Norway's Yes-To-OOXML Is Formally Protested

An anonymous reader writes "Norway's yes-to-OOXML may tip the vote in favor of accepting it as an ISO-standard, but the committee chairman just faxed a formal protest to the ISO. '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.'"

Comments

Money can't buy you love.

[inTheLoo]

Or truth or science. A lie is a lie no matter how many people you pay to repeat it. Corruption has no place in any technical organization that will be litened to and respected.

Groklaw predicts more challenges

and notes the results will now be announced on Wednesday, so and ISO standard for M$XML is not going to be one of the worst April Fools jokes of the next decade.

Re:Money can't buy you love.

[Anonymous Coward]

He has at least 5 sockpuppets and routinely games Slashdot by posting replies "in agreement" to posts made with his other accounts. Most of the people on slashdot get by fine only using one account (or in my case, none at all).

That said, at least twitter has been writing a bit more civilly with his newer sockpuppets than he used to with his older ones (he may actually be learning something!). His Twitter and Erris accounts are in karma hell for good reason. He has a fanatical hatred of MS (which isnt so bad by itself) but routinely misrepresents, takes things out of context, or just flat out lies in his posts. A lot of real open source advocates around here think he does a lot more harm than good for that reason.

Re:Money can't buy you love.

[Darinbob]

A lie is a lie no matter how many people you pay to repeat it. Corruption has no place in any technical organization that will be listened to and respected. Technology and technical organizations are human endeavors. Therefore corruption is no more out of place there than in any other human endeavor.

Re:Money can't buy you love.

[innerweb]

And that would be different from the other loves how? ;-)

InnerWeb

Stupid governments

[Anonymous Coward]

"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."

This is why we need open source governance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_governance

Re:Stupid governments

[Tore S B]

As a Norwegian, I believe that not blaming Norway sounds like a wonderful thing. Look at all those other silly countries! Hah! How silly they are!

Nice Sentiment

[MightyMartian]

It's a nice gesture, but it's a lost cause. The ISO has been undermined by Redmond and its agents, and now an unimplementable file format will give Microsoft the highground it needs to peddle its monopoly, to the detriment of anyone interested in a real open file standard.

I leave it to the EU (as the US DoJ clearly has no interest in this any more) to take Microsoft to task, and hopefully empty their coffers a little bit. That seems to be the only thing to be done with Microsoft until the time comes when they're anti-competitive behavior is finally met by government agencies of sufficient power to break the company up.

Re:Nice Sentiment

[ScrewMaster]

All that will happen, in the long run, is that ISO will become untrusted, marginalized and obsolete. Microsoft has graphically demonstrated how easily ISO's processes can be corrupted, which means that other corporations will follow suit (assuming they didn't get there first.) Don't expect the world to have the same respect for ISO after this.

Re:Nice Sentiment

[Chirs]

The point of an ISO standard is that multiple organizations can implement it.

In this case only Microsoft can possibly implement it, because various sections refer to proprietary MS software and basically say "do it like that".

Since only Microsoft knows what that actually means, nobody else can implement it. Therefore it is worthless as a "standard".

Re:Nice Sentiment

[SanityInAnarchy]

And that is the real tragedy here.

We already had OOXML rubber-stamped by Ecma, proving, once again, that Ecma likes to rubber-stamp things. Having it ISO-certified, while a blow, is perhaps not the most serious result of this...

If OOXML is certified, we're put in a lose/lose situation. Either we accept it, and OOXML becomes a "standard", even though it really isn't -- or we continue to write letters and refuse to accept it as a "standard", which implies we can't trust ISO -- which means we're just about out of standards organizations to trust. And a world without official standards is a world of defacto standards, which means Microsoft will win every future battle.

Think of it this way: If we couldn't trust the w3c, or the Acid2/3 tests, the standard for websites would likely fall back to "Works Best with Internet Explorer 8." That's effectively what's about to happen to everything ISO.

Re:Nice Sentiment

[Daengbo]

Oh, they got there already.

Re:Nice Sentiment

[initialE]

I hardly see it as a lost cause, it's that kind of attitude that allows corruption to win. If ISO is compromised to that extent then it is important that people are informed about it. Keep up the pressure, provide evidence that is not anecdotal, discredit ISO in the eyes of governmental and business interests as a last resort.

Re:Nice Sentiment

[Chris Burke]

All that will happen, in the long run, is that ISO will become untrusted, marginalized and obsolete.

With Microsoft's Office monopoly becoming further entrenched as a side effect. Haha, side effect? More like the point of the whole operation.

Here's the deal as it stands right now (or rather shortly before this farce began):
- ISO was well respected.
- Open Document Format was accepted by ISO as a standard.

These two things combined give Open Office (and any suite that implements ODF, since its an ACTUAL open standard so you can do that) a lot of built-in approval, and makes them look very good to governments/organizations who are starting to mandate open formats for documentation. This is bad for MS, half of their business being the Office monopoly (which supports and is supported by the Windows monopoly).

So what's their strategy here? Well one (or both) of two things happen:
- Their BS non-open "open standard" is accepted, so they can claim their format meets the needs of governments who mandate open standards.
- ISO is no longer respected as a standards organization, so their approval of ODF no longer means as much.

Whichever happens, their little problem with ODF being a standard goes away and MS Office remains the only "standard" (de-facto or ISO-approved) that matters. They don't really care which. Oh no, their manipulation of the process is exposed! Guess that means you can't trust ISO any more! Frankly I give even odds to both happening. But even if ISO ends up rejecting OOXML, it's going to take a hell of a lot to stop the second from happening.

Re:Nice Sentiment

[belmolis]

Even if OOXML becomes an ISO standard, that doesn't mean we're obligated to use it. For one thing, it won't be the only ISO standard for documents: we already have ODF. For another, ISO certification still will not make it an open standard. Governments and other organizations that require documents to conform to an open standard will still have to use ODF, not OOXML. We need to continue pressure for the use of open standards and to refuse to use OOXML ourselves.

Re:Nice Sentiment

[Darinbob]

Even if OOXML becomes an ISO standard, that doesn't mean we're obligated to use it. Of course. ISO has tons of standards that we don't all use all the time. In the same way that the ISO C standard doesn't require everyone to program in C, an OOXML standard won't force anyone to use OOXML. What matters is whether or not a large number of people stand behind a standard and request that others follow it.

This is also not the first broken standard full of ambiguities out there, or the first one with politics involved, or the first one where a company with a monopolistic stake pushed a standard through. It just rises to the top because of more obvious than usual political maneuvering and the larger than normal company pushing from behind.

ISO standards are rarely highly technical guidelines created by unbiased technical people. Usually there's an existing implementation that gets to call most of the shots, or a set of conflicting implementations that maneuver to limit the amount of redesign they have to do. Which makes sense actually; creating a standard before there is an implementation or experience with the technology is often premature.

Re:Nice Sentiment

[QuantumG]

ISO has been dead to me since the C99 standard was published. They changed virtually nothing from the draft even though there was a vast outpouring of bile from the community when the draft was published. Now it is almost 10 years later and there are still no C99 compliant compilers. The most compliant compiler is gcc in c99 mode which isn't the default mode, even though the C89 standard is officially deprecated.

Of course, it's not really possible to write a C99 compliant compiler as the the standard mandates behavior that is sometimes either completely impossible or just completely undesirable.

Re:Nice Sentiment

[SanityInAnarchy]

Of course. ISO has tons of standards that we don't all use all the time. In the same way that the ISO C standard doesn't require everyone to program in C, an OOXML standard won't force anyone to use OOXML. What matters is whether or not a large number of people stand behind a standard and request that others follow it.

It also matters when governments start imposing standards-compliance on themselves. For a brief moment, we had hoped that we'd be able to get government documents in a reasonably standard format (ODF) -- that is, I think, why this is actually a big deal.

Usually there's an existing implementation that gets to call most of the shots...

I'd argue that's actually a good thing, if and only if said implementation is at least as free/open as the standard itself. No spec can capture every single quirk of a real live piece of software, and in case we discover two alternate implementations which both fit the spec, it would be nice to be able to say which is correct.

That's not originally my idea, but I can't remember where I heard it first.

But for large parts of the spec to basically say "Whatever MS Office does" -- or, actually, "Whatever a particular piece of extinct proprietary software does" -- that seems pretty unacceptable in a spec which is meant to define the now and future standard, rather than simply document (partially) what a particular implementation is going to do anyway.

Re:Nice Sentiment

[Anonymous Coward]

So what's their strategy here? Well one (or both) of two things happen:
- Their BS non-open "open standard" is accepted, so they can claim their format meets the needs of governments who mandate open standards.
- ISO is no longer respected as a standards organization, so their approval of ODF no longer means as much.

I'm going out on a limb here, but there is a possible third outcome of this:
- ISO acceptance of OOXML is used to justify legal penalties against MS for not implementing interoperability

I basically think that this is a horrible outcome and the example of the worst sort of corruption--not to mention the ongoing saga of problems with MS.

However, I could potentially forsee this coming back to bite MS, in that someone might eventually argue that MS is withholding specs necessary to implement an ISO standard, in order to maintain a monopoly.

Re:Nice Sentiment

[Dogun]

Actually it may well be the case that nobody at Microsoft knows how to implement and specify it either. autospacelikeword96? Word96 was a while ago...

Re:Nice Sentiment

[kocsonya]

Maybe the whole ISO process was a bit like the Internet. The protocols were originally designed with the assumption that the participants (at least the servers) are trusted entities. The protocols themselves trust the underlying delivery mechanisms and servers trust their peer servers. Then came the realisation that you can't trust servers, you can't trust administrators, you can't trust routers or even the cable - you can't trust anything and anyone on the Net.

Probably the whole ISO process was designed with a similar mindset, assuming that the standard sub-committies themselves are serving the public interest and not their own, the thought of corruption didn't even occur to them. Now we have a malicious script kiddie with a very powerful toolset (i.e. billions of dollars) to wreck havoc and to set up a spam botnet.

Re:Nice Sentiment

[Jason Levine]

And perhaps that's why even Microsoft has said that they're not going to use OOXML as defined (to the extent that you can call it "defined") by the standard.

Re:Nice Sentiment

[mrchaotica]

...even though there was a vast outpouring of bile from the community when the draft was published... Of course, it's not really possible to write a C99 compliant compiler as the the standard mandates behavior that is sometimes either completely impossible or just completely undesirable.

What's wrong with C99? (Note: I'm curious, not argumentative.)

Re:Nice Sentiment

[TheRaven64]

VLAs are just syntactic sugar on pointers and alloca(). They are fairly trivial to implement, and easier to use safely than alloca(). GCC has supported them for years (and I think even the MS compiler does too), and I've used them in my code.

The only way this ballot makes sense...

[Dracos]

Is if ISO contracted Diebold, er, I mean, Premier Election systems, to tally the votes. This is the most ludicrous thing I've seen since 2000.

WTF?

[Socguy]

Perhaps I don't understand how voting bodies work, but how can anyone take these folks seriously with all the nonsense surrounding this vote?

HardeeHarHar!!!

[OldFish]

It sounds like Europe is getting a taste of how the election process works in the U S of A.

Re:HardeeHarHar!!!

[CannonballHead]

... because, obviously, all European governments have smooth elections with no corruption whatsoever. Actually, the US is really the only corrupt government in the world...

Re:HardeeHarHar!!!

[CRCulver]

Norway and the other Nordic countries, however, are consistenly rated as having the lowest corruption in the world. Here is one example of such a ranking.

Re:HardeeHarHar!!!

[zsau]

You would be surprised at how reliable pens, paper and scrutineers are. Not perfection (screw with the votes instead of with the count), but a lot safer that "voting machines".

Also, the correct response to a vote no-one can agree on how it turns out is to hold another vote, not to say "no more recounts, Bush wins". It costs more, but the benefit of having everyone accept the result is worth more to democracy and in the long term the economy than a short-term saving.

Re:HardeeHarHar!!!

[shentino]

Which is probably why we're even AWARE of a scandal in the first place.

Had Norway been corrupter, it might have been silent corruption.

Yes, money can buy you love

[EmbeddedJanitor]

What's the point of http://www.gatesfoundation.org/ if it is not to buy good karma for Bill and MS?

Re:Yes, money can buy you love

[Eddi3]

It helps lower his taxes in the US.

Re:Yes, money can buy you love

[techno-vampire]

...good karma for Bill and MS?

br? Look: if Bill and MS want good karma, they should stop posting as AC, and give up trolling, just like anybody else.

Re:Yes, money can buy you love

[nebosuke]

Charity does not save you money, tax deductions or not. It easily can, if you know what you're doing. On paper it will always look like a net negative, but it can save you tons of money by allowing you to recover portions of sunk costs. E.g., donate overstocked goods or goods that are manufactured at extremely low marginal cost valued at full market rate. If you donate software packages with market value X, but marginal cost of production 1/1000x, reducing your taxes through deductions by 1/100x, it looks like a net loss but is almost the same as printing money. This is highly simplified, of course, but gives you the general idea.

There are many other ways to game the system if you have the time, inclination and knowledge (or the right accountant).

Re:Yes, money can buy you love

[Eivind]

Sure. Donate 1000 copies of some software that is sold retail at $100 but which have marginal cost of production $1.

On paper, you've donated $100,000 worth of software and migth get a $30,000 tax-deduction assuming you pay 30% taxes.

In reality, you've donated something that cost you $1000 to produce, and scored a $30,000 tax-deduction.

Re:Yes, money can buy you love

[Anonymous Coward]

Except that the BMGF only donates money. It's hard to score a tax write down on cash.

Only on slashdot does anyone think that Gates runs his foundation for tax purposes. The man has sixty billion fucking dollars, why would he want to dodge tax? What would he do with the money? As it is he's given more than half of it away to charities. He spends more annually on disease prevention than the entire US government. Just fucking grow up and give the man some credit.

I've no intention of defending MS, but it is just abiding by the rules of capitalism. It's required by *law* to generate as much profit as possible and it's playing by the rules of the game. If you don't like the rules stop voting republican.

Re:Yes, money can buy you love

[mpe]

Sure. Donate 1000 copies of some software that is sold retail at $100 but which have marginal cost of production $1.
On paper, you've donated $100,000 worth of software and migth get a $30,000 tax-deduction assuming you pay 30% taxes.
In reality, you've donated something that cost you $1000 to produce, and scored a $30,000 tax-deduction.

Things look even better for the likes of drug companies doing this kind of thing. They can get rid of drugs which are about to expire without having any disposal costs.

Re:Yes, money can buy you love

[asuffield]

A handful of drug companies take things one step further. They produce a drug that is of value only to poor people (bad sanitation or whatever). Now, it's hard to sell things to poor people for large amounts of money, so what they do is declare that every dose is valued at $1k (or some similarly high figure) which they'd never be able to pay, and then always give it away - you can buy it on the open market, but they don't expect to sell any, they're making all their profit on the tax rebate.

It's a method for making some money out of a drug that they've developed but which trials have shown there to be no real market for. The only reason they don't do it more often is because you're not allowed to have a tax rebate that's larger than the total amount of tax you owe, so it's capped by the value of their primary revenue. But it does mean that some drug companies don't really pay taxes. There are supposed to be laws against this, but they have so many loopholes written in that it doesn't really matter.

In related news today. .

[Iowan41]

The International Standards Organization has rebranded itself as MS.ISO, and is making itself available for vote tabulation in the Russian Federation, Venezuela, Zimbabwe and Broward County.

sweet! (but)

[Anonymous Coward]

That is AWESOME!

But shouldn't it really be called "open content governance"?

Open source is for source code. Open content is for--- content.

Norway corrupt too?

[bogaboga]

It's sad! Very sad indeed. Why? Because I thought Norway was one of the least corrupt nations on earth, and that's why it enjoyed a standard of living higher than my own country - the USA.

Why is this corruption syndrome, typical of the USA cropping up in very successful [European] countries? Why?

Re:Norway corrupt too?

[ookabooka]

Be glad, at least someone blew the whistle. How many votes from other nations do you think could be somehow influenced and nothing done about it? Yeah yeah I'll grab my tinfoil hat :-p

Re:Norway corrupt too?

[Anonymous Coward]

As a Norwegian, I can only say that you are completely unaware of the things that go on in my home country. There are essentially two Norways, one internal and one external, and the external one is the one that's presented to tourists and the outside world.

For example, there was the case when the ruling and massive Labour party had written false "letters to the editor". Essentially, what they did was write things like 'I am a single mother and I hope for the sake of my three children that the opposition's policies will never be implemented because they would fill my life with so much pain. My youngest daughter cried when I told her what might happen'. Or, a bit more advanced, writing arguments that purport to be in favour of the opposition, but very poorly worded, and then they "refute" them in a reply with their own brilliance. Noone has ever been criticised, "fired" or in any way had their politics influenced by this, and it stayed in the (local only) media for all of a week.

Norwegian article: http://www.bt.no/lokalt/bergen/article393005.ece
Translated title: "Knows about false letters to the editor in the newspapers. Former Labour party member Audun Holme says he is aware that fictitious letters to the editor under the direction of the Labour party has reached the newspaper columns". Incidentally, this happened in Sweden as well, though there the secretary (who had done all of this independently and without anyone's knowledge, of course) just had to resign.

And oh, there was the case when the biggest newspaper and TV organisation (A-Pressen) in Norway was going to get a new chairperson, and a panel had been set down to judge between the selection of candidates according to how they scored on a set of formal criteria. The head of the panel had assessed one person as 'weak' or 'very weak' on four out of six criteria. Shortly after this, however, the Prime Minister (Jens Stoltenberg) and Foreign Minister (Jonas Gahr Støre) went on a private home visit to the head of the panel, and argued very warmly for the person in question, praising his personal qualities. They say they were simply going as private individuals to provide a personal character reference, of course.
http://www.aftenposten.no/meninger/kommentarer/article2193377.ece

And oh, there was the case when the military and defense advisor of a supporting party to the ruling and massive labour party (incidentially, the Socialist Left), sat at a luxury restaurant in Oslo (the one where a full night costs ~$400 p.p. sans wine) and discussed airplanes. Effectively there is an ongoing evaluation of fighter airplanes in Norway, whereby the Eurofighter competes with the Joint Strike Fighter. This evaluation is supposed to be assessed by a strictly neutral objectives as to efficiency and performance. A journalist present however heard the politican in deep discussion with two advisors for the Swedish billionaire Wallenberg family, and the politician promised that, not only would the Swedish JAS Gripen airplanes also be considered, they had actually as much as won the contract already!

"I like this fucking bad!" is the headline, quoted. Some exchanges are,

Paper: We saw you at Statholdergaarden yesterday evening and wonder what you were doing there?
Advisor: (laughter) You see, I don't think I have any reason to say who I have dinner with.
Paper: No?
Advisor: Nei, do you think so? Who did you have dinner with last night?
Paper: A colleague.
Advisor: Oh yes. At the Statholdergaarden. Who paid for you?
Paper: We did ourselves.
Advisor: You did? You make that kind of money in Dagbladet ('the daily times')?
Paper: The question to you was, what were _you_ doing there?
Advisor: But dearie you, I really have no intention of telling you.
http://www.dagbladet.no/nyheter/2007/08/30/510484.html

Re:Norway corrupt too?

[TubeSteak]

Why is this corruption syndrome, typical of the USA cropping up in very successful [European] countries? Why? I'm sorry I have to be the one who tells you this, but corruption was alive and well in European countries long before the Americas replaced "Here be Monsters" on the maps. I imagine it was alive and well in China & Sumeria long before the Europeans had any civilization to speak of.

That said, I seriously wonder where you got the idea that America is somehow more corrupt than European countries. Do you pay any attention to international news?

http://www.google.com/search?q=norway+corruption+scandals
Replace Norway with your European country of choice

Re:Norway corrupt too?

[Eivind Eklund]

Actually, averaged perception is a fairly good data source - in many ways, averages of normal people are better than single expert evaluations. And the "Corruption Perception Index" is about the perception *by professional country analysts and business people*.

I could of course bring in single expert opinion: I happen to track both American and Norwegian politics, including being quite interested in how different political and social systems lead to different results. There are sides where the US is better than Norway, and there are sides where Norway is better than the US. Political corruption is one of the ones where Norway is better - due to a host of factors working together.

I just happen to think that the corruption perception index is the best resource we have, much better than my personal opinion even though my personal opinion is somewhat qualified in both political areas (including, of course, knowing a number of anecdotes in each, like you're able to search up.) This view of the corruption perception index as some of the best corruption information available seems to be shared by most others that are writing about the field, being regularly referred by most experts I see writing about the field in general.

Eivind.

Objection

[michaelmalak]

JO: Your Honor, we re-new our objection to Commander Stone's testimony, and ask that it be stricken from the record. And we further ask that the Court instruct the jury to lend no weight to this witness's testimony.

RANDOLPH: The objection's overruled, counsel.

JO: Sir, the defense strenuously objects and requests a meeting in chambers so that his honor might have an opportunity to hear discussion before ruling on the objection.

RANDOLPH: The objection of the defense has been heard and overruled.

JO: Exception.

RANDOLPH: Noted.

...obvious innit?

[toby]

Wire transfers from Redmond.

Re:...obvious innit?

[TopSpin]

If there's any country on Earth where bribes wouldn't work, it's Norway scandle
scandle
a list of scandles

Keep drinking the Kool-Aid.

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/0989_reference_docs.zip

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 ).

And this document contradicts this another BRM document: http://www.itscj.ipsj.or.jp/sc34/open/0989.pdf because the first says that the .DOC file replaces ECMA responses 18 and 43 but the "Response_DE-0028_dates_v9.doc" document says that it replaces ECMA responses 18, 43, 76 and 690 !

ECMA and Microsoft have not provided a 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 had *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, government opposed OOXML )
• 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 unconditional-yes-votes payed off:

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

Re:Quality base-level of ISO very LOW

[Schraegstrichpunkt]

Abstaining is not having balls. Only 25% "no" votes were needed to defeat this, corruption notwithstanding, and several countries copped out by voting "abstain". Shame on them.

Microsoft is in for a PR nightmare...

[NullProg]

if any of these allegations are true: http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/microsofts-great-besmirching

Is anyone going to use ISO specifications again if Microsoft purchases the OOXML vote?

What really gets my clusters in a bunch is that Microsoft could elect to work with Sun, IBM, Apple, Adobe, Whoever, to really come up with an Open Document specification if they wanted too. This specification isn't about Apple, Microsoft, Sun, and IBM. Its about government documentation funded by the public that needs to be available a thousand years from now. Way to be a good corporate citizen Microsoft!

People will still choose MS Office because they like it, not because it does or does not save documents in a government mandated open specification. Microsoft could simply add a new "Save As" filter following the Open Specification.

Enjoy,

Re:Microsoft is in for a PR nightmare...

[cgenman]

People will still choose MS Office because they like it, not because it does or does not save documents in a government mandated open specification. Microsoft could simply add a new "Save As" filter following the Open Specification.

There are certain government regulations about acceptable file specifications. This is to preserve interoperability, facilitate competition between vendors, and to guarantee accessibility in one or two hundred years.

By getting this sham declared a "standard," they can continue to sell to certain government agencies, who can continue to produce docs that are only readable on proprietary Microsoft software and platforms.

Microsoft could most definitely offer a valid save-as file filter to create ODF documents. But it is in their best financial interest to retain user lock-in as much as possible. Ironically, this is exactly the sort of thing that standards bodies like the ISO are supposed to prevent. If this goes through, one must seriously reconsider the weight attached to an ISO certification.

There's an important lesson here

[plopez]

If you can't win, simply get the rules of the game changed. Lawyers and politicians understand this. Nerds don't.

Re:There's an important lesson here

[Chris Burke]

If you can't win, simply get the rules of the game changed. Lawyers and politicians understand this. Nerds don't.

Not true, every nerd worth his salts knows how to change the "rules" of the copy protection "game", whether that be with cheat sheets or a debugger. :)

Re:There's an important lesson here

[Torodung]

My 5-year-old kid understands this. I taught her a strong lesson in "no cheating" the other day. Exactly one day later she was making up her own rules. No prompting from me. She loves to win.

As a good parent, I let her. That's the "fair" way to cheat, but I don't let her make them up as she goes like Hillary Clinton and Microsoft. I make sure we agree to the rules before we play.

The ISO should have done the same. I hope Microsoft is up against the wall for this crap.

--
Toro

Re:There's an important lesson here

[mctk]

Every nerd knows that if you can't win, go GOD mode.

Re:There's an important lesson here

[OldFish]

Nerds do understand it - they just don't think it is right. I like what Shakespeare said about lawyers. If he were still alive today he would have the highest /. karma rating ever.

Re:Microsoft is like the weather:

[EVil Lawyer]

Nobody except for China, that is. Maybe just as with the weather, they'll start taking aim at MS. Perhaps through their newly-passed anti-trust laws?

Send in the Lost Vikings

[Torodung]

So it's all down to Scandinavia again. Send in Eric the Swift, Olaf the Stout and Baleog the fierce. They should be able to sort this puzzle out.

I think Linus should go over there and kick some ass, too. ;^)

--
Toro

Re:Send in the Lost Vikings

[Anonymous Coward]

I think his wife might be better at kicking ass. :-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Linus_Torvalds&oldid=200704953#Later_years

O...M...G...

[QuietLagoon]

Is Microsoft completely unable to play fairly and with integrity in anything they do?

Re:twitter is everywhere!!

[dedazo]

You've called me twitter before, too.

I have? In what context? I'm not sure if you're being facetious or not, but if I did, I apologize.

Maybe some of the people you think are twitter are, but maybe you're seeing things that aren't there.

Maybe one of these days I'll waste an hour writing the "Twitter Failure Log" and document all of his sockpuppets. God knows he's dumb enough to post things like these that make it easier. But no, I'm not seeing things at all. Take this thread, he's posted with three different accounts so far, plus two AC posts. twitter thinks he's clever, but his writing patterns give him away immediately.

Just look at the posting histories for Erris, twitter, inTheLoo, Mactrope and gnutoo. It's just amazing how they keep replying and running to each other, isn't it?

Maybe, in fact, there are people who really don't like being screwed by Microsoft.

Without a doubt. However, this has nothing to do with Microsoft. How would you like for me to create five different accounts and then have a conversation (about any topic) where you think you're talking to five different people? That's the epitome of dishonesty, which is amusing considering he spends all his waking hours bemoaning the fact that Microsoft is dishonest.

Anyway, I've gotten all my well-deserved offtopic moderations for the day. Unlike twitter I don't post AC and I don't have five different accounts that can shill each other. So peace out.

Use the Judo Argument

[dpilot]

OK, So Microsoft has most likely gotten OOXML passed as an ISO standard. Unfortunate, but probably true.

Further, it appears that the real reason they did this is so that they can put that all-important checkmark in the box that says, "Interoperates with ISO standard file formats" when trying to sell MS Office into accounts.

OK, great.

Now PROVE IT!

Prove that MS Office is OOXML compliant. Last I heard, OOXML was like Office 2007, but not really there. Last I heard, OOXML was an incomplete spec with no full implementation.

If Microsoft is going to to for that "ISO standard file format" checkbox, for that matter if anyone is going for an ISO standard checkbox, isn't it necessary that there be compliance testing? And long as we're compliance testing, the certification of compliance should NEVER be given until the appropriate committee evaluates the product against the spec and decides that that the product unambiguously implements the spec.

No full, unambiguous compliance, no check in the little box.

No matter how long the evaluation takes.

Re:How about a nice technical discussion?

[Your.Master]

You came here exactly to talk about twitter. You did so with multiple accounts, even.

Twitter, aka:

Erris,
InTheLoo,
GnuToo,
Mactrope (YOU)

And possibly others I have yet to encounter.

This is highly deceitful. You, who accuse others of astroturfing, are baldly astroturfing yourself.

I don't care about the OOXML results, to be honest; I care about ensuring that astroturfers like you have their voices drowned out in the crowd.

Re:How about a nice technical discussion?

[MrNaz]

Interesting, you're attempting to censor twitter? While I agree with the end, I'm going to play devil's advocate and point out that he, like you, has the right to free speech.

I'm not pointing this out to defend his right to free speech, but more to point out the flaw in the current Western perception of "rights" and their role in society. Everyone gets all hot and bothered about their "rights", but I personally believe that each right has a corresponding duty, the execution of which earns you the corresponding right. You want a right to free speech? Your duty is to listen honestly to others' opinions and exercise your right to speak responsibly. You want the right to free movement? Your duty is to assist others in their endeavours, should you be able. You want the right to vote? Your duty is to actively assess the society you live in and make an informed decision regarding the suitability of the candidate you vote for.

You want the right to democracy? Your duty is to open your eyes and recognise when it is under attack, and from whom.

Wow, that's a big ass rant over a twitter post. Perhaps I *do* get on my soapbox a little too often...

Or an ISO standard for voting

[Chuck Chunder]

Seriously, ISO should drop all other work and start thinking about some vaguely coherent and transparent voting procedures.

Re:Or an ISO standard for voting

[Kadin2048]

> Seriously, ISO should drop all other work and start thinking about some vaguely coherent and transparent voting procedures.

Well, if their current voting procedures are flawed and prone to manipulation by parties with an obvious interest in the outcome, then nothing they produce can really be trusted to be the best practice. Since it undermines everything they do as a standards body, I'd say fixing their voting procedures to eliminate the appearance of impropriety ought to be their top priority.

Re:Or an ISO standard for voting

[mrchaotica]

'd say fixing their voting procedures to eliminate the appearance of impropriety ought to be their top priority.

I'd say that eliminating the actual occurrence of impropriety ought to be their priority, not the mere appearance of it!

Limericks

[Viceroy Potatohead]

There once was a man come to Bergen
Who promised that everything's working
He came to the fjord
And bought off the board
Now we're all autospacelikeWord'ing.

There once was a man who said "Trust us!
Accept this, or surely you'll bust us."
With his special langcodes
Now he's ISO'd.
I wonder how much this will cost us?

Re:How about a nice technical discussion?

[Moridineas]

Interesting, you're attempting to censor twitter? While I agree with the end, I'm going to play devil's advocate and point out that he, like you, has the right to free speech. Absolutely twitter and all his sock puppets have the right to free speech.

But, with all due respect, I think that your perception of free speech isn't entirely right either. Free speech doesn't mean freedom from criticism! Nor does free speech mean--as you say--that others have to listen to you.

Free speech means exactly what it says--say what you want to say! It doesn't ensure that anyone has to listen to you, has to agree, or has to care.

"Your duty is to assist others" ... "duty...earns you the corresponding right." etc. No, absolutely not! You're talking about slavery, or at least something akin to the fascist system in Heinlein's starship troopers (where normal citizens aren't allowed to vote). Rights are rights, freedoms are freedoms. Your system of obligation and duty isn't freedom in my book.

Re:How about a nice technical discussion?

[dhasenan]

Um, this is Slashdot. The editors have every right to remove your comments, or only display a portion of them. You can write stuff here and have it never see the light of day.

If it were a street corner, then you could talk about free speech. But it's private property.

And Reuters can't comprehend.

[Anonymous Coward]

[http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSL3019918720080331]

This Reuters article is, technically speaking, utter rubbish.

Microsoft has pushed hard for international certification of Open Office XML (OOXML)

It's Office Open, stupid. (Albeit not open).

Open Document Format (ODF), developed by Sun Microsystems

Only by Sun Microsystems ...?

The ODF technology allows users to save documents in a variety of formats, including Microsoft's.

Whattt? ODF is an accepted ISO standard for office documents. To convert it to utter rubbish, you need a converter (like OpenOffice.org), stupid.

While OOXML originally did not allow saving text and spreadsheet documents as ODF files, Microsoft later made it possible to do so.

First, you need a converter here, too. Second, Microsoft does not support ODF up to now, therefore I'm wondering when MS Office "made it possible to do so" ... Perhaps later? No, never, if OOXML gets accepted by ISO.

Re:Microsoft will die.

[mrchaotica]

their Windows monopoly is crumbling down, thanks to the Vista fluke.

Every version of Windows except 95 and 2000 have been as poorly received as Vista when they first came out. It's not a fluke, and it's not evidence of impending Microsoft collapse! I wish it were, but it's not!

Wine is getting better every moment, and while ReactOS isn't exactly around the corner, in 5 years it'll be on par with WINE - with 2013's WINE (ReactOS and WINE share a lot of code).

WINE?! Don't you realize that WINE is irrelevant? Sure, maybe in 2013 WINE and/or ReactOS might be good enough to run all Win32 and MFC software. But it won't matter, because Microsoft already moved the goalposts to newer proprietary APIs that are patented to boot!

Re:Microsoft will die.

[Spy der Mann]

But it won't matter, because Microsoft already moved the goalposts to newer proprietary APIs that are patented to boot!

You fail to see the point. So far, Microsoft Windows is the *ONLY* Operating System accepted by the general public. When a competitor arrives, and it's compatible with all the Windows games so far, there won't be any incentive to buy the extra-expensive operating system. Why pay when you can have something better, for free?

Just think of Schools. Government agencies. Thousands of companies which only need a copy of Excel and a few Windows-only software packages to run. In 5 years, game companies will have to face the choice: Whether to keep developing for *one* single operating system, or to develop for *various* operating systems (the Mac will only become more popular in the future, and Linux will reach its critical mass, something that Firefox already achieved).

While some WINE developers are working (and fast!) to implement DirectX 9, other developers are already doing DirectX 10 work, and are adding Vista compatibility features to WINE. So are the ReactOS guys. They already know they're working on a moving target.

And don't forget that the .NET platform has already a Linux implementation.

You think Microsoft's cat and mouse game is a guaranteed success? Do you really think that they'll be able to make a new platform every two years, when they can barely maintain their CURRENT platform? They can't keep up with the vulnerabilities that are discovered by hackers every month!

Microsoft is stagnating. They've already stopped innovating. IE is already behind the competition in the Acid2/3 challenge. They have to change, or they'll die. The good news is that they're not changing... :)

In Finland..

[rasjani]

I didnt RTFA so im not sure what is going on in Norway so im just guessing that it was somewhat similar issue as in Finland.

Majority of board was against OOXML Standard but in the end, board's decision was "yes". Why ? Board consists of big businesses, government and some other groups. 3 of the bigger companies in the board where IBM, Sun & Google and their votes where not counted because "they would vote as their head offices dictate" and thus the overall voting results from "absolutely no" where turned into "yes with clauses".

Yey!