ISO Miscounted Cuban OOXML Vote

An anonymous reader notes Groklaw's coverage of the apparent mix-up ISO made with Cuba's vote in the matter of recommending OOXML as a standard. Cuba apparently voted against OOXML in September, but ISO recorded their vote as a "yes" — which is odd on its face, as Microsoft is forbidden to sell any products in Cuba. The Cuban NB head has apparently now officially responded to the BRM, but Groklaw's PJ notes that verification remains problematical, and "...the bottom line to me is that a process that worked perfectly well when folks all trusted each other falls into chaos when there are allegations of dirty tricks or undue pressure."

Comments

I knew it

[MyLongNickName]

As soon as they bought the Diebold voting system, I knew we were screwed.

Undermining our way of life...

[Urger]

These Cuban scum! They are trying to ruin our American way of life with their instance on "open standards." Their dangerous ideas of "freedom" and "choice" are directly opposed to our system of allowing us to choose whatever option we are told to choose. Damn Commies! If we don't stop them now, they will want to monitor our machine controlled elections! We have to stop these anti-Americans now, while we still have the chance!

Re:Undermining our way of life...

[rvw]

Know what? If something changes Cuba's mind about OOXML and very shortly after the US embargo of Cuba is ended... fuck, I just don't have words for that. I think those Cuban cigars come in handy when Hillary is in "Office". It could open her up, you know! ;-)

No, NOT "Duh."

[spun]

Dealing with unfairness and undue pressure is a central theme in building societies and groups that work. If everyone were good and played fair, any system would work. We need social systems precisely because some people do not play fair. Thus, we have checks and balances in our American political system. Where are the checks and balances here?

The author is basically saying, the system is flawed because it does not take into account certain facts about human nature, and fails at one of the most basic tasks any socio-political system should strive to accomplish, namely limiting the ability of participants to put undue pressure on each other and use dirty tricks.

Re:No, NOT "Duh."

[Chris Burke]

If everyone were good and played fair, any system would work.

With the corollary that if nobody had any reason to cheat, then everyone would play fair, and the system would work.

I think this is part of why "communism" only seems to work on the scale of the "commune", where ultimately even the most corrupt person could, what, lord over the persons and crops of fifty people? Have the most sweet potato of any villager? Scale that up to the level of a nation-state, and suddenly taking control and abusing the system provides a lot more gains in wealth and power.

Similarly with ISO, in the past the system worked because, by and large, nobody had any significant reason to game the system entirely. Sure different companies had their reasons to promote their standard, but ultimately it was still about cooperation and interoperability. While I may be missing some cases, I feel confident stating that this is the first time a standard presented to ISO has the potential to make or break a multi-billion dollar monopoly.

So of course when that kind of cash is on the line, a system that before survived because there wasn't much incentive to abuse it is found to be completely vulnerable. Kind of like if that commune suddenly found itself sitting on a gold mine.

Re:Y'know...

[belmolis]

Your characterization of the Groklaw crowd is quite inaccurate. Plenty of people there are familiar with standards processes. And yes, they know that there has been controversy before, but rarely has there been controversy of this magnitude, to my knowledge, NEVER in the fast-track process. The purpose of the fast-track process is to expedite the formalization of what are already de facto standards, which means standards that are well thought out and carefully written, that exist in multiple implementations, and on which there is substantial consensus. Microsoft's attempt to use the fast-track process for OOXML is outrageous given that OOXML is a bloated mess, has yet to be implemented by anyone, not even Microsoft, and is a single-company effort on which there is no consensus.

Rules always rely on trust

[microbox]

The author is basically saying, the system is flawed because it does not take into account certain facts about human nature,

I'd argue that it's impossible to build a system that will work when people don't respect it. For example - the third-party payola loophole farce. Another example - democracy might work when people respect it, but the rules mean nothing to "I have a PhD in violence" Mugabe.

In essenence, the rules themselves are only useful if they are followed in spirit. When they are not followed in spirit, then we need more clarifying rules until we come down to some basic rules that are followed in spirit. That's why are law books are so large - and it's still not large enough for people like Darl McBride... proof that the more we disrespect each other, the bigger the rule book needs to become.

The traditional solution is to turn your back to people fail to follow the spirit of the rules. You just tell them that they can go bother someone else. You can't force other people to learn ethics, and there'll always be that fuzzy area where the amorale can do horrible but legal things like deliberately spread disinformation about global warming. These people should be charged with treason, because they are subverting the public good.

When an untrustworthy entity enters a situation where a certain level of trust is already assumed (M$ and ISO), then the rulebook needs to catch up *a lot*.

Re:Y'know...

[asuffield]

The abuse here is trying to push OOXML through on fast track, when it's obvious to anyone following the process that this should take the same route as SQL, for example. But that wouldn't be quick enough for Microsoft to stem the organisations mandidating open standards to look at their options, and choose OpenDocument over OOXML.

It's more than that. The normal process is a specification-creating process. The "fast track" process is just ISO urinating on some company's product in an attempt to convince people to use it. Microsoft doesn't want to make a system, they want their existing system to be advertised.

The whole OOXML noise is a joke - but then, ISO shouldn't have a "fast track" process in the first place, and the "standards" worship that is in vogue these days is just silly. The purpose of ISO (and all similar organisations) is for people to come together and create an agreement on how they are going to make their systems work together. If there is no intention for people to make their systems work together, then there is no value in any of it.

A "standard" is not some kind of law about how computer systems have to work (despite what a lot of very stupid people seem to think), it is the symbol and partial documentation of a completed process of development and negotiation, which all parties agree they can work to. If you try to just make up the document without that agreement, then all you have is a worthless piece of paper, since nobody is going to be able to build systems around it even if they wanted to.

When all the proprietary UNIX vendors sat down together and worked out a specification for the common elements of their systems that anybody could write programs against, that was a real standards process which resulted in real benefits, because they started with the intention to make it possible to write portable software and designed a specification which they could and would all implement. When somebody just makes up a new bunch of rules off the top of their head and gets some official-sounding organisation to put out a press release, that's purely marketing, of no particular use to anybody, and it doesn't matter who the organisation is.