Unix Group Takes UK Standards Body To Court Over OOXML

superglaze writes "Halfway through the two-month window of opportunity during which OOXML's ISO standardization can be derailed by a formal objection from a national standards body, the UK Unix Users Group is trying to force the British Standards Institution to do just that. According to the Unix Users Group, the BSI used a flawed decision-making process when they chose to approve OOXML in the ISO vote. 'The UKUUG is also folding in many other complaints about Office Open XML (OOXML), such as unresolved patent issues and a lack of completion in the specification's documentation, and is calling for the High Court of Justice to force a judicial review of the BSI's decision.' This is not the first time a country's ISO vote has been challenged."

Comments

Where are the mods?

[Quinn_Inuit]

I've got some karma to burn, so here's something blatantly off-topic. Where are the mods? I've hardly seen any comments above a 2 for the last several stories. Is nobody moderating anymore? Do I have my preferences set wrong? Feel free to reply as AC so you don't lose karma answering me. I'm just curious here.

Re:Anyone else

[rtb61]

You also left out the single most important issue because of the importance of international standards in providing standards by which the quality of goods and services can be measured and quantified to ensure reasonable quality and safe use.

The blatant visible corruption of the international standards will only lead to substantially increased costs to validate goods and services across international borders as ISO would have to be abandoned due to the fear that any nonsense standard to be used as B$ marketing would start getting approved.

So it goes far beyond just a computer document standard, it has an impact upon every other industry, every other product and every other service that makes use of international standards, it has cost ramifications across the board. M$ executive team and board of directors willingness to continue with the process after they had already been caught out speaks of their total arrogance and utter disregard for every other business or person on the planet.

Re:I am lost?

[DarkOx]

The real problem with ooXML is that its a bad standard. Its bad because it really fails to specify how to encode a document. It fails in essentially two major place. The first could be corrected, its simply that there are a number of ambiguities around the formating(display),percision(display), and storage(document) of non integer numeric values. A spread sheet should calculate and spit out the same results regardless of the software you open it in.

The second issue is ooXML allows large binary blobs of virtually any type to be encoded in the document. Binary in XML and in office documents is not all bad. Certainly for multi-media type things like pictures and sounds its appropriate. I would argue however that there should be limits on WHAT binary formats are allowed. Those should reference other standards. Being able to parse out the stucture of a document only to discover all the content is locked up in some binary format you have no idea what the stucture of is, is downright useless. The reason for standards is so that people can interoperate if you can't do that then the standard is broken.

Before people jump all over me about how being able to interoperate does not mean that you can display he document exactly as it is in Word or whatever let me say "I know that". The content should be accessible though. Rendering should be about how the user wants to display it. A blind person might want a text to speach enginge to read a document to them. The standard should allow them in all cases to dump out the text data from the document. It should be possible to run into the binary objects and have the software say "there is an image here" etc etc. That's usefull "Document, contains unkown data" is not.

Re:This molehill is gigantic!

[KiltedKnight]

The only valid point against OOXML is that it contains unclear and/or unimplementable aspects, thus denying others from the ability to create supporting implementations. However, if this is the case, and MS is unwilling to create OOXML implementations for non-MS/Apple platforms, how successful do you really expect the standard to be? Which in and of itself is a reason ISO should've rejected it in the first place, based on their own requirements... that a proposed open standard have a fully working implementation. No such thing exists for OOXML.

The UKUUG taking legal action over the corruption in the vote doesn't make them look like whiners. It makes them look like learned elders who are about to take a stick to a bunch of delinquents.

No, it looks like they are whining over a decision that didn't go their way.

No, it makes them look like they've looked at the ISO procedures, requirements, etc, and said, "Hey, this is completely out-of-the-ordinary!"

No, it just says to onlookers that Microsoft's standard is so advanced that even the best and brightest of the computing world can't implement the difficult parts of it. OMFG, do you even believe what you're posting? Anything that's too advanced for anyone to implement has no business being in a standard. A standard should be explaining the interactions, not obfuscating them. If the standard cannot be implemented, IT IS NOT A STANDARD .

Re:I am lost?

[surmak]

I agree with your statement, and with the parent, but there is one other piece which has I have not seen addressed anywhere.

It seems that Microsoft has convinced a number of organizations, that unless OOXML is approved, governments will be unable to used the MS Office software which they have been dependent on for years. Add in training costs, and user resistance to anything new IT organizations within (and without) various governments are convinced that they need ISO approval for OOXML so that they can continue to use MS Office.

Of course MS could, if they wanted to, add an ODF filter to office, and make it as good as the native format. They could propose a TC (ISO speak: technical corregendium) to include missing features, but it is better for them not to do so and instead threaten IT organizations around the world with losing a piece of software they depend on (due to a potential requirement to use open / standard file formats), and in that way have recruited them to the MS cause.