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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 don't care how ISO re-writes whatever.
The problem was NOT that they didn't have the rules in place.
The problem was that the rules were NOT followed. And ISO was unable (unwilling) to rectify the "errors" once they had been committed. And ISO is still unwilling to identify the individuals within its organization who committed the "errors" and take any action.
Oh, wait... sorry, forgot whose pocket my congresscritter was in. Carry on :)
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
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
Why one earth should Brazil wait for MS to be ready? It is Brazil that is (theoretically) in charge here, not MS. If MS is not ready by the set date, too bad. After all, this isn't supposed to me MS's format anymore.
The word that you can buy ISO standards.
Unless a bunch of heads roll and replaced non-corp people, the ISO would have a more credibility if they showed a price list than doing this.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
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.
ISO doesn't look good for having accepted the bribery.
What I don't understand is how Microsoft can keep pulling these sorts of stunts, and not suffer for it. What most people think is this: Office file format lock? Never realized formats could be open. WGA? Excused and forgiven. Bundling? Barely noticed, and when it is, feel that's a good thing. The anti-trust lawsuit? Delayed to death, then watered down to nothing. The CPU tax? Under the radar. DRM, and the attempt to suppress all non-MS multimedia formats? Mostly swallowed, because artists deserve a chance to make a profit. Though I understand Zune isn't doing too well. Miserable security? Fooled. Think that's normal, just part of life to have to live with Norton AV, and all the slowness and inconvenience. Vista? Jury is still out on that one, maybe this is the big one that will finally get people to question MS. As for this shenanigan, it will go unnoticed.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
Fixing the errors slowly means that ISO is worthless.
And WAITING for someone to APPEAL the process means that ISO is worse than worthless. They cannot even manage their own internal systems. For a "standards" organization, that is beyond unacceptable. That means they produce corrupted standards.
As evidence, I give you OOXML.
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
Microsoft moves faster than the speed of the law.
Twinstiq, game news
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."
Brazil did not appeal, only protested.
This difference may very well matter as far as ISO procedures are concerned.
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)
"Members cannot vote on any directive or standard that was introduced before they joined"
Contrast this to OOXML.
What should have it had to have been complete? And similarly would you have approved HTML 2, or HTML 3.2, or HTML 4.01 based because they didn't have feature X?
That's not how standards are or could be. It's about agreeing upon a scope and defining itself within that. It's ok to have complete standards within their scope standardised.
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.
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
Well you probably know most of this, but I'll re-iterate it just in case. Basically there are a lot of organisations, particularly governments, who have recently either declared, or have indicated that they're likely to declare, a policy to only use open formats in various situations (such as document storage). This effectively rules out native MS Office formats because they haven't been open.
Such declarations have been treated as great for open formats (such as OASIS), and Open Source, and users generally, because it's much easier to write/maintain applications, open source or otherwise, which implement and use open formats. In other words, if you use an open format, you're much less likely to get locked into a particular software vendor, such as Microsoft, whose closed formats require you to use their software to open them reliably and accurately (at least in theory and according to popular belief in management circles). For the same reasons, open formats tend to be much more useful when exchanging documents. For example, it means that I don't have to buy Windows, install Windows, buy Office, and install Office, just so I can open some kind of law change proposition that a government department might have forwarded to me in an Office 2003 format.
Microsoft has been in danger of losing control over the market, because Office's dominance relies at least partially on format lock-in, and a cascading effect between organisations of document exchange. Organisations often standardise on Office and its formats specifically because they deal with many other businesses and organisations that also use Office. If some key organisations (such as governments) suddenly decide to standardise on open formats, it'll likely have a similar cascading effect whereby other organisations that deal with them will also adapt their systems to be able to interoperate with those open formats. Standardising on open formats means that even if people somehow use MS Office to produce them, organisations that set such a policy won't necessarily be locked into Office any more, and neither will all the organisations that deal with them.
Microsoft's answer was to declare that they'd be standardising and opening the Office 2007 formats, so that the key organisations would still be able to buy and use Office. (They probably could have claimed that Office 2007 would just support an existing open format such as OASIS, but they didn't.) Microsoft wanted to get the ISO to rubber-stamp their new OOXML format to prove to governments and other organisations that it really is open. The ISO (aka the International Standards Organisation) is a highly respected organisation on approving standards, so to get an ISO stamp is basically to declare to everyone that yes it is an open standard and it's been carefully peer reviewed to make sure of this.
The problem is that a lot of people think that OOXML really isn't open, for a variety of reasons which you've probably heard of, and that it's just a tool for Microsoft to keep control of the market using what's really a closed format whilst using double-speak and claiming that it's open, so it'll get accepted. There's also a lot of belief that Microsoft manipulated the ISO and its voting member organisations in some very despicable ways to get their Office 2007 formats rubber-stamped as an "open standard" when it really doesn't deserve to be.
Ultimately this means that employees of governments and organisations which declared they'll be using "open" formats might still standardise their work on Microsoft's OOXML formats, using the ISO's rubber-stamp to justify what they're doing, even though OOXML doesn't actually offer the interoperability benefits that a real open standard should offer, and arguably nobody would win except Microsoft.
an African or European politician?
Actio personalis moritur cum persona. (Dead men don't sue)
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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