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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?'"
... for their NEW international standard, "how to act like a complete jackass when deciding to adopt an international standard."
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
A: Sorry, but we can't hear you over the sound of us thumbing through all these big stacks of cash.
The enemies of Democracy are
I cannot count the times people have asked me "What was the post-BRM voting on ISO/IEC 29500?"
Maybe they should rename themselves the "International Organization for Vague and Undefined Standardization, To Be Decided By The Market"
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
So they're basically saying: "Since we've done a lot of successful standards before, there can't possibly be anything wrong with how this one was carried out."
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
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.
Pounds-mass predates slugs. Of course it helps that the concept of "pounds" also predates the concept of a distinction between weight and mass.
Because people don't measure their weight. They measure their mass. How much that mass happens to weigh at sea level or somesuch is unimportant, since it's the total quantity of matter that composes you that is the health concern.
But what is curious is that metric-users do use the idea of "kgs force" for things that are force measurements, when a perfectly acceptable newton already exists.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
What people think of the 'standard' is totally relevant. Simply blindly accepting something as the golden rule is ignorant, and this will (probably) lower the esteem of this standards body for a very long time. That is damaging to the purpose of standards, and part of the reason that there are not 47 international standards bodies. Since OOXML is not the only specification out there, it behoves anyone with contrary feelings to promote their favorite standard rather than try to bring down OOXML. Okay, back to your logic problems. How do you promote your own favorite standard without verbally bashing this one that is trying to supplant the good value of your favorite standard?
Yes, I know that sounds like being negative, but you must remember that using OOXML as a design example of what standards SHOULD NOT BE is a valid method to promote the standard of your choice.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
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.
brennanw (5761)
One would think you'd be used to it by now.
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.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
...if ISO was paid in euros or dollars. You'd probably want to fast-track to this degree if your bribe goes down in value the longer you take.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
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.
"A number of such claimed contradictions were identified...//...It is possible that others may still remain, but these can be taken care of during the maintenance of the standard."
Am I to interpret this as meaning that when they find problems with the standrad, they will change the standard to 'fix' it?
If my interpretation is correct, I wonder where this leads us. I could end up having bought a number of licences for some software that conforms to the standard, only to find, a month or two later, that they have altered the standard.
Since there is a great deal of movement in the EU to accept only standardised file formats, where would this leave me and my umpteen licences? When I bought the software it followed the standard, but does not later. Can I expect the manufacturer to provide me a free upgrade/patch, or is my software to be considered still standards-compliant, or will I simply have to fork out more money for the latest, currently compliant, version?
And the situation gets more interesting when you reverse it: suppose I get the absolutely latest version of some compliant software, and save a file that I send to someone with an older, now not compliant, version of the same software. How should this older version handle my file? should it spit out an error message: "I cannot open this standards compliant file, because the standard has been updated too much"? Or should it open the file and do the best it can? Or should it notify the user that this particular file is newer than the software and might not render correctly?
I can't help but think that a lot of potential problems would have been avoided if the work around this particular standard had been allowed to take it's time, so that a technically sound standard was accepted.
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.
ODF: 5+ applications can write the format.
OOXML: Zero applications can write the format.
ODF Wins!
As is a bigoted, insensitive, shallow asshole.
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.
IETF requires demonstrated interoperability using prototype reference implementations before they will adopt a standard.
ISO generally first adopts standards, then waits for people to prototype implementations and discover the bugs in the standard (unless someone walks in with existing technology and asks for it to be standardized). When people start reporting that aspects of the standard can't be implemented, ISO works on fixing it.
After ISO adopted the Open System Interconnection (OSI) standards, they had to set up "implementers' workshops" to figure out how to make their newly adopted standards workable. (The OSI standards are the 7-layer reference model and related protocol suite that were pushed aside by the Internet protocol suite, a.k.a TCP/IP. Many OSI protocols were never fully implemented or never made to work.)
The workshops met (one was sponsored by NIST) and produced a lot of documents on things that needed to be done to make OSI work. When the Clinton/Gore administration came into office, they killed US government support for the OSI protocols and told its agencies to use the Internet protocols.
There's also evidence that multiple new people signed up *specifically* to vote against OOXML - it cuts both ways.
... 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?
I've seen many articles that discredit OOXML that have raised specific verifiable issues. What verifiable evidence of your claims do you offer?
to do so would destroy ISO's credibility in the wider world
And to not do so would destroy ISO's credibility in the wider world, as well.
Many ISO standards have had flaws before; now adding corruption and outright blatant incompetence at their primary purpose to the list of sins will impact ISO relevance. Perhaps that was partially Microsofts intention; the end result is more likely to be a migration to a standards building process with more integrity.
This will work
No it wont. This isn't 1990 where people communicate through mass media or read books and encyclopedias to get information. Anyone using the internet to look up ISO will come across references to the corruption in question.
A bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
Part of the reason for ISO standards is so a product can be deemed standards compliant. Is it ISO itself that determines whether an individual product complies to the standard?
I'm curious, because I've heard that no product, including Microsoft's, currently follows the OOXML standard... and I wonder if there's a chance they never will? I suspect it may not be possible.
Or are Microsoft products going to be rubberstamped for the approval process as well, even if their implementation is buggy?
you're doing it wrong. first you need to compare your mass to a reference using a balance scale, THEN you use a spring scale to measure the weight force (in newtons) your body produces. with the two values at hand, you divide your weight by your mass, and the result should be 9.8
using only a spring scale in your bathroom simply won't tell you anything, unless you calibrate it everyday with copy of the international prototype kilogram (IPK).
man, this is the second time in less than a week that i post something absolutelly pedantic... should i start to worry ?
What ? Me, worry ?
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.
Win a signed Stephen Carpenter ESP Guitar from the Deftones: http://def-tag.com/?r=0008781
... 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.
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
There's evidence -- circumstantial though it may be -- that entire COUNTRIES signed up their standards committees as P members to vote for the proposed OOXML standard. There's a difference between that and individual companies joining a national committee to vote one way or the other.
Now, with respect to those individual companies, I would never dream of saying that Google is not 100% capable of reviewing the proposed standard independently and deciding it's of poor enough quality that they must to join the committee in order to vote against it.
I similarly cannot say with 100% certainty whether or not the other companies who joined those same committees and happened to have contracts with Microsoft and who voted for the proposed standard were capable of and did independently review the proposed standard before voting.
FYI: In the interest of fairness, I will state that I do work for IBM, but these are my own opinions.
But that does not excuse ISO. On receipt of this monster ISO could have laughed, refused it, and revoked their recognition of ECMA as a standard setting body for cause. They could have used a less harsh method of censure amounting to "get away from me kid, I've got work to do."
ISO didn't do that. Instead it went through the drama in three acts that was the validation of this garbage. Now in this FAQ they tell us they monitored the process quite closely all the way through. That means they observed all of the shenanigans in real time and allowed them complicitly. At the end they tell us how proud they are of their process. Since the whole way through the rules changed at every step dynamically to force the approval and silence dissent they imply that was their intent and the result is the one they desired: approval at any cost.
The price of "approve at any cost" appears to be their credibility. Now they've no credibility left and ECMA has none to lend them.
The status of international standards body of record is a prestigious one. With it comes a hefty responsibility. You don't get to blame the other guy. The other guy is not ISO.
They're toast.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
If competing standard need to be decided by the marketplace, then what the hell do we have an ISO for?!