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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."
The damage has already been done, to the ISO organization at least.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
The US voted for approval from the start (big suprise: American company gets supported by an uninformed America) so we wouldn't be likely to protest. Anyways, who is it that does the ISO voting for America? I am not sure it is congresscritters.
I think it's too soon to say that. Let's see what happens with the handling of the protests. ISO may yet redeem itself.
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The apparent ease with which Microsoft achieved this does beg the question 'how many times has this happened before?'.
ISO's been around for a while, and I can't see that this is the first standard that stood to make the controlling company rich. There's no doubt Microsoft would have remained in control of the standard, 6000 pages of complex specification that even they haven't yet implemented fully can mean nothing else.
So, are we about to see the dirty secrets of ISO revealed? Will we find that the top bods have been lining their little pockets?
I hope not, but I'm very dubious.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
Is the ISO rewriting the rules so the protest and appeals cannot happen again?
or
Is the ISO rewiting the rules so the corruption cannot occur again?
I would not bet my life on the second.
Then maybe it's time for them to be replaced with something that actually does work and is willing to admit to and fix flaws.
"Members cannot vote on any directive or standard that was introduced before they joined"
Does I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property ever read the articles he links to? His summaries are always much more inflammatory than the articles, and get important details wrong.
Getting the details right is very important if you want to convince people that you know what you're talking about, or convince them to support your position. This kind of sloppy summary just hurts what seems to be an otherwise important argument.
Of course, even W3C has its problems, as some people consider W3C to be dominated by larger organizations. Still, I consider W3C to be the most anti-proprietary standards body.
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.
The ISO can do whatever it wants now. It won't make a damn bit of difference. It's already been proven how incompetent the governing body is, and how little regard people have for it; whatever the big names (Microsoft) want, they're going to get through sheer force of attrition.
They can rewrite their rules until they have a big rewriting orgy. It doesn't matter; the damage has already been done, and in my eyes, the damage is irreparable.
Let's stop dilly-dallying and just change "-1: Overrated" to "-1: Disagree" or "-1: Doesn't Subscribe to Groupthink".
This is a legal matter and the experts have spoken against you so get a lawyer to respond to the specific points that the SFLC raise or (and I mean this respectfully) shut up.
What implementations?
I don't think that's correct. It was approved, but IIRC, there are a couple more steps that have to happen before it's really final.
Also, I think the language applied by you and many others is too harsh. ISO's processes were designed in the context of a set of cooperating entities trying to achieve mutual consensus on a standard for the benefit of all. It's really no surprise that Microsoft was able to subvert it. Even within the current framework there is a mechanism to reverse the damage, and the framework is being revised to be more robust in the future.
I have some confidence that ISO will be able to both correct the forced fast-tracking of OOXML and adapt to become more resilient to such tactics in the future.
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"No. The reason ISO is slow SHOULD be to avoid errors in the process.
Fixing the errors slowly means that ISO is worthless."
What if fixing errors is part of the standard process? Couldn't a bad fix be worse than the errors in following the process?
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