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?"

Comments

So...

[Romancer]

Getting fired for something that's on record that you not only asked permission to do, but got that granted permission documented.

That's a new one to me.

Are these people elected and when's the next open forum meeting?

Re:So...

[hazem]

Getting fired for something that's on record that you not only asked permission to do, but got that granted permission documented.

The key here is that as the chairman of the committee he's supposed to work from a neutral point of view. Sure he has his own personal opinion but he's not supposed to let that influence his job as chairman. By taking the role of chairman you are pretty much agreeing to be bound by that.

When he then openly expressed his opinions about the matter his further judgment will be called into question, especially if his decisions as chairman align with this publicly stated opinions. He gave up his objectivity and by keeping him as chairman, anything that comes out of that committee would be called into question.

Depending on the rules of order in place, the committee probably did not even have the authority to let him "step down" from the chairmanship and back up again.

Re:So...

[Max Littlemore]

Look at it this way - if I asked my company for permission to speak candidly, and it was granted, and then I told them that I'd been stealing stuff from them, or selling secrets to the competition, I'd be fired. Not because I spoke candidly, but because of what I said.

No you wouldn't, you'd be fired for what you did. Big difference there.

If you asked to speak candidly at a meeting, were given permission and you stood up and said "Our products suck, no one I know likes them and we're a laughing stock", a good company would maybe want to hear more details as part of an improvement process.

Then again, maybe if you work for a company that's a laughing stock, inability to take criticism is probably a respect aspect of the corporate culture and being fired might look good on the CV.

Re:So...

[laa]

You speak Finnish then? I don't, so I can't tell what exactly he was fired for. I do. The problem is that he got no reason, we was fired during his four months "trial period" so the employer is not obliged to give a reason. The article certainly tries to hint that the reason was his open speak, but then again, it's pure guesswork as no reason was given.

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...

Re:So...

[Mr Europe]

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.

Re:So...

[CortoMaltese]

Look at it this way: It's his job to say the things he said, right? He chose to say them off the record so that instead of genuinely trying to help, he was just having a bitch session. He then went right back to failing to oppose something he didn't believe in. He was not supposed to say those things on or off the record as a chairman of that meeting, or as a representative of the Finnish Standards Board, which was present as an independent, unbiased observer. What he did have was enough technical competence to understand what was wrong with the proposed standard, and asked if he could present his opinion as a private citizen. He was allowed to do that, and he also repeated that the opinion of the Finnish Standards Board would be the result of the meeting, regardless of his own opinions. In my opinion, he did the Right Thing.

Re:So...

[macshit]

Try a relevant analogy: You're a project leader at a company, ask to speak candidly, say, "I hate this project and I wish it would just die", are you really expecting to be allowed to continue leading that project?

Er, no, that isn't a relevant analogy. The committee's job wasn't to promote MS's standard, it was to judge it. If a company was evaluating a potential expensive purchase, and the team leader candidly said "well let's be frank, this product sucks" before the "official" evaluation was over, people would either laud him for his frankness, or argue with his premise, but they sure as hell wouldn't fire him!

Of course, if the Finnish committee sees its job as promoting Microsoft products, then of course your analogy would be correct -- and the committee should be charged en-masse with corruption.

Re:No, I'm not interested

[Iskender]

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).

Re:My suggestion

[ByteSlicer]

I'm afraid that Steve wouldn't keep the chair very long...

FTA

[PrayingWolf]

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

How do you say

[slickwillie]

"throwing chairs" in Finnish?

Re:How do you say

[Fizzl]

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."

To be fair...

[pushing-robot]

In their defense, the board just said they'd excuse him of his duties. They didn't say they'd give them back.

Translation of the article

[kalpaha]

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.

Re:Any more details?

[rasjani]

• What did he say?
• What is the structure of the Finish Standards Association? Who fired him?
• Who claimed he was 'excellent' and 'one of a kind'?
• Who else is part of this association?
• What does this association standardize, and for whom? In other words, what is the impact of this association's decision?

Some answers:

• During the meeting, he asked permission to speak as private person and was granted to do so. The article is abit brief on the matter but comments on the article says that he mentioned errors/problems in ooxml and even the microsoft representative on the crowd wasnt able to deny those facts. I should also mention that the same comment mentions that he explicitly pointed out that this was his personal view and SFS should should have only the view that this meeting will decide, twice.
• He was fired by Pekka Järvinen, who's basicly CEO of SFS. According the article, Nirhamo was still on his 4week trying period and Järvinen said to the press that the contract is cancelled due to issues that have appeared are causing a lack of trust and he cannot talk more about the details.
• Comments in the article mentions that he was keeping the meeting well in course, not allowing people to wonder to offtopic discussion.
• Member list of the association is here: http://www.sfs.fi/sfs_lyhyesti/jasenet/jasenluettelo/ . Briefly said, its an organization that has members from wide range of finnish industrial and commercial associations and finnish government/minister offices.
• SFS Covers alot of standardizing in various fields. Im not so aware of all the things they work with but seeing the memberlist has basicly all the major industrial and commercial associates and all major government offices, i would assume that their work is atleast "relevant" =)

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:

Freely translated: Finland is one of ISO JTC1-group's so called 36 P members, who's votes 75% are required to accept the standard. And due to outcome of this meeting, Finland's decision wasnt declared due to results of this meeting.

Re:Error. Help!

[bky1701]

"/0: Paradoxical"

Re:No, I'm not interested

[marcello_dl]

It's more a case of "since ninety-nine percent of the people using this website cannot read this, it has no merit here.", which seems perfectly sensible.

It seems perfectly sensible but for one crucial detail:

"'Tis is Slashdot: we don't RTFA here!"

I can tell you've never been involved with ISO!

[Flying pig]

Anybody who has ever been involved in standards, whether ISO, IEC, or their national standards body, knows that this happens all the time. Chairing the meeting is not incompatible with holding strong views. What less ethical chairmen would have done is simply talk to people before the meeting, find people who agreed with their objections, and then make sure they got a chance to express them. If the opposition try and say too much, have a useful retired consultant who can be relied on to stand up and waffle the meeting out.

ISO and IEC are often very political and feelings often run very high in working groups, though this rarely makes it way to the plenary sessions. People shout. Observers try to intervene and have to be shut up. This guy behaved perfectly properly. Your comment about "decisions as chairman" show a bottomless ignorance of procedure. I can only assume that either you have no experience whatsoever of standards work, or your employer is based in Redmond.

Re:'es not fired...

[phoenixwade]

That was the Norwegian Blue. Keep your scandinavian countries straight, ok? It is so near to Russia,
So far from Japan,
Quite a long way from Cairo,
Lots of miles from Vietnam.

Finland has it all....

Re:Any more details?

[hakola]

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".

Translation of Article

[maroberts]

Mr. Nirhamo is Finnished.

Re:Any more details?

[vinsci]

Reporters may want to talk to Mr Jaakko Lehtinen who participated in the OOXML-meeting at the SFS and wrote this insightful comment (in finnish) regarding the decision to fire Mr Nirhamo:

Translation of the original comment in finnish*:

October 1st, 2007, 22:03 by Jaakko Lehtinen
Re: Wrong opinions

Can it really be, that Microsoft would be involved in this decision as well.

I question what caused this lack of trust. We don't know that, as we're not told. This however causes suspicion regarding the SFS.

You see, I was there at the SFS's ooxml decision meeting, which ended in very even votes for and against and where the state's votes also were 2-2 — first even 3-1 against ooxml.

Mr Nirhamo handled his role as chairman in a very professional manner. He kept the discussion tightly within the agreed 'frame', to use contemporary wording. Some [attendees] tried to start for example comparing the existing standard and the suggested standard against each other, but that was ended immediately, as it was not on the agenda for the meeting. No kind of deviations to other subjects were allowed. Not even from Microsoft.

And it was a very well handled decision meeting, I dare say as someone who has been in meetings with hundreds of pretty big decision makers.

Rarely — hardly ever — have I seen and experienced such a great performance by the chair.

Further about speaking one's mind, he made it clear at least twice, that the SFS doesn't have and can't have any other opinion that the decision of that meeting.

Due to Microsoft's pressure he separately inquired if he can put forward his own opinion of the matter. The representatives of the SFS who were present gave him permission to temporarily diverge from his position as chair and to state his own opinion.

He then showed the facts, that he based his opinion on. These arguments could not be denied by Microsoft either. There are errors and contradictions in the ooxml-suggestion.

I am very sorry about how Mr Nirhamo has been treated and disappointed at the SFS's way of handling the matter, if the alleged lack of trust was due to that meeting.

In that case, the SFS does not deserve my trust.

This looks like a full-blown scandal at the SFS to me. Certainly, the SFS under managing director Pekka Järvinen, can not be trusted to create standards according to the SFS's charter (link in Finnish), which among other things says that the SFS is an independent organisation and that it should represent the interest of Finland.

____________
*) Although I believe this translation to be very good, I'm not a translator by trade.

Re:Any more details?

[CortoMaltese]

Assemblix wiki has some more details:

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".