OOXML Will Pass Amid Massive Irregularities

Tokimasa notes a CNet blog predicting that OOXML will make the cut. Updegrove agrees, as does the OpenMalasia blog. Reports of irregularities continue to surface, such as this one from Norway — "The meeting: 27 people in the room, 4 of which were administrative staff from Standard Norge. The outcome: Of the 24 members attending, 19 disapproved, 5 approved. The result: The administrative staff decided that Norway wants to approve OOXML as an ISO standard." Groklaw adds reportage of odd processes in Germany and Croatia.

Comments

Gross sounding title

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like something a gastroentorologist would diagnose.

Re:Gross sounding title

[mcpkaaos]

It is.

Re:Gross sounding title

[AJWM]

The end product is about the same.

Re:Gross sounding title

[Daengbo]

Hopefully, everyone else agrees that it's shit, but I don't think that'll happen. OOXML will pass, MS OFfice will use its own, non-standard version of OOXML, governments will claim they are in compliance with laws requiring open standards, and the rest of us will be in the same boat we've been in for fifteen years. It's all quite sick.

Re:Gross sounding title

[johny42]

+1 Sad :(

Re:Gross sounding title

[fwarren]

Hopefully, everyone else agrees that it's shit, but I don't think that'll happen. OOXML will pass, MS OFfice will use its own, non-standard version of OOXML, governments will claim they are in compliance with laws requiring open standards, and the rest of us will be in the same boat we've been in for fifteen years. It's all quite sick.

You have forgotten all of the benefits the the ISO process.

Lets see. There is making a mockery of the standards making process. There is a cheapening of the term ISO standard. When I see that in the future, it won't have as much meaning to me. It does not mean something will work, or is used by the industry, or even that it is possible to implement. I know it is not multi-vendor. It will not prevent lock-in. Any data comitted to it may or may not be portable.

Also, as serves them right. The ISO has been crippled by this. All of those members that came on board to help Microsoft. Well, they are not showing up at any of the other meetings. So when a standards body meets. Has 40 members only 10 of them show up, and you get 4 YES, 4 NO, 2 abstain and 30 not present. Well shucks. Things just about grind to a halt.

Re:Gross sounding title

[ta bu shi da yu]

+1 terrible, given that ISO is now seen as a money grubbing corporate lackey, with non-transparent processes and processes vulnerable to corruption by the highest bidder.

Hopefully this fiasco will never happen again. The best you can say about the whole deal is that it at least gives an insight into how standards are created. Unfortunately, it seems that many aren't created with quality in mind, but for the good of a single interest.

Re:Gross sounding title

[tbannist]

Frankly, I had little respect for ISO processes before this. Now, I know ISO standardization is utterly worthless. I mean, we're just finding out about this now because OpenXML is an issue of interest to us. The process has likely been bought before, just by people who know the meaning of the word "subtlety".

To me, this clearly shows that ISO, as an organization, is a useless rubber stamp.

This is getting ridiculous

[Pig Hogger]

This is insane.

No day goes by without hearing from some croporate giant running roughshod over the laws, procedures or institutions of democratic countries.

The United States have let a handful of mega-croporations totally wreck it's economy with the blessing of the government that was elected while pulling the wool over the electorate's eyes.

It is time for the people to revolt, and put the croporations back to where they belong by firmly asserting the power of the government over croporations, if need by, by the croporate death penalty and the confiscation of the croporation's assets.

The government has thoroughly been subverted by croporate cronies; those should be charged with subversive sedition and thrown in jail and the key tossed in the Marianas trench.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[mactard]

It seems this has little to do with the USA though. I agree with most of your points, but the countries listed can grow a pair too, you know!

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[pdq332]

Darned powerful corporations, tooooo powerful if you ask me. So powerful they can subvert committees in Norway made up of over twenty people! And all over that OO-Thingy. Scary. Charge them with shifty shennanigans too, the gallows for them and build the platform over a black hole.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

I find all the 'reporting' on OOXML very hard to belive. I don't see how its possible to publicly bribe so many board member in so many countries and get away with it. The truth must surely be a little more plain -- that the process is working (at least the same as it would for any other standard) and nobody is greasing anybody's palm.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[CSMatt]

Go ahead. Let me know how it turns out.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Achromatic1978]

I'm with AC here. Are Groklaw, etc, really suggesting that several standards bodies in several nations are /all/ corrupt? And not one leak? Not one failed, incorruptible whistleblower? Or is it just that, whatever you may think of the standard, Microsoft, etc, that OOXML just has enough to get past? I know it's an ugly concept, but it seems more plausible. And only natural / human that when your championed standard/objections to something are overlooked/fail, that you look for a culprit, any culprit, that overlooks your own weaknesses and / or failings?

That's more what it seems like to me, despite my personal objections and issues with OOXML.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll trust a big corporation over big government any day.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

So, what's the difference between the government and a corporation?

I will answer that for you: none, except one can garnish your wages and throw you in prison if you refuse to pay for their services, whether you need them or not.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

That's all a bit strong. A simple and peaceful way to do this is passive sabotage. Just use the rope they sold us to hang them with. This rubbish that's been pushed is broken, we all know that. The discussion has been about the merits of the systems and those whos opinions matter have voted and said no. But we are being bullied to use it anyway. All we (system administrators, programmers, computer people) have to do is work to rule. Everything relies on us going the extra mile. As soon as we stop pandering to that, it all falls down.

Implement the damn broken protocol.

Make sure every installation, every road traffic system, every government admin system, every critical utility enjoys this substabdard rubbish exactly as its written, Give them what they want. When it doesn't work, point to the spec. In 5 years time the name Microsoft will be dirt. Microsoft products will probably be banned by law after a number of high profile disaters.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

[The United States have let a handful of mega-croporations totally wreck it's economy ]
Um, yeah, ok. If this is wrecked I'll take it. Still gowing, low unemployment; I've been to Europe, South America, Japan, you can keep the economies there.

[with the blessing of the government that was elected while pulling the wool over the electorate's eyes]
Last election was a landslide. Think the gov is fooling the people, check out the Obama campaign.

[and put the croporations back to where they belong by firmly asserting the power of the government over croporations]
Won't happen. The corps have a business plan, the people don't.

Good luck.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[donweel]

"We are the goonsquad and we're comming to town beep beep."
"Theres a brand new dance but I dont know its name
That people from bad homes do again and again
Its big and its bland full of tension and fear
They do it over there but we dont do it here."http://www.lyricsfreak.com/d/david+bowie/fashion_20036921.html and for u visual types http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oudKFDpUlQ

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

I might consider your points if it wasn't obvious by your use of punctuation that you've been corrupted by the slash cabal. If they can get to you, surely M$ can get to you.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[MrNaz]

Why? Because government has an entire intelligence agency at its disposal and regulatory control over the media? Wake up call: In the western world, for all intents and purposes Big government == Big corporate.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[mabhatter654]

Considering that the RIAA and others are lobbying for just those rights for companies I'd be worried...

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[countach]

Microsoft's core competency has always been in corporate deals, politicking and product positioning rather than actually making a product good enough to stand on its own merits. This can work for a while, but my prediction is we are near to the end game of this strategy.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

Step away from the computer.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[donweel]

"We are the goonsquad and we're comming to town beep beep."
"Theres a brand new dance but I dont know its name That people from bad homes do again and again Its big and its bland full of tension and fear They do it over there but we dont do it here."http://www.lyricsfreak.com/d/david+bowie/fashion_20036921.html and for u visual types http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oudKFDpUlQ

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[nmb3000]

Microsoft, etc, that OOXML just has enough to get past?

Wait, are you suggesting that Microsoft didn't bribe a dozen counties, at a hundred or more people, and pull off the biggest corporate cover-up in history (aside from the brilliant and astute readers of Slashdot who have worked diligently to uncover this plot) just so they could get their document format adopted as an ISO standard--something which will yield them little to no gain because the market share of Office essentially requires competitive document compatibility?

You most obviously and certainly, as a very wise man once said (probably Cowboyneal), must be new here.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[VultureMN]

I don't think it's necessarily _illegal_ corruption (flat-out bribery) that people are complaining about; a company can still stay within the law while doing nasty, immoral stuff. Think about the sea of lobbyists and the resultant corporate influence in the US: legal, but still reprehensible.

Add that to the fact that the vast majority of people haven't heard of, or simply don't give a rats ass about, the ISO process. Tada, they can pull these kinds of shenanigans without much risk of a public opinion backlash.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

If I don't buy windows, no one really gives a shit and if they do there is jack they can do about it. If I don't pay my taxes, I get my wages garnished or go to jail.

At least you can boycott a company. You can't boycott the government.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[conlaw]

And not one leak? Not one failed, incorruptible whistleblower?

Obviously, you didn't RTFA. The German, Norwegian and Croatian members whose votes were essentially negated have all blown the whistle and it's having just as much effect as the detailed account of Dubya's lies about Iraq has had on continuing the war he started. I think people in many countries, starting here in the good old USA, should start reading some history; e.g., "When in the course of human events...."

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[orasio]

I'm with AC here. Are Groklaw, etc, really suggesting that several standards bodies in several nations are /all/ corrupt? And not one leak? Not one failed, incorruptible whistleblower? Or is it just that, whatever you may think of the standard, Microsoft, etc, that OOXML just has enough to get past? I know it's an ugly concept, but it seems more plausible. And only natural / human that when your championed standard/objections to something are overlooked/fail, that you look for a culprit, any culprit, that overlooks your own weaknesses and / or failings?

That's more what it seems like to me, despite my personal objections and issues with OOXML.

In my country, Uruguay, they were not corrupt. They were just ignorant. The vote of government organization was in the line of: we don't really know what this is all about, but MS software is important to us, so we think it's OK to standardize it. Vote YES.

I think that, because this is a key issue for MS, they exploited the system in every way they could, you don't even need corruption in most places, if the have the right vulnerabilities.

The reason why we are all saying that it can't be possible that they accept it is that some of us read the standard, of excerpts from it. The complaint is that, even to lay people, it is very easy to see it's not a standard at all, and tries to standardize an area that already has a real standard approved (ODF), without improving on it. It should be easier to spot for standards specialists. There are issues where you can have different opinions, but this seems too clear cut to even be discussed.

A standard should be something that allows you to test compliance. OOXML, in lots of points does not help you build a compliance test. Of course, those tags that say your should render content as Word9x come to mind. That is why it's so clear to me that I can't be approved, in its current form. Of course, it could be improved and become a standard, but it has not happened yet.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Drasil]

While I agree with your sentiment I think your solution is unfeasible. While the mass remains docile and subservient true change (for the better) is unlikely to happen. If you truly feel this strongly then my advice would be as follows. Stop playing the corporate game, stop buying their products, minimise your income so you pay as little tax as possible. Align yourself with others who are doing the same, form communities for mutual support, strive for as much self sufficiency as possible.

Revolution is never the solution, it just changes which evil oligarchs are on the top of the pile. Instead strive for evolution. Hope that one day the mass does the same, at which point our glorious leaders will find themselves with no one to lead and their power will evaporate. Of course this will not happen in our life time, or even within the span of the current civilisation. Just because the right thing is impossible does not mean we should not attempt it.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[NoobixCube]

Votes probably weren't bought outright, but talk is cheap. Microsoft probably bought a few persuasive people to argue the point until they're blue in the face. A few who genuinely like OOXML, plus a few with a new car, can certainly convince enough of the remainder to get it through. Just look for the countries that did a 180 first and you'll find a few dubious phone calls, at least.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

If he was corrupted, wouldn't his /s be \s and\or wouldn\t... (doh!) ?

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[MrNaz]

You can boycott a company hey? Try boycotting the fraction of your tax dollars that are spent funding an unpopular, unproductive and wasteful war that has been fully privatised. In other words, try boycotting Halliburton, Bechtel and KBR.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[schnikies79]

In that case, why should I trust the government?

Not every corporation is in bed with government, but the government has power and control over every corporation.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[donweel]

no idea how that went in twice
sorry, some fire wall problem.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

We only know about these irregularities because voting members have leaked this information, even in the face of legal threats. The people at Groklaw don't presume that everyone is corrupt, but when they see four people deciding to override the votes of twenty other people behind closed doors they can see that just enough people has drunk the Microsoft kool-aid. Never mind that OOXML still has hundreds or thousands of unaddressed errors.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually this sounds pretty good idea. Make a plugin that purposefully creates faulty files, then everyone will be complaining how poor the new Office is as they cannot open the files 'correctly'.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[stoicio]

When 19 out of 24 *VOTE NO* to a proposed standard
and it still passes, there's something wrong in
Norway.

The simplest answer is usually the best answer.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

Still gowing, low unemployment

In case you hadn't noticed, even the President admits we are in a recession. The unemployment rate in my state is at a 4-year high. In 2004 the unemployment rate in my state was the highest it had been since 1993 when we were still recovering from the Bush Sr recession.

Last election was a landslide.

Which last election are you referring to? In 2004 Bush got 50.7% of the popular vote versus Kerry's 48.3%. I would hardly call that a landslide; unless you're counting pro-large-corporation in which case it's 99% in favor.

In 2006, The U.S. House lost 30 Republicans and the Senate lost 6. That was a clear expression of disapproval with the status quo.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[AJWM]

I don't see how its possible to publicly bribe so many board member in so many countries and get away with it.

See, you've missed half the trick right there. It's not a matter of bribing "so many board members", it's just a matter of getting the committee chairs on your side and having them get creative with the voting or vote recording process. You don't have to bribe all the members (or even most of them) if the chairperson can tell them "'no' votes aren't allowed" for obscure procedural reasons (Germany), or if they ignore an overwhelming 'no' vote (Norway), or if they can say that voting will be extended to allow email votes by those that didn't show up at the meeting -- and any that don't send email will be taken as a 'yes' vote (Poland).

As for swinging committee chairs to your side, here's a pretty good explanation of that process.

Then of course there's just stacking the working groups by having all your Microsoft-Partner business buddies decide to join up and take part.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry about the "redundant" mod...hit the wrong item in the list. I meant to choose "insightful"

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[zippthorne]

The usefulness of revolution is not in that it changes the regime for the better: it may not. It's that the new regime has to start from scratch. The problem is evolution. Namely that tyranny doesn't come all at once in a democracy. It piles on like plaque, and the deeper it gets, the harder it becomes to shed.

Now, certainly, there is risk in revolution: you could get tyrants right off the bat. In which case, you'd better have another revolution in the wings. And that's the reason why it's a good idea to be careful about starting one, but they're certainly not never the answer.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[lskovlund]

They did not bribe. They stacked the panel.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Hal_Porter]

As an totally independent consultant working on one of the standards boards I'd just like to say that people here don't what we are trying to achieve here with OOXML ... they .... don't understand .... OOXML... or ... <ALIEN VOICE>THE GLORY OF ITS PURPOSE. GLORY TO MICROSOFT!</ALIEN VOICE>

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[AJWM]

Are Groklaw, etc, really suggesting that several standards bodies in several nations are /all/ corrupt? And not one leak? Not one failed, incorruptible whistleblower?

Not at all. It's precisely because of the leaks and whistleblowers that we're aware of the corruption and interference that has taken place. And your "/all/ corrupt" is a strawman -- it doesn't require everyone in the standards body to be corrupted, just a few key individuals with influence over the voting process.

(Now, please put down the Microsoft talking points and step away from the keyboard.)

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[darkfire5252]

I'm with AC here. Are Groklaw, etc, really suggesting that several standards bodies in several nations are /all/ corrupt? And not one leak? Not one failed, incorruptible whistleblower? Well, I am all about questioning the groupthink, but you're missing something. Stories like the above are the leaks you're looking for. These are written by people who are/were involved with their country's standardization process and feel that there's a problem with what happened.

If you can read German, here's the story on what happened there. For those who can't, when they went to vote, they were not allowed to vote disapprove, so the choice was to approve or to abstain. It was a tie, 6:6, which means no consensus. [...] the representative from DIN decided to cast a vote, which isn't the process. DIN isn't supposed to vote, because it's supposed to advise. But this, they rationalized, was a vote not about whether to accept OOXML on the basis of *technical* issues, but whether to accept the approval suggestion of the technical committee. So DIN voted to accept DIN's suggestion. Hence Germany ends up in the Approve column. That's a German 'whistleblower' who is familiar with how the process should run and is stating that it did not run that way.

Here's an article from Norway [...] The article says there should be an investigation of the irregularities there, because while there were only two votes to approve, from Microsoft and a business partner, Statoilhydro, and all the others voted no, 21 votes [...] So they put everyone out of the room, and Standards Norway, three people were left in the room, and they usurped the decision and made it their business to decide to approve anyway. There's another independent report from another country. The list goes on... One should always be skeptical of believing in massive cover-ups and the like, but let's be honest here: there are plenty of legitimate signs that something untoward is going on.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[MrNaz]

I'm not saying trust the government, I'm saying trust neither. And not every corporation is in bed with the government, but they are *all* motivated by the sole aim of separating you from your money.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[blind monkey 3]

I will answer that for you: none, except one can garnish your wages and throw you in prison if you refuse to pay for their services, whether you need them or not.
and the other owns them....

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

The right wing in the US is a joke. The corporations have been too powerful in the US for more than 140 years. The corporations don't really care what the people think. Sadly, governments also, don't care what people think. There is a faint hope, that after this next election, there will actually be change in the US (something that hasn't happened in more than 70 years). There needs to be a fundamental shift of power, from governments and the string pulling corporations that controls it, to people. The parent doesn't want it, because he is part of the problem. Communism didn't work. But its failure doesn't automatically mean capitalism is a success. If it works for only 1% more people than communism, and we are talking well below 25% of the population, you can't say 'success'.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't take whistleblowers because it's all out in the open. The standards process is fundamentally flawed and just because this time you care how it is organized doesn't mean it worked any better before. Standards are made by businesses with vested interests, not by groups who have the good of the people in mind.

Anybody who reads that "standard" proposal can see that it should never be considered anything but a rough sketch of a current snapshot of a proprietary and convoluted file format. It is not standards material by any means other than the desire to keep the status quo of Microsoft dominance for the sake of continuity. The inherent stability of making current practices a standard is why you won't see outrage from anybody who could do something about this travesty, even though the committees are subverted by Microsoft affiliates.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[El_Isma]

Fellow uruguayan here... I've heard the same story (from people that attended the votation).

So, what shall we conclude? That ISO isn't a relevant entity. This votation has shown that it's corrupt in many countries, and incompetent in others. Why should the other standards that have been aproved in the past be any more "respectable"? Couldn't they also been approved out of corruption or incompetence?

And even if in the end it doesn't get approved, you can't ignore what has happened. I don't know about you, but I will not hold ISO in high regard anymore.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[ozbird]

As for swinging committee chairs to your side, here's a pretty good explanation of that process.

Here's a better explanation of the process. "I suggest a new strategy, ISO: let the monkey boy win."

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[neonmonk]

as an hero??

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Skeetskeetskeet]

And they say something's rotten in Denmark.... HAH!

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Eth1csGrad1ent]

eg. Japanese whaling and the International Whaling Commision. Not a mega-corp per se, but the same principle applies.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Larryish]

tag: somethingrottenindenmarkuhimeannorway

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Divebus]

As for swinging committee chairs to your side... That brought out a whole different visual.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[man_of_mr_e]

What's even more interesting is the fact that the story is in fact wrong.

The norway meeting was not about approving or disapproving OOXML. It was to discuss if there was voter irregularities in Norway's vote, which the administors decided did not occur.

The vote was whether or not to change their vote based on voting irregularities.

Any vote for or gainst OOXML is like going to a US mid-term election and crying foul and corruption because your vote wasn't counted for the president.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[tomatensaft]

This basically shows, how the world is tied up. If Microsoft wants something, it goes to its partner, a national corporate giant (StatoilHydro is a nafta giant) and asks him a favor. Then suddenly, government of the country is all for Microsoft's wishes. >:(

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[mikeb]

That's a completely understandable viewpoint and it's hard to argue against its pragmatism.

However: as a member until a few weeks ago of the British Standards Institute panel on this topic (I resigned because it's simply impossible to review a 6,000 page document properly and keep a full-time job, the work is unpaid), all that I can do, amid the noise and shouting, is to say that in my opinion a) all the comments about what a pile of crap the draft is are entirely correct and b) I am totally mystified by why national bodies are changing their minds.

I attended the Ballot Resolution Meeting in Geneva, though as a non-delegate was not allowed into the deliberations. Discussions with numerous delegates confirmed my view that the draft remains unfit.

If I had still been a panel member last week my vote would have been no.

It appears that that would have then been 5 for 2 against inside the BSI if the leaks and rumours are to be believed. The BSI procedures are in fact that there is no voting but instead 'consensus' is sought. If that's true, the 5/1 split reported doesn't sound like consensus to me but I wasn't present and can't verify the leaks because the BSI process is closed to outsiders.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[wellingj]

I don't know where you are from, but to me the government's role was never to hold power over the corporations. Theft is still Theft, and the confiscation you propose is exactly that. But aside from that, how is having a corrupt government confiscate even more money going to solve anything? Besides if the US confiscates MS's assets, it will be clear to all people that no company is safe to operate within the US. Do you want that to happen? I'll admit that MS has a problem with wanting what they have not earned through monopoly force, but guess who created that problem? The consumers created this problem because they wanted simple easy and homogeneous. They didn't want to think when they used a computer. And they wanted it now. They traded their comfort for their technological freedom. But you and I know exactly how easy it is to free your self of that claptrap, it just takes the bare minimum of thought. Show me a user who can't use a Modern Linux Distro and I'll show you someone who also shouldn't be left on their own on any computer system.

I'm just going to keep using Linux, and refuse to fix any one's windows box for them, and when they say "Awww gee whiz but you are like smart with computers and stuff" I'll just tell them why they should use Linux in clear and simple terms, and if they don't like that, too bad for them because I'm not going to shovel their shit for them and they can pay someone else for their time.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Allador]

Okay, I'm not familiar with the internal rules of national ISO committees, but it sounds like in all those cases that the decision makers made a decision. And in some cases it was in disagreement with their technical advising committees.

So maybe it wasnt a good decision, but I am not seeing bribing or corruption here.

In other words, if the people who cast the final vote werent the actual decision makers, then why would the ISO accept their vote? If they are the decision makers, then it was properly done, just unpopular.

Of course, its possible that the meeting rules require a binding democratic vote of all present, but I cant find any online documentation that says yay or nay on that.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[rolfc]

I think it has a lot to do with USA. It is a company from USA, that the USA government has failed to control, that has ruined an international standards organisation in order to maintain their current customer data lockin.
You know that is the truth since they have to push it through by force, instead of accepting the fact that there already exist a standard, that they refuse to support.
As far as I am concerned, all they have accomplished is to shame them self. The fact that they get an ISO-stamp, does not mean that OOXML is an open standard, and it is my belief that it never will be.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[catman]

Did you actually read Geir Isene's blog? He was present at the meeting, for crying out loud.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Tom]

It is time for the people to revolt, and put the croporations back to where they belong by firmly asserting the power of the government over croporations, if need by, by the croporate death penalty and the confiscation of the croporation's assets. Pfft. Revolution doesn't work, read 1984 again.

All we need is to enforce the simple fact that corporations are not persons, and do not enjoy any rights granted to "the people" except those where corporations are explicitly included.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a corporation from USA but that's it.

I'm from Finland and really ashamed on how all went. In Finland, most of the people in the meeting opposed (many corporations, two of the ministries, etc.) so the chairman (who was a replaced one, the previous one opposed OOXML so he had to leave) decided they didn't vote but made decision based on general consensus even though "complete unanimity wasn't achieved". I mean... What?! There was one of the changed votes (5 votes need to be changed from previous try that OOXML would pass and this was one of them).

While it would be easy to blame it all on the evil USA and their nasty corporations... Ofcourse the corporations roam free if they are allowed to but why in hell are they? Finland (among other countries) needs to look into itself too and ponder "What the hell just happened and WHY?".

Captcha is very appropriate... Dishonor

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[cloakable]

Nah, make a plugin that creates OOXML compliant files. MS Office isn't actually OOXML compliant. Then point at the spec.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

It should be stated that "Standard Norge" is a private, independent company
and is not affiliated with the Norwegian government.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Daniel Phillips]

I find all the 'reporting' on OOXML very hard to belive. I don't see how its possible to publicly bribe so many board member in so many countries and get away with it. The truth must surely be a little more plain -- that the process is working (at least the same as it would for any other standard) and nobody is greasing anybody's palm. So you think Microsoft cannot order its "partners" to stuff meetings and vote for its proposals by offering sweeter deals on Microsoft licenses, and implying license price increases ahead for those who do not cooperate? You are naive. Especially since Microsoft has been found guilty in federal court of employing similar tactics more than once.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[AlistairGroves]

Is there anyone at the BSI we can complain to about this? It might not change the voting results but I had hoped that the UK at least could have conducted things in a more sensible manner.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Delkster]

No day goes by without hearing from some craporate giant running roughshod over the laws There, fixed the spelling for you.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[ozmanjusri]

Microsoft probably bought a few persuasive people to argue the point until they're blue in the face.

That's pretty much what happened in Australia.

Over here, Rick Jelliffe was touted as an open standards advocate and given an extraordinary amount of influence in the MSOOXML deliberations despite being employed by MS as a consultant and being paid by Microsoft to help edit the draft of Microsoft's OOXML standards proposal..

Most attempts to communicate with Standards Australia were ignored or responded to with a form letter, and there was only one public forum in Sydney with little prior notice.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

It is time for the people to revolt I like your train of thought:

"Microsoft is going to get its broken document standard accepted by an international standards body. Therefore, it is time to launch an armed revolution (presumably against the United States)."

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[ichigo 2.0]

Considering that the government is just a subsidiary of the corporates, they already have de facto powers of taxation.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[mikeb]

You can try

BSI British Standards
389 Chiswick High Road
London
W4 4AL

Telephone: +44 (0)20 8996 9001
Fax: +44 (0)20 8996 7001
Email: cservices@bsigroup.com

But they appear to have battened down the hatches and my guess is that the most likely outcome that you will be ignored.

From what I have seen they are all decent people but institutionally incapable of realising that they have made a big mistake. This whole controversy seems to be something that their systems are incapable of recognising, let alone dealing with.

It looks like a kind of collective denial, but I don't know them well enough to judge better; what I describe as collective denial might conceivably be a well-rehearsed response to dealing with situations like this.

Frankly I'm disgusted with the way that this has been handled. Their systems and processes are, in my view, arcane, out-of-date and unfit. Higher up they seem to be doing a rabbit-in-the-headlights response of just hoping it doesn't matter and it will all go away.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[hvm2hvm]

yeah, but it's not really a cover up. they just forced the comities to accept the standard with no fear of consequences (on M$) because they know there aren't going to be consequences whatever they do.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Delkster]

Exactly. If you're good enough or have strong enough connections, you don't need to bribe.

I think there may be several players in the field, both in the OOXML case and in general, who largely see supporting (or at least not opposing) MS as a viable political choice. The rationale may include special deals offered for Microsoft systems, or important companies deemed to be important for national economy that are close to Microsoft. Add good lobbying from MS and its partners, and shake well.

I of course tend to disagree with the notion that it would be a good idea to support MS because of apparent short-term benefits. After all, a monopoly isn't beneficial to anyone in the long run except for the monopoly itself even if the deal initially seems attractive. On the other hand, you also have to remember that even if the EU (where most of this seems to be happening) is supposed to be built on economical collaboration, each nation still pulls their own rope. If the decision-makers view something as a national advantage even though it sounds like a bad idea globally, many of them are likely to support it.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

It's scary to see how much influence a software multinational company has on most countries. Makes you wonder what those oil giants can do...

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[gtall]

If you are referring to the current credit crisis, the blame goes to a lot more than a few mega-corporations. Let's assign the blame:

1. The Fed. Years of interest rates way too low made too much money available which had to go somewhere inflating somewhere's value, and it went to our next contestants...

2. The U.S. house buying public which bought houses on all interest payment loans, second and third houses, flipped houses, etc. This was enabled by our next competitors...

3. The real estate companies (and their lovely agents) and the builders...who believed everyone deserved a McMansion. This was heartily approved by our next scum suckers...

4. The local and state tax districts whose pols and legislators saw to it that zoning ordinances, lax environmental laws, etc. where there to Help Make America Strong. They were echoed by...

5. The federal Congress Critters and Administration who saw to it that a free market economy carried no responsibility for oversight since more economic activity meant more money to spend. That still wasn't enough so they deficit spent because what's a few more bucks for those policies needed to buy the next election. This enabled...

6. Your mega-corporations on Wall Street...even thought they are dwarfed by real mega-corporations but I figured you probably wouldn't know the difference...These Wall Street geniuses thought that packaging loans and thus cutting the link between value and collateral would be a great way to sucker the investors near and abroad in buying these "debt instruments"....and to make things worse...

7. Their other friends on Wall Street made more debt-instruments available all backed by the debt-instruments in 6, and this went several layers deep so that an entire domino tail was stacked up just waiting for a push. This also enabled...

8. Speculators in commodities to use this new found wealth to bid up the prices of oil, food, and other commodities.

8. The first domino fell when Joe Sixpack realized how overextended he was and couldn't afford to outlive his means and cut back...including defaults on those home loans.

And this is the simplistic view.

Gerry

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

The get out and protest dude! Bring a whole bunch of people with you. Be a leader!

If I were in your shoes I would...

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, this smells bad.

But it is never over. YOU can still make a difference; simply reject .docx files and ask for ODF- or PDF-files. Also, point the sender to http://www.anyofficesuite.org/.

Thanks.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[SgtChaireBourne]

I'm with AC here. Are Groklaw, etc, really suggesting that several standards bodies in several nations are /all/ corrupt? And not one leak? Not one failed, incorruptible whistleblower? ... No. Groklaw simply links to the whistleblowers. Such astroturfing doesn't work anymore, pretending there wasn't two years of ongoing outrage only works in Redmond and doesn't fool anyone here.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Drasil]

A good point, well made. I accept that not all (perhaps not even most) revolutions result in a worse situation than that which prompted them, but I still believe that thinking in terms of revolution is most often not helpful.

The problem is evolution. Namely that tyranny doesn't come all at once in a democracy. It piles on like plaque, and the deeper it gets, the harder it becomes to shed.

I would not call this process evolution, stagnation, regression or decadence perhaps. I am struck by the realisation that tyranny is to democracy as bloat is to software.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[cp.tar]

When 19 out of 24 *VOTE NO* to a proposed standard
and it still passes, there's something wrong in
Norway.

The simplest answer is usually the best answer.

As for Croatia — I live there, so I should know — lots of things are rotten here, and this process and Microsoft's interference are among the least of them.

Apart from the irregularities listed in the Groklaw article, Microsoft Croatia is rather well connected to the government, which brought Microsoft to all the schools and most universities exclusively. So I am not in the least surprised on how the vote went, though the HULK (CLUG) guys have fought valiantly.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[itsdapead]

As for swinging committee chairs to your side, here's a pretty good explanation of that process

Easy - just tell them what certain Microsoft execs do to chairs hen they're unhappy... :-)

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

Posting Anonymously, not wanting to toot my own horn. Apparently, last September Standards Australia was going to vote yes, but thankfully I have the ear of a rather influential group in Australia. A nice two page letter to put the whole situation in simple terms and SA abstained. I've been told that a copy of that letter has been shown at meetings in Redmond (funny that it was Ecma submitting the draft, why would Microsoft need to care?) and maybe certain people at Microsoft don't like me very much anymore. Oh well, too bad, are they going to take away my Windows license? Heck, i've got heaps of unwanted ones that i've been forced to buy when purchasing computer systems, even after specifically telling the vendor that I have no intention whatsoever of ever running Windows on them.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[orasio]

Fellow uruguayan here... I've heard the same story (from people that attended the votation).

So, what shall we conclude? That ISO isn't a relevant entity. This votation has shown that it's corrupt in many countries, and incompetent in others. Why should the other standards that have been aproved in the past be any more "respectable"? Couldn't they also been approved out of corruption or incompetence?

And even if in the end it doesn't get approved, you can't ignore what has happened. I don't know about you, but I will not hold ISO in high regard anymore. Well, it all comes down to what your agenda is. ISO is relevant right now, and will continue to be so, even with all these issues. OOXML being rejected as an ISO standard would give a competitive edge to ODF. OOXML is having problems right now becoming a defacto standard, because users with older msoffice versions are pushing backwards. I think without the added momentum of ISO compliance it will never catch on. In large organizations it will come down to keeping the old formats, for compatibility sake, or ODF for ISO compliance. It would very easy to make the case against OOXML if they don't get ISO status. In that scenario, time could get rid of .doc, eventually, and finally data would be freely available, and time proof.

I was hoping people in our country would be wiser, but I underestimated the power of government people do do the stupid thing.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

Something is wrong in the standards company (Standard Norge). Cellular phone number to the boss of the standardardization company is "+4790115868". Y'all could SMS him how you feel.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[orasio]

It's scary to see how much influence a software multinational company has on most countries. Makes you wonder what those oil giants can do... Luckily, in my country they can't do much, because there is a state owned monopoly on refineries and fuel. Fuel has comparable prices to neighbors, even though we don't have any oil. That's what they don't teach in class when they say monopolies are bad.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

eg. Japanese whaling and the International Whaling Commision. Not a mega-corp per se, but the same principle applies.

I'm not sure if this is your point, but in that case Greenpeace and similar is the lobbying "mega-corp" influencing uninformed political decisions.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a corporation from USA but that's it. Not quite. It's a corporation from the USA, displaying all the bad things about the corporate culture of the USA. It's self-serving. It's corrupt. It's anything but being competitive. It's sickening.

I agree completely with the rest of your post placing a huge load of blame onto some of the countries happily playing along with the scam, of course. But if the company in question didn't do its part of it all, it most likely wouldn't have happened this way, would it?

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[schon]

get their document format adopted as an ISO standard--something which will yield them little to no gain I guess you haven't really been following along, but there is *MASSIVE* benefit to getting MS's proprietary standard declared "open".

But I'm sure you'll counter with the absurd assertion that MS doesn't need to maintain lock-in, because they already have a monopoly, right?

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[tixxit]

I also haven't seen anyone come out and explain to all us tin-foil hat wearing techies how this is actually the process working as it should. I find it hard to believe that no one has a good explanation for all this apparent misconduct, if it actually is innocent (I know, I know, they shouldn't have to prove their innocence, we should prove their guilt; but its for their own reputation).

As a side note, there may well be a good explanation and I'm just a jackass. Hopefully its posted in these comments somewhere.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, make a plugin that creates OOXML compliant files. MS Office isn't actually OOXML compliant. Then point at the spec.

This won't work. Every PHB knows that 'the standard' is defined by precisely how MS's latest POS works. The software *is* the spec.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[darkfire5252]

Okay, I'm not familiar with the internal rules of national ISO committees, but it sounds like in all those cases that the decision makers made a decision. And in some cases it was in disagreement with their technical advising committees. So maybe it wasnt a good decision, but I am not seeing bribing or corruption here. In other words, if the people who cast the final vote werent the actual decision makers, then why would the ISO accept their vote? If they are the decision makers, then it was properly done, just unpopular. I'm not quite sure what your point is here. No one is saying that a masked bandit usurped the administrative voting process and forged the vote of a national ISO committee. In most of the 'irregularities' the committee met to discuss the issues and the majority of the members were not in favor of OOXML, many for specific technical reasons. The 'technical advising committee' _is_ the committee, because this is a vote on accepting a technical specification. So, the committee as a population says 'no', then the executive members of the committee (in your terms, and President Bush's, the 'decision makers') decide to submit a 'yes' vote and give a very vague justification for why they overruled the committee. A vote being 'properly done' according to administrative process and a vote being 'properly done' according to the spirit of the committee are two different things. In these cases we have an administrative functionary effectively negating the opinions of the committee as a whole for no justifiable reason. I wonder what may have caused that?

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Alsee]

I am not seeing bribing or corruption here.

Results 1 - 20 of about 19,600 for ooxml bribe

This is FAR from the first report of "creative rule bending" mid-game rule rewrites and outright rule violations and mis-informing people about votes to prevent them from showing up to cast their votes and bribery and national "No" votes being falsely recorded as "Yes" votes and assorted other shenanigans from countries all across the globe. And ALL of the "voting irregularities" all stack one way. They all involve either a country being shoved up into the "yes" column or blocked from the "no" column and diverted up into the "abstention" column.

It looks like OOXML is *just barely* going to squeak through ISO with just enough "yes" and just enough countries kept out of the "no" column. It doesn't matter how accepting you are of dirty tactics and accepting of committee chairs abusing and re-writing rules to subvert their national vote and saying rules-are-rules and all-is-fair-in-love-and-war, if even a fraction of these reports are accurate on out right rules violations then OOXML fails.

And one of the biggest games they are playing is on the clock. If a vote doesn't go well for OOXML they revote and revote trying to get a better result, and if a country threatens to drop from "yes" to "abstention" or "no" or threatens to drop from "abstention" to "no" then the process is sabotaged to block or invalidate or ignore the new national position. And they want to play out the ISO clock... they want to lock in an ISO approval and then it doesn't much matter how many outright rules violations are dealt with, it is past the deadline for a country to change their vote and it will be close to impossible to reverse the bogus approval.

Oh, and I happen to be a programmer. I have looked at portions of the proposed OOXML standard. It is riddled with literally THOUSANDS of minor errors and substantial flaws. It is a total mess. There is no way in hell it belongs on the ISO fast track process. It would take YEARS of review and edits on the standard mainline ISO process to get it UP to the level of merely being a bad standard. Even the SUPPORTERS essentially admit this, saying yeah it's riddled with problems but pass it anyway and let the maintenance process worry about fixing everything.

-

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[seeker_1us]

The United States have let a handful of mega-croporations totally wreck it's economy with the blessing of the government that was elected while pulling the wool over the electorate's eyes.

Bush was the loser of the popular election that brought him to power.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Wowsers]

The United States have let a handful of mega-croporations totally wreck it's economy with the blessing of the government that was elected while pulling the wool over the electorate's eyes. It is time for the people to revolt, I'm revolting (pause for effect)... Where I once was 100% a Windows user, I am now only about 5% Windows user and 95% in Linux. Now I have the computer do what I want it to do.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[bobstaff]

In some (many?) countries the US lobbying system would be considered bribery and therefore illegal, if MS used these techniques in such countries I hope their held accountable.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[ozmanjusri]

It seems this has little to do with the USA though.

This has a LOT to do with the USA.

Microsoft has been indulging in clearly uncompetitive practices for decades with no more than a slap on the wrist from US regulators. The EU has achieved more real change in the past three years than the US did in that whole time.

In fact the EU is investigating the irregularites in the OOXML debacle.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[analog_line]

Microsoft is certainly from the USA, but that does not absolve other countries from the responsibility of preventing damage by Microsoft within their borders. It is the fault of the countries involved, not the United States, that their governments cave to Microsoft. The EU has stood up before, indeed it seemed that until now the EU was the only entity with the guts to say "no" to Microsoft.

I would imagine that raising a public stink about American Hegemony being extended (or rogue American terrorist corporations or whatever) through a corporate proxy in Microsoft would be a really productive political stink in most of the countries that apparently have officials that were corrupted by Microsoft. I would recommend cleaning your own houses before you recommend cleaning up America's house. As an American, we made that mistake already, and we're dealing with an extremely painful cleanup from it. I would recommend that you learn a few lessons from our crumbling political, physical, and economic infrastructure. All symptoms of worrying too much about what happens outside our borders, and too little about what is happening inside them.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Maxo-Texas]

It opens your eyes about what must be happening for the things that really matter when this can happen over something like OOOXML.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Maxo-Texas]

Reported unemployment is at an all time high.

Like CPI, money supply, since the reported unemployment matters, it has been changed (like the others).

Actual unemployment is much higher (just as actual CPI is higher). The money supply the just bold-faced stopped reporting to hide the fact they are printing cash at a huge rate. This destroys the actual value of the dollar-- which you can see by the slip from 1.20$ to 1.54$ to the EU. (http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=FXE&t=5y&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=)

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[marcosdumay]

Well, the USA can start investigating its own NB, that also aproved OOXML on a not nice way.

Of course, that isn't one excuse for the others...

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a sad fact, that Microsoft paid its way to win this. The implication on the free society the damage done. Tried to post but it does not show posted sorry for dupe if.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Andy Dodd]

"And not one leak? Not one failed, incorruptible whistleblower?"

The rash of stories from multiple standards bodies says otherwise.

The problem MS is having here is that nearly every standards body they are trying to subvert has members who are not only on the up-and-up, but are proud of their work and their contributions to the standards process - Nearly every one of these stories has not been a secondhand rumor, but a first-hand account from one of the committee members.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[zippthorne]

And as "creep" is to "mission."

The founders were struck by the same realization, which is why one of them said, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

And I think that he may have believed that "from time to time" would be approximately once per generation.

Which is not to say that people should be on the lookout for revolution. Just not opposed to it when the need arises, and all of the better options have been thoroughly exhausted.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Darinbob]

Not really on topic, but I find "consensus" to be a singularly pointless word. I'm confused by what it means at times. I was on a committee at the office once, and was the sole dissenter. After kicking me off and getting someone else, the committee declared that they reached "consensus". They tried to make it sound like it was an equivalent to "unanimous", which it clearly wasn't. In that case, it seemed like the outcome had been pre-declared and I was just an obstacle. Perhaps the ISO/IEC committees have similar thinking?

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[nuzak]

Finland is actually in a perfect position to tell the rest of the world about what happens when any one corporation gets too powerful: when Nokia says "jump", how many of the local politicians in Finland say "how high"?

I'm not singling out Finland, and I think the USA has even more deeply fucked up corporate machinations (witness the current debacle), but that much power in the hands of one corporate entity cannot be good.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[jez9999]

And how will the end game play out?

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, I'm new here. Could you please explain why you keep calling them "croporations"? At first I thought it was a typo, but then I noticed you were always typing it that way.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Allador]

So, the committee as a population says 'no', then the executive members of the committee (in your terms, and President Bush's, the 'decision makers') decide to submit a 'yes' vote and give a very vague justification for why they overruled the committee. What I'm saying, or at least trying to talk through, is that it seems like if it happened this way, then the rules of these orgs allow the executive members to overrule the vote.

If thats the case, then, according to the rules, it was done properly.

It's tough to talk coherently about these meetings though because they dont seem to publish their rules of organization or meetins or anything that I can find online. So its hard to make an informed decision about whether the rules were violated or not.

Now thats not saying that even if they were not violated that it was a good decision. My biggest gripe of the OOXML proposal has been the fast-track, which is clearly not the right venue for this iso proposal.

But that being said, I think this whole process says much more about the ISO orgs than it does about Microsoft or business in general. Because it seems as if the ISO national orgs are setup to allow this to happen. Which means MS played to the letter, if not the spirit, of the rules.

To be clear, I'm not arguing in favor of or against the OOXML proposal. My thoughts here are more about the ISO process itself, and that it seems to be quite easy to game.

What I'd love to see are some thoughts from folks who have been part of these processes for years, and see if this is normal or abnormal behavior for these orgs. In other words, does this happen every time a proposal comes up that is central to some company's financial success? Its possible that it does, just at a smaller scale. Leave it to Microsoft to go big on something like this.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Allador]

How about you lay off the angry juice for a bit. My comment was about the ISO processes themselves, not about whether OOXML is a good standard proposal or not.

And please ... just because there are google results for the words OOXML and bribe doesnt mean that bribery was used. Thats a completely nonsensical argument.

This is FAR from the first report of "creative rule bending" mid-game rule rewrites and outright rule violations and mis-informing people about votes to prevent them from showing up to cast their votes and bribery and national "No" votes being falsely recorded as "Yes" votes and assorted other shenanigans from countries all across the globe. And ALL of the "voting irregularities" all stack one way. They all involve either a country being shoved up into the "yes" column or blocked from the "no" column and diverted up into the "abstention" column. Part of my point is that these orgs are not very public or transparent. I cant look at the rules for the Norway ISO body and see what their rules are, and then compare their minutes to the rules, to see if it went according to the rules.

This means that unless you were there, physically in the room, then you (and I mean the generic person you, not you specifically) do not have first hand information.

And there's a lot of FUD on both sides on this. All the brouhaha on the Norway vote ... how the admins locked out the attendees and made a vote. That has been all over the techy news. But its starting to appear as if that original story was completely wrong. That the vote in question was an administrative matter about a prior vote.

Oh, and I happen to be a programmer. Likewise. I'm also a software business owner.

I have looked at portions of the proposed OOXML standard. It is riddled with literally THOUSANDS of minor errors and substantial flaws. It is a total mess. There is no way in hell it belongs on the ISO fast track process. It would take YEARS of review and edits on the standard mainline ISO process to get it UP to the level of merely being a bad standard. Even the SUPPORTERS essentially admit this, saying yeah it's riddled with problems but pass it anyway and let the maintenance process worry about fixing everything. All that is true, but also doesnt mean much.

OOXML is a documentation of a current de facto standard. It's the documentation of a representation thats had more than 15 years of evolution, never once until the last few years with any thought towards public documentation.

And even with its flaws, its arguably more useful than ODF.

Look at the differences:

ODF is a nice, clean standard. However, its not really used in the real world outside of a very very tiny subset of the technical population. And despite it being a standard, if you use the format, then the vast majority of the world wont be able to read your documents.

OOXML would make a fairly crappy standard. However, its used by the vast majority of the people in the world. And despite it not being a standard, if you send it to arbitrary other pople, the likelihood that they will be able to read it with their current software is very high.

All that being said, I do think ODF is a nice standard (in theory), and I dont think OOXML should have been fast-tracked.

So, the likelihood of ODF being a meaningful document storage format over the next 10 years is very low, at least in my opinion. It's a great idea, but probably just wont play out in the market. Microsoft is just too damn good at marketing, sales, and deal-making.

However, even with that, its 'A Good Thing' that ODF exists. Because it puts competitive pressure on companies like Microsoft.

ODF being present probably wont sway most companies, they'll still buy MS Office. But it gives them a stick to use against MS and other companies. With it, you can always leave. This helps keep companies like that more honest and competitive than they would be otherwise.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

Update: Norwegian committee chairman to ISO: Count our vote as No

http://blogs.freecode.no/isene/ (Blog of a Norwegian Standards Committee Member)

more on Groklaw.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

In some (many?) countries the US lobbying system would be considered bribery and therefore illegal, if MS used these techniques in such countries I hope their held accountable.

The irony is that one contributing reason why BillG got into so much trouble with the US government in the beginning was that he and MS openly flat out refused to play this game with the politicians -- in contrast to almost all of their competitors (not at least the accusers in the original monopoly trial...) they didn't lobby, didn't pay "campaign contributions", didn't court politicians. They have learned since. And Google have really learned from them.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[spitzak]

OOXML would make a fairly crappy standard. However, its used by the vast majority of the people in the world.

I think you are confusing OOXML and Microsoft .doc file format?

its 'A Good Thing' that ODF exists. Because it puts competitive pressure on companies like Microsoft. ODF being present probably wont sway most companies, they'll still buy MS Office. But it gives them a stick to use against MS and other companies. With it, you can always leave. This helps keep companies like that more honest and competitive than they would be otherwise.

You can't "leave" unless you can take your documents with you. If Microsoft refuses to write ODF or any other format that you can take, you are locked in.

Far too many people think this is Microsoft trying to stop Open Office. This is nonsense, Microsoft does not give one shit about Open Office as it's impact on their sales is trivial or non-existent. What Microsoft is in mortal fear of is that they will have to write their saved files in ODF, which means they will allow thousands of third-party programs, not just the little Open Office, and they will remove the ability to force casual users to install a pirated copy of Word to read their email.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Allador]

I think you are confusing OOXML and Microsoft .doc file format? I am slightly conflating .doc and .docx, sure. Both are published specs now though, and there are tons of apps that can read/write, import/export to both.

You can't "leave" unless you can take your documents with you. If Microsoft refuses to write ODF or any other format that you can take, you are locked in. Well thats just not true at all.

Despite it not being a standard, and office not writing to ODF, there are a ton of available software packages that can read and write, import and export to both .doc and .docx.

OpenOffice and iWork come to mind right off the top of my head.

None of them work perfectly, but thats just par for the course. Even the MS apps dont work perfectly from version to version.

And there are third party apps whose sole purpose is to do batch conversions of one doctype to another. They're for pay, but they exist. They cover the precise 'I'm leaving' scenario.

Not to mention word docs you can export to rtf or pdf or html and take them with you. And PowerPoint you can export to PDF or HTML and take it with you.

Of course, with things like Excel and Access, businesses will have tons of code written in VBA inside these apps, and that'll never be portable. But then again, the scripting language inside these apps are never portable. Even if its in a broadly available language, the object model to interact with the document itself will be different from suite to suite.

And overall ... you CAN leave. I could make a decision to move my business off of MS Office and I guarantee you that I could make it work. And the presence of OpenOffice and ODF does in fact provide me with leverage from MS. Not that I've used it, but its there should I need it.

But the bottom line is that in the real world, it IS possible to leave MS Office and take your docs with you. It does come with a fair amount of pain though (conversion, retraining, compatibility), and you have to measure that against the benefits you think you'll get (licensing fees, etc).

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[edxwelch]

> When 19 out of 24 *VOTE NO* to a proposed standard
> and it still passes, there's something wrong

maybe they had Excel tot up the votes

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[KDR_11k]

To Microsoft OOXML may have mattered a lot, it's their only option to prevent being the only office software maker that does not support any standards and that after repeated court orders to facilitate interoperability.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[KDR_11k]

You can get away with anything if there's no law against it. Apparently corrupting or stacking standardization boards is not outlawed anywhere.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[rifter]

I'm with AC here. Are Groklaw, etc, really suggesting that several standards bodies in several nations are /all/ corrupt? And not one leak? Not one failed, incorruptible whistleblower?

This argument doesn't really fly with me because the corruption isn't even a secret. When several groups decide, by fiat, to ignore the votes of their members, it is wrong and corrupt, Microsoft's involvement be damned. Besides which there were several whistleblowers, which is how we heard about this in the first place.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[rifter]

Wait, are you suggesting that Microsoft didn't bribe a dozen counties, at a hundred or more people, and pull off the biggest corporate cover-up in history (aside from the brilliant and astute readers of Slashdot who have worked diligently to uncover this plot) just so they could get their document format adopted as an ISO standard--something which will yield them little to no gain because the market share of Office essentially requires competitive document compatibility?

Actually it gains them a lot. For one thing, as reported here, in at least some of the nations where irregularities have been seen laws were recently passed requiring all government documents to be published using open standards. Since MSOffice does not provide this facility, they'd have to use something else to produce the documents. If they can just say their document format *is* an open standard (ipso facto!) they don't lose their coveted market share and they don't have to make any changes to their software.

It also gains them something in an area of Microsoft's desires that has puzzled me forever. For some reason it just offends their sensibilities to support ANY open format in their software, be it png, OpenDocument, or XML. HOWEVER ever since the Linux revolution around 2000 and the big hoopla over open standards Microsoft has billed themselves as the most open company in the universe out of one side of their mouths while deriding the Free Software people as Communists out of the other. In any case this is one more feather in their cap of features in their Software they can point to and say "See we're the most open company in the world!"

This is, in fact, what started this mess. Microsoft claimed they supported XML, an open standard, in their office suite, people with more than half a brain said "that doesn't look like XML to me" so Microsoft decided to call what they were doing OOXML and get it approved as a standard. When that did not fly, the votes got changed so it passed.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Maxo-Texas]

Yes and there are organizations (military industrial, medical) who have a lot more than microsoft at stake.

abusive monopoly watch

[RichMan]

Supposedly Microsoft is still under watch by the Fed for being an abusive monopoly.
Also Microsoft is under close scrutiny by the EU trade commission.

And we have all the wonder full reporters calling in.

I wonder what Microsoft would be pulling if there were not so many watching.
I wonder what Microsoft is pulling where they are not being watched.

Re:abusive monopoly watch

[gtall]

The Fed (Federal Reserve) doesn't watch over monopolies, that's the Justice Dept. And Judge Kotar-Kelley has shown herself to be pretty clueless.

Gerry

Re: croporations

[Anonymous Coward]

"croporations"

I don't think that word means what you think it means. /ducks

But yeah, a little bit of "croporate" accountability would do wonders.

Can ISO de-recognise standards?

[jkrise]

If OOXML passes and the ISO finds out about the ir-regularities; and later the uselessness of the standard; can it meet again to de-recognise the standard? If so what is the procedure for this?

Re:Can ISO de-recognise standards?

[VirusEqualsVeryYes]

Standards can be withdrawn by committee. From the ISO website:

All International Standards are reviewed at the least three years after publication and every five years after the first review by all the ISO member bodies. A majority of the P-members [participating members] of the TC/SC [Technical/SubCommittee] decides whether an International Standard should be confirmed, revised or withdrawn.

Withdrawing standards isn't unprecedented, and they've even considered withdrawing JPEG entirely.

Re:Can ISO de-recognise standards?

[Anonymous Coward]

If OOXML passes and the ISO finds out (emphasis mine) about the ir-regularities;

What makes you think that the ISO has not found out about the irregularities. If you believe the ISO knows nothing until now, I've got a bridge in San Francisco I'd like to sell you. The ISO knew about the irregularities and they won't meet again to de-recognize the standard later. Do you know any corrupt organization which later give back the money?

Re:Can ISO de-recognise standards?

[Anonymous Coward]

Three years seems too long a period for review. ISO 9000 audits are done every 6 months actually. I think OOXML must be reviewed atleast every year, as a special case.

Re:Can ISO de-recognise standards?

[JSG]

ISO 9001 external audits are carried out yearly for us by the BSI.

when one entity holds enough power

[Xiph]

That entity will start using it to attain more power, a core democratic principle is distributing power to the people.
A solution is to limit the amount of power, which one entity can have.

I think splitting up MS is overdue, others might favour different solutions, but i think some corporations have too much power.

My captcha was costume, I do not believe, there is much correlation nor causation between my captcha and my post.

Re:when one entity holds enough power

[calebt3]

Maybe an OS division, Xbox division, a business software division, and... PC games, maybe? On an aside, which part would be responsible for IE?

Standards process failure?

[Kaell Meynn]

I personally see the passive of OOXML as sign of a failure in the standards process. This thing in no way should pass, and there ought to be some sort of punishment for the attempts to subvert the integrity of the process by MS.

Re:Standards process failure?

[TubeSteak]

This thing in no way should pass, and there ought to be some sort of punishment for the attempts to subvert the integrity of the process by MS. Many organizations assume that members will stay within the spirit of the rules, and consequently have very few mechanisms for sanctions or the enforcement of them.

I have no idea how ISO is setup to deal with such abuse, but it wouldn't surprise me if there was very little they could do. Maybe ISO needs to send out voting observers, a la the United Nations, to oversee the voting procedures of individual countries.

Re:Standards process failure?

[Anonymous Coward]

The thing is that the ISO process is funded by the body submitting the standard. Microsoft/Ecma paid for the BRM in Geneva, the officials to run it, the Ecma editors and the organisation, and the press releases that came out. The ISO have employees but they don't want to get their meal ticket angry.

It's easy to blame the National Bodies for voting the way they did (and sometimes they deserve that blame) but the ISO ran the Fast Track process and could have stopped it earlier. They continued on, and received funding from their vendor.

I mean just read this pleasant ISO review of the meeting that participants describe as a sham and disgusting process abuse. The ISO are in denial that there's any abuse going on.

We need to keep telling people the real story here. They can't be allowed to forget this. Their reputation is in the drain, but they must be held accountable.

They need some kind of oversight

[BadAnalogyGuy]

This kind of irregularity should be disallowed. If necessary, turning this type of administrative decision to a higher court would be effective in making sure that the rules are followed and the correct decision be made. This type of "supreme" decision body could normally sit out the voting process and only be brought in where the votes were too close to call and too in violation of the established rules.

It may not be the most democratic method, but an oligarchal system that only exercised power in extreme circumstances allows a society to have the best decisions made at any given time.

Re:They need some kind of oversight

[Thundersnatch]

"Disallowed"? What "court"? This has nothing whatsoever to do with any government. ISO is a standards body, which publishes recommendations that people volutarily follow. And this particular standard isn't exactly the kilogram. Even if it passes, it is not something that will be forced down anybody's throat as a requirement.

Let me guess: you're the sort of whining douchebag that wants a law regulating every pet peeve and perceived injustice you encounter. Someong talking on a cell phone in a restaurant? Make a law against it. Someone building a new parking lot near your house? Make a law against it. Don't like Microsoft? Make a law against it. Hispanics moving in down the street? Make a law against them.

Grow up, man. The government is not your mommy.

Re:They need some kind of oversight

[penix1]

Even if it passes, it is not something that will be forced down anybody's throat as a requirement.

Get your head out of your ass and think about that statement. 90+ percent of the Office market is controlled by one monopoly. For years Office applications have had to bend to the defacto shifting standard set by that monopoly to remain in the market. It most assuredly will be forced down everybody's throat just to remain partially interoperative with that monopoly having the advantage over any competition. Hell, even that monopoly's offering isn't compliant with this "standard" so how the hell do you expect others to be able to implement it? Add to the fact that you would have two competing "standards", which do you think will be left standing when the dust settles? It sure as shit won't be the one ignored by the monopoly.

Re:They need some kind of oversight

[Thundersnatch]

Thank you for making my point. The standardization of OOXML is immaterial, and certainly nothing about which to get your knickers in a twist. Everyone will have to implement interoperability with MS Office to remain relevant in the marketplace anyway, regardless of any standardization process. We certainly don't need courts and a UN Tribunal to "investiage" this issue, as the GP desires, because it just doesn't matter that much.

Re:They need some kind of oversight

[penix1]

Thank you for missing my point...

Governments are mandating "open standards" for document formats which is why Microsoft needs this or governments are going to switch to OOo. Many have already mandated it. For Microsoft to remain in that market, they need something to point to and say "look, we have a standard" to governments.

The point is this. ODF exists as a standard now. OOXML doesn't. Governments and large enterprise orgs can demand ODF now. That pressure will go by the wayside if OOXML is approved.

Re:They need some kind of oversight

[Thundersnatch]

And I say, so what? Every relevant office suite is going to have to implement OOXML (as well as support for legacy MSFT formats) for many years to come, whether or not OOXML is a published standard. So it is much better for everyone if OOXML becomes a standard, so that the spec is out there and diverting from it is more difficult for MSFT.

If you're suggesting that MSFT adopt ODF instead of OOXML, well, why should they? ODF has a lot of design-by-committee compromises and missing features (no change tracking, no tables in presentations). MSFT is the 800 pond gorilla, and changing the direction of the MS Office ship is enormously more painful and complex for the whole industry (and MSFT customers) than adding OO.org and KOffice support for OOXML. Why should Sun and the open source community be allowed to dictate MSFT file formats? Because Microsoft is a big, rich, successful coporation, and you just don't like them?

revelations from brazil

[rafaspol]

Finally: the details about the final results of the BRM

Microsoft is above the LAW and ISO

[linux23dragon]

This OOXML issue is the proof we all needed. Microsoft is above the LAW and ISO. Not happy Jan :-(

The ISO has just lost their credability

[Telvin_3d]

This kind of shocking. The ISO, an organization which has existed in high regard for sixty years, is done. They will no doubt continue as a holder of legacy certifications that will continue to matter for as long as they are not superseded, but as far as a respected body they are over. In a single act they have completely discredited their own approval process and by extension everything they approve.

No one looking to establish a new, credible, standard in an field relating to software or information exchange will ever use them as a prime standards body again. They are now a marketing term and not a professional resource.

Re:The ISO has just lost their credability

[calebt3]

So where should one go for standards now?

Re:The ISO has just lost their credability

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a real shame. Despite all the irregular reported (and many confirmed) processes around the world, that this "standard" will pass. No organization is perfect, and no process is perfect, but at least they could have enforced the rules and laws of the process and making sure all of this was respected . Now the ISO as a organization worth less than nothing. NOBODY now should think the ISO as a well respected authority regarding standards. It is a real shame....

Re:The ISO has just lost their credability

[Anonymous Coward]

parent wrote: The ISO, an organization which has existed in high regard for sixty years, is done.

You shooting for a "funny" mod?

Sure some good standards happened be approved by ISO - often because they simply approved another already-good standard. OTOH ISO's the silly reason you go into manufacturing plants and see people who's job it is to label soldering irons "soldering iron".

ISO == "I Sold Out" was a joke even before Microsoft bought them.

Re:The ISO has just lost their credability

[BRSloth]

I'm not sure about being respected after this. I guess some people will ask themselves "if this standard was approved in such a way, what about all the others?" (and, honestly, I'm asking this myself right now.)

The fact that this is the first time such thing happens is just because people in this standard are way more vocal and know how to use the current media (internet.)

Re:The ISO has just lost their credability

[Akaihiryuu]

Something will replace them...even if is just something "unofficial". I'm expecting a sort-of return to the days when standards were just RFC's published on different sites. Something like that will probably spring up, run by someone in the free software or "open source" camp. And hopefully the two groups will be able to get over their differences for this. If OOXML is approved, noone will ever take anything ISO does seriously again, and real open standards will just be shared among the community, without a corruptible bureaucracy. Though this may not be a bad thing in the long term...we will be replacing a centralized bureaucracy vulnerable to corruption to a decentralized community run program that cannot be bought.

Re:The ISO has just lost their credability

[Anonymous Coward]

OASIS. They're the ones who run the ODF process. The chair leaving ISO (well technically ISO/IEC JTC1 SC34) suggested that people go there for development. ITTF. They rely on two independent implementations of a standard in order to verify that the documentation is correct. W3C. HTML5 has been good (well, when they were forced to get off their ass and not hand the future of the web to Flash/Flex and SilverLight). There's also OpenISO.org but that's just a few guys I think. Probably doesn't have the credibility.

Re:The ISO has just lost their credability

[HalAtWork]

So MS have achieved their goal, either way ODF is not going to be used by businesses, because either the ISO is distrusted so it means nothing that ODF is an ISO standard anyway, or the ISO is trusted and MSOOXML is considered approved and so businesses will just continue to use what they're using now either way. The only other option is if MS is untrusted because of this, but considering that people are still using their products after the EU and US antitrust, as well as numerous other court cases they have settled and not won, or just lost, why would anything change just because of this?

Re:The ISO has just lost their credability

[El_Isma]

I don't know about OASIS, but W3C applies only to web standards. That's a very narrow standards body.

Re:The ISO has just lost their credability

[Yvanhoe]

Some structures like governmental bodies are designed to resist such attacks to a certain extent. Contrary to what it seems, it is complicated to tamper with every international ISO committee. Their openness was supposed to be balanced by their number. But Microsoft has devoted hundreds of people in many countries for this operation. Until recently, the cost of such a tampering (both financial and PR cost) would have been too huge for any company to buy a standard. Microsoft however has some particularities : A huge cash amount, an ability to make money out of standards lock-ups and a PR oriented toward final consumers that don't really care about what is happening behind the scene.

I really think this is a first in the ISO history.

Re:The ISO has just lost their credability

[PinkyDead]

Just thinking out loud - but...

There are many other industries involved in ISO based production (I'm thinking of the petrochemical industry or the building materials industry), which in terms of individual might would be smaller than Microsoft, but in terms of combined industry strength (given that a lot of the software industry is against OOXML) would be far bigger, and capable of exerting far greater pressure.

Is is not possible that these industries have had influences over the ISO process in order to create standards that are inherently unsafe - and I mean in a life threatening way, as opposed to a 'bad document' way? When we see airplane crashes, bridge collapses or levies bursting, should we not be thinking 'ISO (corrupted)' rather than 'freak accident', at least in part?

Re:The ISO has just lost their credability

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is probably what MS wanted to do all along. Kill the ISO and you kill all those standards MS has no control over, and they can then remake it in their own image.

Although the EU may force some changes to happen,

[rickst29]

ISO is broken. The ISO needed to look to their own reputation during this horrific, scandalous MESS. Shame on the ISO for not protecting their own "voting process" from P-Member ballot stuffing, NSB chairperson abuses, and even allowing the "fast-track" process for such an enormous and controversial "standard" in the first place. It should be necessary for EU administrators and legal action in the various voting countries to fix this, ISO should have fixed it themselves!

I agree. The ISO is now the M$O.

[PaulGaskin]

The League of Nations came and went. The United Nations has allowed it's self to be discredited by militant, hegemonic nations. Now the ISO has been compromised by a flawed process and corrupt bureaucrats enabling a monopoly corporation. This international bureaucracy is no more legitimate than the decisions they make.

Re:I agree. The ISO is now the M$O.

[raddan]

All of this makes me think that the charters of newly-formed bureaucracies should have a "kill yourself" clause in them.

I Don't Get It?

[SkaKidDan]

Why does /. hate OOXML so much? Every time a story is ran about OOXML, everyone on /. seems to scream revolution and blasphemy.

Re:I Don't Get It?

[Cassius Corodes]

Its not so much that we hate OOXML, its just that we like to scream revolution and blasphemy.

Re:I Don't Get It?

[nawcom]

Um, do you understand how OOXML is set up? it's not like ODF or anything at all.

http://www.noooxml.org/open:rejectooxmlnow/

^ Some reasons

I myself am no critical analyzer of standards, but the fact that the standard will still have a microsoft copyright on it is enough for me to say no. If, let's say, it was adobe instead of microsoft (and isn't pdf, for there are opensource implementations of pdf), I would still have the same viewpoint.

Standards shouldn't have disclosed code in, which is why I believe if something like a document format is standardized, the source code should be open to all.

If I am wrong about OOXML in that way, someone correct me.

Re:I Don't Get It?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does /. hate OOXML so much? Every time a story is ran about OOXML...

Did you, per chance, read those stories?

Re:I Don't Get It?

[calebt3]

From http://www.noooxml.org/open:rejectooxmlnow

20 good reasons to disapprove OOXML

1. ISO's "Fast Track" process was abused for standard development 'on the fly'. In the past ECMA has "fast tracked" small (50-500 page), mature and industry accepted standards. OOXML is large (6000+ pages) and immature. An editorial of Redmond Developer News described: "By contrast [to ISO 26300], the Microsoft OOXML specification takes what might be called a kitchen sink approach." -- an ISO process is not thought to become a kitchen sink for half-baked ECMA standards. OOXML was only released in 2006 and is hardly accepted by the industry. The OOXML community around the format is a community of one. All third party supporters have contractual relations with the vendor. The limitations of the "Fast Track" process; fast evaluation time frames, extremely limited time to resolve all the concerns and little room for modification has demonstrated that the "Fast Track" process was unsuitable for OOXML. It gives us little surprise as the process was never intended for standard development.
2. OOXML is a proposed parallel standard without a justification. No empirical evidence was provided for the assertion that OOXML faithfully represents the corpus of existing documents of a specific vendor as opposed to the existing ISO standard or customized versions thereof. ECMA's branding of the format as a silver bullet for archiving cannot be tested by NBs. Additionally ECMA failed to provide a mapping between the legacy binary formats and OOXML. The binary legacy specifications was only made public in 2008. Multiple standards for the very same purpose with conversion issues undermine the respect for ISO standardization. You need a consistent justification to adopt another ISO standard for the same field which is not build upon an existing ISO standard - not to mention backwards compatibility to ISO 26300 architecture.
3. OOXML's ISO agenda is to undermine the adoption of the existing ISO Office standard. OOXML evangelist Mahugh explained: "When ODF was made an ISO standard, Microsoft had to react quickly as certain governments have procurement policies which prefer ISO standards. ... Microsoft therefore had to rush this standard through. Its a simple matter of commercial interests!" A disapproval would motivate the submitter to contribute to the existing ISO Office format, ODF (ISO 26300). We find historical precedence for a proposed Microsoft standard being disapproved in order to constructively motivate harmonization of standards: the Microsoft VML and W3C SVG standards. Microsoft's VML was rejected at the W3C in favour in Adobe's SVG. Microsoft's response was to join the W3C working group to improve SVG which later became a W3C standard. To the extent that SVG is incorporated into ISO/IEC:26300 SVG is an official ISO/IEC/ITTF international standard.
4. OOXML is incompatible with ISO/IEC and WTO Technical Barrier to Trade (TBT) basic principles, which ISO/IEC are supposed to respect. The BRM added the notion of "Microsoft Office 97 to Microsoft Office 2008 inclusive" to which products' formats a 'faithful representation' is sought by the proposed ISO standard. International standards are not permitted to discriminate specific vendors positively, and thus all competitors negatively. The standard would become a technical market barrier, a tool of unfair competition. Formally a standard is supposed to avoid referencing products. Non-compliance with WTO requirements on technical barriers to trade due to formalities will be an obstacle for the adoption of OOXML in the public sector and undermine trust in the ISO label.
5. The BRM heavily amended those ECMA 'dispositions of comments' it had time to discuss. The BRM only discussed about 10% of the known technical issues. Of 54 non-editorial issues covered in detail, 48 were modified at the BRM. This left 850 issues without check-over, and pushed through by a bulk vote. These

Re:I Don't Get It?

[dltaylor]

Because, unlike most other other ISO standards for documents, like fax G3 and G4 compression, and ODF (Open Document Format) OOXML literally cannot be implemented by anyone other than Microsoft. This is not because the entire rest of the world contains no competent programmers, but because the standard simply does not have enough information to do so. Microsoft wrote the proposed standard with what amount to calls into their libraries of legacy Word code, the actions of which are NOT documented, rather than "tag X requires an indent level of 30000 millipels from the indent level of the enclosing block", or whatever.

The entire purpose of OOXML is to subvert the increasing call for public documents to be stored in a format that can A) be read without buying Word/Office/..., on the theory that documents created in a citizen's government should be available to those citizens without paying a corporate "tax", and B) that by documenting the format of the documents, readers/editors can be created, as needed, at a future time when the original creation tool may no longer exist or have a computer on which to run, unlike, say, Word documents, where support for older formats is simply dropped by Microsoft.

Microsoft is an ongoing criminal organization, and as such, should be seized under the RICO act, and its parts sold off or its source code simply published for those parts without buyers, and the buyers should be forever blocked from forming a cartel, single company, sharing directors, ... to prevent a resurrection of Microsoft.

Re:I Don't Get It?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're either ignorant of the history behind MSOOXML or a troll.
If you're ignorant go to www.groklaw.net and get informed. If you're
a troll, well ... can you troll some other website please?

--Johnny

Re:I Don't Get It?

[AJWM]

Why does /. hate OOXML so much? Every time a story is ran about OOXML, everyone on /. seems to scream revolution and blasphemy.

1. It's a 6000-page spec (plus another 1500 or so pages in response to negative comments from the September ballot). For a facetious answer as to why /. hates that, see the results of the current poll about how many books a year slashdotters read.

2. It violates ISO guidelines in that rather than referring to existing standards wherever possible, it invents new (and broken) ones. E.g. MS vs ISO country codes, MS vs ISO date handling (including broken leap years), MS vs ISO color codes, MS vs ISO's math markup, etc, etc.

3. It's under-specified, e.g. tags like 'lineSpaceLikeWord95'.

4. Even assuming it were specified well enough to implement, such implementations would be at risk of Microsoft patents, notwithstanding Micosoft's so-called patent pledge (which amounts to promising not to sue hobbyist programmers who develop 100%-compliant code in their basements, but doesn't extend that promise to anyone else or to anyone sharing or actually using the code).

5. For more, see the thousand or so comments brought to the BRM and not individually addressed, or the hundreds of additional problems found with the spec since the BRM.

While some people probably wouldn't touch MS-OOXML even if it were perfect (and it's a long way from that) simply because it came from Microsoft, the vast majority of its nay-sayers are complaining about it's piss-poor technical quality, and would be doing so no matter who originally authored such a crappy spec.

Anyone who has ever had to try to develop software from a self-contradictory, ambiguous and incomplete specification -- which probably includes a fair percentage of slashdotters -- rightly runs screaming at the thought of this turd achieving ISO blessing. (Ditto for anyone who has ever had to try to use such software in conjunction with some other software a different team developed to the "same" spec.)

Re:I Don't Get It?

[erroneus]

Are you joking?

ISO standards are supposed to be clearly and completely defined. These standards definitions are created so that multiple parties can participate in government and other public activities through information interchange.

OOXML fails in very serious ways to fit that description. Not only are various aspects of the 'standard' vague, but they reference descriptions of behaviors of a particular software application on a particular platform without defining what that means. Without any issues of politics and anything 'human,' by ISO's definition and rules of adoption or creation, OOXML is technically not eligible to be an ISO standard.

Beyond this is the use of the "fast track" approval process. This process is supposed to exist to enlist standard formats that are in wide and common use. Formats like PDF and PNG, if they are not already ISO standards, might be good candidates for such since they are already in very heavy use and are very clearly defined and implemented widely. The OOXML format, as defined, is not a "ubiquitous" format. It's not even implemented completely or correctly by the company that has defined it. And because it is not clearly defined, cannot be correctly implemented by other parties. All of this means it is ineligible for the fast track approval process.

Finally, after it initially failed the fast track process in spite of wild irregularities in the process, this second attempt has resulted in passage but does so with further irregularities. Each participating country in the process operates through its own set of rules. In various examples, these rules were either changed, convoluted, or simply ignored. In some instances, the results seem to indicate simple and direct fraud.

All of this represents corruption and possibly the destruction of the purpose of ISO approval.

If ISO were a pure religion, what Microsoft has caused to happen would be called blasphemy. If ISO were a court, what Microsoft has caused to happen would be called a travesty. And if ISO were a business, what Microsoft has caused to happen, it would be fraud.

Acceptance as an ISO standard means that a file format is eligible for use in various official and public purposes. The purpose of requiring an ISO standard for such formatting is to allow any and all parties interested in participating the opportunity to do so by following a clearly defined and published standard. In the case of OOXML, this would be impossible for any party other than Microsoft to do this effectively since the definition is incomplete and defined by the behavior of its applications which are subject to revision. In the event that a government process or activity requires the use of this "ISO" standard, it effectively excludes all other vendors but Microsoft from participating.

I'm not sure how much more clearly the problem with OOXML's adoption as an ISO standard can be defined. It's not a question of "hating" OOXML. It's a matter of subverting a definition and process that has been depended upon internationally to clearly and precisely define standards of process and information interchange.

Re:I Don't Get It?

[donweel]

I hate it because it's a scab
OOXML carries forward a known legacy bug affecting date and timefor spreadsheets (page 3305-6xxx). This standardization of a famous old mistake (originating in Lotus 1-2-3) for the stated purpose of "backward compatibility" requires that spreadsheets treat the year 1900 incorrectly as a leap year. This gives wrong dates according to our standard Gregorian Calendar and affects other software that interacts with Microsoft documents.xxxi
And that's just the tip of the iceburg.

Re:I Don't Get It?

[AJWM]

I've seen some discussion that the alleged bug in Lotus 1-2-3 never really existed, that Microsoft just made up "backwards compatibility" as an excuse for their own bug.

Shrug. I might even have an old DOS copy of Lotus 1-2-3 around somewhere, but it's not worth my time and effort to find out. At this point it doesn't matter whose fault it was originally, it should have been fixed a long time ago.

Re:I Don't Get It?

[dh003i]

Summarily, only someone who is (1) a complete idiot, (2) completely incompetent regarding issues of standard, (3) extremely iased, or (4) paid-off, could possibly say crap like, "OOXML is a great standard", or recommend it for approval.

Re:I Don't Get It?

[symbolset]

Why does /. hate OOXML so much? Every time a story is ran about OOXML, everyone on /. seems to scream revolution and blasphemy.

Read it and get back to us if you still have questions.

Re:I Don't Get It?

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the standard does not have the Microsoft copyright on it. The standard is copyrighted by ISO. If the standard is ratified, then after ratification, if you want a copy of the standard, you must order it from ISO, and pay a nominal fee, I think approx $100. This is how ISO standards work.

Re:I Don't Get It?

[Xacid]

Offtopic but, you had me until this: "Microsoft is an ongoing criminal organization, and as such, should be seized under the RICO act, and its parts sold off or its source code simply published for those parts without buyers, and the buyers should be forever blocked from forming a cartel, single company, sharing directors, ... to prevent a resurrection of Microsoft." This is the problem with many slash dotters, they begin with great, credible arguments, then turn themselves into conspiracy theorists and angry anarchists. To me this is the equivalent of when I hear some republic friends of mine have a decent argument to their point but then start dropping phrases like "socialist democratic party". It ruins what credibility you just had. Point is - if you want to change the methodology of something, rash actions/words wont get you as far as say well thought-out discussions on the topic. Just my two cents. This *is* a capitalist nation. If you want a better product, use it. *.doc files can be opened with open office, *.pdf with ghostview, etc. No one's forcing you to pay some "corporate tax". With that said, do I agree with all of their business practices? Not at all. I'm just saying, if you have any intentions on countering them, then come up with more solid words. If you don't, then there's no point in suggesting such harsh actions.

Re:I Don't Get It?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right on the copyright of the specification itself, copyright is assigned to ISO/IEC. One unrelated weird thing about OOXMLs use of media is that OOXML references copyrighted media by name. The media isn't within the standard though so implementors lack coverage!

Re:I Don't Get It?

[Alsee]

Why does /. hate OOXML so much?

I assume for much the same reason that *I* do.

I'm a programmer and I've looked at (some of) it.
It is an unusable error riddled steaming pile of shit.

Did you have any other questions?

-

Re:I Don't Get It?

[Anonymous Coward]

I find that most of your claims are false or incorrect.

(1) The 6,000 pages includes a tutorial, and the 1,500 pages actually are clarifications. If you had read any of those clarifications you would have seen that the majority of them are small editorial changes so it hardly amounts to your implied "7,500" pages.

(3) It is not "underspecified". Had you bothered to actually look up the actual issues, you would have seen that things like "lineSpaceLikeWord95" were fully specified as it was one of the major issues that people raised.

(4) There is no risk of "Microsoft patents". The whole OOXML is covered by the OSP, and Microsoft has announced that their commitment to the OSP will go beyond the current spec and will continue as OOXML is evolved, this is the identical claim that Sun and IBM have made for ODF regarding patents.

(5) There are not "the thousand or so comments brought to the BRM and not individually addressed", every comment was addressed. There were an incredible number of repeated issues submitted (people copy-pasting from Groklaw, IBM talking points or members from one country editing the content for other countries). Once sorted and made unique they came down to a thousand. Every single issue came with a proposal to clarify or address the issue.

ECMA met with various countries (the invitation was open to every country) a month in advance of the BRM to walk countries through the comments, get their feedback and update the proposed text /in advance/ of the meeting in Geneva.

All the resolutions, statistics and the actual comments are available here:

http://adjb.net/comments.php?y=08&m=03&entry=entry080306-082306

Going back to why Slashdot hates OOXML. It is very clear, because its Microsoft.

I am ashamed of my country

[Anonymous Coward]

Finland switched its vote from "Abstain" to "Yes". (Press release in Finnish)

One of the favourable opinions was that "standard will be developed faster in open and larger community." I mean, WTF! Shouldn't the standard be already delveloped before making it a standard? Lucily (or not...) the voting was not unanimous. Those who opposed said that "the standard is not high quality enough -- technically speaking." No shit.

"Conversation was constructive", noted the chairman Aki Siponen, a representative of Finnish government.

Fucking idiots...

I think the only difference now...

[JustShootMe]

Is that people are actually watching and know it's going on.

This kind of thing has happened for as long as there has been political bodies and people who want to manipulate them. The only difference now is that we have a well enough entrenched journalistic system (no thanks to the big media corpos who are doing their best to squash it) to bring it to light.

Weak Victory if you ask me

[JoeCommodore]

Everybody knows they gamed the process in one way or another and didn't 'earn' the vote as others have in the past. These actions says a lot for the company's ethics if you ask me. I expect that they probably made a bunch of deals with less reputable more desperate firms, organizations and individuals that will further behold them to such dealings.

Microsoft seems to be a lot about deal making now a days from lowering the specs to Microsoft vista capable requirements and their shifty legal contracts that they conned Novell to sign without enough review.

While this may "buy" them some market share they still have a butt-load of aging technology which mainly advertises "improved security" over any other sort of innovation or compatibility. Ultimately it means they will have to continuing paying-off for their market else face real critical comparison.

Re:Weak Victory if you ask me

[lakeland]

Only those people paying attention known they gamed the process. The executives making calls over the next decade that their organisation requires all documents to be stored in an ISO certified format, they don't know MS gamed the process.

This result, if it gets ratified, shoots down the most visible failing in Microsoft's software in years. It doesn't matter if it gets shot down using foul means, because the people who hear about that (us) don't matter enough to Microsof'ts bottom line.

time to start expelling

[Anonymous Coward]

If there has been willing corruption of the process here, then ISO needs to investigate and punish participating members with expulsion. This sort of under-handedness cannot be allowed to continue.

Re:time to start expelling

[Anonymous Coward]

Expulsion of Ecma ... Tim Bray writes, "This was horrible, egregious, process abuse and ISO should hang their heads in shame for allowing it to happen. Their reputation, in my eyes, is in tatters. My opinion of ECMA was already very negative; this hasn't improved it, and if ISO doesn't figure out away to detach this toxic leech, this kind of abuse is going to happen again and again."

I don't get it

[Trogre]

Does ISO really want to stop being taken seriously that badly?

I guess the slide towards irrelevancy will continue...

Re:I don't get it

[JustShootMe]

This is what happens when academics go head to head with corporations.

The corporations will win every time. As smart as academics are, they just aren't prepared for this kind of thing.

Re:I don't get it

[erroneus]

No, it's not ISO, it's the individual participants. They, like so many others, are vulnerable to exploitation, temptation and corruption. I could be wrong, but the the scope and scale of these reported irregularities represents a Microsoft driven campaign of unprecedented global corruption and organized crime the likes of which has never been publicly displayed. It's almost as if they didn't even try to cover their tracks on this.

Re:I don't get it

[pembo13]

It's almost as if they didn't even try to cover their tracks on this.

Why should day? What's the worse that can be done to them?

Reasons to hate OOXML

[betterunixthanunix]

1. OpenDocument already exists. What good does a second format, based on identical principles, do for the world? 2. OOXML requires the use of patented algorithms, which makes open source developers nervous, especially when a company that despises open source and has an ongoing campaign to kill the open source movement happens to be the patent holder...and happens to be pushing the format. 3. OOXML is exceedingly difficult to implement, giving Microsoft an automatic advantage over everyone else and forcing us to play catch-up (though OOo3 will have native support, IIRC). 4. This is /., and the format is Microsoft supported. What did you expect?

Re:Reasons to hate OOXML

[betterunixthanunix]

0. Forgot about HTML in my last post.
1. OpenDocument already exists. What good does a second format, based on identical principles, do for the world?
2. OOXML requires the use of patented algorithms, which makes open source developers nervous, especially when a company that despises open source and has an ongoing campaign to kill the open source movement happens to be the patent holder...and happens to be pushing the format.
3. OOXML is exceedingly difficult to implement, giving Microsoft an automatic advantage over everyone else and forcing us to play catch-up (though OOo3 will have native support, IIRC).
4. This is /., and the format is Microsoft supported. What did you expect?

Re:Reasons to hate OOXML

[skulgnome]

Note that even Microsoft hasn't actually implemented OOXML. They say it would be implemented as a "converter", a special module that would "permit interoperability" using this hideously ugly XML dump format. I.e. document sharing between Word and OO.O will still be as much a hassle, or even more so, than it has been up until now. Which enforced Microsoft's lock-in policy quite nicely.

I say hideously ugly because there isn't really an OOXML spec as much as three or four sub-specifications [for word-processing documents, spreadsheets, presentations and the fourth which I can't remember] that share essentially nothing. OOXML is not _a_ format, but four, and these four share no components except by accident.

reverse democratic process?

[suck_burners_rice]

Hmmm... how about a democratic process that works by the Opposite Day method: The candidate or policy with the least number of votes wins! Of course, that would lead to people deliberately voting for the candidate or policy they wanted least.

Re:reverse democratic process?

[seanellis]

Wasn't this what actually happened, in Norway at least?

And when we complain to MS that Opposite Day wasn't declared, they will just say that they declared it oppositely by not declaring it.

So they aren't corrupt, but...

[aztektum]

What's the quote? Never ascribe to malice what can adequately be explained by ignorance?? It's pick your poison time. Do you rely on an organization run by complete idiots? Or one run by completely corrupt officials?? Either way, I'd say ISO has become a lot less important.

Re:So they aren't corrupt, but...

[arth1]

What's the quote? Never ascribe to malice what can adequately be explained by ignorance?

Hanlon's razor says stupidity, not ignorance. Ignorance can be cured with information.

There's a corollary to Hanlon's razor that applies here, though:
Never attribute to stupidity that which can be adequately explained by greed.

Regards,
--
*Art

Re:So they aren't corrupt, but...

[Jaywalk]

Hanlon was just ripping off Napoleon. His quote was, "Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence." I suppose that would make you both right, since stupidity and ignorance are both forms of incompetence. I think I'd categorize greed in with malice, since it requires a deliberate choice to do harm.

Re:So they aren't corrupt, but...

[nuzak]

I don't think the etymology of Hanlon's Razor will ever be known. Unless there's a verifiable source, the attribution to Napoleon is no better than the one to Machiavelli (which is also quite common). Chalk it up to "common wisdom" now.

As for the modern coinage, Hanlon is quite likely a pseudonym for Heinlein. It sounds like the sort of glib aphorism he'd put in the mouth of a character like Lazarus Long.

Re:So they aren't corrupt, but...

[arth1]

There's no records, indications or even hints that Napoleon ever said this. Like many other sayings, it's attributed to a famous person when the person quoting it can't remember or doesn't know who said it. Ascribing it to someone famous then gives it an air of importance.

In this particular case, it's likely a misquote of Heinlein to make his phrase[1] appear as a generic rule, but misquoting his name too.

[1]: "You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity"

Microsoft has made enemies this week

[BlueParrot]

The EU is already investigating their influence on the OSI process, countless of companies are pissed that their voices were not heard due to Microsoft bribes and whatnot, the media will love this one. I seriously think Microsoft has shot themselves in the foot here. Big time.

Re:Microsoft has made enemies this week

[compro01]

i would think they were aiming a couple feet higher and more towards the centre.

Re:Microsoft has made enemies this week

[Chandon Seldon]

Sadly, Microsoft has been pulling this sort of shit for *years*, and they always seem to get away with it. With the way things are going, I bet they could assassinate a competitor (say... Steve Jobs for argument's sake), publicly admit to it, and still get off with a stern warning as long as they promise not to do it again in the next 18 months.

Re:Microsoft has made enemies this week

[Tom]

If the media "love this", how come there are about 500 Google News on "OOXML" while there are over 5000 on "Paris Hilton", 13,000 for "Nepal", 17,000 for "Vista" and so on.

It doesn't look as if the media had picked up the story at all. Many of the 500 articles don't mention the irregularities at all, from what I've seen.

want to read the standard writeups? - ODF & OO

[nawcom]

ODF:

http://docs.oasis-open.org/office/v1.1/OS/OpenDocument-v1.1.pdf

OOXML:

http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/files/ECMA-ST/Office%20Open%20XML%20Part%201%20(PDF).zip

http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/files/ECMA-ST/Office%20Open%20XML%20Part%202%20(PDF).zip

http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/files/ECMA-ST/Office%20Open%20XML%20Part%203%20(PDF).zip

http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/files/ECMA-ST/Office%20Open%20XML%20Part%204%20(PDF).zip

http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/files/ECMA-ST/Office%20Open%20XML%20Part%205%20(PDF).zip

Sudden Outbreak of Common Sense

[Anonymous Coward]

The next sudden outbreak of common sense for the governments is to confiscate all of M$ assets and redistribute them all to FLOSS projects.
--
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.

Well that is because laws are inherently meant to:

[DaedalusHKX]

Be broken! Or at least bent. An old relative of mine, years ago when I was a child said that the laws are merely a fence, which keeps bovines in their place. Big dogs jump over them and little puppies slink under them, but only bovines are kept in check.

It sounds far better in its native tongue than it does translated to english, but pay heed that this holds true regardless of the country.

Likewise, for running roughshod over laws, most laws aren't written to help "the people" and never were. Recall the "regulative restrictions" placed upon CB (citizen's band) radios in the USA, requiring that individuals pay a 10 dollar license fee and getting "registered".

It was a shitty law meant to squeeze blood from the proverbial turnip. People did not comply, at all. When the regulation was reduced to mere "sign a form so we know you have one" (aka registration) people still refused. As a result, the whole thing was dropped formally due to "mass non compliance".

Irony? People still want to have legislators set the rules, when the simple rule is, as always has been, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, but do it first and do it well." The legislators know this, which is why, regardless of the country or the century or the millenium, all governing bodies fuck the people good and hard, and then pretend it is someone else's fault.

"It is the free market's fault. It is the free individual's fault. It is society's fault."

If people disapprove of Microsoft's standards, then they should NOT USE THEM! PERIOD!! There are plenty of competing standards, and plenty of clean open source software out there. Use it, or lose it. Just like freedom. It isn't granted by others. It is freely available to those who would make use of it and be cognizant of its presence and benefits. Period. Everything else on this subject is bullshit excuse making from impotent and incompetent wimps unable to stop from penis envy with Bill Gates. Instead of trying to "beat" the big boys, start actually side stepping them. Like the airlines and the big telecoms, they are ALL obsolete. So is central government and big agencies and militaries. The world's people will never see this, regardless of how blatantly visible it is to some of us. Stop asking for others to prohibit all options you can have, and exercise the power of your choice and your wallet. You don't like Gates or Microsoft? Don't buy their shit. Don't like starbucks? Don't buy their cappucinos (in fact I make a far nicer one at home, and I get to put rum in mine too!!) Get used to it. If you don't approve of a company, STOP GIVING THEM PRESS... stop buying their products, and instead promote those that espouse the beliefs and values you support. I use Linux and BSD and rarely if ever drop back to windows to play a game WINEX doesn't support yet. That's it. My choices? Yes. Took me four years to find and purchase the right wireless cards I wanted. Did I switch back to windows because WPA supplicant didn't work right when they first started? No, I merely did without wireless and went so far as to patch mine in a crude and unapproved fashion. The fixes are in and it works okay now. I made choices. So should you. Stop being angry. It helps nothing and wastes your energy pointlessly.

Hope my advice helps. I spent a lot of time being angry and political campaigning, here and IRL. None of it helped. Letting go, and voting with my walleet and my feet helped more. Try it.

Elected government?

[EmbeddedJanitor]

After years of honing their bribery^h^h^h^h^hlobbying skills, don't for a second believe that the megacorps would leave government selection to anything as random as citizen voters.

Andd why dump them in the Pacific? After taking US nukes and other toxic waste for decades, why would the Pacific want US government stinking up the joint too?

Corruption?????

[zappepcs]

The tagging has the corruption tag... wtf? That's kind of like describing a broken window as just a little dirty? Windex isn't going to fix this broken window, unless the EU regulars are fond of dressing up kind of like superman but with Windex emblazoned on their chest.

For some reason that mental picture of that has me rolling on the floor

That cracks me up.

[PaulGaskin]

If that's how you'd handle Microsoft, I'm afraid to ask what you'd would you do about Halliburton. I agree that Microsoft should be broken up but I don't think I want their source code to see the light of day.

Hollow victory

[HangingChad]

This is every bit the win for Microsoft as Vista. It's gone past the point of absurdity. Any developer this side of Alpha Centauri knows they rigged the vote. It's a joke. What on earth could make it worth this public clown posse?

Handled with all the execution savvy we've come to expect from Redmond these days.

Re:Hollow victory

[jimmyhat3939]

It's actually more of a victory than that. The whole point of this is that many organizations (governments, corporations) have said they want to store their documents in an ISO-recognized file format.

Basically, this makes Office qualify for that, but still have what amounts to a closed spec. They don't really care about all the rest of it.

Re:Hollow victory

[gsasha]

Well, it will make funny of all of MSFT's efforts if those same governments now start stepping forward and declare that they want a format supported by at least two compliant implementations. Let's see Microsoft subvert THAT.

Re:Hollow victory

[Pecisk]

Microsoft Office doesn't qualify. Yep, Microsoft could not get that even right.

Re:Hollow victory

[rolfc]

They said they wanted an open format, and they thought that that was what ISO provided. If that no longer is the case, then they will ask for an open format. There is no winner here, just losers, especially Microsoft that has shown more openly than ever that they don't care about their customers.

Re:Hollow victory

[Jesus_666]

Of course governments can still point out that Microsoft didn't implement OOXML (DOCX is a similar but slightly incompatible format) and thus Office and its file formats don't qualify. It's not very likely but possible.

So Let Me Get This Straight

[SkaKidDan]

There are now two supported formats, ODF and OOXML. /. doesn't think theres enough room for the two to co-exist? If OOXML breaks a few of ISO's rules and ISO still approves, couldn't it mean that they (and those who voted) saw enough value in OOXML to still let some of its faults slide? I'm sure its not the first time ISO has approved of something that wasn't perfect. I just think everyone seems to be over reacting... but maybe I'm just ignorant.

Re:So Let Me Get This Straight

[Raineer]

You're giving too much credit to the ISO which passes this. If the vote is somehow intimidated by Microsoft (we all know they NEVER intimidate anyone on purpose), then this serves as no judgement whatsoever on the validity of OOXML.

It is the kind of thinking that you just exhibited that is the the scariest, the fact that some might view this as "oh wow, Microsoft isn't all that evil after all".

Re:So Let Me Get This Straight

[SkaKidDan]

I think the ISO has done enough good in the past that I trust their judgment. M$ I don't trust at all for anything, but I still respect their talents.

Re:So Let Me Get This Straight

[Pinky's Brain]

You mean the past where a third of the voting members didn't only join at Microsoft's behest? (This story might concern some slightly harder to believe conspiracy theories, but that Microsoft bought around a third of the votes outright by getting small countries to join is pretty much a certainty.)

Re:Well that is because laws are inherently meant

[justinchudgar]

I agree with that. I haven't used any MS software, any Adobe software, or any eggs from caged chickens in several years. I've also gotten a friend to switch one of his systems from WinXP to Kubuntu instead of buying a legit license for it. (It came from a relative with a cracked version of XP.) I've stopped buying potted plants and started just saving and planting seeds to save all that diesel spent shipping little seedlings around. I have no idea if it makes any difference to MS, Adobe, Raley's, WalMart, etc. but it does make a difference to me.

The outcome only..

[Anonymous Coward]

Money could buy. No one in their right mind would pass this. In reality and in the absence of bribery and pressure, no one would pass this in any way shape or form. With a lot of pressure and a lot of money, the first round failed. With an overwhelming amount of pressure, and bribery that would make the Medici family blush, and an underhanded manipulation, a 'Gaming' of the ISO process that would make Machiavelli blush, the second round somehow is managing to pass. Is OOXML a real standard in any sense of the word? No. Is it possible for any other entity, anywhere in the world to create a compatible version of OOXML? No. Its intended to give a single company a rubber stamp, a marketing aid, to enhance their monopoly. In this one act, the ISO becomes a joke. The standards body recedes power. Within a decade, even small companies will be able to pass any amount of gas, call it a standard, and be given a rubber stamp of approval from this body. Like the governor of Massachusetts, they caved and didn't do the right thing from an ethical, moral and practical point of view. In the interests of power politics, money and greed, they sold out. It now acts as a sign: "Open to bribes by big business, please pay millions at the door, and leave your request along with the money".

There's a word for this.

[IGnatius T Foobar]

Where before, ISO standardization was a fair and democratic process that usually resulted in international standards that made industries run smoothly and on an open level field ... thanks to the actions of Microsoft, ISO standardization is now a process that can, with sufficient resources, be outright bought in order to protect and extend an international monopoly for years to come.

There's a word to describe the activity of making that kind of change. Microsoft uses this word to describe itself all the time.

The word is: innovation.

strange results

[jollyreaper]

Of the 24 members attending, 19 disapproved, 5 approved. The result: The administrative staff decided that Norway wants to approve OOXML as an ISO standard. Did they record the vote on Diebold machines?

Where are the irregularities?

[Moridineas]

First off--I have not followed the OOXML story at all, so I don't really have a clue as to what's going on.

However, I read the links here, and I don't see the irregularities--like in Norway, are the people that voted "approve" not allowed to vote normally? Were people stopped from voting? I don't understand.

Any insights would be greatly appreciated.

Re:Where are the irregularities?

[man_of_mr_e]

Yeah, the problem is that you're only hearing one side of the story.

For example, the meeting in Norway was not to approve or disapprove of OOXML, it was to determine if there had been any irregularities in the Norway vote. As such, only the administrators votes counted towards whether to overturn their previous yes vote to no or abstain.

Since there was no vote to accept or reject OOXML, these stories that claim such are deceptive. I don't believe the authors are deliberately bending the truth, but I think they have bad information and are just repeating it.

Re:Where are the irregularities?

[GrievousMistake]

You'll have to provide sources for that, since everything I've read says otherwise. E.g. http://blogs.freecode.no/isene/2008/03/30/promoting-the-repair-shop-philosophy/
Frankly, I suspect you are the one spreading misinformation on this. Even so, have you even considered what you are saying? Are you claiming that the vast majority of participants in the voting process claimed that the voting process was faulty, only to be overturned by a few people in charge (Who also were the ones with Microsoft ties?)
Yeah, that sounds much better.

No cover up. Corruption is blatant. Who cares?

[walterbyrd]

Cover up? Msft is not even shy about their brazen corruption anymore.

Yes, there was corruption. Tons of it. It has all been very well documented. Read groklaw.net or noooxml.org.

What does msft care is the slashdot/groklaw crowd doesn't like it?

OOXML will not pass

[Negativeions101]

"Predicts it will pass" and "it will pass" are 2 different things. Does anyone honestly still doubt that Microsoft are pieces of sh*t who should be dismantled?

Re:Where are the irregularities? NEVERMIND

[Moridineas]

Ahh Re: Norway, I see I totally misread something. Weird, I don't get what happened. Would like to see some press coverage of the vote, though I guess that's too much to ask for.

After the BRM spin...

[symbolset]

This one's a cake walk. A gentle lob over the net. "Overwhelming international approval for new international document standard. Embraced by technical committees the world over. A revolution in standards process. Sailed through." Quote after quote from NB committee members without mentioning that they're Microsoft employees, or that they managed to get themselves inserted into the process for this one thing only.

I'm turning off my internet for a couple weeks after it starts. I think I'm going to be ill. Somebody record the SCO fiasco for me.

non-sequitar

[dh003i]

To move from (a) the fact that OOXML is not a standard, or if you want to call it one, a crappy standard that only a person who is biased, malevolent, or moronic could recommend; to (b) that MS should be broken up; is a non-sequitar.

We don't have the right to good standards. Yes, we want good standards, just like we want good things in everything we have. But we don't have the right to good standards regarding document formats. This is because we don't have the right to have documents, word-processors, or computers to begin with. We obtain those things through mutually beneficial trades, using our money. If we don't think what is being offered for our money (e.g., MS Office) is worth it, we can walk away from the proposed deal. But we have no right to force Microsoft to change their offer to be more appealing to us.

If you want to create a world with better software and better standards, you have several justifiable options: (a) Educate consumers; (b) Oppose patent laws, the DMCA, and other laws relating to such that result in artificial government-created monopolies over various things. If you're response to the fact that there are numerous laws in existence which give unjustified advantages to say Microsoft over it's competitors, by using the threat of aggression to prevent competition (e.g., patent laws), is to argue for more artificial government laws to deal with the problem created by those laws to begin with, then you'll never get anywhere. As Ludwig von Mises said, interventionism leads to more interventionism.

Duplicative standards conflict with WTO rules

[walterbyrd]

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080327170359776

"the president of the European Academy for Standardisation, Tineke Egyedi, is critical of OOXML being made a standard when ODF exists already, and she believes duplicative standards conflict with WTO rules"

Not that stuff like rules or laws ever stopped msft.

No thanks.

[Mactrope]

Others have already read the OOXML docs and pointed out countless places it's incomplete, contradictory and impossible to implement. Worse, it has been pointed out that DOCX is already something different from the above. I have better things to do with my time than read 6000 pages of misdirection. NO ONE but MS is going to have a working implementation, if there can ever be such a thing. OOXML is a farce that will only fool the weakest minded non technical decision makers. It surely did not fool the majority of ISO representatives and we shall see if it really becomes a standard in light of all the irregularities. The organization's reputation is on the line. For prior art in this matter, look up Rich Text Format, the Microsoft last "open" specification that no one ever used.

Rational policy for the new documents is to return the thing to it's sender and ask for ODF. Editors can be had as a free download and they work well, so there's no reason for anyone to demand others buy a $400 text editor. It's that simple, for you and me to work together I can buy a $400 program or you can download one for free. Which do you think it's going to be most of the time?

Re:No thanks.

[Anonymous Coward]

You already posted on this article with another one of your five sockpuppets. Please stop gaming the moderation system.

Microsoft Approves Itself

[BanjoBob]

From our friends at Groklaw...

Microsoft is approving its own "standard", I'd say. We count 20 direct Microsoft participants:
1 BELGIUM Mr. Bruno SCHRODER MICROSOFT
2 BRAZIL Mr. Fernando GEBARA Microsoft Brazil
3 CANADA Mr. Paul COTTON Microsoft Canada
4 COTE D'IVOIRE * Mr. Wemba OPOTA MICROSOFT West and central Africa
5 CZECH REPUBLIC Mr. tepán BECHYNSKÝ Microsoft Czech Republic, Ltd
6 DENMARK Mr. Jasper Hedegaard BOJSEN Microsoft Denmark
7 FINLAND Mr. Kimmo BERGIUS Microsoft Ltd
8 GERMANY Mr. Mario WENDT Microsoft Deutschland GmbH
9 ISRAEL Mr. Shmuel YAIR Microsoft
10 ITALY Ing. Andrea VALBONI Microsoft Italy
11 JAPAN Mr. Naoki ISHIZAKA Microsoft
12 KENYA Mr. Emmanuel BIRECH Microsoft East Africa
13 NEW ZEALAND Mr. Brett ROBERTS Microsoft New Zealand
14 NORWAY Mr. Shahzad Rana Microsoft Norge AS
15 PORTUGAL * Prof. Miguel Sales DIAS MICROSOFT Portugal
16 SWITZERLAND Mr. Marc HOLITSCHER Microsoft Schweiz GmbH
17 UNITED STATES Mr. Doug MAHUGH Microsoft Corporation
18 Ecma International Mr. Brian JONES Microsoft
19 Ecma International * Mr. Jean PAOLI Microsoft Corporation
20 Assistant to Project Editor Mr. Tristan DAVIS Microsoft

Nope, there's no conflict of interest or ethics issues here. I don't know how anybody could think that Microsoft is influencing the ISO standards process.

Re:Microsoft Approves Itself

[AJWM]

That's not even counting the various reps from companies that are Microsoft Partners.

Re:Microsoft Approves Itself

[man_of_mr_e]

Odd that you don't mention all the representatives from companies that have a financial interst in the failure of OOXML (like IBM, Sun, Oracle, etc..).

It's not uncommon for ISO NB's to have members from the companies submitting the standard. It wouldn't be able to be submitted otherwise.

Some people are on NB's for multiple countries (for example, I know of one IBM employee who's on three countries NB's) and thus get multiple votes.

Absence of proof is not proof of absence

[Geof]

Are Groklaw, etc, really suggesting that several standards bodies in several nations are all corrupt? And not one leak? Not one failed, incorruptible whistleblower?

Political failure is so commonplace as to be unremarkable. Whether due to corruption, ignorance, or other factors, it constantly afflicts more important politics than this. And it is often overlooked. The more it happens, the less exceptional it is and the more likely it is to be overlooked or accepted as simply the way things are. In that context, whistleblowers will be few and far between. You cannot take their absence - or, more importantly, an absence of reporting about them - as evidence of the integrity of a process (you certainly can't depend on the trustworthiness or relevance of reports on their incorruptibility or otherwise). Only a proper analysis of the process can determine its integrity. Though as others are pointing out, there are whistleblowers aplenty in this case.

You forgot to mention

[celtic_hackr]

That the OOXML proposed standard is already outdated, because MS Office doesn't use it. If you apply OOXML to a Word Document you'll not get the entire document in it's original format. So, any Archiving of Word documents still won't be retrievable by anything other than the version of Word they were created on. in other words the OOXMl standard is nothing but a big fat lie, because it is not used by any word processor on the planet. A worthless time consuming attempt at a standard that has zero usefulness. But, Microsoft has gotten it's way, again, by hook and crook and just plain old BS. Personally I don't see how they can keep pulling this stuff and getting away with it. It really is amazing how they do it. If they were to apply these skills for good we could probably have World Peace.

Not so fast

[gnutoo]

They will first have to make the mistake of recognizing the standard despite so many irregularities and allegations of fraud.

To report corruption to Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

If anyone reading this *actually* has any evidence of wrongdoing, you can report it to Microsoft:

Microsoft Business Conduct Line: 1-877-320-6738

From outside the US, call an international operator, and place a collect call: 1-704-540-0139

Email to: buscond@microsoft.com

Use the web based tool: https://www.microsoftintegrity.com/

Making an allegation without providing evidence is one of the lowest (and oldest) forms of human communication.

Results are not final

[tokul]

Just one switch from Approve to Disapprove in P members group and it fails to pass. Out of 19 known/suspected votes 9 switched sides. Observer votes are also mostly unknown.

Not corrupt, weak, spineless...

[Joce640k]

These are people with no real vested interest who are being browbeaten by professional browbeaters.

I love irony...

[gQuigs]

Secure Connection Failed

www.microsoftintegrity.com uses an invalid security certificate.

The certificate is not trusted because the issuer certificate is unknown.

(Error code: sec_error_unknown_issuer)

        * This could be a problem with the server's configuration, or it could be someone trying to impersonate the server.

        * If you have connected to this server successfully in the past, the error may be temporary, and you can try again later.

                    Or you can add an exception...

Too late? Maybe...

[Whuffo]

The United States had the chance to deal with this monopolist but chose not to. Then the European Union had their chance to deal with this monopolist - so far, they haven't accomplished anything.

Unchecked, this corporate monster has now effectively subverted the ISO. What will our supposed government watchdogs allow them to get away with next?

This isn't funny at all. We've let this evil grow within our democratic society - now we're going to have to live with the result of that bad decision.

Re:Too late? Maybe...

[Anonymous Coward]

Then the European Union had their chance to deal with this monopolist - so far, they haven't accomplished anything.

They have accomplished two significant things:
a) They finally squeezed some half-decent file server protocol specs out of them.
b) They showed them that whatever tactics MS used they would pursue the process to the end and force MS to obey the competition law in case a)

They also got a nice bit of change out of MS for their initial refusal to comply.

I think MS now takes the EU competition commssion much more seriously. Whether this means in future they will try even harder to subvert the process or whether they will reluctantly comply in future remains to be seen. But in Naval warfare terms, they have had more than a shot across the bows - something like having one of their funnels shot off when they were assuming the EU was firing blanks.

Easy Fix

[Pop69]

When it comes time to mandate the standard you're going to use, just say it has to be ISO recognised and correctly identify leap years.

That's the MS standard out the window as it thinks 1900 was a leap year.

Re:Easy Fix

[The Famous Brett Wat]

I'm more inclined to require that it be ISO recognised and have at least one open source implementation. After all, part of the reason for the standard is to allow governments to publish electronic documents without the populace being forced to pay some corporation in order to read it. If there's no open source implementation, it hardly matters how open the standard is -- you're going to be shelling out something to someone (under the terms of some unconscionable EULA to boot).

Seppuku.

[miffo.swe]

The ISO organization has just made themselves irrelevant for the future. Any serious company that wants their new idea standardized will take it elsewhere. ISO is just an empty marketing shell for those who wish to buy a "standard" on paper.

Re:Well that is because laws are inherently meant

[daveime]

If people disapprove of Microsoft's standards, then they should NOT USE THEM! PERIOD!! There are plenty of competing standards, and plenty of clean open source software out there. Which is perfect if you sit in Mama's basement all day ... but in the real world outside, when passing a lecture to your professor, or passing a report to your boss, they don't want to hear "it's open source so it's better" ... nor do they want to have to download 97MB of OpenOffice software just to open the frikken thing, as happenned to me the other day ... if your ODF is so damn open, where's all the freeware readers for windows ? Instead of trying to "beat" the big boys, start actually side stepping them. Like the airlines and the big telecoms, they are ALL obsolete. So presumably you have your own private plane, and airstrip on which to take off and land, and you managed to post this article using magic ? So is central government and big agencies and militaries. Ah okay, so you don't pay any taxes, don't use the public healthcare system, don't take any medicine, and when someone invades, you'll be right at the front armed with flaming torch and/or pitchfork to defend your land ? I use Linux and BSD and rarely if ever drop back to windows to play a game WINEX doesn't support yet. Rarely ... so your solution is fine *when* it works, but even you don't practice what you preach. THERE IS NO *RARELY* ... if you were so convinced of your convictions, it truly would be "all or nothing" ... f*****ng hippocryte.

They could use SCO...

[yariv]

Give them some minimized version of MS-Office and claim SCO is an independent organization.

I don't get it

[hyades1]

With all the well-documented cheating going on, why is anybody even pretending to take this seriously? What democratic government would agree to commit time and resources to decisions made in such a corrupt manner?

Woooops

[BlueParrot]

That was of course supposed to read "ISO process" ... oh well, +5 interesting anyway :P

It's always been ridiculous.

[reiisi]

I've been in city council meetings and other places where people think they have a chance to wield a little influence to make things come out the way they want. It's amazing the lies people tell to each other, and to themselves, to "win" their point. (And you watch, after a few years, they generally find themselves hoist on their own petards.) As long as there are a lot of people who have bought into the "power" model of society, this sort of stuff will go on, because people get their self-images all tangled up in the amount of "power" they can wield.

Someone once said it this way:

We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all [human beings], as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion.

And they keep it up while telling themselves that everyone is doing it.

Anyway, as someone pointed out on Groklaw recently, Gates very likely figures he can't lose. Either way, he's put the ISO down, and that makes it that much harder to prove that his software is mathematical snakeoil.

But he's fooling himself if he believes he can hide the power of plaintext from the world forever. It would have been more to his empire's benefit to have let the ODF spec stand unchallenged and simply joined in with software that works (more or less) by that standard. Now, because of the travesty that is OOXML (not to mention Microsoft's primary formats) people will start realizing that it doesn't take filling a file full of formatting (and maybe a precious few semantic tags) to send someone a message asking how the trip to Cancun was, or asking for a quick summary of a committee meeting.

We get what we pay for (at best). I don't know about the rest of you guys, but my work journals and most of the stuff I want to keep forever is now in plaintext with a few ad-hoc semantic tags. (Not even full XML, if I figure I can parse it later with my eyeballs.)

Re:It's always been ridiculous.

[inode_buddha]

OT regarding your quote: that would be Jos. Smith in the D&C if I recall correctly (I'm inactive). However sadly, it is very true.

Congratulations Microsoft!

[1336]

With your purchase of a brand new ISO standard, you get a free, new matching anti-trust investigation from the Europeans who have already fined you BILLIONS of $ for past anti-trust violations!

Well...

[zkiwi34]

In case no one had noticed, it's going to take years for even Microsoft to implement this standard, or for that matter for the ISO processes to get it fixed. The sheer number of flaws is mind boggling. Look for a raft of Office patches and hacks that no one will be able to keep up with, let alone the trail of broken documents that will be created. Nothing ticks off government or other bureaucracy more than broken documents. Besides, the EC is already ticked with Microsoft's non-compliance on other issues. This might be the straw that breaks that regulatory camel's back.

Other corporations? (half OT)

[Lonewolf666]

Halliburton?
I have not followed this one in detail, but they seem to have cheated the US government (and ultimately the tax payers) by a few billions. I guess a massive fine to recover that money would be appropriate.

Blackwater?
Bunch of mercenaries that might have committed war crimes. Investigate, treat by the same standards that were applied to German war criminals after WW2. Might lead to some executions...

Back to Microsoft and a hypothetical public domain release of their source code:
Their source code may be a bunch of spaghetti code, but Windows is widespread enough that cleaning it up might be worthwhile. At least it should help projects like WINE or ReactOS.

not about approving ooxml any more

[reiisi]

Well, that's what somebody want's somebody to believe.

Funny thing is, votes can get changed to approve.

Somebody has wanted very strongly, from the outset, to make this nothing but approval of a done deal, just like the elections in Russia. The market "has already voted" because MSOffice is so "prevalent", so it's "stupid" not to make MSOffice a "standard".

The logic of popularism, as opposed to the logic of a free market.

spelling police myself: want's - wants

[reiisi]

I'm getting tired. Time to go after some groceries before the sun goes down.

If I don't buy MSWhatever, I can't get a job

[reiisi]

And it's not just programming any more. There are a lot of teachers who look at you like you just stepped out of a UFO if you suggest using your document built on anything but MSOffice as teaching material. There are a lot of doctors who look at you the same way if you suggest using anything but MSWhatever box in any medical function. Dietary plans? MSExcel spreadsheets. Inventory? MSAccess. KnowledgeBase? you know it.

People want a standard. Everyone but Microsoft has been saying we shouldn't standardize yet. Microsoft lies and says they have a standard. Kaching.

And plaintext with good search really could have done the job for 99% of everything that's being done with computers.

The EU check

[balazsa]

I just hope the EU Competition Comission just started to write another billon dollar check payable to compensate Microsoft's prudent corporate citizen behavior.

Here is what happend in Romania as well

[Anonymous Coward]

http://aranea.zuavra.net/index.php/97/

enough. time for a call to arms.

[apodyopsis]

ok, enough! yes its bad, its annoying, its down right underhanded.

BUT WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT IT?

it there any body that can be complained to?

will the countries whose votes have been hijacked have any recourse to complain?

what is the correct procedure to strike down an ISO standard?

how can this be stopped?

will it, actually, make any difference if it is a standard?

is there any appeal procedure?

what is the next step for the ODF backers?

has ISO got any credibility left?

we are engineers, we should waste less energy on complaining (though I'll admit we do that well) and actually attempt to do something about this.

Re:Well that is because laws are inherently meant

[DaedalusHKX]

don't use the public healthcare system, don't take any medicine, and when someone invades, you'll be right at the front armed with flaming torch and/or pitchfork to defend your land

Nope, I don't use "public healthcare" that's for socialists who expect something from nothing and sign themselves away for "free stuff". I went off some medication I was prescribed, and instead went into my mother's herb garden and started using her plants instead. Surprisingly, I'm healthy now... the government and its sanctioned medics now see me as a "lost stream of revenue". I call myself "free".

Course the average schmuck will miss the part that once you accept free stuff, without doing a thing for it, the government that is strong enough to give you things, is also strong enough to take those things away, oh yeah, and it owns you. On that issue I stand where I say I do and don't play your game. I've yet, in my whole life, to take a single handout from the government, yours or anyone else's. As for "defending my land"... right now its "public use" and "public policy" schmucks like you that want to put highways through people's back yards or through their farmland that are the real enemy, not some foreign schmucks who can barely afford to feed their "armies", nevermind actually invade anyone's "land". I'm fairly sure I can defend my land from an invading army more effectively than you or anything you can afford to throw my way.

As for the "rarely if ever", you need to put your dick back in your pants boyo. You forget I'm not just a believer in the Free Market, but I also exercise it whenever possible. You forget that little issue that "I already have a paid copy of windows XP" retail, they threw it in with a laptop I bought (before I got into building my own). Why not use it if I feel like it? Not like Microsoft will give me a refund. That doesn't mean I'll be buying another copy of Windows ever again, but when they throw one in, I don't mind using it for games. I have yet to get much work on Windows though.

PS - I actually hold the title and deed to several lovely little pieces of property. Including the one my mom lives on. But thanks for the typical weak minded insults you hurled my way. Shows what an enlightened "real world thinker" you are.

PPS - most of the business minds in the world whose work I read, have discussed the fact that airlines are and were (as of 2000) overdue for financial collapse. Same with most big entities. They're too slow to maneuver, and most people that matter are either in on the take of their scams or have been clued into their scams and want no part of 'em. Either way... 9/11 and all this terrorism craze resulted in governments inflating moneys through the proverbial roof. As a result, all the security theater is not meant to "keep us safe from terrorists"... it is meant only to pump endless streams of freshly printed cash and credit into the coffers of the airlines to keep them afloat. And yes, I have driven on public and private roads, and I must say, with scant few exceptions, I've felt less bumps on private roads than on public roads, course most people don't realize that private roads generally charge tolls, surprise surprise. Prime example are the roads in Washington DC... the "shining example of America's Glory!"... I've driven those roads extensively, and even close to the White House and Congress, there are potholes... no joke. I live less than 500 miles from there, and my last job took me there every other day. Needless to say, you cannot PAY me to go there anymore.

PPPS - I say this, and take it as you will kiddo, but you should definitely look at whether such lovely things as tyrannical governments, church movements and inquisitions (crusades, etc) and other such groups "helped" technology and knowledge or helped to stifle it. Ask yourself if all our advances have been the results of government control, or of individuals hoping to cash in on a good idea. Look around, lots of people, many of whom I've known, used to flee

Microsoft doesn't HAVE to implement the standard.

[argent]

Microsoft doesn't HAVE to implement OOXML, all they have to do is have a standard that smells like Office "in the works" for the folks who need a checkmark against "standard file format" to keep buying Office.

It's just like the way they implemented POSIX to satisfy FIPS-151. They produced a deliberately crippled POSIX subsystem and later when it turned out they actually needed a working UNIX environment on NT they bought the company that had implemented one.

Re:Well that is because laws are inherently meant

[DaedalusHKX]

"when passing a lecture to your professor, or passing a report to your boss,"

I used to pass them on paper. Do they demand electronics now? Pity. When I went through college, some half a decade ago, we used to know how to write by hand (amazing skill, I know). Good skill to have.

As for your second part of that statement. I am my own boss. I own two of my own businesses, and I'm pretty much retired at this point. I just check in now and again.

I fired my professors and quit college after 3 years. Had I done it sooner I might have saved some cash and gotten on with learning how life works sooner. As far as I can tell, most curricula teach one WHAT to think, not HOW to think. Sooner one gets out of school, the sooner one gets to live life. Not that I disapprove of autodidacts, or even those who manage to actually squeeze through school and get enough reading and experience on the side, or from the rare "good" teacher, but I haven't met that many.

If you want to experience real life, go boar hunting with a spear. Go bow hunting for grizzly or bow fishing, go king crab fishing in Alaska, or go camp out in the back woods a hundred miles from the nearest bit of "civilization" for a month with only your survival gear and a friend for company, and come back to society after surviving out there. Things such as politics or all this little worthless bullshit we all fight about around here, will seem FAR less important to you than they do now. Real life is what people DON'T live, not this shit they do 9 to 5 while pretending they're more than just meat automatons. Your "job" and "school" are not what real life is. Those are merely things people do while hiding from real life. Eventually, they face it, probably in old age, without having learned how to face it when they were capable of learning such a tough lesson. And then they suffer crises, heart attacks, etc.

And no, the herbs in my mother's garden aren't what you are probably thinking. They were mostly ginseng, aloe, etc... but the "secret" here, is that I started living life, rather than having it lived for me... and I've found that things fell together easier. Granted, the difference was that I've never been one to refuse asking for help. Do yourself a favor and either kick in your TV or fire your cable company... you'll suddenly have enough time in the day to even tend a garden and raise a pet. Hell, I'm still understanding the lesson, and I like to think I've gotten started on it some years back.

What a fantastic effort for a "tick in the box"

[Anonymous Coward]

What I find staggering is the risks Microsoft is taking for that "ISO" stamp - which may never arrive due to breach of process.

Just look at it: "sponsoring" people around the world (those less sensitive to libel laws call it bribing), massively exposing itself by leaving documentary evidence of vote rigging and telling clear untruths, plus their own formal declaration that they themselves will never use that standard. In other words, all MS is after ist the "ISO" tag, and by breaking a global process benefitting business worldwide this may actually invalidate whatever "approval" they think they have. In addition, I would as a voter INSIST via media and other means I could lay my hands on that if my government would choose Microsoft on the basis of that ISO standard it MUST store data in that format, and have at least one alternative method/vendor to retrieve sch stored information with 100% fidelity. Let's see how long it would take for reality to dawn then.

I know that none of my businesses will use anything more than the most basic Windows desktop, and that's only because IT's not quite ready with out LTSP based desktop model (I also secretly suspect them to hang around for Ubuntu 8 - that's OK :-). All of what we do requires extreme high levels of security and trust, and that starts with trust in the vendor. I cannot convince myself that there is a sole, single reason why I should trust Gates & cohorts - that trust disappeared somewhere around Worries for Workgroups but then there were few usable alternatives. Now there are, especially where intelligent IT design has kept open standards at the core (also saves a heck of a lot of time with integrating acquisitions, but I digress).

I know that I will now look at any ISO standard with concern as to how it was archieved, because Microsoft has in principle voided the essential neutrality of ISO (if you look at the voting situation, where Microsoft has touched it, ISO has basically turned into a vendor controlled body), and those who participated in this farce have exposed themselves for the weak spined individuals they are (don't tell me they're committees - those are still composed of people).

This was not really a battle about standards - this was about trust. And plenty have been found wanting. Little note to those that played Microsoft's game: we now know who you are.

Odd how you miss

[Anonymous Coward]

that these other companies are COMPETITORS TO EACH OTHER!

Sun produce an office application for sale (star office)
IBM produce an office application for sale
etc

they all compete.

MS produce their own office application.

So we have 22 on MS's payroll and 17 on the payroll of several competing companies (the bit you left out to create a feeling of collusion is that these several companies are NOT sharing their votes: they are competitors with MS *and* each other).

If there are 4 IBM assignees, would you say there are 4 IBM employees and 35 competitors, so IBM are being picked upon???

What about in Zimbabwe?

[Circlotron]

The elections there seem to have a parallel with this whole situation.
A few for; many against. The strongest stays in power regardless of what the majority wants.

Re:Well that is because laws are inherently meant

[roguetrick]

Jesus, you're absolutely insane. Your telling everyone you dance around in an herb garden and drove slightly less than 500 miles to DC every other day. New york to DC is only 200 miles. Your either the fruitiest trucker I've ever encountered in any way shape or form, or a true nutcase.

Re:Well that is because laws are inherently meant

[Mista2]

I always wondered why MP3 players would manufacure a device that requires them to pay royalties to play .mp3 files and the required codecs but not play the free one, .ogg/vorbis? The I found that they often have to sign agreements saying they will only play .mp3/wma etc, and not the free ones, or else no license to play mp3. 8(

Re. Paris Hilton

[cheros]

Well, it can be argued that Paris Hilton is more open than Microsoft, and has been longer at it. Hence the better Google results.

(I'll go and hide now :-).

It's all working fine, very fine.

[Anonymous Coward]

First, sorry it's all IMHO.

But... was this standard ever meant to work? I bet it was not. It must exist as a standard, yet make its use impossible in practice.

Now, smearing ISO's reputation in the process isn't a wonderful by-product? Real standards (those released through a standards institute) are a real nuisance to some. De facto standards are much better, mainly because they're not standards: with enough clout, any behaviour can be made a de facto standard.

So, a product can become standard.

Standards organizations should exist to prevent such influence; it seems "we're going to need another, Timmy".

Why do we care again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Every week there is some article about this. Why do I care what Cuba votes on OOXML or what any other country is doing on a weeky basis? Is this something anyone can change or is it just another excuse to spout conspiracy theories? As far as I can tell, it's a frickin' document format, not the laws for the new world order. Relax...

Spin or incompetence?

[TropicalCoder]

The CNET blog linked to this post shows that the author, Martin LaMonica has a very poor grasp of the situation, and demonstrates the power of Microsoft's spin to confuse the issue...

There are three phrases in the blog that highlight the lack of competence of the author.

1.) "Andrew Updegrove, an advocate for rival standard OpenDocument..."

ODF is not a "rival standard". It is the standard for documents until we hear otherwise. Using the word "rival" implies that standardization is just a contest, whereas in fact it is supposed to be a sober evaluation of how best to formulate and document a specification. There was no contest and this is not supposed to be a game. ODF was adopted as the standard for documents long before OOXML. Perhaps Microsoft would prefer us to have a revisionist view of things?

2.) "Some countries, including Venezuela, even changed from supporting the standardization to opposing it, an unusual move that underscores the political nature of the process."

How does voting "no" underscores the political nature of the process? The author of the blog gives no insight or justification for that interpretation. Why is a "no" assumed to be a political response? Couldn't it be that voting "no" simply reflects the outcome of technical evaluation of a very flawed proposal?

3.) "If confirmed by the ISO, the vote is a victory for Microsoft and other industry backers of Open XML at Ecma..."

Again, creating a standard is not about winning or losing or victory or defeat. I have said it all in my first point above.

When I began this comment, I didn't want to imply anything about the author's motives since I have no way of knowing his motivations for writing this piece. However, now after reading my own comment I have to come to the conclusion that Martin LaMonica is either a very poor journalist or in fact, a very skilled spin doctor for Microsoft - take your pick.

If a vendor..

[domatic]

Ever says "Our product is ISO XXXXX compliant!" I'm going to reply, "I don't give a damn. I can sum up my regard for the ISO in five letters O . O . X . M. L.".

Re:If a vendor..

[evil_aar0n]

Regard for ISO: Shouldn't that be: F.U.C.K.Y.O.U -- ? Ok, that's 7 letters...

Comment to ISO directly.

[seanellis]

My comment to ISO, as submitted on this web form:

http://www.standardsinfo.net/info/livelink/fetch/2000/148478/6301438/enqsvc_ISO_IEC/enqsvc_ISO/enqsvc_ISO_%20general/enqsvc_ISO_general_contact_form.html

----

Sir/Madam,

(I have been unable to find a direct email link for this enquiry.)

I would like to know what, if any, action ISO is taking in respect of the widely reported process irregularities in JTC 1/SC 34, specifically with regards to DIS 29500 (Office Open XML).

I would also like to know whether, in the face of any such investigation, the certification of DIS 29500 would be suspended for the duration of the investigation.

Write to your Member of the European Parliament

[giafly]

In case no one had noticed, it's going to take years for even Microsoft to implement this standard .. let alone [fix] the trail of broken documents that will be created.

Microsoft doesn't HAVE to implement OOXML, all they have to do is have a standard that smells like Office "in the works" for the folks who need a checkmark against "standard file format" to keep buying Office.

Microsoft, and everyone else, has to implement OOXML fully if the EU says they do. This is important for our literature and culture. Write to your Member of the European Parliament, requesting that they set aside a few million Euro to fund comprehensive "clean room" tests of compliance with the written standard. Otherwise it will be like IE and CSS all over again.

Re:Write to your Member of the European Parliament

[argent]

Microsoft, and everyone else, has to implement OOXML fully if the EU says they do.

1. That's what people said about FIPS-151. The POSIX subsystem was carefully designed to just satisfy FIPS-151 while being as limited an implementation as they could get away with.

2. There's no reason that they have to implement it on any specific schedule. It doesn't matter to Microsoft if it takes them five, ten, or twenty years to implement it fully... they only need to be able to promise that an implementation is under development or waiting on approval.

3. If Microsoft can finagle the approval process for the standard, finagling the approval process for implementations is child's play.

Re:Write to your Member of the European Parliament

[marcosdumay]

"2. There's no reason that they have to implement it on any specific schedule. It doesn't matter to Microsoft if it takes them five, ten, or twenty years to implement it fully... they only need to be able to promise that an implementation is under development or waiting on approval."

No, that is a pretty one. If we can convince the public opinion that MS doesn't implement OOXML, it will need to. Otherwise, it will be unable to sell Office to those government bodies that demand ISO standards (and they were the reason all that started).

Now, we "just" have to convince the people, while MSM will scream everywhere that we are lying...

Re:Write to your Member of the European Parliament

[argent]

If we can convince the public opinion that MS doesn't implement OOXML, it will need to.

No, if we can convince the public opinion that MS doesn't implement OOXML and that it matters, it will need to. But if the public in general actually cared about stuff like that they wouldn't be using Office file formats for anything but working copies of documents anyway.

Look, if Microsoft implemented ODF and did a great job of it, and it was included as an option in Office right now people would still overwhelming be passing documents around in .DOC and .XLS format. And government bodies would just check "supports ODF" and still send out proposals and accept tenders in .DOC and .XLS. But at least they'd mostly also accept ODF, whether they cared about it or not. But most of them won't... again, if they did, they'd already be using software that supported open standards.

Hell, there's a company I do business with that provides reports in .XLS format. The reports don't contain any more information than a simple .CSV would. People have asked them to provide .CSV as an option, and they haven't. The company's servers are all running Linux and they're active users of open source software. If people like that don't care enough to use open formats, why the heck do you think the public opinion will make a difference?

Re: croporations

[dmbasso]

I think he meant "craporations"...

It's not USA's fault, it is human nature's. All over the world there is this "synergy" between governments and corporations, that gives us the crap laws that goes opposite to the public interest. Here in Brazil this behavior is just as much pronounced.

Greed drives self-assembling functional structures within the societies' inner workings, and these structures are almost impossible to eradicate.

It's sad.

Hopefully, initiatives such as the "Change Congress" will hinder greed's progression.

Re:Well that is because laws are inherently meant

[Anonymous Coward]

"If people disapprove of Microsoft's standards, then they should NOT USE THEM! PERIOD!"

Personally, I don't. But I don't think you understand why Microsoft is going to such lengths to ram this so-called standard through ISO.

The reason? Government contracts. Government bodies across the world have started to add a requirement to their RFPs that office software support international standards. The only one currently ISO approved that really matters for this discussion is ODF, which Microsoft refuses to implement in a way that would meet RFP requirements (ie. letting you save in it by default). To be eligible for these contracts, they need something to meet the international-standard checkbox, so they're pushing OOXML as hard as they can. They NEED this desperately, since Office file-format lock-in is half of their major monopoly power (the rest being the Windows OS itself, of course) and a huge, huge chunk of their revenue.

This is the reason people are so concerned with this. It has nothing to do with whether or not I use this fake standard. It has everything to do with what GOVERNMENTS will do with this standard. When we've got the Library of Congress, of all agencies, requiring proprietary Microsoft protocols already, this is a big deal. I refuse to pay money to Microsoft to interact with my government. Will I be able to continue to do so if Microsoft rams this through? Microsoft can only bribe and threaten. Government can imprison, fine and shoot me. Different threat scale here.

Re:Well that is because laws are inherently meant

[itsdapead]

If people disapprove of Microsoft's standards, then they should NOT USE THEM! PERIOD!!

You miss the point - this all started because various (usually) government bodies in the US and worldwide were starting to worry about how much data they held and distributed in a proprietary file format which was only reliably readable by products from a single vendor. They started passing rules that required public documents to be stored and exchanged in some sort of non-proprietary standard format. Such rules have to be passed by the politicos who aren't capable of assessing the technical merit of a file format - but will respect ISO certification. With ODF as an ISO standard, progress was gradually being made (albeit an uphill struggle the teeth of MS lobbying). This would have been a major breakthrough towards a healthily diverse and competitive market in office software (in which MS could easily become an equal player by simply adding ODF support to Office).

If OOXML gets a ISO certification then non-techie politicos will take this as carte blanche that MS file formats are "open" and can be safely used (and that they can stick with their MS software because there's an "upgrade path" to .docx). This is the "path of least resistance" anyway and such people will be easily convinced that all these rumblings about inconsistencies in the approval process were just sour grapes from penguin-hugging beatnicks.

You don't like Gates or Microsoft? Don't buy their shit.

That's the problem with monopolies: they subvert the free market model because lots of people don't have the choice! - MS has such market dominance that everybody assumes that everybody else can read the same file formats. What do you do if someone sends you a MS word file that K/OpenOffice won't render properly? When you send your proposal for a new project to a funder as an ODF file and they say they can't open it, what do you do? Now, currently OpenOffice etc. do a tolerable job of opening .doc files - but that's entirely dependent on the OO programmers being able to keep up every time MS changes the format, and it will only take one patent lawsuit to put an end to that.

Took me four years to find and purchase the right wireless cards I wanted.

Q: Why did that take so long? Well, one reason is that because of the Microsoft monopoly wireless chipset manufacturers can hit 95% of the market just by supplying their own low-level windows drivers - and card resellers can (and do) switch chipsets without warning. Someone tells you that the NetSysLink 9000 card is supported by Linux, you buy one and find that NetSysLink 9000 sold in the EU on a Tuesday use a completely different chipset. I've had DVD drives that I've had to plug into a Windows system to set the region code before they'd work in Linux.

Without the "wintel" monoculture, they'd need to publish interface specs, or establish some sort of standardised communications protocol so that various OS vendors could implement drivers.

By your own admission, sticking with Linux has been a labour of love - the vast majority of the desktop computing market simply doesn't have your technical knowledge, let alone persistence.

Always look from the bright side...

[HigH5]

Although this is an important victory for MS, they actually played a defense role here to maintain their position in the market. They had to throw their time, money and human resources into this global operation of corruption. And we still have ODF as an ISO standard, that could be distruptive enough to OOXML business. Yes, it's another uphill battle, but MS keeps retreating. And time is on our side.

Re:Well that is because laws are inherently meant

[0xdeadbeef]

So should you. Stop being angry. It helps nothing and wastes your energy pointlessly.

So ends the wall of bold text.

Submissive and defeated is no way to go through life. Don't rationalize it by taking the side of your enemies.

Re:Well that is because laws are inherently meant

[daveime]

Well ...

You are one serious angry anarchist hippy son of a bitch ain't ya ?

A few comments about how someone who preaches open source use (when it works for them, when it doesn't you still use the man's software, despite hating him) ... and you go off the deep end.

Nope, I don't use "public healthcare" that's for socialists who expect something from nothing and sign themselves away for "free stuff". I went off some medication I was prescribed, and instead went into my mother's herb garden and started using her plants instead. Surprisingly, I'm healthy now... the government and its sanctioned medics now see me as a "lost stream of revenue". I call myself "free".

The next time you do something trivial like break your leg, where exactly will you get an x-ray ? In your herb garden ?

Course the average schmuck will miss the part that once you accept free stuff, without doing a thing for it, the government that is strong enough to give you things, is also strong enough to take those things away, oh yeah, and it owns you.

Spoken like a true "I had everything handed to me on a plate" schmo, who now feels they can pontificate on the rights and wrongs of the political system, without it actually affecting him personally cos mummy and daddy will always be there to bail him out.

On that issue I stand where I say I do and don't play your game. I've yet, in my whole life, to take a single handout from the government, yours or anyone else's.

Except for when you need to drive on those public highways - financed by government (other people's) money

No screw it ... there's just too much wrong with your whole world view to even bother trying to respond to the rest. I'd suggest you just go back to living in your cave, relying on your survival of the fittest approach, watching your neighbor die because he's too poor to afford everything himself, and has to become a "slave to the machine" you so abhor. And if all else fails, he can always try and grow his own herb garden.

Re: croporations

[TeknoHog]

I think the original poster meant to say "coprorations", because the copro- prefix has the crap meaning, for example in coprophilia and coprophagia. In effect, coprorations are serving rations of crap...

Shame on ISO, delivering political IT standards

[omz]

Irregularities and political decisions in ISO DIS 29500 March 2008 votes:

Germany

In a steering committee of 20 people a vote was taken to answer this question: "did the process run according to the rules and without irregularities?"

6 answered no and 7 abstained!

http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-49525/limited-choice-at-german-din http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2008032913190768

Norway

21 members of the committee voted NO to fast-track this DIS but it was decided to vote yes anyway.

http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-50031/oil-fire-in-norway-microsoft-buys-another-standards-body

Denmark

The technical committee didn't agree to change the disapproval vote but it was "decided" to vote yes anyway.

The committee S-142/U-34 under Danish Standards could not agree to change their vote from No to Yes.

A couple of hours later:

http://www.version2.dk/artikel/6718 says that the announcement from Danish Standards will not be made until Friday and that the Chair of the committee has been barred from speaking about the result of yesterday's meeting.

After some Microsoft political intervention to revert this ( the Prime Minister of Denmark is a Microsoft friend ), we have this: http://www.en.ds.dk/4227

Another political decision, influenced by Microsoft lobbyists.

Malaysia

The Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation decided on Malaysia's final position on OOXML ("abstain" ), overturning the 81% "Disapprove" position by ISC-G and TC4.

http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/2008/03/the-minister-of.html http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/2008/03/malaysian-indus.html

Poland

On March 20, 2008, Technical Committee (KT 182) of PKN was supposed to either accept the recommendation (which was to vote YES for the proposed standard) or not accept it, and thus recommend PKN to vote NO or abstain from voting. Of 45 members, 24 appeared on the meeting. And the votes looked like this:

• 12 votes supporting the reccomendation,
• 10 votes rejecting it,
• 2 abstaining to vote.

No consensus has been achieved concerning the recommendation. Thus, the chairman of KT 182, Elzbieta Andrukiewicz, decided to allow the missing members to vote by e-mail during the next 10 days (till the end of March).

The email vote was taken, counting a "no mail sended" as an "approval" !!!

Clearly, there was no technical consensus in Poland, but the chairman forced the rules to favour an approval.

http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-49455/polish-chairwoman-distributes-microsoft-propaganda http://polishlinux.org/poland/possible-manipulation-around-ooxml-process-in-poland/ http://polishlinux.org/poland/poland-confirms-its-approval-for-ooxml-in-iso/

Croatia

Out of 35 members of TO Z1, 17 sent a vote, and there were three votes for, and fourteen against fast-tracking OOXML, which is relative rejection rate of 82%. Members who voted were individual experts, IBM, CLUG and HrOpen. However, since there were less than 51% of votes, the voting process was declared invalid, and the previous vote holds ( "approve" ) !

M

Re:Shame on ISO, delivering political IT standards

[Anonymous Coward]

Regarding Switzerland:
It is true that chairman Thomann virtually decided Switzerland's position himself, but *also* Istvan Sebestyen, the secretary of ECMA, happens to be the chairman of the relevant parent commitee and exerted some influence, and *also* a dozen or two Microsoft partner companies joined the committee a day or two before voting and didn't join any disscussions, and *also* the representative of the Swiss government voted in favour of OOXML apparently under instructions (his boss National Councillor Hans Rudolf Merz was prominently reported as having had discussions with Bill Gates at the World Economic Forum), and *also* the vote was just one short of "Abstain", and *also* two companies (Google Switzerland and Liip), who were outspoken against OOXML, failed to join the commitee in time, and *also* the officers of Swiss Normierungs Vereinigung, while trying to play fair or at least appear so, were obviously biased in favour of OOXML. So it was a lot of factors and the result might have come out differently if we had tried just a little bit harder or Microsoft hadn't had all the breaks after the first vote, which had gone against OOXML.

ODF editor a surprising proponent of OOXML

[2muchcoffeeman]

Patrick Durusau, editor of the OpenDocument Format standard, posted a letter on his website (PDF format warning) last week in favor of ISO adopting OOXML as a standard. His reason: passage benefits ODF as much as anybody else.

He says ODF currently lacks formula definitions for spreadsheets and says that "many core financial functions in spreadsheets are undefined except for actual Excel output" which "varies by version and service pack of MS Office." He then asks, "What happens if OpenDocument and OpenXML reach different definitions of those functions?"

Durusau also notes that ODF doesn't yet support Microsoft format legacy features which "will be easier with a formal definition of those features," and points out something we already know: "OpenDocument does not have a robust mapping to the current Microsoft format." He says that task would be easier if OpenXML completes the ISO process and adds, "If OpenXML is unclear, it must be fixed in order to create a robust mapping between the two."

The comments attached to Infoworld's coverage of Durusau's announcement raise some interesting points, as well.

Re:ODF editor a surprising proponent of OOXML

[Anonymous Coward]

We've discussed that story before.. The /. crowd was, IIRC, not impressed.

Ignorance my azz

[walterbyrd]

"August 30, 2007 (Computerworld) -- Microsoft Corp. admitted Wednesday that an employee at its Swedish subsidiary offered monetary compensation to partners for voting in favor of the Office Open XML document format's approval as an ISO standard."

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9033701

Now tell me that's not corruption.

"Microsoft's Great Besmirching"

[walterbyrd]

This article does a great job of presenting the big picture:

http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/microsofts-great-besmirching

The new Slashdot meme

[dpilot]

This is Slashdot after all, and a new meme has been rising...

There have been more and more postings to the tune that Microsoft's really does make good products, and that its corporate practices are no worse than any others, and that most of the anti-Microsoft hatred is unfair, motivated by jealousy, or both.

But so far in this thread, I haven't seen any post extolling the quality of the OOXML spec submitted to ISO. Nor have I seen any refutations to tell us how the whole balloting process for this issue really has been fair, open, and free from any taint of corruption. Maybe it's that all of the anti-MS Slashdotters have been unfairly modding such informative and insightful posts down, and I need to change my threshold.

That *is* an irregularity.

[argent]

For example, the meeting in Norway was not to approve or disapprove of OOXML, it was to determine if there had been any irregularities in the Norway vote.

Between the time of the original vote and now new information about the proposal has been published by the various voting groups. How exactly is it regular for this second ballot to be strictly based on the voting process?

This reminds me of the time I was at a neighborhood committee meeting and the bloke running the meeting basically told everyone to hold questions until they'd finished some procedural matters, then a friend of his called for a vote before the question period, and anyone who tried to object was told they were out of order, and finally the question period was called off because the vote had been taken. Apparently the people who had questions about the vote were supposed to have recited some "rules of order" mantra earlier and the guy running the meeting was the only expert weasel.

All this was technically legitimate according, but it was blatant abuse of a loophole in the rules.

The situation in Norway seems to be similar.

I would like to see your argument for why this kind of chicanery should be considered "regular".

MOD PARENT UP

[Maxo-Texas]

Answers the question directly-- informative!

We are done

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a sad fact, that Microsoft paid its way to win this. The implication on the free society the damage done.

A Standard?

[xbytor]

If this OOXML 'standard' gets completely through the ISO process in its current form, will it not be the case that _nobody_ (eg Microsoft) will have a compliant implementation ready and that _nobody_ will ever be able to (or want to, in Microsoft's case) implement this 'standard'? It's dead from day one.

ODF at least has compliant implementations now and more will be implemented in the future. At the ISO level, we have one spec that is functioning correctly and a second one coming up that never will for anyone for any purpose.

The point needs to be made that MS does not, in fact, implement the coming ISO OOXML standard and has made no commitment that it will in the future.

Re: croporations

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not USA's fault, it is human nature's. All over the world there is this "synergy" between governments and corporations

There is nothing natural about that.

Re:Well that is because laws are inherently meant

[jc42]

If people disapprove of Microsoft's standards, then they should NOT USE THEM! PERIOD!!

Well, that's easy enough to say, but it can be pretty difficult if the "use" is reuired by a government agency with the power to send you to jail if you don't reply properly.

And the whole point of a "standard" like this is to make it legal for government agencies to send you docs in a Microsoft format that you are legally required to read and reply to. Either that, or you hire someone who can read it for you.

I have a few friends that are very busy right about now, because here in the US it's tax season, and their job is helping people do their taxes. They all explain how they hate Microsoft, but they have to use it, because a lot of the government's tax docs and forms are only available now in computer form, and most of them are only in MS formats.

The pretense of most standards agencies is that a standard is open to everyone, and anyone can implement software or other equipment according to the standard. But it's fairly common for standards agencies to rubber-stamp standards that are poorly defined. This is usually done by approving a standard written by "consultant" paid by a corporation, and the actual standard describes something that the corporation sells. This makes it nearly impossible for independents to develop to the standard, because you can't know the obscure details hidden in the big corporation's product. What you have to do is try to reverse-engineer the spec, and you always miss something. Customers inevitably come across cases that your product doesn't handle "correctly" (i.e., exactly the same as the big corporation's products). At that point, you lose all future sales to that customer, because their management decrees buying only the big corporation's products "to prevent similar future compatibility problems".

It's an old story. And the ISO has produced such standards many times. I worked for a few years back in the 1980s on some projects that involved developing ISO networking standards. We were repeatedly hit with proposed revisions to a new standard that made absolutely no sense to any of us. It always turned out that the text was written by people paid by IBM or Microsoft or Cisco or a few other major networking firms. It was clear that unless we could present a logical technical argument against the text, it would be accepted in the standard. And "We don't understand any way to implement it" wasn't a logical argument. (It was merely an admission of our ignorance. ;-)

Of course, the resulting confused mess was a lot of why OSI lost out to IP. And most of the corporate "contributions" to OSI were clearly intended as sabotage, since the corporations all wanted their own network rubber-stamped as the standard. They were sorta blindsided by the Internet, which they also didn't own (though they're working on that). But they did succeed in making OSI a standard that nobody much wanted to implement.

The only real news here is the extreme in-your-face arrogance of Microsoft this time around. Usually such problems are kept quiet until it's too late to do anything. But MS seems to feel that they can easily win this one. They may be right. Online discussions in the tech community don't seem to have affected the process very much, and chances are we can't really do anything about it. So we can look forward to a future of working with a poorly-specified standard that we'll never be able to implement correctly. In this case, there will be a big corporation selling software that complies with the standard, though of course "compliance" will be practically defined as working exactly as Microsoft's software does.

But, but, but!

[cicho]

As Slashdot's vocal libertarian contingent has taught us well, corporations are responsible solely for the financial interests of their shareholders. Microsoft is acting accordingly. Governments and NGOs have no business regulating Capitalism. If you don't like OOXML, don't use it. And greed is good. There. Any questions?

Quality base-level of ISO very LOW

[omz]

If you want to see how bad was this process handled, see one of its awfuls deliverables.

Open the document "Response_DE-0028_dates_v9.doc" in this zip

http://www.itscj.ipsj.or.jp/sc34/open/09891.pdf

This is one of the changes frenetically accepted in BRM, regarding treatments of dates in OOXML. See the salad of colors trying to explain the modifications. And this is a fix ( BRM ) of a fix ( one of ECMA 1027 proposed fixes ) of a NB comment of a draft text ( original ECMA submission ).

ECMA and Microsoft have not provided a decent final text with all this changes applied. In the BRM they frenetically changed Scope, Conformance , Schemas , and lot of normative text. Microsoft is now rushing to get a final text in less than one month, to comply with ISO normative.

This is how ISO delivers IT international standards, mandating fundamental changes to drafts, leaving national bodies with the only alternative to cast a political vote leaving aside the technical content of the specification.

Congratulations to the countries that have balls and didn't agree with this way of deliver standards to people:

• New Zealand ( dissaproved )
• Brasil ( dissaproved )
• India ( dissaproved )
• China ( dissaproved )
• South Africa ( dissaproved )
• Canada ( dissaproved )
• Venezuela ( dissaproved )
• Ecuador ( dissaproved )
• Iran ( dissaproved )
• Italy ( abstained )
• Spain ( abstained )
• Belgium ( abstained )
• Netherlands ( abstained but only Microsoft opposed the disapproval )
• France ( abstained due to heavy Microsoft pressure )
• Malaysia ( abstained due to heavy Microsoft pressure )
• Australia ( abstained due to heavy Microsoft pressure )
• Kenya ( abstained )

And congratulations Microsoft, your friendly little countries supposedly experts in XML document description languages ;-) ( now ISO P-members ), who joined ISO JTC1 just to cast an "uncoditional yes vote" have payed off:

• Jamaica
• Cyprus
• Malta
• Kazakhstan
• Lebanon
• Azerbaijan
• Cote-d'Ivore
• Pakistan

correct link

[omz]

correct link ( ZIP document )

http://www.itscj.ipsj.or.jp/sc34/open/0989_reference_docs.zip

Bad spec

[dwheeler]

It's a really bad spec, and should never have been submitted to the "fast track" process. Rob Weir analyzed OOXML using a sampling technique, and found that the ISO process found 1.5% or less of the errors in the spec. That suggests there are at least 172,000 errors in the spec that were not even NOTED in the last gathering for ISO's fast track. Inigo Surguy's "Technical review of OOXML" also found a massive number of errors. It's hard to express how warped the process has become. In a five-day meeting, they couldn't address almost all the errors (because there were too many) - instead, they did a block vote, and I know of no one who really even understood what had been accepted by the vote. The countries "approving" the spec don't even have a final spec to approve - instead, it's an original document with a bunch of text describing the kinds of changes to be made to it.

ODF

[dwheeler]

I don't want my documents in essence owned by any one supplier of office suites - I should have the freedom to choose, and change, who my supplier is. ODF meets that requirement well; OOXML does not. ODF was developed over many years, by a large number of different organizations working together - both open source and proprietary. It's not just "Sun and the open source community", it was a large collaborative effort (as is usual for standard-setting). In contrast, OOXML was developed under the sole control of a single supplier, who's rigged things to ensure that they stay in control by them, in perpetuity.

If you're looking for "compromises", you should look at OOXML, not ODF. Rob Weir shows that OOXML is full of a massive number of errors - I estimate over 172,000 unresolved errors. These comments about ODF are without merit; OpenDocument can handle change requests (see, for example, section 4.6) and tables in presentations. OpenDocument 1.0 handles tables-in-presentations just fine, they're just encoded differently than you seem to be expecting. Embedded tables are encoded as embedded spreadsheets; this is slightly different than how OOXML encodes it, but all the data and capabilities are there. OpenDocument 1.2 will make the indirection optional, but this is all invisible to end-users anyway. Note that this means that tables CAN be in presentations, but more importantly, they're encoded the same way that they are encoded in other kinds of documents - OpenDocument has a single, clear table model. In contrast, OOXML has multiple incompatible table models. OpenDocument is remarkably consistent, as well as building on well-established standards - which is why it can be so much smaller, and so much more capable, at the same time.

Sure, many office suites will implement some subset of OOXML. But it would be wise to view it as a temporary transition format, so that you can escape from vendor-specific formats to an open standard like ODF. Yes, it's convenient to have it as a "published standard", but Ecma is enough for that; there's no reason to have an ISO stamp on it. OOXML is essentially the proprietary format of a single vendor. There's no reason to confuse anyone into thinking it's some sort of universal format, and the ISO stamp is likely to cause that kind of confusion.

The format for documents should not be controlled by any single office document supplier. That is a key reason why OOXML should be rejected by ISO, and published only by Ecma as some sort of interim format (to enable people to move off it). OOXML is also so error-ridden that it should have been laughed out of the fast track process.

To those people of those nations...

[theolein]

Take your fight to your politicians. That means in the EU, you should be sending in suspicion of corruption claims to the EU competition commissioner. Unless you do something now, we'll all be stuck with Microsoft's fairly obviously illegal practices for ever after. Do it, and do it now! I for my part will be looking into what can be done here where I live.

Formal protest regarding the Norwegian vote on ISO

[omz]

from

http://blogs.freecode.no/isene/2008/03/31/norwegian-committee-chairman-to-iso-count-the-vote-as-no/
http://consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20080331114700984
http://blogs.freecode.no/isene/2008/03/30/promoting-the-repair-shop-philosophy/

This was just sent to ISO from the chairman of the Norwegian standards committee responsible for evaluating OOXML:

Formal protest regarding the Norwegian vote on ISO/IEC DIS 29500

I am writing to you in my capacity as Chairman (of 13 years standing) of the Norwegian mirror committee to ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34. I wish to inform you of serious irregularities in connection with the Norwegian vote on ISO/IEC DIS 29500 (Office Open XML) and to lodge a formal protest.

You will have been notified that Norway voted to approve OOXML in this ballot. This decision does not reflect the view of the vast majority of the Norwegian committee, 80% of which was against changing Norway's vote from No with comments to Yes.

Because of this irregularity, a call has been made for an investigation by the Norwegian Ministry of Trade and Industry with a view to changing the vote.

I hereby request that the Norwegian decision be suspended pending the results of this investigation.

Yours sincerely,

Steve Pepper

Chairman, SN/K185 (ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34 mirror committee)

(sign.)

The Letter to ISO in pdf:

http://blogs.freecode.no/isene/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/iso-protest.pdf

Formal Protest Filed

[walterbyrd]

Formal Protest Filed Asking that Norway's Vote Be Annulled & KEI Statement
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080331144223128/

Formal protest regarding the Norwegian vote on ISO/IEC DIS 29500

I am writing to you in my capacity as Chairman (of 13 years standing) of the Norwegian mirror committee to ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34. I wish to inform you of serious irregularities in connection with the Norwegian vote on ISO/IEC DIS 29500 (Office Open XML) and to lodge a formal protest.

You will have been notified that Norway voted to approve OOXML in this ballot. This decision does not reflect the view of the vast majority of the Norwegian committee, 80% of which was against changing Norway's vote from No with comments to Yes.

Because of this irregularity, a call has been made for an investigation by the Norwegian Ministry of Trade and Industry with a view to changing the vote.

I hereby request that the Norwegian decision be suspended pending the results of this investigation.

Yours sincerely,
Steve Pepper
Chairman, SN/K185 (ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34 mirror committee)
(sign.)

This makes the W3C process shine

[RCanine]

Although many deride the W3C's approval process, this ISO kludge demonstrates the benefit of the W3C process. W3C standards cannot leave Candidate Recommendation status until they have two fully-functional implementations and a test suite. Since it appears that OOXML could never meet these requirements, it could never become a standard through the W3C.

Re:Well that is because laws are inherently meant

[Anonymous Coward]

MS behaves just like a drug cartel in so many ways! Future revolutions will be against this kind of corporations in the name of freedom.

Re:Well that is because laws are inherently meant

[kingazdak]

Yeah- fight them bad capitalists by not buying their products, but instead by buying other products. Stickin it to em, champ.

Say it all together, kids- the workers create the commodities, the workers become commodified. Consumerism is powerlessness, any which-a way you look at it.

Re:Well that is because laws are inherently meant

[DaedalusHKX]

The next time you do something trivial like break your leg, where exactly will you get an x-ray ? In your herb garden ?

I can afford to PAY for a trip to the doctor. I don't need the government to legislate me a 6 week wait in line before I get treated for something, though.

Except for when you need to drive on those public highways - financed by government (other people's) money

If you return all the taxes I still have forms for, that I've paid to the government on my businesses, and that my family paid on theirs, I will gladly never drive on a "public" highway, ever again.

That money alone adjusted for inflation, would buy me a plane and pay rent at a private airstrip, at this point, could probably BUY the airstrip given the desperation of so many mortgage holders :).

As for the "not helping my neighbors", I will digress from your rant and mention that most of my neighbors have asked for help before and I've gladly helped. Likewise, they helped me when i needed theirs. I got out of the city though, and seemingly, even out here, there's plenty of techies who got as fed up as I did. I disagree that I should be FORCED to help my neighbor. I merely did it because it brought me enjoyment and gave me someone to invite to my backyard for a barbecue or groundhog shoot. Had a government agency come to take half my land and commandeer my shed to "provide for the less fortunate" I would see that as criminal trespass or perhaps even, what it actually is... outright banditry under color of law (research the legal meaning of "color of authority" btw, it will be eye opening). But my own decision to help my neighbors is a different story. I have no problems with those who choose to help or not help consciously, without six black suited agents threatening them with kidnappin.... oh wait, they call it "arrest" and robber... oh wait they call it "seizure" or "confiscation".

Re:Well that is because laws are inherently meant

[DaedalusHKX]

Cute.

Not sure I was trying to stick it to the man, just merely saying you'd be sticking it to the man MORE by living your life and enjoying it, rather than spending it flailing helplessly to "show them".

You won't be showing them. You're too weak to "show them". Those who are powerful enough to reach, touch or "show" them, will be BOUGHT by them. Those who cannot, will either form their own secret societies or other methods of staying alive and keeping their principles alive, or they will be brought down or eliminated by "them".

Period.

Generally most get bought, or get tired of fighting fruitless losing battles. There are alternatives to fighting.

Re:Well that is because laws are inherently meant

[DaedalusHKX]

500 miles times roughly 50 cents per mile, plus fuel costs covered, is worth it per day.

Do the math.

Re:Well that is because laws are inherently meant

[DaedalusHKX]

A third party service to convert various file formats or write a backup firmware and software that runs the stuff would be a very profitable sideline for someone inclined to do it.

I'm not, but I have other priorities. Some of you may find a way to implement this idea, and gather a crew that pulls it off. I'm passing this idea to you freely here online.

I don't patronize music players since I actually still use an small media server in the truck (a via C3, a couple of laptop hard drives, and a case machined in my shop at home), which plays anything and everything, without my having to pay anyone for the music I freely rip from my cds to take with me on the road. I have absolutely no desire to actually take an ipod with me wherever I go, however, since I actually enjoy listening to the sounds of the world around me.

Re:Well that is because laws are inherently meant

[DaedalusHKX]

Who said submissive?

Who said defeated?

You just cannot win with a frontal assault.

For a bunch of "geeks" you all sure haven't read the classics, or have you simply not grokked the lessons therein?

If asked for suggestions, I would advise, Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" and perhaps dig around for Niccolo Machiavelli's "The Prince" as well. Usually you can find them as a compendium on strategy and mindset in the business section of your local book shop. You can even read it there without buying it.

You cannot live free by depending on others to limit your choices. Make your own, and enjoy the fact that you did. Asking others to limit the choices through legislation or various standards will not make your life or anyone else's better, with the scant exception of those who want the particular law or standard to be enforced, or who stand to profit from enforcing it. If you're not part of that small mafia, you will not benefit, so why get upset?

Years back, I used to "fight for Linux" during my rebellious attempts at changing the world I lived in. You know what happened? I got tired, and went off to relax for awhile, read a whole bunch of books (yep, the paper kind, the ones that smell good). I came back, refreshed and relaxed, and found that the world had changed on its own. Hell, my less than tech savvy friends know what Linux is now. They've even heard of BSD. They got sick of windows without my having to lift a finger to convince them (they used to resist my attempts to convert them as if I was forcing them to adopt a new religion.)

Hell, my mom asked me to install BSD and Linux side by side for a test on her machine. She complained that KDE was useful but too slow, she thought Gnome had a tendency to self destruct after several months of heavy use and no reboots. This from someone who barely knew which version of windows she was using during my Open Source crusading years. If I don't bother to try, she might even pick up LaTEX.

Thus, I realized that you cannot change the world. You might influence the changes that DO take place, but you cannot force change. Thus, learn from those in power. Influence your environs... and sit back, pour yourself a glass of brandy, and enjoy the show. Quite fun, I assure you.

Re:Well that is because laws are inherently meant

[DaedalusHKX]

I fully concur with your experience, though mine was different.

However, participants in business can and should realize (even if most have been too conditioned by schools to make the realization) that government is not only fallible, but it is a TOOL not a ruler. Tools are to be used. Most people let the tool use them, rather than using the tool. A business operator can and has the full right to demand a particular document format (PDF, etc) be used, or physical copies of documents be delivered. The power government is given nowadays is simple, it is a classic case of the tail wagging the dog. That so many fear the IRS is also amusing. Audits occur when individuals enter into business with the IRS and then back down on an agreement. Its a private corporation, people, and as such, plays by the same rules any other contractor does.

One can also notify the IRS that their clients do not trust closed source software which cannot be vetted by the client or an agent acting on behalf of the client. Thus the only option is to convet ALL documentation to odf or odt or pdf or whatever format is desired. (I'd love to see someone demand html or ASCII or even Unicode, with these formats being universal if coded as such.)

Most businesses setup to do taxes aren't set up with the taxpayers as customers but rather as resources (think mineral fields in starcraft), and the IRS as the customer. After all, they don't serve their "clients" but the IRS. As a result, the tail has come to wag the dog, because the dog, in this case, has been trained since it was a puppy that the tail is in charge, rather than a tool for the dog to use.

Hell, for all I have heard, you can demand that because of religious or philosophical demands, you cannot use Microsoft standards because of their dirty business practices, and thus require all forms delivered in a truly open format. Of course, the caveat is that you have to truly believe this, and not just lie about it, since lies have a tendency to occasionally come back and bite you in the ass (like when you get audited and find you saved all your documents in .doc format.)

Anyone not just tax preparers can make such demands, and even have them honored (if you cannot pay your taxes because your beliefs force you to not use windows, then they cannot deny you the right to avoid buying windows or MS office, but most do not bother to research. The desire for ease, routine and lack of brain activity leads me to believe that most people would be better off brain dead and on life support, since they make so little use of their brains anyways.

Re:Well that is because laws are inherently meant

[kingazdak]

By which self-justifying logic the inevitability of capitalist society has always been maintained; There's a fine line between practical pessimism and resigned complicity.
Surrender isn't, I think, a position one would actively promote.
I rather think one either believes in and aims to bring about the possibility of a post-capitalist society, or becomes ideologically entangled in it.

Period.

Re:Well that is because laws are inherently meant

[DaedalusHKX]

I have this funky feeling we're arguing on the same side of this particular topic and simply dicing up semantics more than actual content.

Then again, I do not equate a 'free market' with "capitalism" since capitalism simply refers to operations on capital, generally the movement, coalescence, dispersion or application of capital.

Sort of reminds me of that lovely Leninist concept of "humans are the most precious capital of all", and the later ensuing battle cry of communists the world over... "DESTROY ALL CAPITAL!"

Makes one wonder, does it not?

Re:Well that is because laws are inherently meant

[kingazdak]

Then again, I do not equate a 'free market' with "capitalism" since capitalism simply refers to operations on capital, generally the movement, coalescence, dispersion or application of capital.

Wherein I honestly think lies the trouble...

Makes one wonder, does it not?

Only if you seriously think that 'capital' as a concept somehow predates (or exists externally to) capitalist exploitation.
Look- pretending that there's some sort of innocuous or apolitical existence of capital is like pretending that the guillotine would make a lovely celery chopper, if it weren't for irresponsible misuse.

I can't say I've ever heard of the Leninist concept you're referring to, but then again I for one have never really accused the Leninists of having a terribly deep understanding of anything- but 'destroying capital,' I think, is much more about attacking capital, a philosophical framework (and practical concretization) of exploitation.

Radicalism is about pulling things up from the root- nickel and diming doesn't cut it. The goal has to be a fuck of a lot higher than the welfare state to have a snoball's chance in hell.

Incidentally, it has become neccessary to hereby purge DaedalusHKX and all other slashdotters from the people's vanguard.
---------
Comrade KingAzdak, beloved by all the youth

Re:Well that is because laws are inherently meant

[DaedalusHKX]

Incidentally, it has become neccessary to hereby purge DaedalusHKX and all other slashdotters from the people's vanguard.

Nice. I dig well crafted sarcasm. Best there is.