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South Africa Appeals ISO Decision On OOXML
mauritzhansen sends us a blog post by Steve Pepper, former chairman of the Norwegian standards committee responsible for evaluating OOXML, reporting that the South African national standards body, SABS, has appealed against the result of the OOXML DIS 29500 ballot in ISO. From the blog: "In a letter sent to the General Secretary of the IEC (co-sponsor with ISO of JTC1), the SABS expresses its 'deep concern over the increasing tendency of international organizations to use the JTC 1 process to circumvent the consensus-building process that is the cornerstone to the success and international acceptance of ISO and IEC standards.' Having resigned as Chairman of the Norwegian committee responsible for considering OOXML for exactly this reason, I congratulate South Africa on its willingness to stand up for the principles on which standardization work should be based."
"Despite having an open source strategy the South African government doesn't really understand how to benefit from OSS. This is according to Microsoft director of corporate standards, Jason Matusow." http://www.tectonic.co.za/?p=2432
Some extra info and thoughts in this article: http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20080523052458101
Dependency hell? =>
Thank you South Africa!
Hip Hip Hurray!!
BTW, the pdf letter linked in TFA is a great read, perfect summary of all the problems that were so apparent to anyone actually looking into the whole mess.
A cyberpunk common theme is multinational industrial concerns having equal or more power than the governments. In fact, the governments seem to have been broken of most power and now are nothing more than location-based unions.
The first time I saw this was actually Max Headroom (I suppose that show could be called the grandfather of cyberpunk).
It always seemed like fantasy to me (a pretty horrifying one), but nothing that could come true.
What's going on these days though feels like the first battles. Industries placing people in top government positions, controlling votes, manipulating laws and standards, Chevron killing villagers who are protesting, all the private police forces protecting industrial concerns in Iraq (and being better equipped than the solders to do so)...
I'm surprised they were as accurate as they were, and I trust their predictions for our future in a corporate-run world if we let it go on--not that I know what to do about it...
We've always been able to overthrow governments that became too problematic. How do you overthrow a multinational conglomerate that is in control of multiple governments? How do you even know who to fight?
> I don't think anyone would complain about Microsoft submitting standards for approval.
Why not? The ISO mandate is to have one standard per task and ensure that any new standard should reuse other ISO standards and not try to reinvent the wheel.
Any company submits a duplicate standard and reinvents ISO standardized from the date stamp to graphics files for no other reason than to get government contracts and ensure vendor lock-in, it's right to complain no matter who is doing the submission.
> I for one have a great deal of distaste for fanatics of all stripes, and I'm afraid Stallman and his more opinionated supporters do qualify as fanatics
Actually, even though I don't subscribe to Stallman's rigid views, I don't see a problem of them.
He and his followers are equivalent to the Amish. The want to live in a world with certain constraints so that they can live in a society with certain rewards.
Anyone who's been the victim of vendor lock-in or abandon-ware or forced obsolescence or had to support software where you don't have access to the source (so you don't even know what's going on) or has had to deal with security (e.g. Sony CDs) or has had to deal with paternalistic vendors that say "You don't need to now that" or "You can only run this software on hardware the vendor decides when the vendor decides for how long the vendor decides in which way the vendor decides and the vendor has the right to change terms whenever he feels like it", should feel sympathetic.
I (or my family or my work) been burned by all the above, and I can understand why someone would want to build all the tools necessary so that they can become self sufficient.
OOXML violates pretty much every one of these issues raised.
I think your distaste has more to do with the evangelicalism within the Stallman camp. There's nothing wrong with evangelicalism per say. How are people supposed to know that there is a better way if they're not informed. The problem comes when the evangelical education and invitation turns pushiness and forced choice. As Sir Winston Churchill once stated, "A [bad] fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.".