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Brazil Appeals OOXML Decision
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Brazil is now appealing the ISO's decision to standardize OOXML, following South Africa's lead. Interestingly, part of the reason this took so long was that Microsoft supporters at the meetings kept asking for delays because they 'weren't prepared' to discuss the issues raised. And the ISO as a whole is moving rather slowly, after that delay in releasing the DIS. But at least the ISO is also rewriting the directives in a special working group so this doesn't happen again. Of course, they'd have to be strict about making sure the directives are followed for it to help."
I think you misread the summary. The situation is like this:
In Brazil, there is a working group made up of representatives of government, trade, and public organizations. Some of the trade reps to the working group are pro-MS and pro-OOXML. The group majority was ready to protest, but the OOXML-supporting minority asked them to wait so they could organize their side of the story. The working group, being made up of thoughtful and respectful people, gave them their chance to come up with counter-arguments. When nothing convincing was presented in time before the formal protest had to be lodged, they went and lodged the protest.
This doesn't have to do with the Brazilian government vs. Microsoft Corp. (at least, not on the surface). This was a group of people who represent Brazil at the ISO, some of whom happen to support MS and their views on the world.
I think all the posts and the lead story misrepresent the position. Brazil is sending a "protest" against the BRM and delay in publishing the standard; it is not appealing.
The author of the linked article felt strongly enough about the distinction between protest and appeal that he has resigned his position.
I do not understand fully the difference between the protest and an appeal, but strongly suspect that the former does not lead to a requirement to re-open consideration of whether the proposal should be accepted as a standard.
As the author makes clear in his article, M$ has triumphed again, excellent meeting engineers that they are, and Brazil and the rest of us have lost again.
Just so you know, Opendoc is a format created by Apple computer, not to be confused with ODF (Open Document Format) which I think you were talking about.
ODF went through the regular vetting procedure; it might have been rushed, but it passed all of the standards checks. OOXML, on the other hand, went through the fast track process normally reserved for formats that are already in use and mature but not yet official standards. Rushing a fast-track procedure on a format that should never have been submitted to it in the first place is miles away from keeping the regular process moving along as fast as possible. At least the end result for ODF was a usable standard, even if it still contained a few flaws that needed to be fixed. OOXML still doesn't even have a published final draft of the standard.
As mentioned earlier this week on Groklaw, we don't really know one way or the other, as the ISO group working on this is doing it in secret. Maybe a list of the members of the group and their affiliations would help.
That the final specification text for OOXML is not available when it was due May 1st (or March 29th, depending on who you listen to) shows how the ISO aren't following their own rules. It also shows that there are a lot of problems getting OOXML into a state ready for public consumption because it's of such poor quality, that it was a premature abortion of a standard in no fit state to be useful to the world.
The ISO/IEC JTC1 and SC34 are now deprecated. Realy standards are made at OASIS.
The US technical committee INCITS V1 was stacked. Check that site for a graph of late joining members who suddenly voted for OOXML.
-Docvert converts MSWord to OpenDocument, clean HTML
It's fair to be outraged now, not to wait for history to judge this.
Brasil does NOT appeal OOXML decission but only PROTESTS against it because a Microsoft SHILL within their standards body imposed his/her view over even the FIRST NO vote of brasil regarding the standard.
NO SIG
It's not worthless because it will help rise the issue to other nations but it's not worth much :(
The article is very difficult to read, due to poor English (no offense meant - I don't speak a word of Portuguese!) However, having waded through it, it is clear the parent is correct, and the summary is completely wrong.
The article's author is resigning from the ABNT, specifically because it is not appealing. It is only "protesting", whatever that means. The article claims the failure to appeal is due to Microsoft supporters claiming they did not have enough time to weigh the arguments, which sounds a bit rich in the circumstances.
"The Milliard Gargantubrain? A mere abacus - mention it not."
Instead developers do rely on reverse engineering laws (which have some provisions for patents) as they always have in the past for developing .doc filters.
If developers choose to ignore both the SFLC opinion of those who wrote the GPL and if they choose to ignore reverse engineering procedures and write ooxml filters anyway this does not make it lawful or disprove my point.
OOXML is against Open Source from a legal standpoint, an existing OSS software standpoint (doesn't build upon web standards like SVG but instead proposes things like VML), and against the philosophy of open development (developed at Ecma where even people like Goldberg could only ask for more information from Microsoft rather than actually helping fix or design the format)
That's not begging the question. It does raise the question however.
In this case however, they submitted a format via EMCA that was bloated, broken, has undisclosed parts that are not documented, and which isn't even compatable with the single product, offered by them, that purports to support the format.
Of course, conflations like you've made above are part of the issue here as well: because Microsoft has a legacy Office set of formats, people might be surprised that others are so against this specific and distinctly seperate format because they think they're the same thing.
However, people on *technical* standards committees are (supposed to be) there because they know the details and the technology. They are by definition experts in the field, otherwise they wouldn't be part of that specific standards committee; they'd be in the one covering technology in their own field of expertise.
The problem here is that a lot of people "from the community" joined because Microsoft paid/pressured them to, with the instruction to push OOXML through. From what I've heard, none of these members actually have a clue about OOXML or office document standards.
This is the problem that ISO is purportedly trying to fix.
Provide a legal opinion or stop the FUD.
No it doesn't, read the fucking licenses. They're different.
Maybe, but the Microsoft Office formats, even in the newest version, ARE NOT THE SAME THING AS OOXML! They do not conform to that thing that ISO so euphemistically calls a 'standard!'
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Youre looking in the wrong place. Best suited for your inquiry (or however one should write that), is groklaw.
For a short blurb:
1) MS has been the past few years under some pressure from big customers, particularly governments, to use a non-binary more open format for office documents.
2) It got to the point of some of this clients mandating that the office software they bought should support an open, ISO sanctioned standard for storing office documents.
3) Microsoft responded to this attempting to create an ISO standard, FUDdigly called Office Open XML (in an obvious attempt to thwart an already existing standard, whose reference implementation is Open Office, called Open Document Format, that was alaready sanctioned by ISO)
4) We (as in we, the open source zelots), got really mad at this position because its not tennable from many standpoints:
a) [most important] The submited documentation for supporting OOXML proved to be pretty lame, basically the document "standard" reflected implementation details of the MS Office product line. Such speciffic details are not welcome in any "standard" that should be usable by all.
b) The quality of the proposed standard was also very questionable because, first of all, there is no reference implementation of it. Not even MSOffice supports the documented standard in their docX, pptX..etc. files.
c) There is ALREADY an open standard, the one openoffice uses, called ODF, and it is non-patent-encumbered. COnversely, MS's proposal, was IP encumbered (meaning that they purpoted to keep control of it and reserve the right for them to make proprietary extensions to it and still call it an ISO standard). Additionally the ISO organization traditional stance is that they do not accept competing standards. If there is already one standard, then thats the Office Document ISO standard and none other.
d) In any case, the process to get this thing approved is lengthy and i cant get into it now. Suffice it to say that microsoft bribed many officials GLOBALLY and stalled the proceedings to get their "standard" aproved.
So there. Im gonna ask PJ for a job.
NO SIG
You are right!
Fortunately, as I wrote TFA's author requesting to see ABNT's letter anyway, I was surprised to know that ABNT actually submitted an appeal to ISO. (Which the author himself didn't knew up to the time of blogging).
ABNT's full letter can be found in this other blog.
-><- no
-Docvert converts MSWord to OpenDocument, clean HTML
You're probably right that it was wrong when it was written, but it's correct now because they've finally, actually appealed instead of just protesting:
Source:
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080529202924937
http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20080529150227123
- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property
Comparing apples to apples, OOXML's formulas are an early buggy draft and at least ODF had the sense to withhold them from the spec until they were ready.
The ODF PAS process took 9 months due to support/lack-of-opposition more than anything. Complaints were dealt with in that time and the text short enough to understand. Contrast that to OOXML where the complaints are not dealt with and so therefore it is rushed.
... Now if only Ogg Theora became the baseline video standard for the Web and these larger organizations (i.e. Nokia and Apple) could leave W3C alone. Actually that scandal, at least on Nokia's part, can be traced to a mole from MS that got into Nokia and wormed his way onto the W3C's HTML5 committee representing Nokia. Conflict of interests there ought to negate that decision about Ogg and tainted members replaced for a do-over.W3C is the World Wide Web Consortium - they wouldn't work on a word processing (etc) standard document, though they might work on web-specific extensions to such a document.
Slay a dragon... over lunch!