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Possible Manipulation of OOXML Process In Poland
michuk writes "IBM's representative for KT182 (the committee empowered to vote on OOXML in Poland) accused the committee's chair of intentionally manipulating the process. A letter from the president of the body overseeing KT182, sent a month ago to the committee chair for distribution to all committee members, was never distributed. The letter recommended that, if consensus were not achieved on the OOXML vote, then Poland should abstain. This follows up my recent report on the OOXML process in Poland (also covered by Groklaw), it looks like things are going bad this time, at least as bad as in October." The EU is already investigating the Polish process based on complaints last fall. Is anyone tracking all of the allegations and investigations surrounding OOXML?
IBM forgot Poland.
Heise reports that the vote process in Germany was manipulated, too, although on a more obvious level:
link (German only, sorry)
The members of the German institute for norms (DIN) were basically unable to vote "no", only "yes" and "abstain" were allowed.
Format name itself is cheating and (deliberately) confusing, to begin with.
839*929
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The problem with this kind of accusations is the lack of clearly-defined norms regarding how the process is supposed to be run.
Unbiased observers exist only as a theoretical approximation, not in practice, anyway. The next problem is that it is quite natural for any chairperson to see one side as the aggressior and the other side as the victim, based upon which it is quite natural for just about every decent-minded person to want to help the victim. The problem in this conflict is that both sides are making arguments to show themselves as the victim, while very few people are have the skills and knowledge to determine on the basis of objective moral criteria (which are relevant in this complex situation involving technology as well as economics), so that for most people it will again depends on their bias whom they will see as the aggressor and whom they will see as the victim.
The only way out is to have more formalized, standardized processes for dealing with conflict situations so that the chairpersons don't have vast amounts of power to interpret the rules to favor the outcome which they personally think is right.
I sent the following yesterday to:
Mike Low <mike.low@bsi-global.com>
Jean Stride <Jean.stride@bsigroup.com
Adrian Stokes <Adrian.Stokes@cat-ltd.demon.co.uk>
I have not received a reply.
UKUUG is seeking a member who will represent them on the tech advisory committee as our current rep no longer has the time.
**** email sent ****
I am writing is my capacity as Chairman of the UKUUG (UK's Unix & Open Systems User Group).
I was appalled to hear it rumoured that the BSI is intending to approve the fast tracking of the
Microsoft sponsored OOXML format (DIS29500) while there are still so many outstanding questions
about the draft standard. In this letter I make no comment about the long term suitability
of OOXML as an ISO standard, my main issue today is that fast tracking it is wrong.
An ISO standard should be well defined and capable of multiple independent implementations.
The whole point is to allow users of the standard to have products from different vendors
work together just as well as a product from a single vendor. If an ISO standard is
insufficiently precise to allow this then the reputation of ISO as a standards setting
body will suffer severely; with a consequential effect on International trade.
With this in mind, if BSI approves the fast tracking of OOXML it will do severe damage
users' confidence in standards in general and to the reputations of those organisations
who have approved this broken standard: BSI and ISO.
Technical people will regard standards less highly leading to a long term
erosion of use of standards. Do you personally want to be responsible for this ?
I thought that BSI meetings were open, but now find that they are secret. I find this
astounding, it makes me wonder what really happens in those meetings. Will you publish
unedited minutes and allow independent observers in the future ?
The last time that this was aired in public, I remember a BSI member commenting that the number
of comments about this was unprecedented. This shows that there is a great public interest
in this issue and that fast tracking would not meet public approval; people will wonder
who you represent and whose interests you serve.
On the standard itself: I am aware that some of the problems have been addressed, but that
there are large numbers of other ones that are still contentious. There are many parts
that are not properly defined. For these reasons OOXML is not fit for purpose as it stands.
It is possible that these problems may be fixed by the standard being fully discussed,
IE the fast tracking is not appropriate for OOXML.
I call on BSI to act in the interests of the UK public and say 'No to fast tracking of OOXML'.
If I can be of any assistance, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Regards
Naaah, I think that this is not intentional. It's just the typically polish manner of doing things: let them drown in the chaos. Do you know that our former prime minister stated recently (http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/03/official-polish.html) that he opposes the idea of voting over internet because people use internet mostly to watch pornography while drinking beer and voting should be a serious issue? And our president doesn't want to sign a treaty that he himself has designed a few months ago? (details:http://www.eubusiness.com/news-eu/1205847121.22/)
I mean, come on. Don't take them seriously. The person responsible for distributing the e-mails will be sacked (just in a few months).
Also on groklaw:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080328090328998
"Jomar Silva, a delegate from Brazil, which voted No, has now done what he said he would do and has posted what he saw and heard at the BRM. It is a deeply shocking tale of maneuvering the delegates to vote against their will by presenting a kind of Sophie's Choice of options, all designed, according to what I gather from his account, to get a positive result for Microsoft."
This seems like pretty big trademark infringement. All the stories I see it is easy to confuse OpenOffice's xml format and Office Open XML format. Isn't the entire point of trademark to guarantee consumer confidence in the brand they are using? Someone know of a release by the OpenOffice team as to why they haven't brought a lawsuit about?
so they say, and there sure is a lot of smoke surrounding this standards voting process. There must be some fire somewhere, and using Occam's razor in connection with the history of Microsoft business practices and I'd put money on the 'Microsoft is perverting the process' side of the bet.
PJ seems to think that what is happening 'not quite normal' and right now, if PJ says it, it's good enough for me. Her reputation is several orders of magnitude better than Microsoft's, to be kind to Microsoft.
Sure, perhaps the Poles do muck things up now and again but it's not *just* the poles. Things are 'not quite normal' with this process the world over.
If it were up to me (yeah right) now that there is so much mess, I'd say it will never be a standard until there is > 85% support for it to become one, and all dissenting voices' questions MUST be answered in full and to the satisfaction of > 85% of the voting body. I'd take the cat and mouse politics out of it so that there no longer remains any doubt about the politics pushing a bad standard or not.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
That is what this article seems to suggest:
http://osrin.net/2008/03/28/south-korea-votes-approve-for-isoiec-dis29500/
Comment removed based on user account deletion
NoOOXML.org has been actively reporting on the process and tracking irregularities since last June or so. The list is very long and we're still collecting information.
My blog
See, the name isn't EXACTLY the same, so trademark infringement would require the danger of "confusing similarity" in the minds of the target market. Now, anyone with two brain cells to rub together can easily tell that the two are nothing alike; the Open Document Format used by OpenOffice.org is exactly that - a high-quality, open document format - whereas OOXML is a massive pile of bovine waste products.
;-)
No one with a good understanding of the situation could EVER mistake OOXML for EITHER a high-quality format OR an open format. See, it's quite elementary!
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
deeply flawed meetings with deeply flawed decisions about a proposed deeply flawed standard that exisits solely to further the commercials aims of one particular company.
in the meantime it risks destroying the credibilty of a mahor standard body (to further the commercial aims of one company).
and, of course, it reduces the possible impact of a simpler, superior standard (to further the commercial aims of one company).
the more I read about this the madder I become.
there is an old saying if it walks like a duck, looks like a duck and quacks like a duck then it is probably a duck. the simplest explanation in all cases points beck to some seriously disturbing manipulation by one particular company - and the brazen bare faced manor in which it is done is simply breathtaking. sure there is nothing *illegal* in padding up membership of committees to get the votes that you want - but by any measure it is underhanded and a dirty tactic.
If I had 1% of every dollar that changed hands from microsoft to some member of some national standards comittee over the past weeks, I'm pretty certain I could stop working - for life.
It is obvious that the whole process has been abused. If ISO were still capable of reasonable action, they would halt the entire process and conduct a thorough investigation before continuing.
Alas, as ISO is a comittee-driven organization, and too many of the comittee members have been bought, excuse me "convinced", to be a little more microsoft-friendly, that won't happen.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I did not read the OOXML proposal, I understand that there has been numerous remarks on the technical ground only. Those comments have been partly addressed by Microsoft and therefore another round of discussion on this proposal is in order.
What astounds me is that there is so much shadowness, hidden agendas, personal interests, overt corruption and manipulation in the process! I mean, what do these people evil people think will happen if OOXML becomes an ISO standard? Do they have vested interests in Microsoft Corp.? Do they have shares in software companies making OOXML editors? Do they think that Microsoft will send them big crates of dollars (the greenback being so low, I don't know what people outside U.S. would do with that) if they 'win'?
What will happen if OOXML becomes a standard? Won't there be any more choice for individual governments to choose their own computer format for exchanging documents? ISO will only have one more reference in its catalog, and everybody will move on?
The only thing I am very looking forward is for prosecutors to investigate the interests I was talking about earlier, find who is behind it, and go berserk on his/her/their ass(es).
ALB1
0) Bill Gates contacted the president of Mexico and ask to approve ms-ooxml
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080327104739103
1) Finland change is vote from Abstention to Yes without voting
http://www.groklaw.net/comment.php?mode=display&sid=20080327104739103&title=Finland+Changes+Vote+to+%26quot%3BYes%26quot%3B+after+Questionable+%26quot%3BConsensus%26quot%3B&type=article&order=&hideanonymous=0&pid=682930#c682940
2) Polish NB Chairwoman has changed the voting rules for the email ballot to "If you don't vote, it is counted as a YES", and she has threatened to sue committee members if they spread accusations
http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-49455/polish-chairwomen-distributes-microsoft-propaganda
3) Romania voted Yes. There is strong suspicion of ballot-stuffing and the Romanian Standardization Organization has so far refused to offer any information other than the vote distribution.
http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-49319/romania-votes-yes-again-ballot-stuffing-lack-of-transparencyro
http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-47722/last-minute-committee-stuffing-in-romania
4) Cuba voted No in September but that its vote was counted as Yes
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080324121844682
5) Brazilian representative alleges that he believes Microsoft has itself violated the "Law of Silence". It relates to Microsoft's claim that 98% of issues were resolved at the meeting, which he says is inaccurate, but his question relates to why Microsoft can talk about the BRM and no one else can. The Brazilian delegate has written to ITTF
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080324220213437
6) Belgium: Yes man invade Technical Committee
http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-48345/belgium-also-stuffed-with-microsoft-business-partners
7) Pakistan and Egypt stuffed?
http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-48053/pakistan-and-egypt-stuffed
8) USA: The Yes men are back for voting in the United States. OOXML was adopted 17 votes against 4, thanks to Microsoft and their 11 Business Partners.
http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-46044/committee-stuffing-also-in-the-united-states:11-microsoft-business-partners
9) German vote Yes: only Yes and Abstain vote admitted. Without very strong pressure from Microsoft Germany would have voted "ABSTAIN", with 9 to 8.
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080327231223154
http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-49525/limited-choice-at-german-din
10) Sweden: the vote is annulled because one member vote two times. No new vote will be cast because there are no time for a new vote (sorry no-link)
11) ISO has violated WTO rules accepting ms-ooxml as possible standard. Tineke Egyedi, president of the European Academy for Standardisation, is critical of OOXML being
Actually, when you think about it, it's a win-win situation - for microsoft.
Either, they get OOXML force-fed to us all, damaging ODF.
Or, their methods will corrupt and destroy faith in the standards process itself. Now ask yourself what one important backbone of Free Software is. That's right - standards. Interoperability is why Free Software can work with each other and we can build global systems out of it.
So, in either case, MS has successfully damaged an important asset of those they consider their enemies. They can't lose.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
MS uses their own DrawingML instead of SVG, their MS Math instead MathML, Dark Blue is coded as 000080 and not 00008B (SVG and ISO), MS country codes instead of ISO country codes, etc. Some of them are documented; some are not. However none of them are approved standards themselves. This means that in order to use OOXML completely, software must use MS standards. For things like DarkBlue and country codes, this is plain silly. Why should everyone in the world conform to uses MS standards when the ISO standard already exists.
Also using MS standards excludes any platform/software MS chooses to exclude including Linux, OS X, BSD, etc. For example the recommended format for DrawingML is Windows Meta File(WMF) which is Windows only and there are no plans to port it to another format or platform.
Besides being anti-competitive, the use of undocumented MS standards can be dangerous. For example, OOXML uses MS hashing and cryptographic functions which are not documented or approved or tested. Are these functions safe and effective? No one but MS knows. Again, there is an existing ISO standard on hashing and cryptographic functions.
OOXML uses units like English Metric Units (EMU) and "twips" (twentieths of a point). While somewhat defined, neither of them conform to any country's known units of measurements. Also in OOXML, different parts uses different units without any explanation. For example, some parts use twips while some parts are defined in points, half points, pixels, etc.
Many parts of the specification have undefined terms like the style "basicThinLine" (1 pt line?) and "plainText" (ASCII, UTF8?) . If software wanted to render a basicThinLine or use plainText, it would be up to interpretation to what that meant.
XML should be human readable but OOXML is littered with abbreviated, unclear element names like scrgbClr, algn, blurRad, dir, dist, rotWithShape.
Many parts of OOXML are written from a Western viewpoint of languages and customs with little consideration of other cultures. There are numerous examples where OOXML does not support Unicode which means only Latin based languages can fully implement OOXML. This affects all non-Latin based alphabets: Cyrillic (Russian, Belarussian, Ukranian), Middle Eastern (Arabic, Farsi), Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean),etc. For example, OOXML does not support RFC 3987 which means no Chinese characters in web addresses. Some functions are Western only: Networkdays() returns Saturday and Sunday as weekends which is true for the US but not Muslim countries.
autoSpaceLikeWord95, footnoteLayoutLikeWW8,mwSmallCaps, etc. Most of these are not documented. Even if they were, they require emulation of a MS product. That unfortunately brings MS patents. If another software emulated autoSpaceLikeWord95, MS could sue them for patent infringement, and MS has only promised that they will not to sue. Legally, their promises mean nothing, as they can go back on their word at any time.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Microsoft has a history of satisfying standards on paper in ways that are completely useless for anyone to actually use. Remember FIPS-151? It was supposed to make an easily implemented open operating system API (POSIX) a requirement for US federal government computing systems. Microsoft's implementation of POSIX allowed them to pass that checkmark, but it wasn't actually useful because they restricted POSIX-using applications. Even IBM's mainframe operating systems had more useful POSIX implementations than Microsoft.
Bad implementations of standards prevent the adoption of real standards.
Ironically this bit them later on, so they ended up buying a company (Softway Systems) that had extended the POSIX subsystem and removed the restrictions because they actually found they needed a working POSIX environment themselves. This totally bailed them out after they had twice failed to convert Hotmail from FreeBSD to Windows NT.
Especially considering that trademarks need to be actively defended. Even Patrick Durusau refers to Microsoft's format as OpenXML. OfficeOpen is just OpenOffice reversed. They are in the same product space. I'm sure Microsoft wouldn't allow an operating system called 'Pro XP Windows'
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
n/t
Should read "Probable"...
realkiwi
OK, this is probably just nuts, and a result of posting in the morning before having any caffeine to boot my brain, but a weird theory just came to mind. I'll present it for the general amusement and ridicule of the Slashdot crowd.
A lot of complaints about OOXML are over things that it did the same as, or better than, ODF. For example, one of the complaints was that it did not fully specify how to do password hashing. But ODF is even less forthcoming in this regard. It just says that you should hash any password you store in the file. It doesn't say what hash you should use, or tell you how to record in the file what hash is used so others can figure out how to process the file. But because of these complaints about OOXML, it now specifies password hashing in enough detail that you can implement it from the spec and referenced documents.
A second example: calendars. OOXML was dinged for not giving a precise reference for each supported it calendar. It just had a list of calendars, and for each a short description. But ODF was even terser. It just, in one sentence, gives a list of the names of the supported calendars, with no reference at all. But because OOXML was dinged for inadequate calendar specs, OOXML now for each gives a precise reference. For example, all you'll find in ODF about the hijri calendar is that one word in that list (and I think there is one example document fragment where it has that word in it). In OOXML now, it says this about the hijri calendar:
Specifies that the Hijri lunar calendar, as described by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Endowments, Da'wah and Guidance (Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Endowments, Da'wah and Guidance n.d.), shall be used. Net result: another place where you have to guess in ODF, but are told in the spec what to do in OOXML.There are a lot of things like this in there--things where OOXML is now specified much more precisely than ODF. Places where you can figure out from the spec itself what to do, whereas if you are implementing ODF, you have to fall back to looking at OpenOffice source code to see what they did and match it.
And this has had a very predictable effect. A lot of third party programs and sites are starting to support OOXML, whereas ODF doesn't seem to be growing much beyond OpenOffice and the other free office suites. Reading blog entries from people who have tried to implement OOXML and ODF, I see that the OOXML ones are having an easier time. The ODF ones are more likely to run into something that is underspecified or ambiguous (at least if they are sticking to the standard, rather than working from 1.2, which is not a standard yet)
The net result of OOXML being required to clear a much higher bar than any previous document standard is that OOXML has become the most useful document specification. And how did this happen?
The surprising answer: IBM. There has been a lot of technical criticism of OOXML, but also a lot of FUD. And when you look at the FUD, and trace it back, a heck of a lot of it ends up coming from IBM.
Why? The net result of this is to make OOXML better, and to ultimately harm ODF. But IBM wouldn't want to harm ODF...
Or would they? Sun effectively controls ODF. Sun and IBM are competitors, to a greater extent than IBM and Microsoft are competitors. Could IBM have decided that they are not comfortable with Sun's tight reins over ODF? So they started a FUD effort against OOXML, knowing that it would result in (1) OOXML becoming a better spec than ODF, and (2) prompting Microsoft to turn more control over to ECMA than Sun has turned over to OASIS?
To put it succinctly, is IBM trying, in a very roundabout way, to kill ODF?
Not that I trust Poland's postal service or e-mail infrastructure, whichever they're referring to, but I'm sure Microsoft was pulling some BS here. Why don't they just tell Microsoft after all the crap they pulled that they automatically lose?
Google's Super Secret Search Algorithm: SELECT @search_results FROM internet WHERE @search_results = 'good'
There was a time when a standard was determined by popular use, not by committee.
Remove the committee and this problem will vanish.
If OOXML is approved you will be rewarded, otherwise... well, chairs flying.
The chairperson deliberately hid a letter from the Polish Committee for Standardization (PKN)President, asking all members of the voting committee to change their vote to abstain as no national consensus was reached.
As the information about it came back to the PKN's President he decided to publish his letter on the PKN's website - http://www.pkn.pl/?pid=list_kt182&cid (polish only).
Oh, come on, it's Poland, what do you expect?
As a Pole I can only say "Kurwa ma"
Maybe they're just pissed that Microsoft forgot Poland.
Me lost me cookie at the disco.
Denmark
http://www.ds.dk/
Poland
http://polishlinux.org/poland/no-consensus-over-ooxml-in-poland-yet/
Germany
http://www.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.heise.de%2Fnewsticker%2FDIN-sagt-Ja-zur-ISO-Stan
dardisierung-von-OOXML--%2Fmeldung%2F105657&langpair=de|en&hl=sv&ie=UTF8
South Korea
http://osrin.net/2008/03/28/south-korea-votes-approve-for-isoiec-dis29500/
Norway
http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article92563.ece
I think the USA and the UK are also voting yes, but I don't have any links for those.