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ISO Releases OOXML FAQ
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The ISO has put out a FAQ concerning OOXML, but it may raise more questions than it answers. For one, it promises to address problems if they arise in the future. PJ of Groklaw said that's akin to 'selling you a car with four different sizes of tires and assuring that that if you see it's a problem, you can always bring it in for maintenance.' It also handwaves the OSP discriminatory patent promise issues, when asked about contradictions states that some 'may still remain', and asserts that duplicate standards are 'something that need[s] to be decided by the market place.' Notably, the FAQ does not answer the question, 'what the hell were you thinking?'"
Maybe they should rename themselves the "International Organization for Vague and Undefined Standardization, To Be Decided By The Market"
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If the Imperial system consisted of definitions like "Measure this like King George III would have", I'm sure people would argue against that being a standard also.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Living up to your name, I see.
Two absolutely key requirements for a standard are that it be well specified and possible to usefully implement. The OOXML processes wasn't even long enough for someone to *read* the standard, and all the criticisms that were submitted by standards bodies were ignored in bulk - hence there is *no way* that the ISO could have known that OOXML met those requirements.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
No, no, no. They're saying: "This was approved with the same process as all our other standards. So imagine how many other ISO standards are complete BS!"
Since we've done a lot of successful standards before, there can't possibly be anything wrong with how this one was carried out.
Yeah, it is a nice misdirection they pulled. I have always considered the study of logic to be akin to studying mental self-defense (or, perhaps "brain-fu").
I would classify their fallacy as "ignoratio elenchi," or "ignorance of refutation." Their evidence did demonstrate something, but not what they set out to demonstrate. Stating "ISO and IEC have collections of more than 17 000 and 7 000 successful standards" could be used to defend statements like "we have produced standards," "we produce standards," "we have produced LOTS of standards," etc. This statement, however, does NOT suggest that "the standards development process is credible."
Credibility must be established by evidence other than volume. And we already have plenty of evidence suggestive of a lack of credibility.
We've seen blatant, ample evidence that this was a bought vote. We've seen MS bribe normally uninterested countries into voting their way. We've seen them manage to fast-track a standard when it is obviously due more scrutiny (if nothing else, due to its larger size compared to the earlier ODF standard). And we've seen *blatant* vote tampering with Norway, which voted yes despite a majority of its technical advisors voting no.
The ISO's complicity in all this cheating is plain and obvious to anyone who cares to look. Their attitude of blaming the observers is, frankly, insulting to the morals and intelligence of anyone who is speaking the truth.
Yes, this does bring suspicion on the validity of the other standards. However, the other standards do not have the blatant, obvious process tampering that this one did, nor (to my knowledge) the enormous, unscrupulous corporation with an interest in seeing the standard passed.
We reviewed the process before it started, all the while during its course and afterwards as well. In other words:
"Our review process sucks so much that we can't even spot the most blatant and obvious abuse in our entire history right while it's going on under our noses."
Thanks, ISO. That removes my final doubts regarding your reliability and competence. Only leaves me to wonder how you're getting anything done right at all.
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I don't know much about the ISO process or about previous ISO standards, but it's entirely possible that this is the first time that an ISO standards process has been gamed so thoroughly.
There is evidence that multiple new countries signed up as ISO members *specifically* to vote in OOXML. If so, that's an extremely large scale procedural attack. If this is the first time that a procedural attack on that scale has been attempted, then the whole situation only implies that the ISO wasn't prepared to withstand an attack of that magnitude (and now are trying to cover their asses in response).
Now, if that is what occurred and the ISO goes on refusing to admit to the problem rather than trying to fix it then the ISO name will no longer be worth trusting - but the ISO still has a month or so to make a procedural catch on this issue, fix the problem, and save their reputation.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Standards should be allowing open markets to flourish and they can't do this if the depend solely on a given operating system, environment or application. They can't do this when they allow proprietary extensions willy nilly. Where's this mentioned in the FAQ? The "market place" didn't decide diddley squat. ISO had a opportunity to give the âoemarket placeâ a chance but instead decided to assist a proven abusive and monopolistic company in it's bid to remain to moving target when it comes to being interoperable and compatible. How the hell does ISO get it's funding anyway? I sure hope it ain't public. The funding should be cut off. Anyways, I'm sure Microsoft will be more than willing to take up the slack.
The FAQ is all about not fixing it. They're rationalizing about how they have great process and how they have to accept the result of that process. The fix is in.
And Microsoft? Now that they've built this grand machine for subverting ISO do you expect them to use it once and then throw it away? Not likely. Their duty to their shareholders and all that...
You can stick a fork in the ISO. They're done.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
... and anybody else shouldn't, either.
Unless they cancel the Standardization of OOXML immediately and furthermore establish a reasonable code of conduct for itself and for all the national bodies that are entitled to vote.
Yes, this does bring suspicion on the validity of the other standards.
I don't think ISO realizes how much damage they've done to themselves here. ISO certification is supposed to guarantee that no matter what, your process is sound. ISO's own process has failed here, and everybody knows it. If ISO themselves can't even adhere to an ISO process, what value is their certification? What value is any ISO standard?
A standard, by definition should be fully implementable by any party. You do not have to have secret knowledge to make a video cassette or a VHS videotape player. You do not have to reverse engineer the pinout on a DB25 RS232C interface to get data-in and data-out. These standards are open and documented to be implementable, to create common interfaces for various vendors to assure basic cross-compatibility.
Whatever the ISOs procedures, what Microsoft has got certified is a standard that, at best, can only be partially implemented without inside knowledge as to certain formats that remain proprietary. The standard is so hard to implement that Microsoft hasn't even produced a full-blown implementation yet.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I'm not going to pretend I know that much about this, but that is my fear too...if ISO continues to defend this decision they are risking a loss of good faith, or perhaps a loss of confidence. The publicly known irregularities should be enough for ISO to admit they made a mistake and restart the standardization process. I think anything "fast-tracked" should be considered suspicious.
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... to prevent people from altering their posts in ways that will make the rest of a thread impossible to understand. There is a particularly clever kind of trolling where someone creates a rabidly inflammatory post, waits until a horde of people have responded to the over-the-top comments in that post, and then re-edits the original so that the criticism is a lot more even-tempered... which makes it appear that the people who are responding to the post in its original form have gone off the deep end. Not being able to edit your posts pretty much makes that impossible.
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