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ISO Calls For OOXML Ceasefire
In response to the continued attacks on Microsoft's OOXML standard, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has called for a ceasefire. "Last week the ISO committee in charge of document standards, SC 34, met in Oslo to discuss the way forward for OOXML and ODF. The plenary session was marked by protests outside, largely carried out by delegates from a nearby open-source conference. The protesters were calling for OOXML to be withdrawn from ISO standardization -- something that could theoretically happen if a national standards body were to protest against its own vote within the next month or two."
We the undersigned wish to make it clear that the ISO fucked up and should never have made OOXML a standard, and that we will continue to attack ISO until it is revoked. Furthermore, we believe that this is for the ISO's own good, because allowing this result of obvious corruption to remain can only harm ISO's credibility as a standards organization. We also wish to remind the ISO that these so-called "personal attacks" have only become necessary in the first place because our technical objections have been entirely ignored. Finally, we note that the resolution to create working groups to maintain OOXML and "harmonize" it with ODF was stupid, because neither group would be necessary in the first place if the redundant, conflicting, and poorly-designed OOXML hadn't been approved in the first place!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
They deserve to be taken to the woodshed for a good spanking.
The ONLY ones who will benefit from a "cease-fire" are the ones who have the criticism coming to them. Let them admit they screwed up, that the processes behind their handling of MSOOXML are fatally flawed, and that a redo is necessary to preserve^Wrestore the integrity of ISO.
Kevin Smith on Prince
Reduce, reuse, cycle
the ISO is corrupted. MSFT fscked up the ISO and it is permanently damaged. Germany, Norway, Poland, and several other countries are looking into voting irregularities in the OOXML vote. For that fact alone the OOXML should have failed to pass pending the outcome of those investigations.
right now there are several MSFT P member countries that will no longer vote on anything because they are no longer being paid by MSFT to work with the ISO. These countries are deadlocking other standards and forcing them to fail because they refuse to vote on anything not OOXML. Those countries should have their votes discarded until they start attended and voting on things other than OOXML.
So why should the attacks stop? Has the corruption stopped yet?
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
That is the major effect though. I think that most unbiased observers would conclude that Microsoft's main goal in having OOXML rushed through is to allow .govs to tick the box that allows them to keep purchasing Microsoft Office. I have no faith that Microsoft will adhere to OOXML in letter or spirit, and in fact that having it 'controlled' by ISO makes this even less likely. Microsoft will not approach ISO to have new features included, they'll just binary-blob them in.
I say this as someone whose job it is to implement editors for previous (binary) versions of Office formats. The (new) guys working on our OOXML version are super stoked because (they say) it's much clearer. Sure, I tell them, but wait until Office >=2009 starts saving out documents with big embedded proprietary binary blobs. They'll still be OOXML 'compliant', for all the good that'll do us.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Sadly, I think you underestimate the apathy of the public over this stuff.
Joe user will hear the words "ISO Standard", "voting" and decide they neither know nor care WTF this is all about. The mainstream news will know this, and won't both reporting it.
Us in tech will find yet another reason to loathe Microsoft and their business practices, but to the average user, they simply will not care about this. You can't easily make this an issue people will understand why they should care about. It's so far off their radar as to be non-existent.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
WTF is ISO playing at when they take something that CANNOT be said to be a "reasonable standard" and still APPROVE it as an ISO Standard?
Fuck that! ISO is supposed to approve STANDARDS. Not approve crap and then try to turn it into a "reasonable standard".
ISO sold out and is now trying to play the victim in this.
The ISO process to fast track and/or approve OOXML has been fought hard by technical people on the basis of technical deficiencies.
OOXML is *NOT* worthy of ISO approval. Any rational review of the "standard," will show that it is incomplete, non-specific, and completely worthless as a blue print on how to implement a document reader for a document.
How this got approved is clearly worth a corruption investigation. It calls into question the integrity of the people and organization that approved it.
It is nothing less than an attempt to eliminate the ability to share documents without paying Microsoft and maintain Microsoft's monopoly. The very thing the ISO standard is supposed to fight. It is criminal that these bastards have subverted the standards process as they did.
Calling for the end of "Personal attacks" is nothing more than saying "fuck you." Public statements questioning the motives and integrity of these people is the only ration course of action given what they have done. They deserve every last bit of it. Jailtime if we can find a law to fit the crime.
ISO got gamed, ganked and pwned. At this point, Microsoft are teabagging their corpse.
What ISO need to do right now is to grow a pair and admit that they're gagging on sweaty Ballmer-balls, rather than putting their fingers in their ears and going "La la la, the process is perfect, la la la, there's nothing wrong."
I doubt you'd find any unbiased informed observer that believes them, although I'm sure you'd find a few who would happily say that in return for a free upgrade of their corporate Office installs. The emperor has no clothes, no matter how many procedural boxes they tick off to try to hide their ding-a-ling dangling in the wind.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
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INK has no business being part of a document format. It's an image format. It should exist as a separate standard on its own. The document format need not know INK specifically but rather provide for a way of including 'images' which both OOXML and ODF do. Then their specs can say "We allow the use of ISO XXXX (aka INK)."
MS doesn't get it. You don't get it. ISO doesn't even seem to get it anymore. It's hysterical that a format that represents exactly 1 commercial interest and has no implementations is published as a "standard." ODF has its failings, but it's already being used as a standard (multiple parties implement it) and it is being evolved with multiple parties in mind. Like a standard or something.
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
Because the next step is to decommission ODF. Read the writing on the wall; you have two standards that overlap, and one company that is willing to push any amount of money to get their way. We might yet see Microsoft "agreeing" with its detractors that one standard is better than two--and then you can logically extrapolate from that what their next move will be.
Another version reads: "Two standards good, One standard better!"
Or perhaps summed up clearest: "Embrace, extend, extinguish."
- Roey
ISO does a lot more than deal with software standards. Since apparently they have lost all credibility worldwide in every industry thanks to their approval of a half-baked word processing format, I guess your goofy website will also deal with things such as the following:
"ISO has just launched the new ISO Standards collection on CD-ROM â" Materials for the production of primary aluminium. It contains the full collection of 108 ISO standards for materials used in the production of primary aluminium, including standards for alumina, pitch, coke, electrodes, ramming paste and fluorides."
Since of course aluminum smelters the world over will be abandoning the ISO en masse for Certified Open Dot Com.
By the way, openness != standardisation.