EU's Anti-Trust Investigation of OOXML Continues

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Since January, the EU has been investigating whether Microsoft broke anti-trust laws while advocating OOXML. That investigation continues following its passage as a standard. Meanwhile, the ISO approval of OOXML is being appealed, so Microsoft hasn't won just yet."

Comments

Cramped comments

[Rik Sweeney]

Am I the only one who is experiencing cramped comments? About 1/5 of the page is just a margin.

Re:Cramped comments

[Tastecicles]

I meant:

nothi
ng to
see h
ere m
ove a
long.

but forgot to switch formatting :x

Re:Cramped comments

[PinkyDead]

That's OOXML for you.

You were warned - but no, you knew better. I have no sympa<formatLikeWord95> D'oh!

Appeal?

[BACPro]

After having RTFA (sorry), I don't see where anybody is appealing the decision, yet.

IBM issued a broad support statement so as to leave all doors open.

FSFE said this must not happen again...

Nobody issued a statement indicating an appeal had been filed.

Re:Appeal?

[Ngarrang]

Give it some time. The Groklaw article did state that there is a 2-month period for appeals to be filed.

Re:Appeal?

[Zeinfeld]

The Groklaw article did state that there is a 2-month period for appeals to be filed.

Yes, but who has standing to file an appeal here? TFA says ISO national bodies. That would be a pretty difficult challenge to mount.

As with the Netscape use of the justice dept to go after Microsoft, I remain very unimpressed by companies that attempt to win commercial battles by involving government. Netscape did not help the anti-trust case against Microsoft, on the contrary, they caused the DoJ to abandon a strong case (on the pricing issue) into a weak one. Netscape's tactics against Spyglass were every bit as aggressive and anti-competitive as those they accused Microsoft of. Netscape was never a good player in the standards world either, they wanted absolute control of the Web. Their idea of standards participation was to fax a proposed 'standard' to W3C hours before they released the product.

The risk here is that the EU is going to look at this from a protectionist point of view. They have an opportunity to establish some non-tarrif trade barriers here and there is little opportunity for the US to complain.

Re:Appeal?

[oliderid]

The risk here is that the EU is going to look at this from a protectionist point of view. They have an opportunity to establish some non-tarrif trade barriers here and there is little opportunity for the US to complain.

European anti-competitive laws are mainly aimed at European countries/companies.

There are still strong protectionnist tendencies amongst european countries against each other.

For example, last week, the Italian state can't refund the nearly bankrupted Air Italia because of these laws. They are almost "forced" to sell it to Air France/KLM (privately held)

Anti-trust laws are also mainly aimed at European companies.

So basically the European union is the only body in Europe promoting/reinforcing free/fair trades. Its main mission is to guarantee fair play amongst its members. American companies having European acitivites experience it from time to time. Here on slashdot microsoft makes headlines.

I noticed few months ago that Novell (I think, anyway It was an American company with open source based services) won a mid sized European Commission contract against european companies. Adobe is well established in the European commissions and it is making a lot (really a lot) of money.

If you play fair, you are welcome. If you don't you get fines.That's quite simple really.

Re:Appeal?

[UnknowingFool]

Technically, all appeals have to wait until all the votes are officially announced for each country. That way people aren't filing appeals based on rumors. Also, the appeals process might require formal procedures like paperwork, affidavits, blood sacrifices, etc.

Re:Appeal?

[ozmanjusri]

Yes, but who has standing to file an appeal here? TFA says ISO national bodies.

Norway, Germany, Poland Romania and many others are reporting irregularities and stacking in their committees. The memo from Comes v Microsoft [pdf warning] describes pretty excatly what happened in those meetings.

A stacked panel, on the other hand, is like a stacked deck: it is packed with people who, on the face of things, should be neutral, but who are in fact strong supporters of our technology. The key to stacking a panel is being able to choose the moderator. Most conference organizers allow the moderator to select the panel, so if you can pick the moderator, you win. Since you can't expect representatives of our competitors to speak on your behalf, you have to get the moderator to agree to having only "independent ISVs" on the panel. No one from Microsoft or any other formal backer of the competing technologies would be allowed â" just ISVs who have to use this stuff in the "real world." Sounds marvelously independent doesn't it? In fact, it allows us to stack the panel with ISVs that back our cause.

Considerable poltiical influence was brought to bear too. Bill Gates campaigned in Denmark, where he is a friend of the Prime Minister. Sarkozy himself intervened on Microsoft's behalf in France.

This topic has started to expose just how much influence Microsoft has with governments, and shows they're willing to meddle with national sovereignty.

It's not going to take too much to turn it into a cause celebre.

Re:Appeal?

[arendjr]

The problem though is the ones that need to appeal are the NB's, which are the same ones that also had the final say in the Yes votes.

Can't disagree I really hope there will be appeals as well.

Re:Appeal?

[LingNoi]

The reason for this campaign was from start to finish to attempt to force governments to use ODF in place of OOXML and thus force the use of Open Office.

No, I completely disagree with this. There is no reason that Microsoft Office can not support ODF, infact it already does with a plugin so why would this block or change governments from using Microsoft Office if they want to use it?

OOXML was really crap when it was first submitted and we all don't really know if that has changed much as the fixes haven't really been looked at in any detail. Hence why use a subpar format which is heavily based on Microsoft Office simply because Microsoft feels that it's a competition between Closed vs Open Source?

It's not a competition, this has nothing to do with Open Source, it's about a file format being implementable or not and about being realistic. The OOXML format ISO is never going to be used, even by Microsoft, that's just realistic expectation based on their past. What's going to happen is this... How Microsoft Office renders your exported files is going to determine the ISO format and thus nothing will actually be changed from today, where Microsoft gets to make the standard that everyone follows.

So, why is it such a bad thing to use ODF which isn't going to be heavily influenced like OOXML is by a single vendor? Although ODF was originally in Open Office implementations of ODF are so widespread in other office suites and Open Office's popularity is so small that there is no chance that Open Office could ever control the ODF spec like Microsoft could with OOXML.

Thanks, we have several

[Nursie]

There was this one started by some Finnish guy named torvalds that seems to have taken off pretty well. Some of our governments use it now.

I hope MS gets rebuffed harshly

[gweihir]

Standards are a major pillar of a modern technological society. Attempting (whether successfully or not) to sabotage the standardization process of a well-respected source of standards, amounts to attempting to destabilize society. This is clearly utterly unethical. The potential damage is inconceivable.

MS did this evil thing either because they do not care at all about anything except their short-term profits, or because they are scared out of their wits. In either case they need to be contained fast, before the world is without a credible (read: of high integrity and producing high quality syandards) standardization organisation.

Re:I hope MS gets rebuffed harshly

[seeker_1us]

As several have commented on Slashdot before, MS also benefits from the discrediting of the ISO process in general. Then there are no "standards" just what MS makes, what MS wants, and no pesky people complaining about them not being standards compliant.

Re:I hope MS gets rebuffed harshly

[El_Muerte_TDS]

Standards are a major pillar of a modern technological society. Attempting (whether successfully or not) to sabotage the standardization process of a well-respected source of standards, amounts to attempting to destabilize society. This is clearly utterly unethical. The potential damage is inconceivable.

Some would label that as an act of terrorism.

Re:I hope MS gets rebuffed harshly

[gwait]

Exactly. Microsoft have won this hands down.
Notice how the mainstream press are reporting Microsoft's OOXML ISO approval, without mentioning the dirty tricks (illegal or not) that they used to get it "approved".
So for Government programs that state that documents MUST be based on an open standard, Microsoft have won, and for anyone who mentions ODF is also an ISO standard, they can say "Who cares? ISO is a disorganized and easily corrupted organization, nothing they rubber stamp means anything!".

It's not at all surprising that Microsoft went after this whole hog, handcuffing customers to MS Office is the source of their income and power. All else (windows monopoly, etc) follows.

Re:I hope MS gets rebuffed harshly

[Eternal Annoyance]

Microsoft did this to discredit ISO. Think about it, Microsoft sabotages the voting process and everyone "inconviniently" discovers the voting fraud. As a consequence ISO isn't trusted anymore.

What happens? Everyone scrambles to consolidate "their" (read: Microsoft's) idea of standard. "Unfortunately" this will mean that each and every standard breakable by Microsoft will be broken in such a way that it's very convenient for... Microsoft.

Microsoft is pushing OOXML simply to sabotage ISO and not to provide a "competitor" to ODF, that's only the front.

At this point criminal prosecution of the Microsoft execs responsible for this would be very desirable (corruption, fraud and forgery of documents (yes, it might just apply here)).

The companies aiding Microsoft in the irregularities deserve to get punished severely over this.

Re:I hope MS gets rebuffed harshly

[kamochan]

... handcuffing customers to MS Office is the source of their income and power. All else (windows monopoly, etc) follows.

<rant>Which just sucks golfballs. I recently installed Office 2008 for the Mac. Universal binaries and all, made me expect improvements. Silly me - what a stinking pile of dog poop! As slow as the f*cking runtime-translated powerpc-binary-2004, buggy to no end (ate several files already, while I'm on a hard deadline), the interface has been changed where it makes no sense (the templates etc drop-down section) - but unchanged where it should have been fixed (native scroll bars in most controls). ARRRGH!!

I actually tried to build OOo so that I could try to fix the handling of tables in headers/footers (which is the main show-stopper for our company for using OOo). Too bad the mac native version isn't up to snuff yet (in too many ways for someone to just quickly fix)./rant>

But one does have to hand it to Microsoft. Well played.

Re:The new EU economic plan

[psysjal]

Wasn't Linus Torvalds from Finland? Doesn't that mean Europe can at least claim some responsibility for the Linux kernel?

not yet, but it will be.

[apodyopsis]

Well I don't read that an appeal has been filed yet.

But it will be.

To not appeal as this point is tantamount to agreeing to the decision to make it a standard. It is demonstrable that a great many people, companies and organizations do not agree (in fairly strong terms) as we can assume an appeal is inevitable.

At this point, an appeal makes a stand and casts doubt on OOXML as a standard - so win or lose in the appeal, the mere fact that there is one will help our case.

Lastly, I state again - if OOXML passed the agreed consultations and tests for a standard, was approved in the conventional standard, and brought a demonstrably superior implementation to ODF then I would accept it in a heartbeat.

ISO is now irrelevant

[denis-The-menace]

The OOXML Standard was bought and the ISO stood idly by, hand extended.

Therefore the ISO is now irrelevant; so who cares about the ISO.

Re:ISO is now irrelevant

[Akaihiryuu]

Indeed...ISO is completely irrelevant now. They are not a reputable organization, and no longer have any say in standards, at least computer-related ones. Noone is going to seek out ISO "approval" for standards anymore, at least noone reputable. FSFE is pretty much saying the exact same thing in TFA. There is even a replacement for ISO springing up. http://www.certifiedopen.com/

Re:ISO is now irrelevant

[marcosdumay]

The ISO followed procedure

Oh, no. It didn't. ISO changed the procedure exclusively for this one draft, hours before making a decision to not kill it while the old procedures required it to be killed.

Re:ISO is now irrelevant

[mysticgoat]

I can't follow your logic.

The ISO standards process was corrupted while processing the OOXML "fast track" request. So the OOXML standard is corrupt, and the application of the "fast track" process is corruptible, if not corrupt itself.

That has no bearing on any of the other ISO standards. Such as

• ISO 9000: quality management in production environments
• ISO 10161: Interlibrary Loan Application Protocol
• ISO 7: Pipe threads where pressure-tight joints are made on the threads
• ISO 500: Rear-mounted power take-off specifications for agricultural tractors
• ISO 999: Guidelines for the content, organization, and presentation of indexes
• ISO 68-1: Basic profile of metric screw threads
• ISO 7736: Car radio installation space
• Any of the other 16,000+ ISO standards that enrich our lives

No one with any sense is going to declare the ISO process null and void. It has proven its value too many times, in too many different areas.

What is likely to happen is that people who are used to working with ISO standards are going to be saying "This is great! Now we have a way of measuring how closely different software conforms to an international standard! Look, this version of OpenOffice is in proven conformance with only eighty-something percent of the ODF Standard. But when we measure this version of MS Office against the OOXML Standard, it is in conformance with... uh... less than 10% ????"

The acceptance of OOXML as a standard to be measured against is going to make it more difficult for Microsoft to sell its products in a lot of markets in the short term. From what I've read, the OOXML standard is going to be so hard to implement that it will be difficult for Microsoft to score well against it for the long term as well. Microsoft may have put itself into a situation where they will have to work with ODF files in order to sell to the big accounts, where ISO 9000 and shipping containers that can be moved from truck to train to boat are important to the business.

Re:ISO is now irrelevant

[zsau]

I know! It's awful! All of my pieces of A4 paper now have unreliable edges: In fact, I have a page which is not even a known shape, having angles which do not add up. Possibly US letter paper is immune to this? I don't know; I have none around. I tried to get money out of the ATM this morning, but my card stopped fitting after OOXML was passed. It measures the same dimensions as it did previously, but without a reputable standards organisation behind it, the sizes cease to be the same when they are near. I am similarly concerned about the dimensions of my bike tyres. In fact, the ISO has included the BIPM's weights and measures in it, and time too; how can I be sure today's millimetres are as relevant as yesterdays? Even feet and inches are defined in terms of the ISO's metres; perhaps I shall have to revert to Newton's Parisian foot.

The characters on my computer screen, which I previously had encoded in ISO-8859-1 or ISO-10646, now correspond only randomly to the byte sequences they are represented as — how do you who reads this know it is what I have written? The various programming languages I work in no longer operate correctly (except for, ironically, C#); my computer and I cannot agree on the meaning of words or the syntax. I am sure I am using the same semantics and syntax this week as last, and the compilers show no indication of having changed, yet they fail.

No, the ISO no longer has any reputation. All these things and others besides have ceased to work because of it. One mistake — one inability to hold their own against the worst onslaught they have seen — and they are dead, and all they have done is for nought. Before the experiences this last week, I thought the rest of the world would not notice any problems and would force us geeks along with them. How wrong I was!

Re:The new EU economic plan

[calebt3]

It is developed internationally and he lives in California now. And it is not owned and licenced by a corporation.

OT: Yeah, WTF's up with Slashdot today?

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one who is experiencing cramped comments? About 1/5 of the page is just a margin.

It's even fuglier in Classic Mode. It's fugly in classic-threaded-mode, and utterly baffling in classic-flat-mode.

Whatever the Gods did, could they please undo it? The only bars I want to see are the single bars to the left of the blockquoted comments.

On a high-contrast color scheme (or even just turning document-specified colors off), it's even worse - the 3/4-box is thick and black around some comments, and absent on others, resulting in something extremely distracting.

It seems that all the complaints about the differences in style on idle.slashdot.org are going to have to be rehashed again.

Does it even matter if it's a standard?

[zarmanto]

It seems to me that it doesn't matter in the least if OOXML becomes a standard -- because frankly, nobody but Microsoft is going to put any significant effort into supporting it. A "standard" which is only supported by one product is about as useful as a two inch long drinking straw in a world of six inch tall soda cans... what's the point in even worrying about it?

Another example of this same problem is the Acid3 browser test. While I applaud the guys who came up with the tests for pointing out how many "standards" have been ignored by modern browsers, and I am quite impressed with the folks developing Opera and Safari/Webkit for their efforts to meet those standards... it still won't genuinely mean much until the forty foot gorilla in the room (Microsoft's Internet Explorer, of course) decides to play nice too.

In the case of Acid3, this is a regrettable fact of life that actually works to Microsoft's advantage -- which is why they aren't chomping at the bit to actually fix their browser. In the case of OOXML... Microsoft probably doesn't realize it yet, but they're pretty much screwed no matter how this thing ends.

Re:Does it even matter if it's a standard?

[R2.0]

It matters because it is a long held practice of governments to specify a "standard" product so that they cannot be accused of choosing proprietary products. If OOXML had not become a standard, governments may not have been ALLOWED to use it according to their own internal rules. Of course, this process is often abused - specifications are often written so that only one product or company qualifies, even though they are not named. So now all governments need to is say "File formats shall comply with standard XYZ and - lo and behold - only MS office qualifies.

Re:Does it even matter if it's a standard?

[JasterBobaMereel]

This is largely irrelevant - on past form Microsoft will change the specification in the next version of Office and then there will be no systems that comply with the standard

Re:Does it even matter if it's a standard?

[mysticgoat]

It matters because it is a long held practice of governments to specify a product that measures up well against a standard so that they cannot be accused of choosing proprietary products...

There, I fixed that thought for you. BTW, this also applies to a lot of big corporations and other entities... not just governments.

Procurement at government agencies and big businesses can usually be simplified to a three step process, that is driven by the need of the individuals involved to protect their careers from the fallout of a bad decision:

1. Arguing over what criteria to evaluate: use an ISO standard, or some national standard or some industry specific standard? What failure rate will be acceptable? Everybody signs off on this: no single person can be held responsible for a mistake.
2. Testing the performance of vendor samples against the chosen standard. Done with enough rigorous objectivity to assure that the testers are protected against backlash if the whole thing blows up into a mess later on.
3. Report on test results, with recommendation to purchase based on the results. Final decision again by a committee so no individual can become a scapegoat for any costly mistakes.

Microsoft products and OOXML cannot reach acceptable scores in this process today, nor in the near future. From what I have read, it seems unlikely that they will ever achieve good scores. And now that Microsoft itself has opened the door for using this bog standard process on software procurement, it will be easier for big business and government to switch from the OOXML standard to the ODF standard than to go back to earlier modes of justifying procurement decisions.

Interesting quote from groklaw link

[firefly4f4]

PJ posted a link to http://government.zdnet.com/?p=3745 in her latest update on OOXML, and it contained an interesting quote from news.com:

Microsoft's general manager of standards and interoperability Tom Robertson said that Microsoft, too, has been queried as part of the investigation.

He said that Microsoft will "fully cooperate" with any investigation from the Commission. In response to the accusations of stacking committees, Robertson said that IBM and other competitors have done exactly what Microsoft is accused of doing. For example, an employee from Google, which opposed Open XML standardization, joined the Finnish national committee only three days before a vote.

"It seems that one of the main concerns that people have raised about the process is the broad-based participation in the standards body deliberation," he said. "I think it's ironic IBM is complaining about new members in national standards bodies when they have been working around the clock to get people to join."

Two wrongs do not make a right, and if IBM and other companies were wrong as he suggest, then so was Microsoft if they did the same, and it just goes to support the argument that the process was tampered with and the results discarded. By making that statement, he actually argued against his own position that everything went fine.

Note: I work for IBM, but this opinion is my own

Re:Interesting quote from groklaw link

[Shados]

I'm a pretty big Microsoft supporter (yeah, one of like, 3 on this site...I do NOT work for MS however), and even I agree with you. Even if MS won, the process was tempered with. If OOXML is to be an ISO standard, we'll be stuck with it. It has to win fair and square. And if it is good enough to be an ISO standard, it should win, regardless of IBM. If its awful (and in its current state, its probably not so hot), it has to fail, so that MS can go back to the drawing board.

They need to trash the results and start over. As it is, even though OOXML was approved, NO ONE will trust it, because no one know if it actually deserves the spot or not. (And it goes both ways. Its not as simple as "It shouldn't be ISO!").

Re:Interesting quote from groklaw link

[katz]

Why should MS "go back to the drawing board" in the first place, instead of just implementing ODF? (though I grant you that's a rhetorical question, since ODF serves to discourage the kinds of lock-in that Microsoft's business model appears to depend on)

- Roey

Re:Interesting quote from groklaw link

[Jason Levine]

In theory, I agree. If OOXML were truly an open standard, but just differed from ODF in some ways (perhaps better in some ways and worse in others), but otherwise was a fully implementable standard, I would be all for making it an ISO standard and having OpenOffice.org able to read/save OOXML files.

In practice, however, Microsoft has shown that they don't really care about OOXML as a standard. They've said themselves that they aren't going to implement it. If they aren't going to implement it, then how is anyone else supposed to? Besides, it's littered with awful "explanations" like AutoSpaceLikeWord95. How do you AutoSpace like Word95? OOXML doesn't explain this. You're just expected to know. OOXML is really just an attempt by Microsoft to get to claim support for open standards without actually having to support open standards.

In short, I would have no problem with someone else coming up with a format to compete with ODF, but I don't think Microsoft is willing to do it.

Re:Interesting quote from groklaw link

[tokul]

Fins also fired board chairman that opposed to MS-OOXML.

Difficulty of Appealing

[Adaptux]

After having RTFA (sorry), I don't see where anybody is appealing the decision, yet. The main problem with appealing is that at the ISO/IEC JTC1 level you cannot really file an appeal about the decision-making processes in the national standardization bodies. The reason for this is that the national standardization organizations are not branches of ISO. The power structure is the other way round: ISO is an international cartel of national standardization bodies.

You could try to appeal at the ISO/IEC JTC1 level based on the differences between what the ISO/IEC JTC1 directives say and how things were actually done. I have written up an analysis in which I come to the conclusion that an appeal which is based only on this kind of discrepancies will not be successful.

What I suppose could be done with some chance of success is to file an antitrust lawsuit as well as an appeal and demand in the appeal that ISO/IEC shall defer to the result of the antitrust lawsuit. (Trying to get the standardization organization officials to decide the antitrust concerns themselves would not be a good idea IMO, since standardization organizations are really not equipped for resolving legal conflicts).

Can't by me love..

[jav1231]

Money can't buy me love but apparently it can buy a standard! Microsoft is inherently evil. Like kicking puppies. Or raping a standards body!

ISO

[Ariastis]

International Sell-Out

Is this guy serious?

[Zero__Kelvin]

Microsoft's general manager of "standards" and "interoperability" [quotes added for accuracy] Tom Robertson says in the article:

"I think it's ironic IBM is complaining about new members in national standards bodies when they have been working around the clock to get people to join."

I guess if someone starts shooting at me, I don't have any right to pick up a gun and shoot back without being guilty of wrongdoing then, eh Mr. Robertson?

maybe if governments got smart...

[Rob Y.]

As it stands, the new OOXML 'standard' amounts to a mandate to upgrade to Office 2007 (yes, there's some kind of add-on for older versions, but most will just eat the upgrade). A nice win for MS.

It would be nice if Government mandates required that multiple, compatible implementations exist for whatever standards they mandate.

That might call Microsoft's bluff. Either they'd have to implement a working OOXML to ODF translator or help others implement OOXML and verify completeness.

Hell, by defining 'standard' in terms of actual multiple implementations, Office 2000 binary would make a better standard than OOXML. OOo does a pretty good job of reading them - better than anybody but MS is likely to do for OOXML anytime soon.

So, let's lobby for governments to just standdardize on ODF, PDF and Office 2000.

Of course, Abiword, KOffice and OOo would have to get cracking on making their ODF implementations compatible for ODF to make the cut.

Any guesses which job would be easier?

Cant we quit moaning...

[RiotingPacifist]

I dont really care what happens with the legal side of this, it doesnt matter how many times microsoft get caught with its trousers down, the uninformed masses just dont care (or worse say that its what you do when you have a monopoly? )

What i do want to see, is microsoft having thier asses handed to them on the technological side. With gnome office onboard there is a real chance that microsoft isnt going to have the best implimentation of thier own standard, its much harder to take a finished product and tweak it to conform to the new OOXML changes (without breaking anything), than it is to start from scratch and design a fully OOXML complient (when theres nothing to break). If the gnome team get OOXML implimented well, a small unix style aplication could easily allow convertion between OOXML and ODF ( go crazy and call it OOXML2ODF., Simply install it into the OS, and allow ODF complient programs to use OOXML programs without even relising and visa-versa, this would kill the document office suite link which is microsofts main weapon.

The problem is everybody is too busy bitching about OOXML to realise that MS have given us a chace to beat them on thier home turf.