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OOXML Critic Fired From Finnish Standards Board
Shirke writes "A Finnish computer magazine reports that Finnish Standards Association has fired Mr. Lassi Nirhamo (article in Finnish). Some excerpts: Mr. Nirhamo was chairing the OOXML standard proposal meeting. During the meeting Mr. Nirhamo asked other board members to be excused of his duties and voice his opinion as a private citizen. After this was granted he criticized the standard proposal and resumed his duties as chairman. Mr. Nirhamo has now been let go due to a 'lack of trust.' Independent observers have assessed his chairmanship as 'excellent' and 'one of a kind.' The Association is accepting applications for the position. Anyone interested?"
You're flamebait/troll, but I'll bite for future reference.
This place won't post stuff without links (there are exceptions, but you can't count on them). If a submission doesn't have a link, the story won't be posted. If a story isn't posted, you won't find out about it.
In other words, if this story in Finnish hadn't been posted, you would have been more ignorant about the OOXML ISO process, story in Finnish or not. A longer summary or complete translation will no doubt appear soon, too (I speak Finnish myself, but am too busy at the moment unfortunately).
The article says (I can read finnish) that mr. Hirkamo was still on his trial period of 4 months, during which his boss could legally fire him without providing a reason.
The CEO of the organization in question, Pekka Järvinen, stated that "Unfortunately issues came up during the trial period, after which trust is no longer possible". And "I cannot comment on the reasons any further".
I guess his anti-Microsoft ideas were not appreciated :-P
"Heittotuoleja".
Here's a quick translation of the article.
The finnish standards association has suddenly terminated the contract of Lassi Nirhamo, the new expert of the IT standardization team. As late as last week, Nirhamo participated in the SFS press conference and was part in making the finnish stand on OOXML known at the ISO organization. Lassi Nirhamo tells to the Computer- magazine that he only got the information about the severance of his contract last thursday, after his four months probation was coming to an end. At this point the employer can legally terminate the contract without any cause.
Lassi Nirhamo himself wonders, that no reasons were given. "It's quite hard to say anything about reasons, when they haven't told me", says Nirhamo.
Lassi Nirhamo lead the OOXML- meeting in Finland, in which the finnish stand on the standard was decided upon. During the meeting, Nirhamo surprised the participants by announcing that he would speak as a private person for a moment, instead of being the chairman of the meeting. At that point he announced that he was against accepting the Microsoft standard. At the end of the meeting, Nirhamo put forward the opinion that Finland should abstain from voting.
The CEO of the Finnish Standrds Association, Pekka Järvinen says that the reason for ending the contract is lack of trust. "Unfortunately, during the probation period, issues came up, after which trust is not possible. I cannot comment further than this." Järvinen says over the phone.
SFS is now searching for a new expert who would be responsible for the many IT standardization related jobs, like continuing the OOXML- issue in the ISO organization next spring.
In this case, the Finnish Standards Association is the body that decides Finland's stand in the debate over OOXML becoming an ISO standard. Finland's vote at ISO is now going to an "abstension"...
Some answers:
Addition to the last answer, i read the linked article which covered the actual meeting. In the end notes of that article, journalist mentions following:
yush
Preview is your friend... :)
Microsoft standard critic got fired
Picture text: Lassi Nirhamo participated SFS (Finnish Standards Association) press conference just last week, where he said he'll take OOXML subject to ISO workgroup. Finland's vote may change in the spring.
SFS has surprisingly ended work contract of information technology standards team's new expert Lassi Nirhamo. Just last week Nirhamo participated SFS's press conference and was going to take Finland's views about OOXML to the ISO.
Lassi Nirhamo tells Tietokone magazine, that he was informed losing his job last thursday, when four month test period was about to be finished. At that point employer can legally give notice to end the contract without giving any reason why.
What Lassi Nirhamo wonders is the fact there was absolutely no reason given. "It's rather difficult to say anything about the reasons, because they never told me", says Nirhamo.
Lassi Nirhamo was leading Finland's OOXML-meeting, in which Finland's vote was decided. In the middle of the meeting Nirhamo surprised the participants by telling he won't be the chairman, but a private person. At that point he declared to be against accepting Microsoft's standard. In the end of the meeting Nirhamo suggested to vote void.
The CEO of SFS Pekka Järvinen tells the reason for ending the contract was lack of trust. "Unfortunately certain things came in to daylight during the test period that prevent trust. I can't elaborate any further than this", says Järvinen on the phone.
SFS is looking for a new expert, whose responsibilities will include many information technology projects, such as continuing on OOXML in ISO in the spring.
A chairman is supposed to be objective but I am still stunned. Finland is a place where you're almost always permitted to speak your mind freely. Interesting...
Why does the kernel go through stable and then unstable forks? Can't it always be a stable build, like with Windows?
A guick translation (of the story and one comment presumably from a board member present the meeting):
"Lassi Nirhamo was the chair leader of the OOXML-meeting in Finland, where the Finland's opinion should be agreed. During the meeting Nirhamo surprized all and asked other board members to be excused of his duties and voice his opinion as a private citizen. After getting the permission he told as his personal opinion that he was against the acceptance of Microsoft's standard. He also listed the grounds for his opinion, which Microsoft members could not deny. In the end of the meeting he proposed as the meeting would abstain from giving a opinion."
The formal reason was that his four month trial period was ending.
(Note: this is a very quick word-to-word almost translation, I am not an expert in this just wrote for people to get a view of the issue)
The news is:
--
Expert who criticised the Microsoft's standard was fired.
Finnish Standards Association SFS has suddenly let go of IT standardation team's fresh expert, Lassi Nirhamo. Yet in the last week, mr. Nirhamo participated in SFS press conference and was taking the Finnish stand about the OOXML standardiation issue into ISO.
Lassi Nirhamo told the magazine (Tietokone) that he was told last weeks thursday that hes trial period of four months was coming to an end. In the trial period, its possible for employer to legally fire you for any cause.
Lassi Nirhamo wonders however why no cause has been given. "Kinda bad to say anything about reasons, when they didn't tell me why", says Nirhamo.
Lassi Nirhamo led the Finnish OOXML-meeting where Finnish stand on the issue was decided. In middle of the meeting, Nirhamo suprised the participants as announcing that for a moment hes not the chairman of the speak but a private citizen. In that period he announced that he personally was against apporval of the Microsoft's standard. At the end of the meeting mr Nirhamo presented that the Finnish stand on the issue would be to give no answer.
SFS's CEO Pekka Järvinen told that the reason of ending the employment was lack of trust. "Unfortunately during the trial period of employment, some issues came up after which trust is no longer possible. I cannot comment more on the specifics.", says Mr. Järvinen in a telephone conversation.
SFS is now recruiting for new expert who's responsibility is many IT-standardation projects and continuing of the OOXML-issue in the ISO at spring.
---
I hope this clears the subject a bit.
I, personally, am also interested in the discussions on said topic, not only the news article. Well, sometimes. Depends on the story. But definitely in this case.
Quisling was Norwegian
God: An invisible friend for grown-ups.
If you are talking about the general case for a meeting chair, keep in mind that the chair may ALSO have other duties, and may need to report on those duties (thus speaking...) But you are right, generally the chair doesn't use his position as a pulpit. A chair is not a dictator, a chair is a moderator / facilitator. That said, while unorthodox, what he did (stepping down, speaking, and resuming his chairmanship) is exactly the way it needed to be done to be legit.
Apparently, Microsoft now has the power (through its "paid" minions) to shape the makeup of not only the membership, but the standards board. This is a very bad situation. It destroys the legitimacy of ISO. Apparently the ISO doesn't have an ethics committee or ethics rules. If they do, they were swept under the carpet for the entire OOXML issue.
About not being told a reason to...
It is quite difficult to fire somebody with a permanent contract in Finland,
i.e. one can always sue the company for being wrongly dismissed. Because
termination of contract due trial period is one of the rare cases, which
really cannot taken into court of law, it is advisable not to give any
explanations in such cases. Advisable for a company doing the termination,
that is.
Thus, when people are laid off during the test period, they rarely get
anything other than "on the grounds of test period".
Quite easy actually.
First, let us tackle the verb and the subject.
Throw = Heittää
Chair = Tuoli
Now, the interesting thing is that the basic form of this verb is only used when speaking of 3rd person perspective. F.ex. "Ballmer heittää tuolin".
Also note, that in this case the basic form of "Tuoli" is not used. The 'n' suffix indicates a possessive form. Which makes no sense so it must mean some other form. Which, I have no idea. No one but the men of language sciences know all of Finnish forms of words.
Then, let's have a look for first person action. "I throw a chair" -- "Heitän tuolin".
Again, have a look at the suffixes. Lord only knows why, but now we threw out one T and added an N to the verb. The subject has the N suffix again. the subject is actually useless without a form. Basically only thing you can do with a subject without form would be edumacation like "This is a chair" -- "Tämä on tuoli".
To give something to chew. Let's list the normal presens form:
Heitän tuolin (I throw a chair)
Heität tuolin (You...)
Heittää tuolin (He/She...)
Heitämme tuolin (We...)
Heitätte tuolin (You (in plural))
Heittävät tuolin (They...)
And to indicate the possessive:
Tuolini (My chair)
Tuolisi (your...)
Tuolimme (Our...)
Tuolinsa (His...)
Any combination of these is valid.
More interesting things to do with 1st person declensions.
And here's the 15 basic cases to finnish language:
nominative, genitive, accusative, partitive, essive, translative, inessive, elative, illative, adessive, ablative, allative, abessive, comitative, and instructive.
And 12 adverbial cases:
superessive, delative, sublative, lative, temporal, causative, multiplicative, distributive, temporal distributive, prolative, situative, and oppositive.
You don't just throw chairs in Finnish! Prepare for lifetime of torture with the grammar before you can simple things correctly!
From http://www.helsinki.fi/~jshermun/language.htm:
"It is an essentially logical language. The rules are absolute and reliable in all situations, except exceptions."
Bot Assisted Blogging
The goal was to reach consensus between all parties while SFS acts as an independent observer. There was no vote, but all parties were given the chance to voice their opinion. If no consensus could be reached, Finland's vote would be "abstension".
Gathered from the above source and others, the opinions were (non-exhaustive list):
Approval:
- Microsoft
- Novell
- Sysopen Digia
- Tietoenator
- WM-Data
- Ministry of Trade and Industry
- Ministry of Finance
- Customs
- City of Helsinki
Disapproval:- Nokia
- Sun Microsystems
- IBM
- Ministry of Education
- Ministry of Justice
- National Archives Service
- National Library
- Electronic Frontier Finland
- Confederation of Finish Industries
- The Association of Finnish Local and Regional Authorities
- Centre for Open Source Solutions
Abstension:- F-Secure
- Nordea
- Tax Administration
After the comments Microsoft representative wanted to know why it was not possible to accept the "approval with comments" option. It was at this point that chairman Lassi Nirhamo of SFS responded "as a private citizen" that the proposal does not fulfill a single requirement set for ISO standards.At the end, the chairman had stated that it was evident that the corporations disagreed, and that it would've been enough if the state had been unanimous, but as this was not the case, Finland's vote would be "abstension".
As the chairman of the committee, he was responsible for shepherding and implementing the decisions of the committee.
As a private citizen he had a good deal of experience and an opinion about which way he would have liked the decision to go.
It is actually standard practice, in this situation, to do precisely what he did.
It is also standard practice, in any real democracy for someone to have an opinion that doesn't jive with that of the majority. The expression of that dissent is not (and should not be), per se, grounds for any sort of retaliation. Unless there was something in his speech that was completely inappropriate that was not mentioned or aluded to in the article, then I would be inclined to say that his firing was very, very bad news for the standards process in Finland.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.