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.

Comments

Re:Standards Norway's own words

[Danse]

on why & how they changed the vote can be found at their website: Which was just a very long-winded way of saying that the decision had been made long ago and they just had to come up with some weasely way to push it through regardless of all the comments that weren't addressed satisfactorily, the problems with the proposed standard, and what the experts said about it.

Re:Nothing needs to be done

[QuantumG]

If you can't read the whole thing then it is pointless implementing the standard. You'll get "almost works" which is the same as "broken".

And, really, the US military does this multiple supplier requirement for hardware only.. they dabbled with it on the software side with the POSIX requirements, but that's about it.

Further coverage

[Xenographic]

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.

Re:I was kind of puzzled

[SgtPepperKSU]

I suggest you go read the article again.
It wasn't 2 people for and 2 people against. They reached a consensus that 2 of the comments had been satisfactorily resolved and that 2 of the comments hadn't been satisfactorily resolved. They then couldn't come to a consensus on whether the remaining 8 comments were resolved. The 80% number was the number of people that were not satisfied enough to vote yes.
They had agreed that 2 of their comments were not satisfactorily resolved. Which way the remaining 8 comments fell could only increase this number. Roughly 80% of those present didn't want to vote yes.
The final change to yes came down to one man, who seems to have had his mind made up ahead of time.

Re:You are at fault.

[SanityInAnarchy]

I find it odd you didn't mention OpenOffice, Google Docs, KOffice, iWork, etc. Most would at least mention OpenOffice sarcastically, as another "option" that couldn't possibly work, but you didn't mention it at all.

Perhaps you don't know that they exist?

Re:I was kind of puzzled

[LingNoi]

So then, why did not the 80% form a consensus that they should vote 'no'? Saying that they were not satisfied enough to vote 'yes', does not mean they vote 'no'.

Because there was NO VOTING, IF YOU READ THE ARTICLE YOU WOULD KNOW THIS!!!!!

Re:Nothing needs to be done

[Daengbo]

That's nice, except the SDK is an MSI, installable only on Windows.

Re:Nothing needs to be done

[QuantumG]

I wrote that point, and no, it doesn't resolve that problem. "different vendors" means an independent second source.. meaning that if Microsoft decide to discontinue support for OOXML in 10 years time you can switch to another vendor who has the ability to keep fixing bugs in their implementation.

I can't believe I have to explain this.

Re:Nothing needs to be done

[I'm Don Giovanni]

"Anyone except open source programmers, since the license for ooxml is incompatible with the GPL."

Huh, I didn't know that "open source programmers" == "GPL". There are many OSI licenses that ARE compatible with OOXML even if GPL is not. And I don't concede your point even regarding GPL, since Gnumeric implements OOXML with GPL code.

"As well, the patent situation is another large roadblock for open source (not to mention anyone else). So really, not just anyone can use it."

The patent provisions are the same as for ODF.
Jason Matusow has recently posted two blog entries regarding the IP issues regarding OOXML (and compares it with ODF, PDF, etc), which are very good reads. (Yes, he works for Microsoft, so you might just dismiss him as a liar, but if you're willing to read Rob Weir and Groklaw, and take what they have to say as unquestioned Gospel, you might want to at least take a look what the other side has to say; if anything it'll make your own arguments stronger in the future.)
More Open XML Discussion - more misunderstandings about standards and IP
IP, RAND, Standards, OSP, ISP - the conversation continues...

Here's an excerpt from the first blog entry:

The ISO/IEC JTC 1 patent policy is applied uniformly to all standards in the ISO/IEC JTC 1 arena. The idea that the RAND declaration regarding Open XML is any different than a RAND declaration for ODF or for any other ISO Standard (such as...oh I don't know...how about PDF just for fun. Remember the huge list of patents that Adobe used to put on the welcome screen of the Acrobat reader alone?). The terms provided for the Microsoft patents in Open XML are legally irrevocable. They are global. Since they are broader than the RAND declaration for JTC 1, the attempt at FUD by the Groklaw post should be recognized for what it is...FUD.

Incidentally, both of the above blog entries point out that Linux distros already ship software under licenses that are incompatible with each other, making today's Linux distros technically illegal already. In the second blog entry, Jason goes on to say regarding this:

Legal snags like the ones I mentioned only matter if someone presses it in a court case. No one can say if these issues will ever become an issue but that has never stopped a single person from using Linux. So, when people then say that the MS OSP, or IBM's ISP, or RAND terms, or whatever means that Free Software developers can't develop something, I find it hard to take seriously when the intent, and all of the materials surrounding these actions speak of building bridges and enabling...not shutting down or threatening. Those same developers are willing to take those exact same issues as no concern on one hand and then scream foul on the other.

(BTW, regarding the GPL, I'll quote a comment made by 'hAL' to the second blog entry:
"Both the 'Interoperability Specification Pledge' from IBM (on for instance ODF v1.0/v1.1) and Suns 'Covenant Not to Sue' suffer from the same issue with GPL as Microsofts OSP licensing. GPL3 code can be reused outside the limits of those RAND licenses. Any patent protection by IBM and Sun on OpenDocument and from Micrsoft on OOXML will not apply if the GPL code is reused in a project that does not fall under those licenses. As Suns covenant only applies to OpenDocument reuse of patent protected code from an ODF code for anything else but an ODF implementation voids the covenant.")

Anyway, the post to which I replied talked of nobody being able to implement OOXML support besides Microsoft. He didn't say anything about "open source programmers", let alone "GPL". As long as there are other OOXML programs, even if they are closed source programs, ta