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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.
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!!
The question is, is this something that the average Norwegian will actually care about? Obviously it's something that worries /.ers and given Microsoft's previous record on all things imaginable it ought to worry everybody else, but in the grand scheme of things is the average person going to even know how they will be affected by the adoption of OOXML as a standard?
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right" - Salvor Hardin
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..."
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.
The delusional hubris of a (European standards group) bureaucrat that they can somehow "control" or "improve" (shit - "influence in any non-quantum way") Microsoft's behavior just makes me groan.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
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.
That is corruptible as well. The trick here is be sure all coders both writer and reviewer FULLY disclose their affiliations. You couldn't even begin to do this Wikipedia style. No pseudonyms, no handles, everybody has to use their real names and digging into and publicly disclosing corporate actions and affiliations would be cricket.
Even then, if 5000 MS coders blatantly write and approve each other how would you propose to handle it?
I suspect the answer here is "Write up what is actually being implemented into an RFC. Any RFC that can't be understood clearly and implemented will be dev nulled." Since many of us are already disregarding the ISO over this, I suppose that is happening already..........
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.
I like paragraph 2:
... besides simply stating there is no conflict?
Q: Many consider ODF and OOXML to be equivalent document standards, and as ODF had already become an ISO standard, the question was raised as to whether ISO/IEC can have two competing standards.
A: This question was settled early in 2007 by ISO and IEC centrally, who stated that there was no clash of interest between the two standards.
That's a convincing argument. Does anyone know what actual argument ISO is using to state there is no conflict
Not much, because the anti-OOXML side lost too much credibility when they decided to go with FUD instead of purely technical arguments. For example, they slammed OOXML because it only gave the names of the hash algorithms that were allowed for password hashing, rather than actually specifying those algorithms. Yet ODF doesn't even give the names. All it says is that you should use password hashing. No mention of the allowed algorithms. No mention of how to note in the document what algorithm was used. This is just one of many examples.
And they keep generating new FUD, too. Take a look at the recent article on Groklaw (within the last 3 days) on the OSP license that OOXML is under. Groklaw says it requires payment of a royalty. There's no indication of where they came up with that, but it has no connection with reality. Worse, they say that it does not allow sublicensing, and that licenses that do not allow sublicensing are incompatible with FOSS. The problem with this is that the BSD license does not allow sublicensing either, which means that, if Groklaw is right, Linux is illegal, as it mixes BSD code in with GPL code. Worse, GPLv3 explicitly disallows sublicensing, so if Groklaw is right, GPLv3 is not compatible with FOSS!
If you are against something, it is very important to NOT LIE ABOUT it. If you lie about it, that just hurts your credibility, meaning that any arguments of yours that are not lies will likely be dismissed.
C. Push for a standards body that can't be bought by the highest bidder. Then call for the dissolution of the ISO.
I've thought an awful lot of ISO standards were a joke before. They seem to be more interested in codifying whatever is already being used---no matter how awful---than in actually coming up with standards that are in any way useful. This just confirmed that opinion beyond reasonable doubt....
Frankly, it makes me wonder how much corruption has gone unnoticed in previous ISO standards simply because it was not as blatant....
Just my $0.02.
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That, and the fact that a real standard shouldn't have to be improved upon after its codification. Sure, improvements will arise, and can be submitted through the proper channels.
It's a standard. It should be done before it gets ISO'd. Not the other way around, and especially not as the main reason: "Let's certify this SO it can be improved."
- A complete test suite for judging compliance.
- Two independent (no shared code) implementations.
- One of the implementations to be under a license no more strict than the revised BSD license, and ideally in the public domain.
Then, Microsoft could buy OOXML by 'simply' documenting enough behaviour that it is possible to implement it, writing a set of conformance tests, and funding the development of an open source competitor.I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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.
This Norway Meeting Summary does not surprise me. Having observed my share of local and state-level government meetings, the politician often knows the answer he wants, and it's merely a matter of twisting the vote to make it say "yes". It happens often.
I suspect the FCC Chairman used similar tactics in order to push-thru HDTV and HD Radio even though most engineers/technicians objected that the system had serious flaws (especially in the latter case of HD Radio).
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
"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