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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
Uh, actually, I'm sure they're thinking plenty hard about playing nice, and seeing as there is a competitor (OO is taking away some of their customers, even if only the ones who don't care about spread sheets going beyond 256 columns, and since it keeps getting markedly better where Office keeps getting markedly more irritating...) have decided that is a risk they simply cannot afford to take.
You must have been asleep for the past 2 decades, because otherwise you'd know by now that Microsoft's version of "playing nice" is creating a de facto standard that they alone control then avoiding making any changes 9even positive ones) to it so long as nobody else is in the game.
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
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.
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.
The Open Office/Star Office file format was the basis for ODF but it received fairly extensive reworking in the process of creating ODF.
I'd love to believe this will make a difference, but I suspect the same bribing/stacking/manipulation MS used before will succeed again.
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.
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.
who modded this insightful?
this isn't about openoffice.org, this is about people having access to their own information. This is about governments being able to read all the documents they are making now in the future. This is about unfettered, exact communication between countries.
in short, this is remarkably important. I can't think of anything more important in communication than open standards.
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.
Yes, but if a country suspects that there have been irregularities they can call schenanigans.
Imagine this: The country of Lithuanistan is a voting member of ISO. United Megacorp has a smaller standards body like ECMA put a standard they cooked up on the ISO fast-track process. Everything proceeds as expected and the Lithuanistanian national body votes YES on the standard, even though most Lithuanistanian techies are very sceptical about it. A week after the vote, though, someone from UniMeg leaks documents that show that the entire Lithuanistanian NB had been bought off by UniMeg and they didn't vote because the standard hat merit but because they liked their new cars.
Lithuanistan is pissed. They want a chance to stop the standardization process (or at least freeze it for further investigation), now that they can prove it has been tampered with. However, all votes have already been cast. This appeals process is what they'd use: If you have doubt that the standardization process went as it should you can appeal before the standard becomes final.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
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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?