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?

Comments

Wanted: standardization decision-making standard

[Adaptux]

IBM's representative accused the committee's chairman of intentionally manipulating the process.

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.

Why didn't OpenOffice sue?

[phoenix.bam!]

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?

No smoke without fire...

[zappepcs]

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.

money buys the world - and ISO

[Tom]

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.

Big MS Victory Already

[Tom]

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.

Re:Big MS Victory Already

[rtb61]

Actually they can and are losing, they are being exposed as a blatant corrupt corporation, willing to destroy any business, government organisation, international standard, or individuals in order to maintain and extend their monopoly.

This overt criminal behaviour will force regulators to come down hard on M$ where and when ever they can.

It also makes it impossible for governments or government departments to recommend M$ software with out being also being seen as corrupt.

Yet again M$ is doing more damage to itself then FOSS ever could.

Re:Microsoft == big $ == corruption ?

[TropicalCoder]

Why should the rules be different for OOXML?

Indeed, why should the rules be different OOXML? You raise a good point. I heartily agree with you. OOMXL should have taken the same route through the rigorous standards process that ODF was subjected to, instead of being placed on the totally ineffective fast-track process with the preferential treatment it was given.

OpenOffice needs to sue for trademark infringement

[pembo13]

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'

Re:Poland? Just the regular chaos

[rbanffy]

"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"

I oppose the idea of voting through the internet because it would be a nightmare to ensure the confidentiality of the votes, to say nothing about the accuracy of the whole process.

Having been part of the development team of one of the Brazilian electronic voting ballots I can tell there is a very thick layer of regulations, protocols and processes around the physical device that have to be followed carefully and audited independently in order to make it about as secure as a paper ballot while preserving its practical advantages like the almost instantaneous election results.

The very idea of being able to vote by phone of by a home computer connected to the internet horrifies me.

Re:Time for a crazy theory

[UnknowingFool]

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.

In a standard, you have to be careful in specifying "what to do" as opposed to specifying "how to do it". In the case of password hashing, ODF does not specify which method you should use. It leaves that up to each implementation because each country has different standards. ie. Japan: (MD5, RIPEMD-160, SHA1, SHA256, SHA384, and SHA512),US:(SHA1, SHA224, SHA256,SHA384, and SHA512) . OOXML on the other hand introduces new, never tested, undefined MS-only methods that are required. Are these MS function safe and free of holes? Are they patented (which means you have to pay MS to use them)? No one really knows.

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.

Again, same problem. ODF, like a good standard, references other approved standards. OOXML tries to introduce their own standard. For example, the function Networkday() returns Saturday and Sunday as weekends. This is true in Western cultures only. So this function is flawed for Muslim countries for example. But if you accept OOXML, you have to accept a flawed implementation of a function.

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.

I don't know about programs in development but ODF has lots of released software that supports ODF. Name one released application that supports OOXML: Not even Office 2007 fully implements OOXML.

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)

One of the main issues with OOXML is that it contained many proprietary Windows-only, undefined APIs. So Windows programmer might use autoSpaceLikeWord95 but really has no idea what it actually does. So many non-Windows programmers may avoid OOXML altogether. That skews your sample.

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?

If anything, the opposite is true. OOXML got fast-tracked. ODF did not. ODF approval required that all participating countries approve it. Somehow in the OOXML process, Abstain became Yes in some countries.

There has been a lot of technical criticism of OOXML, but also a lot of FUD. And when you look at the FUD,