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New Rules Created For OOXML Vote
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "There are new rules to follow for any NB that wishes to change their vote on OOXML after the lack of resolution at the recent Ballot Resolution Meeting. After comparing it to previous instructions, it seems that they only have until March 29th, they need to email several specific people, that email must be sent by certain people, and they need to confirm it in writing as well, most likely via registered mail. Even Groklaw's PJ, who made sense of many of SCO's filings, finds all the requirements a little confusing. But anyone who wants to disapprove of OOXML had better dot every 'i' and cross every 't' if they want their vote to count, if past behavior is any indication."
What why exactly such a confusing voting process?
If spelling counts, the open-source side is pretty much doomed. You might as well have CmdrTaco start drafting a concession speech right now.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
But anyone who wants to disapprove of OOXML had better dot every 'i' and cross every 't' if they want their vote to count
Or anyone that has been "bought" (if that is going on) and wants to change their mind has it hard too; but we shouldn't mention that should we?
Snips and emphasis mine, but still, I'm sorry. Sometimes I'm a bit slow, but just what does this mean? ...
BTW, what's that smell?!I, for one, am looking forward to the inevitable
You ALSO had to send the filing to the zoning office...
in a locked basement
with a sign on the door, "Beware of Alligators"
in a condemned building
on the third planet of Alpha Centauri
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Is there word anywhere on an official reason for this change in voting procedure? I'm not seeing it in TFA or in any of the things it directly links to, but I might be missing it.
ISO doesn't matter anymore. They didn't matter because they were "The ISO", they mattered because they were a place where politics could be set aside and everyone could work together to make standards that work. That was a unique and precious thing. Now they're not these things anymore, and therefore, they are defunct.
MS didn't drag themselves up a notch here, they just destroyed something special in the world because it got in the way of their dominance. A sad thing.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
It has long been rumored that Microsoft wants to actually show that ISO is not such a great standards organization. I guess this proves it. As usual, Microsoft wins either way.
Presumably, this also affects those who want to move from "NO" to "YES", and as such, hurts those who want to push it through just as much as helps?
This seems to only affect people who voted for it, and now want to vote against it.
You should have to do more (this much more? Not my decision but it does seem odd) to change your vote. Why'd you change your mind? What made you vote for it in the first place?
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Just say NO!
I fail to understand the outrage in this case. Yes, the OOXML specification sucks and is thoroughly umimplementable. And Microsoft is evil. Check. But these are rules for how National Bodies must proceed to change their votes. We're not talking about some uneducated John Doe here trying to punch a butterfly ballot ... we're talking about institutional groups like ANSI, BSI, JISC, and Standards Australia. If those groups, with their staffs and lawyers, can't figure out how to change their vote, and to use ISO procedural rules to make sure their votes are properly counted, perhaps they shouldn't be able to change their votes. I'm sorry, but this isn't exactly rocket science...
Voters might also have initially missed problems in this incredibly long and complicated document that other participants found; they might therefore have voted "yes" initially, and now desire to change that vote to "no" because the evidence available to them has convinced them that the initial "yes" vote was mistaken. What's wrong with changing your mind when presented with new evidence? What's wrong with listening to competing viewpoints and recognising that the person arguing against your initial belief has valid points?
Or they might have been convinced by Microsoft representatives that OOXML would end global poverty, and have now concluded that the truth doesn't match up to the PR. If someone is convinced by a hard-selling salesman to buy a product they don't need, are they being "wishy-washy" when they cool off and cancel the order? No, they're just displaying common sense.
Above all, why are people so hostile towards anyone who changes their mind these days? Sticking to your guns regardless is not strong or smart, it's stubborn and stupid. We should applaud people who publicly change their opinions, not condemn them. Wait for someone to actually dither indecisively, or flip-flop repeatedly between two options, before you condemn them. There's nothing wrong with merely taking one side initially and then changing your mind.
(And, no, I'm not being partisan here. I would say the same in defence of someone who had initially voted against OOXML and had decided, based on the outcome of the BRM, that they would now support it.)
Heh. this isn't surprising for Microsoft. Just wait, the day they count all the votes - MS will probably convince ISO that it's opposite day.
I guess that should be a 'certain person', because they required a certain designated contact with the NB to send them the message about their vote. Mind you, this does make sense (someone else can't speak on behalf of the organization), but with all the things they have to do and how strewn out they are, it would be easy to screw up and have your vote rejected.
Anyhow, the rules aren't at all clear to me (nor, I gather, to those who need to follow them), which is what I think is the real story. Because I have this funny feeling that the rules will later be construed or rewritten into whichever form benefits Microsoft the most. I mean, it's in Microsoft's playbook, so it's not like we're not anticipating it.
- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property
Here's a little of what Jim Melton, the ISO SQL editor, had to say about the OOXML process:
You've written 6000 pages of specification largely in secret (and, I understand, recently added over 1500 more pages) and given the world five months to read, absorb, understand, review, critique, and establish informed positions on it. Worse, whether it happened because of unreasonable methods, pure random chance, or genuine and unexpected interest, the fact that the size of the JTC 1 Subcommittee that was to vote on the document suddenly exploded gives the appearance that somebody was trying too hard to stack the deck...almost as though it wasn't really desired to have too much real review.
BTW SQL was one of the largest ever ISO standards and took 20 years to debug. It was still smaller than OOXML.
And, Please sign the NoOOXML.org petition if you didn't already!
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OK, I gather from what is being said that this is a Bad Thing[TM] but I must admit that I don't understand the legal stuff. Can someone please explain to the layman (a) what exactly these rules will mean and (b) how Microsoft were able to get the ISO rules changed (if this is indeed what is being implied)?
> But these are rules for how National Bodies
Precisely. These are National Bodies, i.e. slow moving bureaucracies.
If you shorten the dates and in addition to that require extra lead time for written letters to arrive to all the right people, you've both dramatically shorted the review time and caused problems for any national body that scheduled their meeting late (so that maximum review was possible). If you think it's easy rescheduling a meeting of all these key people much earlier than what everyone agreed to *months* in advance, you've never held a meeting of any importance.
And by limiting decent to a single person, they've also increased the chance that the will of the national body could be thwarted by a bribe.
> If those groups, with their staffs and lawyers, can't figure out how to change their vote, and to use ISO procedural
> rules to make sure their votes are properly counted, perhaps they shouldn't be able to change their votes. I'm sorry, but this isn't exactly rocket science...
Sorry, but that's BS. If I give you rules that are impossible to follow, no number of lawyers or staff can follow them any more than if I ask you to draw a Frobizoid without explaining what a Frobizoid is, or ask you to fill out form G in order to get Form F but in order to get form G you have to fill out form F.
And even if the rules are unambigious to an elite lawyer, the more complicated the rules, the more likely that votes can be thrown out because of procedural rather than technical issue. Given the mistrust in the process so far, I wouldn't be at all surprised if No to Yes transitions happen (because Microsoft knows the rules they wrote) but Yes/Abstain to No votes are rejected because of non-obvious procedural issues.
Ask yourself this question. Is ISO in place to be a place where lawyers must solve puzzles to get to the next level, or is it a place to create valuable world wide standards that have been proven technically?
No, we don't, and PJ and the rest of you ought to know better.
If it originated as letters and is perceived as letters, it's writing. The law and the rest of the world have long since abandoned the idea that a photocopy or a facsimile or an email are somehow not writing.
Any ambiguity as to the meaning of "must be in writing" is resolved by the requirement that the vote change shall be communicated by email. Not may be communicated by email. Not shall be communicated by email and something they forgot to mention.
Any semblance of ambiguity in the last point is resolved by the lack of a street address, facsimile number, telex identifier, or literally any other means of communicating with the three individuals other than their email addresses. So much detail concerning the email, but they forgot to mention the rest.
As for the actual requirements:
Sending a message to three people. Unconscionable - Never 'cc' anyone. Having an identifiable subject line. Evil - Short messages from an unknown email addresses are never identified as spam. Copying yourself. Unnecessary - Messages never get left in draft form in mail programs, and people happily accept the consequences of their incompetence. Including the name of the sender. Completely unnecessary - SMTP is unspoofable and contact@yourco.org can easily be verified as having the authority to change the vote of a national body.
This is either an elaborate joke, or PJ has partaken of far too much of the Kool-Aid.
I really don't get this. It seems (from my outsiders layman prospective) that MS is being treated differently here.
Naturally the whole ISO system is running the risk of losing a massive amount of credibility on this issue.
So why do they do it? I mean they are not fools - they must read all the comments on the web.
The only reason I could come up with is that they are afraid of the possibility of the next big standard being non-ISO approved and thus them being diminished in importance and relevence.
> SMTP is unspoofable and contact@yourco.org can easily be verified as having the authority to change the vote of a national body.
> This is either an elaborate joke, or PJ has partaken of far too much of the Kool-Aid.
Ummm. STMP is unspoofable? Do you know what that word means?
Maybe I should forward you that letter from the Nigerian Minister of Finance...
NSFW - This is the boring idiot's shock site from members.on.nimp.org
It stinks.
The parent post really seems to try to quickly skip across the "if" part of "if OOXML is accepted...". The acceptance process is supposed to prevent bad quality, unworkable standards from being accepted. A standard should work.
3 things about computers: they're alive, they're self-aware, and they hate your guts.
Why should they be making it harder to vote *against* a standard? The mind boggles at what's going on here.
The only thing for sure is that ISO is destroying any credibility it may have had as a standards body. Let's hope the people who were demanding standards compliance form Microsoft are paying attention to this fiasco and change their requirements too.
No sig today...
ISO has standard on tens of thousands of things that matter, and those standards make international trade and cooperation possible. It just so happens that, in some cases, other standards have won over ISO's, so what? What matters here is not whether one particular ISO standard is fucked up, or unusable, or braindead: these are the kind of things that are expected to happen. What matters is that the ISO itself has been corrupted, its processes have been damaged, the trust it enjoyed has been dilapidated, because MS has demonstrated someone corrupt enough, sociopathic enough could do it.
But anyone who wants to disapprove of OOXML had better dot every 'i' and cross every 't' if they want their vote to count
Actually, no. To disapprove OOXML requires only that everyone who voted NO in the first round simply DO NOTHING; their NO vote will in that case be left the same, and OOXML fails the fast track. It really is that simple, and I am amazed at the number of people who "knowledgeably" and negatively comment on a process they apparently know little about.