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ISO Approves OOXML

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the looks-like-no-joke dept.

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.

23 of 435 comments (clear)

  1. Support Needed. by gnutoo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Microsofts statement hailed the appearance of extremely broad support for the standard at the end of the ISO voting process.

    Broad? I think they mispelled bold faced fraud.

    1. Re:Support Needed. by nuzak · · Score: 5, Funny

      > I think they mispelled bold faced fraud.

      Perhaps their OOXML formatters have problems with boldface, and that's just how it rendered.

      --
      Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
    2. Re:Support Needed. by ShieldW0lf · · Score: 5, Funny

      ISO... ISO... aren't they that defunct organization in Switzerland, the one that used to represent standards before they got into the advertising business and disappeared?

      --
      -1 Uncomfortable Truth
    3. Re:Support Needed. by Xiph · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Lets wait for the announcement tomorrow, ISO is deliberately avoiding an Aprils Fool announcement, which could mean that it might be of a more serious nature.
      Of course if the serious nature of the announcement is approving OOXML, I'll be sending them some emails telling them what a disgrace the process has been.

      It might not change anything, but I encourage anyone with the ability to send email to do something similar.

      --
      Blah blah sig blah blah blah irony blah blah
    4. Re:Support Needed. by Gravatron · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Given the nature of the corruption this process showed, I don't think sending email is going to do much good unless said email contains bank account numbers pointing to a few million dollars.

    5. Re:Support Needed. by supernova_hq · · Score: 5, Funny

      Or perhaps bank account numbers they recognize that no longer point to a few million dollars, if you catch my drift.

  2. Do they not know their own rules? by Adaptux · · Score: 5, Informative
    While I still have some doubts regarding the genuineness of this document (for example, why does it purport to come from the ISO Central Secretariat rather than from the ISO/IEC "Information Technology Task Force" (ITTF) which has been managing the voting process?), the document seems to accurately reflect the previously available information regarding the voting decisions of the national standardization bodies.

    However, how valid are those votes? For example, the ISO/IEC JTC1 directives seem to pretty explicitly forbid changing the vote from "disapprove" to "abstain" like AFNOR (the French standardization organization) did (under the influence of heavy lobbying from Microsoft and HP).

    1. Re:Do they not know their own rules? by KwKSilver · · Score: 5, Funny

      The rules? Haven't you heard of the Golden Rule: "He who had the gold makes the rules!" This is the "new and improved" ISO, aptly described by someone at Groklaw:

      I = I
      S = Sold
      O = Out

      --
      If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
  3. Abandon All Hope by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Ye Who Code This Standard!

    1. Re:Abandon All Hope by profplump · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So apparently it's not valid to complain that the new standard shouldn't need to support "truncateFontHeightsLikeWP6" in the first place? Wouldn't it be technologically superior to require MS Word to emulate "truncateFontHeightsLikeWP6" using standard formatting directives, rather than forcing every other implementer to code for compatibility with some file format that isn't even part of the spec?

      Try this one one for size:
      "15 years ago we had a file format that stored text using EBCDIC encoding. While we no longer write any files using this encoding, we propose that the new standard file format include an EBCDIC mode. We realize that traditional arguments for "backward compatibility" don't apply -- obviously none of our 15-year-old products ever produced any output in the new file format being proposed -- and we concede that we could just convert to UTF-8 encoding when saving old documents into the new format. But such conversions would require more work on our part than simply adding another encoding mode to the new file format and reusing our existing code to render in that mode. We acknowledge that this formatting directive will only benefit our product, as no one else can read our 15-year-old, unpublished format, so we'll note that the EBCDIC mode is deprecated. In spite of that note however, we will generate new files using EBCDIC mode, and therefore competing implementations must implement it as well to be functionally compliant."

  4. Thank God by Mateo_LeFou · · Score: 5, Funny

    I've had so many clients asking if I can scrape data from their legacy lockinware. Now I can confidently say "Yes" and bill them for the 1400 hours it takes to read this spec.

    Thank you MS!

    --
    My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
  5. Good. Now at least we know where the filth is by unity100 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    and what to avoid. and no, im not a bigoted fanboi of any camp - im just reflecting upon the series of stunts ms pulled to get that format validated. judging from the level they lowered themselves in dirty work to get this through with bribing and manipulating, i'd say that their format has to be total crap. else it wouldnt need that level of filthy campaigning.

    --
    Read radical news here
  6. Basically, what they just did by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    was to retroactively standardize 20 years of legacy document formats. All MS-OOXML really is is a forwards-compatible XML serialization of the Microsoft Office 2003 formats.

    And yes, many at Microsoft do consider the whole standardization process to be a sham. (I know, because I work there.)

  7. ISO death bell by mugnyte · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And with that - the "standards body" of ISO was effectively taken down. FUD shovelers everywhere will begin the slow, purposeful targeting of Government, school and corporations to use MS's products for long-term archival concepts.

      Perhaps with only gnashing of teeth from the geek side, initially. After some time, say 3 or 4 product cycles, MS's formats, content and programs will have slipped into breaking changes - with various patches, pieces, conversion tools and sunsets. Then and only then, will the true colors of MS's saletroopers, who overrule the tech side, be shown. But you know this - why else would you be trawling the /. comments down here?

      In other news, the business of writing code to munge data from old MS formats into new MS formats is alive and well. Programmers rejoice! There is an endless market of chagrined middle managers who are willing to port old crap to new crap for good $/hour.

  8. pyhrric by apodyopsis · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Its the Pyhrric victory to end all.

    (1) if they lost the ISO process then they lost

    (2) they won the ISO process then they lost as it forced a deep examination of the standard, and raised critical questions and caused them more problems then it solved.

    (3) if nobody else implements this flawed standard then they lose as some Goverments are now also specifying cross platform implementation as well as open standard (perhaps in response to this mess)

    (4) if (and this is real unlikely) there are other implementations of this standard (eg OO) then they lose as MS Office is no longer required to be ubiquitous on the desktop

    This is NOT really a win for MS the way that I see it. They can spin this how they want and surely get away with it for a large amount of the population - but big business and govermental contracts (where the real money is) are already looking for an escape from propietry formats and have been for a while.

    I'm really fucked off about the perversion of the ISO system, the bad practice, the lack of any "technology morals" in decisions that needed to be unbiased. But I am not that upset about OOXML being passed - I really do not think MS has won this one.

    The important thing to watch now is how MS spins this and where the important money goes (big contracts, goverment).

    1. Re:pyhrric by holloway · · Score: 5, Informative

      I agree. We're back to where we were a year ago only now with a lot more awareness of the office monopoly and how much money is wasted.

      Here are two reports on OOXML that I recently released, one (PDF, 0.9MB) and two (PDF, 0.8MB).

      --
      -Docvert converts MSWord to OpenDocument, clean HTML
  9. Good Luck. by inTheLoo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You are right about the size of the market but wrong about how much money it will make you and what tools to use. Sun and IBM will give you PDF of ODF output and a handy database system to keep it all. So can anyone else with Open Office. Some people are going to be automating the process better than others but it's going to be a competitive market. That's the whole point of standards, to avoid the massive cost of reinventing what should be obvious and spend resources on things people actually want. MSXML is going nowhere in a market like that.

    --
    No calls now, I'm ...
  10. Does anybody else... by $RANDOMLUSER · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...find it ironic that the document describing OOXML's ISO adoption is in PDF format?

    --
    No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
  11. Re:Weirdest April 1st Ever! by codemachine · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The fools are those at ISO who voted to approve this horrid "standard". It definitely wasn't good enough to be fast-tracked, let alone made into a standard.

    Should be interesting to see the next moves from IBM and Sun though. Could there be some sort of challenge or appeal coming? I don't think we've seen the end of this.

  12. Its true by javilon · · Score: 5, Funny

    Even the KDE foundation voted for it !!!

    --


    When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
  13. Re:I need enlightenment... by WWWWolf · · Score: 5, Informative

    Sorry, but every article I read about OOXML is about the voting and standardization irregularities, and nothing I've found reviews OOXML from the users standpoint, or implications of it being ISO-ed...

    From user's point of view, this rushed standardisation means that the whole point of the standardisation has been defeated in OOXML's case. It also means that we now have two standards that solve the exact same problem, and thanks to the Marketing, the technically far worse format has a chance at winning: If OOXML becomes the dominant format, the promising future from OpenDocument may not be realised. It can be a major setback.

    And what was the point of the standardisation? What was the golden promise of OpenDocument? Interoperability, plain and simple.

    Simply put: In the current state of affairs, OpenDocument is implementable by third parties. OOXML is not. There can and will be many OpenDocument applications. If OOXML won't get fixed, there will be one and only one application with anywhere near compliant OOXML support.

    With OpenDocument, you can edit the documents in any ODF-compliant application - or process them with any external tool, or generate them from scratch programmatically - and there's no problems because the standards is complete, well specified, and not hopelessly tied to one application. OOXML, in comparison, has nothing of this: There's a bunch of nasty features that make writing completely compliant applications difficult, if not impossible. The end result will be that there's one application that processes OOXML "perfectly" (MSOffice) and the rest work when they work (and since consumers expect perfect behaviour, it means they aren't used very much, no?)...

    Sure, the interoperability dream is still very much there, because ODF is still out there. It's just that now we have a completely redundant standard that is a) technically inferior but b) Microsoft will make you either use it, or cry and use it.

  14. To: central@iso.org by Tolkien · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Subject: Re: Result of voting on ISO/IEC DIS 29500

    Hello, I'm writing to voice my opinion on the approval of Microsoft's OOXML format. It amazes me that ISO allowed such a monstrosity to pass. Everyone is aware of Microsoft's unending history of corruption. They bought out as many representatives as they could, to get this vote. Even Norway had corrupt people within its circles, though their committee chairman wasn't one of them (http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/03/31/200201) thankfully. It appears ISO completely ignored his protests however because this change of vote, according to the PDF file that I found here (http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/04/01/2229207), lists Norway as Yes without comments, regardless of the fact that it was originally No with comments.


    Shame on you ISO. You have successfully contributed to setting back innovation both directly and indirectly until you come to your senses and approve the ODF file format, or another format which will have been developed by a corporation that has nothing monetary to gain by standardization. How long will that be, 5 years? Maybe 10 years?


    As this file (http://www.noooxml.org/local--files/arguments/TheCaseAgainstOOXML.pdf) should illustrate, everyone with two brain cells worth rubbing together knows that those thousands of pages contain many instances of Microsoft intentionally leaving out important information necessary to implement functional OOXML files which look and act identically in all software implementations. This should have been a massive red flag for ISO to choose to not even consider OOXML as a standard, much less APPROVE it.


    I urge you to reconsider and reverse the decision to formally approve OOXML. OOXML should never have even been considered in the first place.


    After this mistake, I will never fully trust ISO's standards again, considering how Microsoft successfully undermined its voting process, and ISO made no effort to verify or rectify the corruption. I suppose the next question could be "how much money did ISO gain by approving this format?" but I dare not ask. I'm sure I'd be sadly disappointed regardless of the answer given.


    Sincerely,
    Tolkien

    --
    how is babby formed?
  15. Re:Weirdest April 1st Ever! by the_olo · · Score: 5, Informative

    Could there be some sort of challenge or appeal coming?

    According to ISO press release , "Subject to there being no formal appeals from ISO/IEC national bodies in the next two months, the International Standard will accordingly proceed to publication". So there's still 2 months for appeals from NB's.