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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?"
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.
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
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.
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".