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ISO Approves OOXML
sTeF writes in, with the hope that this is an April Fools joke. Doesn't look like it though. An article up at Intellectual Property Watch claims they have obtained a document (PDF) enumerating the vote after Microsoft's OOXML won ISO standard status.
Yes, this is a repost.
While everyone here is shouting "omg oh noes, teh microsoft ruinz teh ISOs!!! ISO suckz becoz microsoft is teh shit!", I cant see anybody summarizing the REAL motives and issues behind the whole OOXML controversy. And by real motives I mean "Anti-Microsoft people dont want Microsoft to obtain a public international standard on documents, so Office sinks (and Microsoft gets screwed) when governments start pushing restrictions on formats for their documents".
Lots of websites and groups were founded for the sole purpose of politically-motivated bashing of OOXML, while pretending to be about technical issues. A lot of people are complaining about small omissions related to optional behaviours such as Word 97 wrapping emulation and such.
Seriously, look at Wikipedias summary on "technical criticism". Out of 5 mentioned "technical criticism" items, two are just silly complaints about not using W3C formats, the last one is not even a complaint or issue, and the other two are valid questions, but small details that can be changed or ignored. What the hell, that Holloway zealot, maintainer of a site built only for this issue, managed to spew 17 pages of crap only to mention 6 (yes, SIX, SIX, on 17 pages) valid (yet minor) issues about OOXML. The entire document was political, with arguments that are nowhere related to a standardization process, such as "Microsoft is historically known for...". What's next? Telling ISO about how random company's CEO cheated his wife, so they can't accept the company's standard? What happened to TRUE technical analisys?
There are no real technichal issues that exclude OOXML from the class of standards that can be accepted by big standard comitee. A lot of people have tried to comment on this issue, even famous OSS developers, and they all received strong criticisms from the zealots that are fighting what is actually a holy crusade against OOXML, and not a valid technical opposition to a standard.
Is it time to admit that most people are against OOXML mostly because they hate Microsoft, and they want the standard to be denied so it might help Open Office and others, and not because they actually read the spec or analysed it. It is time for people to stop pretending that they're fighting for "purity on the standards process" and admit they they're just fighting for their own political interests. They're not mad because they're actually worried about the technical issues of the spec, but they're pissed off because this situation was a good opportunity to screw-up things for Microsoft.
This whole process has NOT turned ISO into an useless standards body and nobody except from geeky OSS zealots care about this. All engineers and big companies that rely on ISO for a lot of things will not change their minds about the institution. This is just about a bunch of grown-up babies crying and shouting.