Slashdot Mirror
India Third to Appeal ISO's OOXML Approval
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "India is now the third country to appeal the ISO's approval of OOXML, with their appeal arriving just before the deadline last night. According to PC World, this makes OOXML the first BRM process under ISO/JTC 1 to be appealed, which leaves us in uncharted territory. Although there was substantial confusion in the comments on yesterday's story, Brazil is really appealing, not merely disapproving, of OOXML, having sent a letter that begins with 'The Associação Brasileira de Normas Técnicas (ABNT), as a P member of ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC34, would like to present, to ISO/IEC/JTC1 and ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC34, this appeal for reconsideration of the ISO/IEC DIS 29500 final result.' Groklaw speculates that this may have something to do with Microsoft hedging their bets by supporting ODF 1.1 in Office 2007, though we probably won't see any more countries appeal now that the deadline has passed."
Andy Updegrove says a fourth country may also have appealed.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
If the approval was fast tracked, then the appeal should be too. Get that spec disqualified, FAST.
Modding Trolls +1 inciteful since 1999
In other words, it's not surprising there's so much confusion in the reporting, because so many crazy things are going on. We have no proof of a 4th beyond a maybe, and there might be technicalities upon which to disqualify some of these and... Oogh.
- I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property
In most of the world, shaking the head is a NO (and nodding is a YES).
If you read somewhere that Indians shake their head for a YES, that is incorrect (I lived in India 25 years). There is an interesting "Indian head-roll" which is just an acknowledgment you are being heard and understood, rather than an agreement, though it can be (and has been) considered a weak form of agreement.
-srr
It belongs to YRO topic in fact. Your rights online.
.NET subscription (oops crackers!) to read a frigging 2 page document can easily ignore them. ;)
They should put all ODF stories to YRO and people which will soon have to pirate/install/forced to buy Office 08 or Office 08
There are enormous differences between cultures in India, with several official languages that vary by region, 2 dominant religions, hundreds of castes etc. Also, as an Indian, we mean yes when we nod our heads.
Orbis terrarum est non altus satis
You know I can understand the reason of why we want to do this. I can even understand why people want a neutral standard. BUT... You know this is so boring because it is not going to help me one ioata...
Yes, yes in the *future* all will better. And we will have solved world hunger, poverty and what have you...
Yes I am frustrated because I F****G wish they would make Open Office a REAL competitor to Office.
For example Calc in OO now has the ability to go beyond 256 columns... Wow, progress! NOT!
Maybe if OO became a REAL competitor Microsoft would think much harder about playing nice!
If you say, "hey you have the sources..." No, I want to pay for a Microsoft competitor!
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
Probably, but then, shouldn't it be the 'poor' countries who are wary of Microsoft? After all, its Microsoft that's providing all those 'free' software to their educational institutes after all.
Second and third world countries that represent a huge market.
Brazil for example, is in the top 10 countries by both Internet Users and Time Spent Online, usually in the 2 top spots in the latter. Ok, most of this time is spent by teenagers in useless thing like Orkut and MSN, but whatever.
The important thing in this is: information can and WILL spread like a wildfire. And be sure that many people will embrace it.
If these "not-real" countries continue their "line of thinking", in the near future we could have more than 1 billion people that reject anything that comes from MS.
It wouldn't be wise to ignore THAT.
Yet the new technological meccas Azerbaijan and C'ote D'ivoire gets taken seriously when voting in favor of OOXML?
Something sure smells fishy.
If you quote this signature there'll be 72 copies of Windows ME waiting for you in Heaven.
This isn't about OOo versus MS Office. I don't mind paying for software. I just want to make sure that when I save a file, people can open it and read it, especially me a few years down the road. Microsoft's closed, proprietary formats keep changing (forcing unnecessary upgrades) and they drop support for old formats after a while.
I'm just some bum writer who wants to open my old files, but what about actual important documents? Right now PDF sadly is about the only way to go and feel safe the document can be read down the road.
If you're not happy with OOo's Calc, that is irrelevant to this discussion. Microsoft is going to provide support for ODF, and honestly that is enough to make me happy. I just wish they were supporting 1.2 right off the bat, instead of starting with 1.1.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Microsoft sells student copies of MS Office dirt cheap. I've seen a few schools install OOo side-by-side with MS Office, and some invididual users make the switch, but until major companies cancel mass volume licensing of MS Office, I don't see MS breaking a sweat.
The fact that several large governments were talking about ditching MS Office (over open file standards) is what got MS to play ball. Now that they support ODF (and likely OOXML once they iron that out as well a bit) those government agencies are likely to stay with MS Office.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
Anybody following the OOXML ISO approval process (or anybody who followed the Peter Quinn case) can see that msft is desperate and willing to go to any lengths to shove its bogus "standard" through the system.
BTW: ODF has nothing to do with openoffice. OpenOffice is an application, ODF is a document standard - like HTML or ASCII.
I use openoffice 2.4, it works for me, does all I need to do. Although I will admit, I considered every version of openoffice before 2.4 to be too slow.
The math, the math, India is the No.2 most populous country and Brazil is No.5, with India expected to be No.1 within 15 years, because of China's population control measures. The opinion of a significant market of PC and smart phone users, probably does matter to MS.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
I didn't realize that, the coworker I had from India some years back would shake yes and nod no. But it wasn't the same as when I shake no, it was a less sudden motion.
Anyways it wasn't really hard to figure out what he meant, even if you didn't realize that Indians from that part of India use a reverse system to the one in use in the US.
I'd love to believe this will make a difference, but I suspect the same bribing/stacking/manipulation MS used before will succeed again.
banana peel
Gary Dunn
Open Slate Project
Well run corporations don't do that. But corporations the size of Google or MS or IBM have a lot of money at their disposal, I don't believe that any of those 3 couldn't shit an obscene amount of money and still be in business.
Sure, it's a poor way of doing business, shitting money that is, but large corporations do it all the time on stupid stuff. I mean just look at IE and silverlight. You can't say either of those was ever particularly centered on profit. IE alone has probably cost MS billions in terms of extra exploit patching and anti-trust litigation. And even under ideal circumstances, it lacks a way of bringing in money.
Oh. You said banana peel in your subject line, which makes my reply rather lame. Like I stepped on it.
Gary Dunn
Open Slate Project
It's not shaking of head (i.e., rotating the head side-to-side on the horizontal plane), but rather tilting of the head side-to-side). I had thought it meant "sorta" or "you know" or similar depending on the context. Interesting bit of Indian culture. No, I'm not an Indian.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
The purpose of all these off-topic posts so early in the thread is to reduce the number of points available for insightful or interesting comments.
Microsoft evangelists do not like open discussion of their failures. Use your points to upmod good comments, not downmod red herrings.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
I just wonder one thing that, why someone/ some countries can appeal to a standard once it is passed to be a standard? I thought once it is a standard then everyone must agree that it is a standard, no matter you agree with it/ vote for it.
Since when is a promise to support ODF the same as actual support of ODF? As in "will" does not mean the same as "does." Maybe it's me, but the future isn't the present, and as they said in "The Terminator," the future is not set. I also remember well Microsoft promising to support Kerberos, and look how much fun that wasn't.
Meet Your Local Microsoft Evangelists
Well I'll be damned (by Bill Gates) - I can already feel the BSOD hovering over me! Ok they call them Evangelists but they're no different from reps. Bastards. But anyway ok but I still reckon first post (or frosty piss) is a tradition that, though much maligned, always makes me smile.
Do it yourself, because no one else will do it yourself. [beta blockade 10-17 Feb]
> The fact that several large governments were talking about ditching MS Office (over open file standards) is what got MS to play ball. Now that they support ODF (and likely OOXML once they iron that out as well a bit) those government agencies are likely to stay with MS Office.
The problem is that MS Office is not compliant with ISO-OOXML. Nothing is. Nor are there standards to determine precisely what compliance means.
I understand that MS Gold Partners are activly but verbally encouraging universities and schools to purchase a few paper licenses and allowing all students to use MS Office in an attempt to undermine OpenOffice ... even MS India staff is involved in this scam .. but since nothing is on paper, their deniability is complete ..
Insight into much, Influence over nothing !
You have to remember the context in which IE was developed. Netscape was the darling of the computer world and there was a great deal of talk of how the browser would be the OS in the future. IE was a strategic move to kill an enemy to the Windows cash cow and it worked. However they can't just stop out of fear that another browser will do what Netscape appeared poised to do.
Silverlight is different. That is typical Microsoft, wait until someone else has proven an idea and then try to either a/ buy it or b/ copy it, then c/ squeeze the original from the market while tying the Microsoft version to Windows. Silverlight is Microsofts attempt to copy what they have not managed to buy namely Flash.
Where's the "-1: Incoherent" option, because seriously, that made no sense.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
It couldn't possibly be because the proposed standard was too complex and too defective to be fast tracked in the 1st place? Consider that over 80% of the problems with the specification had soloutions proposed by ECMA but "due to lack of time" not reviewed or discussed. The committee should have been able to review and if needed revise those "solutions". The fact that one private body was given unsupervised control of "fixes" when it was supposed to be the committee composed of National representatives that had the actual say to me is a good enough reason to appeal.
All that of course ignores the ongoing scandals and accusations that the system was twisted by Microsofts wealth and power rather than following the rules.
An excerpt from South Africas appeal giving the core of their reasons.
It appears that they are appealing not to satisfy peoples hatred of Microsoft but because the rules state that appeals should be launched for one of 3 reasons all of which South Africa feels apply.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
And people wonder why tech support doesn't make any sense...
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
when they ask you to do some free overtime.
They know.
India is country #1 in outsourcing and this fact makes appeal very important for global OSS community.
"Something sure smells fishy."
Well, in Azerbaijan, that would be the sturgeon and the beluga taken from the Caspian Sea, according to Wikipedia.
Though you will be glad to know that Azerbaijan stocks of sturgeon and beluga are going down, so the fishy smell should diminish over time.
I am anarch of all I survey.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
So you don't think that having over 80% of the proposed resolutions for issues with OOXML not being discussed by anyone outside of ECMA is significant? You don't think that fast tracking a specification that is between 6000 and 7000 pages long is inappropriate? I think that the specification is too large for the fast track. I think that allowing ECMA as Microsofts agent to control without over sight so many of the fixes to objections is unacceptable.
All that ignores the scandals associated with the "passing" of OOXML.
South Africa, Brazil, India and Denmark have all objected now. Do you think that all four nations are now being controlled by "Microsoft hating geeks"? I think that unlikely. I think it more likely that they have valid objections. We will just have to wait and see how it works out.
Given Microsofts past history (and convictions around the world) I think it more likely that the objections are valid. Microsoft does have a history of trying illegal methods to stifle competition. Did they not in the DOJ vs Microsoft case falsify evidence that was presented to the judge?