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."

Comments

It won't matter.

[khasim]

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.

Re:It won't matter.

[Chandon Seldon]

That's one way of looking at it.

The other way of looking at it are that the ISO is naturally really, really slow and these appeals are the appropriate first step in showing that there was a problem.

Re:It won't matter.

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not another way of looking at it, that's a complementary opinion.

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.

Re:It won't matter.

[NMerriam]

The other way of looking at it are that the ISO is naturally really, really slow and these appeals are the appropriate first step in showing that there was a problem.

The purpose of being a slow, deliberative body is to prevent major errors from being made in the first place.

Making errors quickly and then fixing them slowly is the worst possible combination of attributes for a governing body to have.

Re:It won't matter.

[UnknowingFool]

South Africa's appeal says something to the effect that OOXML should have never been fast tracked much less approved. Fast Tracking is intended for mature standards that just need to be quickly rubber-stamped when there are no major issues. OOXML is not that standard. It still needs a lot of work and according to the rules, the issues should have been addressed before block vote. The ECMA simply declared that there were no major issues and moved for a block vote.

Why wait?

[Tubal-Cain]

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.

Re:Why wait?

[Em Adespoton]

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.

Re:Why wait?

[tagishsimon]

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.

Wrong Headline!

[alexborges]

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.

Re:ISO = I Sold Out

[SanityInAnarchy]

Too soon? They already bought the standard.

This is attempting to correct the problem, yes. But saying that we should withhold judgment because ISO may redeem itself is nonsensical -- the concept of redemption implies that wrong has been done.

As it stands, ISO is worthless. If the appeal process goes anywhere, then we can talk about respecting them again.

Re:first post!

[Anonymous Coward]

The license that the patented parts of OOXML is available under is not compatible with any open source license.

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)

new rule

[jgoemat]

"Members cannot vote on any directive or standard that was introduced before they joined"

Re:Opendoc

[Em Adespoton]

I certainly don't want to make light of Microsoft's blatant manipulation of the processes, but in some sense the Microsoft Office formats are `already in use and mature'. If Microsoft had submitted Office 95 formats to the fast track, that would make sense; the formats are widely used and fixed in one format. There are issues with the format that would have to be addressed, and Microsoft would have to make those changes to its Office suite to conform to the new standard, but it would be doable.

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.

Re:first post!

[Anonymous Coward]

You're incorrect, ODF is compatible with Open Source licenses according to the SFLC.

Provide a legal opinion or stop the FUD.

Re:Explanation plz

[holloway]

Here's my take on it, as copied from my blog (which is down right now but check back in 24 hours if you want the links) The ISO Standardisation of OOXML in 17 Easy Steps

1. We have had over 15 years of secret file-formats changing with every version of Microsoft Office in order to stifle competition and force annual upgrades to compatible software (the upgrade treadmill),
2. It's a principle of government that they should be vendor neutral. If a government said "All Ford trucks can drive 20 kilometres faster than all other cars" there would be outrage! In the late 1990s governments all around the world realized that web sites shouldn't favour Microsoft Internet Explorer, and that they must use vendor-neutral standards.
3. This argument is then extended to Office Suites and their secret file-formats. For vendor-neutrality/competition some governments propose moving away from Microsoft Office's format to a new standard called OpenDocument (ODF) which is used by OpenOffice.org, KOffice and many others. ODF was approved by ISO under the 'PAS' process.
4. Microsoft are concerned that they'll lose their government sales because their Office Suite doesn't use a standard. If government start using a competitor and putting money into them then maybe something like Firefox will spring up to take them on in Office Suites. Their Microsoft Office cash-cow that earns them (something like) 3.8 billion every 3 months is under threat!
5. Microsoft respond not by supporting ODF but by proposing a competing faux-standard, OOXML (Office Open XML). They hurriedly rush through some poorly written documentation with hundreds (if not thousands) of mistakes that can't be implemented in full. This is good enough for Ecma International, who approve it as a standard called ECMA-376. ECMA-376 is a complete mess -- inconsistent, buggy, inflexible, ugly (non-mixed content model, OLE, DEVMODE).
6. ECMA-376 is submitted to the ISO under the 'Fast Track' process, and is now given the name DIS-29500. It's not a normal process that allows time for improvement, it's a brief 9 month review of 6000 pages (that's a lot).
7. Lobbying begins internationally. To stereotype the process into two camps, it's the people who want to get out from the monopoly Vs those who benefit from the monopoly (Microsoft and business partners).
8. Every country gets a vote in the ISO, so New Zealand is as big as the United States, China, India ... and each country has 9 months to comment on OOXML. The proposed standard is soon recognized as being technically awful, broken, not-cross-platform, designed to confer the appearance of standardisation but without the detail necessary.
9. The ISO doesn't necessarily decide on technical merit, there's a lot of non-techies who are open to all kinds of arguments other than the quality of the standard. They're not the ITTF either, they don't need implementations to prove the standard. The 'Fast Track' can just approve stuff.
10. Process irregularities come out in favour of Microsoft. There are accusations of corruption. They're caught stuffing the ballot in Sweden. Lots of small African nations suddenly sign-up and favour Microsoft. Public perception is that the ISO process itself is quite hackable.
11. Microsoft lose the late 2007 vote, but there's another final chance.
12. Microsoft make some changes to OOXML in response to national comments, but a 9 month review has only touched the surface of the problems within OOXML.
13. They probably will win this current vote (March 2008) and gain ISO approval for OOXML.
14. A lot more accusations of process irregularities, some by people from within the process.
15. If OOXML gains approval then the ISOs reputation will be in tatters within the technical community.
16. The backlash against Microsoft and the ISO will be strong. This Slashdot post sumarises this well: Slashdot: Microsoft's Miscalculation.
17. But really we're just b