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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.
It ain't over 'till the fat man throws a chair...
Faux standard was not certified.
[A]bort, [R]etry, [F]ail?
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
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.
I'll get you next time, Gadget! Next time!
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.
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.
In a recent development MSFT spokesman said that, one standard specifying body meets all is not a viable workable solution for the whole world. Mr Tong'n Cheek said that Microsoft will promote an alternative standard specifying body Open ISO. He said that Microsoft wants its customers to have a choice in international bodies creating standards, choice in standards themselves too. This way users can have various choices like, OpenISO certified OOXML saving MSFT product, or ISO certified OOXML saving MSFT product or, uncertified OOXML saving MSFT product or unsupported ODF saving MSFT product or...
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
...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.
breakdown by country votes: http://www.theopensourcerer.com/2007/09/03/ecma-37 6-dis-29500-ooxml-the-voting-so-far/
Note 7 countries ( marked *** ) just recently updated their status within ISO from 'O' (observer) to 'P' so they could vote. Those are mostly small countries and likely to be Microsoft puppets within ISO body. Which means MS can now actively block *any* new proposed standard and promote their own more easily.
Press release:1 070
http://www.iso.org/iso/pressrelease.htm?refid=Ref
eknagy
Microsoft puts its own spin on the result in this press release.
More information on the upcoming proceedings at ISO are explained in this discussion on the currently slashdotted noOOXML site. (my apologies for poor HTML in the original post that made <no>OOXML come out as OOXML.
Groklaw also has some commentary and more links.
It's clear that this is far from over. Microsoft will convince more countries to become O or P members in the respective committees and Further effort (exposing fraud, convincing your national bodies) is required to prevent OOXML from being accepted as a standard. But it is encouraging to see that resistance is not futileI 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.
Indeed. You'll also find that hammers are poor at undoing screws and cars aren't so good at taking you overseas.
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".
They'll use a format that actually meant for that sort of thing like, say, PDF.
The point of "WYSIWYG" is not - despite what a lot of people (including those that should know better) think - that a document looks the same on computer B as it does on computer A. It's that the document that comes out of the printer looks the same as it does on the screen.
Word processing != desktop publishing.
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.
Like here?
Sesostris III
You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough. - Blake
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.
4. All of the above
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.
Anecdote time.
About a year ago, a client of mine gave me a PDF and some source files and said "We can't edit this. Please fix the problem." The document itself was in Word 2.0. The graphics were WMFs. This thing had been originally created in Windows 3.1 and updated (with the WMFs) in Windows 95. The client couldn't open up any of it.
The Word file was basically a non-starter. I just ignored it and stripped the text out of the PDF instead. The graphics, though...The PDF refused to be opened properly in Illustrator, so I couldn't recover them that way. I also could not open the WMFs directly -- it was something about how they were tied to the original platform. What I ended up doing was digging up an ancient copy of Windows and and ancient copy of Illustrator, building a custom machine just for this operation, and recovering the files that way. The client paid about $3,000 for the privilege of being able to update one of their own files. Just one file, mind, and it had yet to be actually updated -- this was simply establishing the ability to update. All because they were couldn't see what a bad idea it was to invest their data in lock-in formats.
When I explained to the client how they had gotten into this mess, and how they could avoid it in the future, they stared blankly back. We use up-to-date versions of Word now, they said.
Oh, well, I thought, here comes another few grand in my pocket. But then again, in another few years, maybe nobody has these old copies of Windows and old copies of Illustrator anymore, and then they are SOL.
Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
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
In other words, OOXML will be what everyone uses?
Great.
It's because the vast majority of documents aren't really meant for publication. For example, research notes may wind up in a publication (where TeX and PDF would be appropriate), but the bulk of such notes will eventually be edited out of the end publication. Instead, they need to be in an easily editable format so that changes can be made when they occur in the lab. 50 years from now, those research notes may still be needed for one reason or another.
This is where word processing comes in to fill the gap between text editors (which don't have support for rich text or images) and desktop publication (which put out formats that aren't intended to be edited).
Haec merda tauri est. Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
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?