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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."
We can do both.
It's called teamwork. While one group is building the tools you mention, others are putting themselves in the path of an 800 lb. gorilla. It's not just the heroes who save the day, but all of the little people in red shirts that buy them time.
> The best thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from.
You're damn right. But OOXML is not a standard. A standard has to be documented properly and (which is more important) completely. OOXML satisfies neither of these conditions. So it's not a standard.
> Standing around crying because Microsoft bought a standard...
I'm tired of people like you. Look buddy, we're crying not because "Microsoft bought a standard". We're crying because a half-baked specification got recognized as a standard. We're crying because, in the near future, people will distribute documents in a format that is "according to ISO xxxx-yyyy" but in reality incompletely defined.
And it's not mutually exclusive with fighting OOXML. So you shoot yourself in the foot by appearing to want to go technologically backwards and like whiny bitches at the same time. Wow, nice spin-doctoring.
The alternative is to say nothing, which would be seen as tacit acceptance -- and then we would actually be forced to implement this "standard". So we're damned if we do, and damned if we don't. At least this way, there's a chance we'll get the decision reversed.
Because I care a lot more about actually working with ODF (and not working with ODF) then looking good by cooperating with OOXML in any way. Save the energy you want to spend on protests and lawsuits and direct it towards building a better product. See, the problem is, we tried that, and it didn't work.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Very likely bribed various national delegations so that they'd approve OOXML. In fact, quite a few third-world countries joined the standards process specifically to vote for OOXML, and then do nothing else. Bribery is the only plausible explanation, because approving OOXML otherwise goes strongly against their own self interest (because OOXML is unimplementable by anyone other than (and perhaps even including) Microsoft, and therefore they would be tying themselves to a "standard" controlled by a foreign corporation with no free implementation.
ISO let the bribery and committee-stuffing happen, fast-tracked the process when there was no good reason to do it and many good reasons not to, completely ignored its own processes and procedures during the approval process, gave woefully too little time for comments and debate, ratified the standard despite voting irregularities in several countries, and ignored the public when they pointed all this shit out!
Any other silly questions?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I thought the advantage of standards was to reduce divergence in systems. The more implementations of particular items, such as screws, conform to a standard, such as phillips head, the better it is for the people who use screws.
Energy has/is being focused on implementations of another standard and there are already good implementations of the formats you mention from numerous sources including Microsoft.
The problem with OOXML is that it cannot be implemented by anyone other than a single vendor because the format as defined contains references to specific behavior without actually specifying said behavior.
Where a vote has been passed on an obviously incomplete specification and through such blatant corruption, it should be challenged. This is the duty of anyone who values freedom and democracy - and for people intelligent enough to appreciate the importance of the the rule of law. The fact that the format was pushed through by Microsoft in particular is irrelevant to this point.
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. And all power to them.
Protest against the standardization of OOXML doesn't appear technologically backwards when conducted in an appropriate forum and it portrays OOXML as the backwards step it truly is.
As the web makes it possible for more devices from more vendors to inter-operate seamlessly, along comes a format which is only really implementable by one vendor. If someone was to try this with heads or threads, they'd be totally screwed. Microsoft needed to pay to have this pass and by highlighting that at every step of the way, the more money they pour into this, the more corrupt they appear and the more they blacken their own name.
Oh nonononono. Silly little monkey.
This is not about a product. This is about a format to be implemented by anyone who can read a specification
A reasonable open standard already exists.
Using the judiciary to defeat corruption wherever it exists is entirely correct. That is one of the reasons for it's existence.
Toss pot
I don't therefore I'm not.
Standards are important.
My car is made by $COMPANY1.
I can buy tires for it made by $COMPANY2.
I can put them on wheels made by $COMPANY3.
I can tighten the weelnuts with a wrench from $COMPANY4.
You get the idea?
I'm sure that $COMPANY1 would just love to sell me everything to do with my car from the tires on up, but they can't because it's all STANDARD.
STANDARDS are good for consumers, Monopolies are not.
Because those of us that have and are sent Word documents in email give a shit.
Because those of us that go to school and are told to type our papers in Word and to turn in .doc files give a shit.
Because those of us who take online classes and have to download Word documents give a shit.
Because those of us that work in governments and want to be able to exchange information with other agencies give a shit.
Because libraries that believe in open and easily accessible information give a shit.
Because those of us that don't want to use MS Word give a shit.
Because those of us that can't afford MS Word give a shit.
Because makers of other office suites give a shit.
Because those of use that use FOSS give a shit.
Because historians don't want to rely on a MS rosetta stone give a shit.
Because I give a shit.
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If Microsoft was really interested in standards at all they would simply have filed complaints against ODF so those involved could fix them.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
Would you care to give an example of such an independent implementation? According to Alex Brown, the person who convened the Ballot Resolution Meeting for ISO/IEC, Microsoft's own current current implementation does not conform to the 'standard'
Ah, NOW I see what you mean. Why, in fact, I've just implemented the standard myself right here:
main(){exit(1);}
What do you mean my implementation doesn't conform? Neither does Microsoft's.
The issue is that OOXML is an inferior "standard", which has been forced through the process using bribery, corruption and ignorance, and all while a superior standard for the same thing already exists. If microsoft were truly interested in standards and interoperability at all, they would have implemented the existing standard, and joined it's steering committee when they were first invited several years ago.
We don't want to be forced to use that inferior format, simply because microsoft bought and paid for enough people at standards boards, as this will hurt the industry as a whole. It's only microsoft who stands to benefit from OOXML, everyone else loses in one way or another.
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There is plenty of documentation of voting irregularities, which at the very least should be investigated before OOXML can be ratified.
The fast track process is for existing "defacto standards" that are widely used and implemented, and only really need a rubber stamp. OOXML is not widely implemented nor widely used at this point, it should have gone through the normal process. Perhaps the recent standardisation of PDF as ISO32000 was through the fast track, and would have deserved being fast tracked.
According to ISO guidelines, standards should reuse existing standards, preferably ISO ones... OOXML does not, it does mostly the same thing as ODF but in a completely different way, it also stores dates in a way conflicting with existing ISO standards, stores country codes in a different way, stores measurements in a different way and more. Thus it is in violation of ISO guidelines and should not have been approved.
There are other more specific issues, plenty documented out on the web... But the 3 above show where they have violated ISO rules, which should at the very least be enough to kick ooxml off the fast track and into the regular process.
As for ignoring it, unfortunately microsoft are large enough that they can force their inferior format on the market, so it will be impossible to ignore. If the market were free, and people were able to choose products based on technical merit microsoft wouldn't be anywhere near as big as they are.
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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.
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--Joe