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The Inside Story on Norway's Yes to OOXML
Steve Pepper writes "The former Chairman of the Norwegian ISO committee, who resigned two weeks ago in protest against his country's vote of Yes to OOXML, tells the inside story of how the decision was reached: how a single bureaucrat from Standards Norway sidelined the overwhelming majority of Norwegian technical experts and changed Norway's vote from No to Yes. The story is so surreal it's hard to believe." It's as depressing as it is brief.
He's also managed to change their domain suffix to .yes, and their country name to Yesrway.
The real question for me is what can be done now?
- demonstrations? This is what happened in Norway. Sure it would be good to have them elsewhere.
- Virgils? this is what happened in India and almost on the same level.
- moving on a building teams to stifle OOXML adoption by national governments as their standard
- ???
I didn't find the article all that depressing, just oddly disheartening. but I guess that makes sense... I didn't find it all that brief either.
01110000 01010111 01101110 00110011 01100100
After the vote, did the bureaucrat jump up and starting dancing like a monkey?
After the vote did the bureaucrat start throwing chairs around?
Did the bureaucrat appear slightly chubby and a whole lot balding?
If the answer to any of the above is yes, I might be able to shed some insight on this...
The Mothership
"Hereâ(TM)s my version of the story.
It is not impartial."
Thank you for your honesty.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
Its brevity actually cheered me up a bit.
The whole OOXML vote debacle has really showcased corruption of the ISO. Those in the ISO who want to restore the integrity of their organization need to address the massive rule-breaking this vote and Microsoft's role in it present.
Word of advice to ISO: head in the sand is not going to help!!
...SegFaultLikeWord95DoesIt
In this case, a meatspace seg fault. The MCP is getting more powerful. We need a heroic Program to save us all.
I am becoming gerund, destroyer of verbs.
Everyone who buys Microsoft Office supports this abuse to some extent or another.
How about taking some responsibility for your own actions.
Get used to it.
It's Dick Cheney's world, were just living on it - til' he needs to wipe us off.
Microsoft is just another example of the American disease that typifies their culture. By culture, I refer to something that can be grown, in a petrie dish. The American metaphor is that of the cancer, metastatic, it devours everything it can - demolishing its own food supply. Microsoft represents the apotheosis of this "culture" in commerce - as the Rep/Dem political duopoly of endless war represents this in the sphere of political relations.
Vote, little people! Vote! Ha hah ha!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
It will be interesting to see where the inevitable money trail leads. My guess is several of the 20% who effectively blocked the consensus. I think the "single bureaucrat" was non-technical and probably just went with "MS is big corp. Trust big corp. Nobody ever got sacked for backing big corp." (although on this last point he may be proved wrong).
Surreal? Yes. Over? No.
Our second year of CS studies covered these various organizations to a certain degree and the more I learn about their real world conducts, the more they seems like a sham !
As a recent graduate,a strong proponent of open source and above all a decent citizen, how am I supposed to react to news like this and not boycott Microsoft.
The only things that are standard about them are their dirty tactics. Throw me a goddamn chair Mr. Ballmer !
He's been doing the same thing for 13 years before this outrage convinced him to retire. The man's reputation and belief in fair process are as clear as the abuse he relates. The story can non be told any other way.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
on why & how they changed the vote can be found at their website:
http://www.standard.no/pronorm-3/data/f/0/18/67/6_2401_0/2008-04-01_Standards_Norway_handling_of_the_OOXML_voting_in_ISO__3.pdf
ISO greased!
Brevity of the event might be viewed as a blessing but the repercussions could be forever haunting. Of course he kept the telling brief as well, who would want to talk about that for long?
[Senate fills with enormous applause]
Padmé: [to Bail Organa] So this is how liberty dies... with thunderous applause.
No words of wisedom here.
At this point, in a bizarre and tasteless trans-Atlantic timewarp, Dr. Johnny Fever, Venus Flytrap, Herb Tarlek, and Jeffifer Marlow, dressed as the Spanish Inquisition, burst in, and say, in chorus:
"NO! One expects Les Nessman!"
They bundle up Eugene and haul him off to stunned looks from all present.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
JC: your mood is quite chipper.
Glad to see you're not, like, bummed out, or something, dude.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
i have to agree and as an American i have to say it is one aspect of my country i am ashamed of...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Many (if not most) similar committees and associations are made up not of the right people for the job, but instead those that were corralled into the positions or couldn't find anything better.
On the other hand, Microsoft's primary goal is to maintain their privileged monopoly wherever and however possible. I actually had an eerie conversation with a Microsoft paralegal, who described her job as "palm-greasing officials in the Asian market". She also described how the executive were no longer concerned with making money, "they're in a position to change the world". I asked her what level of government they planned to get elected, and she replied, "why would they run for office? That would be a demotion!" And that was almost 10 years ago.
Assuming she was giving a truthful account, and her office was directly below Bill Gates, so I imagine she does know what goes on, the Microsoft executive believe that since power is available to them, they are entitled to use their influence wherever and however possible, and that their ability to do so justifies itself.
So show me a group of vigilante multi-billionaires and I'll show you dozens of half-witted committees that bend to their will, despite overwhelming reasoning to do otherwise.
War as we knew it was obsolete
Nothing could beat complete denial
- Emily Haines
after all the trouble and money spent by microsoft to (corrupt officials) get ms-ooxml passed by the ISO committee if business and enterprises switched to StarOffice/OpenOffice ODF as the standard to share/store data in, i bet that would force the cost of office furniture in Redmond to go way up...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I wondered what alternative standards bodies could exist and I tried to find a web peer method that might work.
/. regulars to tell me what a tit I'm being and why it would never work :-(
The best idea I came up with was a standard body for GPL standards based around something like sourceforge.
If people are familier with wide band delphi estimation then this next bit might sound familiar.
Everybody on sourgeforge has a rating determined by amount of code submitted, and any peer review ratings on their code - this then gives them a weighting value for voting. The more technical they are, the more code they submit the higher their rating is. Everybody can then vote on their amendments or proposals for standards and a moderation scheme would run to promote or demote comments based on their ratings. Changes can then be voted in or removed democratically and the best ideas would naturally float up.
The advantages are:-
1. very large audience peer review of any standard
2. best ideas automatically promoted (even if you are a newbie reviewer if you have a good idea then it should gather momemtum of its own and be promoted)
3. system automatically handles voting, promotion, weighting scale and is therefore impartial arbiter.
4. transparency accross the board, everybody can see how the system works
5. if anybody wants to become more influential then they have to donate more source code to be a prolific reviewer. Everybody benefits.
Ok that is an isolated example, and I chose sourceforge as a well known example.
For standards instead of source there would need to be some changes obviously.
But in this day and age, agreeing on a technical international standard seems an excellent candidate for a web based system. In reviewing this kind of thing I have always thought the more the merrier.
Anyhow, only an idea, a pipe dream really.
I now await the
(I also wondered on how the voting would of turned out if the current provess was peer reviewed - i.e. filmed and distributed for all to see on the standards websites.)
I'm glad that story got exposed. I'm sure there's plenty more nastiness waiting to be dragged kicking and screaming into daylight.
To anyone who has any inside knowledge into the BRM, I say more!
J-F
Microsoft have done it for us. The money they paid to push through their "standard" is wasted because the body the standardized it is no longer respected. Their purpose for seeking approval from a standards body has been defeated by the way in which they obtained it.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Join OOXML forces and show just how devoted you are: In order to preserve the reputation of this beautiful standard, make sure that no company can use the name if they're not 100% compliant with the complete spec. Chances are that no product can claim full OOXML support, not even MS Office. If "OOXML" doesn't appear on any product's feature list, the standard won't matter.
No use getting your knickers in a knot over this. Some years ago we rewired our boat club to the CSU 'standard' of 20 amp plugs. Now I don't know (or really care) how standards are established, but I would tell you that there isn't a boat builder world wide that doesn't use 30 amps. After a couple of seasons of replacing very expensive plugs, we decided that the real standard would prevail....
I don't plan to implement the ISO std. so if you want to talk to my ERP systems you will have to comply with OASIS....moral is that usage determines the standard. End of story
Groklaw also has information on this story for those interested. But some may have missed it because it's part of the update in this story.
I did not know it was common to make crocks of shit so transparent.
It said there were 2 for and 2 against, and about 80% of the people couldn't reach a consensus (sorry folks, 80% saying they could not find a consensus is not the same thing as a consensus against OOXML). Now it doesn't surprise me that a bunch of computer experts in a room couldn't reach a consensus. Getting any computer people to agree on something is like herding cats... it is very difficult. But maybe that is a lesson for people. Some times you have to agree on something. I don't think there is any moral high ground to rail against this bureaucrat who was trying to do his job. He was in a room where, by this article's admission, no one could agree on anything. And a decision still had to be made. The experts it seems weren't willing to come to some common ground and give a coherent recommendation, so he made one himself.
Now hear this!: I don't like OOXML. It is mainly my distrust of MS, I will admit. But they have a track record that doesn't lend itself to trust. However, I still say that computer folks have to start to learn that there are times they can't just go off in their own direction. There are times you have to work together and compromise with the person sitting with you or across the table.
Going by this article, these Norwegian experts couldn't reach a consensus and we see what happened. If 80% had said OOXML is not a good choice and it should not be backed by Norway, I could see people being upset. But it said 2 were for, 2 against, and 80% couldn't come together on anything. That means this was a typical techy cluster **** where no one wanted to give up on their own point. (It is also why we have non techy project managers... they seem to be able to point in a direction and say go... and not worry if it is perfect first.) Suggestion: smarten the **** up and learn to cooperated with someone else for a change. You can't alway "fork" choices in life.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.
What is this K185 that he refers to?
On the Corruption Perception Index http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index, Norway ranked a healthy 9 in 2007 (US was 20th). Let's see if Norway slides.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
YOU HEAR THAT NORWAY?? YOU'RE ON ANONYMOUS COWARD'S ON NOTICE LIST!!
Norway is no better than US. From Norway, to Noway, to Yesway, and today it is M$way. USA Politicians, Corporatist, and Clergy have things in common with Blockheads and many EU Politicians, Corporatist, and Clergy most of them seek money or pleasure using an amoral code of expedition purchased as always best and right.
... no longer will we send our poor children, families, and friends to war in foreign lands. Loyalty will never again be questioned or any oaths of loyalty wanted. The AI/robot military will do many great truly amoral things for homeland/domestic security at the orders of our Politicians, Corporatist, and Clergy leaders. The TS (TimeSpace/ToughShit) mirror shows a complete reversal of the American and French revolutions and the re-emergence of the righteous aristocracy to exploit their serfs/slaves as masters.
US & EU (phonetic, sounds like) Citizens have much to look forward too together. Soon our Warrior Military will evolve into the great big-brother AI/robot military
The Amoral-life will be defined as virtuous; Therefor, all people of honor will again live like immortals, die like heroes, or become living legends with great regret, but none for those they killed. That our poor children, families, and friends are free again to have a future and humanity a great destiny, far more than an AI/robot military will be terminated.
Dang my delusional SciFic personality is ranting again.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
Arma virumque cano, Trojae qui primus ab oris Italiam fato profugus Lavinaque venit litora..."
Hmmm, no mention of India there.
(sorry, couldn't resist a bit of Sunday night snarkiness.)
A post a day keeps productivity at bay.
wosh, that joke cruised over some mods head.
"Even then, if 5000 MS coders blatantly write and approve each other how would you propose to handle it?"
Exactly. The GP advocates a
(x) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante
approach to fighting corruption....
If I have seen further it is by stealing the Intellectual Property of giants.
An "offtopic" mod is not a "not funny" mod.
4/20 may be funny, but I cannot imagine what it has to do with Norway or OOXML.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
When I grow up, I want to have a little army of sockpuppets that shill my posts up, so I can get out of the deep karma hole I've gotten myself into. So I can then troll some more.
Forgive my ignorance (admittedly, I have not been following the whole affair). This isn't me trolling, and I certainly agree that the process used to reach a determination as laid out in the article is questionable. However...
Could someone explain to me:
1) What the problems are with the current proposed standard (other than MS came up with it). I mean, is there something in it that isn't open, or makes software not designed by MS less usable?
2) Why should people should jump up and down and protest this action. Is there some specific point we should worry about?
3) What impact will this have on us?
Likely, I'm missing "the big picture" here, input is welcome.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
In Sri Lanka, the first round of voting was a "Yes", but there were more technical input later to the standards committee which made it a unanimous "No" for the final vote. But again there was so much lobbying which made it an "Abstained".
When deciding to buy Office in order to get my business critical information I should have considered the optiona: a) Not buy office b) go out of busiess due to not being able to get the information that I need in order to operate.
I use NeoOffice, the native Mac port of OpenOffice.org, which is a couple of versions behind OO.org and I haven't had any trouble opening Office 2007 documents and I've opened up several of them. Now whether it can handle macros I don't know as I don't know if any the docs had scripts. If you're counting on being able to open docs and want to make sure anyone you send docs to can also open them them you all need to use the latest MS Office. And MS Windows version, as there are incompatibilities between Office for OS X and Office for Windows. You also ignore *nix users. It may not concern you if you're a closed shop, but for others can be.
FalconShould there be a Law?
This will assuredly be remembered as one of the greatest tragedies of our era. The tale of a desktop documentation format put forth by a large technology firm-- and how it became conditionally approved by an international standards body.
I am sorry, it's difficult for me to write this because I am so deeply hurt by this. How could an international standardizing body standardize a document format created by a large technology company that is not favored by those who frequent this website?
I am absolutely not looking forward to open source firms having to spend time and money implementing this format so I can read my goddamn school documents without booting Windows.
Ladi-... er... well... Gentleman, you are welcome to join my pity party.
The best part of this scandal is how easily the conspirators got caught. Anybody can blog the truth and their voice will spread and amplify instantly if what they say holds any weight. This is a great demonstration of a new paradigm of security.
This was never the case people!!
This kind of manipulation is as old as the voting system itself. It is possible, it works, and there are some who are extremely good at it. And until yesterday, they could easily get away with it as long as the press didn't side against them. Now, we don't even need the press. We no longer depend on journalists to tell us the story. Whistleblowers no longer wish to remain anonymous, and when an insider demonstrates wrong doing, we listen, we act, and we revolt.
It is only a matter of time before bloggers reach critical mass in politics and everywhere else.
I cannot wait for the day our president is a blogger.
Just do nothing. This standard does not serve a purpose.
FYI this is just stating the obivous:
A standard is all about industry experts/leaders reaching a consensus so that others can benefit from a newly found singularity and focus for a specific method.
I observe that regardless of ISO, this is still what *we want*. The industry will naturally try and reach standardization and agreement whether it be through ISO or not.
In this case, it seems clear that ISO recognition of this spec was *not* what we wanted, and not only that, it has been heavily publicized as such. No standard is useful unless it is used, and no standard body is viable unless it follows the desires of whom they represent.
Therefore I argue that not only is this standard already DEAD, it is harmful to ISO. The earlier ISO recognizes this the better. Only retracting the standard will help make up for their wrong doing.
I am sure Norway guy is not stupid. He knows a huge, monstrous and Govt. shaking scandal is just about to happen and tries to get himself out by putting the blame on a single bureaucrat.
It won't be that easy, that decision has a potential to disband whole ISO or setting up a new standards body for IT. Lets not forget the huge prices MS will have to pay if someone (will sure!) finds their link in all of this.
It is not only RMS/Open Source nerds they messed with. They messed with Big Blue and Sun. They really know how these govt. things work.
Those with the money get to define the standards. The more government there is, the more they get to define.
Deleted
Look, a lot of people really didn't like OOXML getting through - but it did - can we please just move on now - it's a tired story - MShaft forces through "standard" - Let's have more balmer quotes on a monday morning.....
Who is he? What's his name, can we have a picture of him? I know that people can change but shall we add him to the community databases of guys to watch? It's like cards in a pokemon games... instead of monsters we have those guys... quite related, aren't they? And we exchange the cards, talk about those monsters...
Looks like we have to do a bit of research ourselves. As in
-is the standard reasonably complete and concise? By most accounts, OOXML fails there but ODF looks better. That could be a reason to pick ODF if YOU have to support it
-is it actually supported? For both formats, there appears to be some support. See
http://www.opendocumentfellowship.com/applications and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML#Application_support.
Note that the ODF supporters are mostly Open Source and the OOXML supporters are from the proprietary camp. So depending on the direction your customer/organization leans to, you might not have much choice in the matter...
C - the footgun of programming languages
I know, yeauggghhh! However, very easy to implement (a simple XSL transform will do the job), but the consequences for anyone trying to start a standards war by abusing their monopolistic position would be significant (and it would really stick in their craw).
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
My new book will capture essential management secrets outline in Yesr mythology. From Thor's mighty Hummer to Odin's three ambrosia lunch, everything will become clear once you inderstand Yesr mythology. Yessir.
Invenio via vel creo
It's not so much "roll over" as "bend over".
They are calling the country NO WAY because of the strange things that are happening here. For example some royal face has a school for talking with the spirits using horses as mediums.
1. bunch of techs in a room couldn't agree. they didn't agree to disagree, they just couldn't agree. subtle but very important difference
2. something had to be decided. again, subtle but important: life goes on, whether you agree what to do or not. getting lost in the minutiae of getting all the tiny quibbling details perfect is oftentimes less important than moving forward with something, anything
3. the non techie guy got fed up, and made things move forward: he forced a decision
that really seems to be about what happened here. and that really seems to be about the best anyone could do in this situation
the problem is the issue of open-ended versus closed systems. a techie tries to get the system closed and distill a perfect solution. but real life dictates that some things, especially a standard as complex as this, have a few grey area points no one can agree upon
then it becomes less important to get that grey area right, and more important to move forward. this drives perfectionist nuts. but if perfectionists ran the world, nothing would ever get done. there would just be endless meetings like the one described here
the bureaucrat killed the endless minutiae. the bureacrat did the right thing. the techies in the room fail to understand life is not about an endless meeting on minutiae
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
(Dilbert tries to defend keeping his project to no avail)
PHB: I'm not seeing your so-called "point". I'll recommend your project for inclusion in the new budget. When we go over budget, it'll be the first one to be killed anyway.
Dilbert: There's nothing more dangerous than a resourceful idiot.
(My point? In environments where influence can have sway over significant decisions, political shenanigans can trump sound reasoning and technical merit.)
"We are Microsoft. You shall be assimilated. Competition is futile."
In case you have to explain this to somebody who has a cargo cult mentality towards "rules", the problem with this process is it is supposed to give certain parties a vote in the results, but the votes it gives them are worthless because they can't sway any decisions one way or another.
Under the interpretation of the rules used by the person chairing the meeting, he has the exclusive personal power to determine the result of the votes in advance. If the formality of "voting" doesn't give him what he wants, he declares them as "inconclusive", dismisses some dissenting parties, and repeats until he gets the results that he wants.
What makes this particular instance a scandal is that the process went on so long it exposed its essential nature, which is that the decision is made by one person and the "vote" is only there to hide the fact. There are many democratic processes that are undermined by the ability of special interests to out wait the public interest, whether it is the developer who can afford to go to every zoning board meeting or the lobbyist who can parlay access to national politicians into handsome fees. It's rare that they are exposed as the cheating they are.
There's always a high minded excuse, as in this case it's the idea that approving OOXML will give ISO members the power to influence the specification in the future. These excuses never stand up to objective scrutiny. What they're saying is they'll take away the parties' voting rights this time, but next time it will be different. If the voting rights meant anything at all, why not put this justification itself to a vote? "Resolved: notwithstanding any concerns with OOXML as a standard, that OOXML be adopted as a standard with the understanding that ISO will control the resolution of those concerns."
If the process doesn't allow such a resolution to be passed by vote, why would it allow it to be created by fiat?
The reason people should get angry at this is because this kind of reason is something that should never go unchallenged. We shouldn't allow ourselves to become accustomed to it.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
"Incompetent manager type makes bad technical decision against his technical staff." Welcome to the IT industry. That's the rule that breaks the exception.
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
...including the blogger, if the same farce had taken place but the VP had said "Yes"? I bet the number would be, oh, roughly ZERO. LOL. Now, that is a stupid way to make a decision, but surely there was some process established long before this meeting for making this type of decision, I mean, they didn't seem to just come into the meeting and make all new rules. Unless the process was known prior to the meeting, there can't be any conspiracy about getting the Norway Standards guys to disagree (or seeding the other votes with 'yes' in order in order to push it up to the VP), and if the process was known before, why wasn't the process objected to? Why doesn't this guy talk about that?
It sounds very much like a lot of information is being left out in his account, although whatever is left out the decision making process sounds ludicrous.
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Of course ranking tables are not as important as the actual scores. The first six are all within a +-1% band (9.3 +- 1%) meaning that any ranking within that band is really pointless since the margin of error is likely wider than 1%. Norway is slightly below this first band, USA is significantly below, but still above most others.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
You'd think with the level of intelligence needed to work with computers that people who view this site would react with thinking as opposed to emotion. It also kind of makes me think that a lot of people are spoiled these days. They all want their own way and don't understand it doesn't always work that way. And if you don't sometimes compromise, you will end up with what you were really afraid of. Thanks for the support.
-- I ignore anonymous replies to my comments and postings.