a marketing gimmick.
(2) the interoperability needs are addressed
(3) there is an alternative product which prevents vendor lock in (this is why I used the word 'MATURE' - you don't want some last-minute coded piece of junk from an MS friendly vendor pretending it's a product). A product has an established user base.
If the product on offer cannot meet those two requirements the story is over. Simple. If no 3rd party can create a competing product or, at a minimum, achieve unencumbered interoperability (i.e. not depending on a license) then the product is unsafe from a disaster recovery point of view.
So, if Microsoft's 6000+ page spec is a bit too much for either themselves or someone else to implement, the answer is easy - make one that works. That's all the world has been asking, simple unencumbered interoperability. I'm fully aware that that doesn't agree with their current business model, but they ought to read "who moved my cheese" - the supply is dwindling.
IMHO they had their opportunity with ODF. They blew it.
Insert
You are an American, I guess, by your immediate recourse to legal action as the solution to every problem? That may well be the best way to solve the problems with the ANSI committee, I honestly wouldn't know, but I can certainly say that in most other parts of the world, legal action would be about the last thing that is needed (except in cases where there was provable fraud, or some other illegal occurrence, but I suspect the number of such cases where it could be proven in a court of law is approximately zero). International standards work because of goodwill and cooperation between interested parties. Without this, there is no point having a standard in the first place. Microsoft (or at least some sections of Microsoft) clearly has a different view of how standards work, and also they clearly have no shame. IMHO they are beyond redemption, but they are just one company, and only plays a small part of the overall ISO organization. The committees responsible for the future progress of OOXML need to get back to focussing on technical issues, how to best proceed to come up with a workable standard, and get rid of the politics. (My personal feeling is that there is no way to achieve a workable ISO standard out of the current OOXML spec, but who knows, stranger things have happened.) A lot of things about the OOXML vote have no precedent in ISO history, and probably some ISO and/or National Body procedures will be changed as a result. Forcing these changes by legal action would be expensive and counterproductive, and in the process surely lose the goodwill of the member nations.
The game.
Seriously, I don't believe the devs working within the company are bad, but you guys need to stage an uprising or something. YOU are the customer! You are paying Microsoft to continue with their existing tactics. YOU are the cause!
FFS! Take some responsibility for your actions people.
Deleted
OOXML is clearly designed to look like a standard, if you take the "executive view" and don't really look at it, while it's really just another locked-in format.
So let's put it this way, Is Microsoft AFRAID of a level playing field?
If they were serious about the whole standards thing, they could just add real ODF support. Then they could simply put out MS Office that worked with ODF, and most people and businesses would STILL buy it, even with alternatives available. Beyond that, since they do have appear to have a head start in usability and function with MS Office, they could simply have the have the BEST office suite that happens to work with ODF file formats. Beyond that, if ODF is not sufficiently robust, MS could "play well with others" and work to add what is needed. Aren't they confident that they could still have the BEST implementation, along with "history effect"?
Does Microsoft really believe that they can't compete in an open market, without customer lock-in, or without cheating?
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
why is this news if the Final vote hasn't been made ye it won't be made until Feb 2008t
In other words, OOXML will be what everyone uses?
Great.
The "backwards compatibility" talk is all FUD really...
Backwards compatibility should be handled by the converter, and shouldn't pollute the format itself.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
"single disgruntled employee who singlehandedly and without authorization from his/her manager bribed the national bureaux of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Congo, Costa Rica, Côte-d'Ivoire, Croatia, Cuba (Cuba? they're not even allowed to buy Microsoft products!), Cyprus, Egypt, Fiji, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Morocco, Kuwait, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Sri Lanka, Syria, Tanzania, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan,
(take deep breath)
Austria, Bulgaria, Colombia, Germany (shame on you, DIN), Ghana, Greece, Kenya, Malta, Poland (only half of the committee(s)), Portugal, Singapore, Switzerland, Tunisia, Turkey, Uruguay, USA, Venezuela (wait 'till someone tells Chávez this),
(remember to breathe)
and thwarted into abstinence the votes of a.o. Malaysia, the Netherlands and Sweden",
yet? (verb at beginning of sentence)
Let's all thank the 1 country above quotum that voted no, otherwise this would have destroyed the credibility of ISO, IMHO.
Thank you VERY much, Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, Czech Republic, Ecuador, France, India, Iran, Ireland, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, South Africa, Thailand, United Kingdom. I don't have money but you have my respect.
To be, or not to be: isn't that quite logical, Slashdot Beta?
Maybe, maybe not, but Cuba and Syria would like to see the decline of Western civilisation, so they do have an interest in OOXML becoming a standard.
I don't therefore I'm not.
I'm not convinced by that argument. PDF, for example, is highly extensible but has seen few problems in that regard. I'm not sure a technical approach to preventing the so called "embrace & extend" will be useful or effective - but it'll certainly make the format less useful for legitimate purposes.
What _will_ help is a good compliance test suite, and an understanding that it's *ok* to extend formats so long as you do so to include things that users need that the standard provides no way to represent and that are non-critical to the core functionality of the document. In general, if you can strip the extensions and still use the document, that's OK.
There are good reasons why you want to be able to extend document formats. Document management systems, for example, benefit considerably from being able to embed their own data in the XML document structure. Forms processing engines need this. In fact, most server-based document manipulation really wants to be able to keep it's own data in the document struture. I'm not convinced that ODF will be seriously adopted in government and large companies unless these things are possible. You might wonder why people use this stuff, and I can only offer my assurance that it can indeed be useful, since unless you've been working with lots of documents it's kind of hard to grasp. Even at my small company there are things like this that I'd like to be able to do to keep track of some of our work better.
MS will embrace & extend the format if they like, whether or not it makes explicit provision for extensibility. That's the problem. If the format is designed to be extensible, such efforts are less harmful, easier to make understood by other tools, and more susceptible to submission as subsidiary standards where they're generally useful. I think MS got this right to an extent with OOXML, and ODF will sooner or later have to follow a similar path or be replaced by something that can.