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ISO Recommends Denying OOXML Appeals
An anonymous reader passes along word that ISO has responded to the four appeals filed against the approval of OOXML as a standard. To no one's surprise, ISO says that there was nothing wrong with the process. Groklaw's coverage is (as usual) the most comprehensive. Andy Updegrove summarizes ISO's position this way: "1. All judgments made during the course of the process were appropriately made under the applicable Directives. 2. The fact that the BRM voted on all proposed resolutions in some fashion satisfies the requirements of the Directives. 3. The fact that a sufficient percentage of National Bodies (NBs) ultimately voted to approve DIS 29500 ratifies the process and any flaws in that process. 4. Many objections, regardless of their merits, are irrelevant to the appeals process."
We don't care about fair process because it's our game anyway.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
How does it matter whether OOXML is an ISO standard or not. No real world implementation exists, so anyone who wants to actually use a standard is still going to have to use ODF.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
They either need to replaced or it must be built up from scratch. If this does not happen, there can NEVER be any trust in them again.
Fuck ISO
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
There are so many things that are unfair, fraudulent, and ridiculous. OOXML's ratification as an international standard is pretty low on the scale.
Ask Morgan Tsvangirai about unfair elections.
I can demand that all clown shoes must be measured in cubits and have it made the clown shoe standard. That doesn't mean people will use it.
Many objections, regardless of their merits, are irrelevant to the appeals process.
Hmm, what is the difference between an objection and an appeal again?
define:objection - expostulation: the act of expressing earnest opposition or protest.
define:appeal - challenge (a decision); "She appealed the verdict"
Ahh yes, completely different.
Even MSFT gave up on trying to use the thing as a standard (for now)... but at least ISO's actions show us just how worthless and suspect (and probably corrupt) an ISO standard can get nowadays.
Guess I should've seen it coming back in the 1990's, when companies were plastering "ISO (insert number) Certified!1!1!!11!" across every marketing material surface that would hold ink.
Ah well... back to the good ol' RFC's, methinks.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
I think we need to teach these cocksuckers a lesson. Let's boycott ISO and all ISO standards. Hopefully, it will be as successful as our amazon boycott!!
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
The way I see it is that they have exactly two options:
1) Clean up their process and make resilient against amoral scum like Microsoft, that have a lot of power and absolutely no restraints on using it.
2) Let them get away with it and have all their standardization efforts become meaningless.
Seems to me that ISO is bound to beceome irrelevant unless they chose 1). This would be detrimental to the whole world and a real pity. Can they just admit that their process has been successfully hacked and take a stand and poclaim that they will not tolerate it? Obviously not. Pathetic.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Many objections, regardless of their merits, are irrelevant
So even if an objection is relevant... it's somehow not relevant?
Yeah, that makes perfect sense to me.
It's a real shame their anti-MS hatred has to taint everything in the world. But at least the ISO is not putting up with it any longer.
Yeah, because Microsoft stuffed ISO with its own people. Maybe they should rename it MS-ISO. I'm sure they'd have no problem getting the name approval.
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Did anyone expect them to say "It's a fair cop gov, you caught us red-handed"?
I think instead of having standards bodies, perhaps we should just say, defacto, that the open source application that manages an open document is in fact the reference implementation. It has all the knowledge in code, for public display and re-use, and that's way better than mere requirements. Like, I'm a total Windows bigot, but I do more C++ on Linux and I now expect that Visual C++ should actually perform the same way that GNU does, rather than vice versa, because I trust GNU more.
This is my sig.
ISO/OOXML = FCC/BPL ?
where corruption is the norm, justice is the first victim
need a free COBOL editor for Windows?
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So, an irrelevant and self serving international body decides to ignore the general feeling and collective wisdom/insight of the community and ratify an standard used by nobody (including its creator).
really, who cares?
Who are the losers here?
MS - because this has all come out in the wash, they are going ODF anyhow and its made them look daft for not even using their own standard. I mean, how could they now?
ISO - because this has generated enough mud to stick and tarnished their reputation maybe beyond compare.
The corruption is so obvious that the ISO's reputation has been harmed. This is a bigger win for M$ than the coo-coo standard they never intended to follow. It is as if RJR got the AMA to approve a cigarette through bribery and a truncated "fast track" process. OOXML is against everything the ISO stood for and that contradiction is the forest that should be seen through all the clear cut trees. Commercial standards are now obviously compromised.
Here's the blowback, that M$ may not have anticipated. It is now up to GNU, Debian and other community efforts to define reasonable standards. People who have "respect" for convicted monopolists will no longer be trusted. The more M$ abuses their power, the more people want to escape.
We don't care about fair process because it's our game anyway.
ISO need not have a monopoly on games. Sure, it's going to take some work to replace it. So the question is, "is it worthwhile doing?"
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
...when it has no standard implementation?
What does this say about ISO Standards when their decisions are rejected by the community at-large?
MSOffice will support MSOOXML*
* but not the ISO standard implementation of MSOOXML **
** written in VERY small print. On a disused paper. In the basement. Without a light (lost) or stairs (lost) behind a closed door saying "Beware of the leopard"
No that would definitely not qualify under the ISO for compatibility or full support. Standards do not require an implementation to be adopted. However, an implementation does need match the standard to claim full support.
It's not crazy to propose a standard, modify it a few times to make people happy, then build the implementation later. It would surprising if this didn't happen quite a bit.
Of course it is likely that the TMB chooses to dismiss the appeals, as looking into them would open a hornets nests. No one with power (ISO, TMB, MS, National committees and selected governments) would want that.
The problem is not whether the appeals hold any merit. The problem is the process handling the appeals (as well as any other ISO process) is flawed.
It's like asking a paralyzed man to piss and hit toilet.
If you quote this signature there'll be 72 copies of Windows ME waiting for you in Heaven.
the ISO's website has a nice feedback form, I would encourage people in a restrained and intelligent way to point out what OOXML has done to the ISO's now ruined reputation.
ISO 9000/9001 certification (which is what you are talking about) is a somewhat vague standard that says, in simple terms, that any process or actions your company performs must have a written description of the process, instructions, checksheets, etc. It is intended to try to improve quality and consistency. It doesn't mean that in all cases (or even most) that quality and consistency are improved.
Its a fairly meaningless certfication, since the company can still be turning out crap. But at least with ISO9000 they should have a record of what was done to make the crap.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
But come on! It's just a standard, not a requirement, no one is forced to use it.
Good grief!
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Well, at this point all I can say is fsck ISO. And I think that's the general feeling of many in the IT right now. That's going to have some consequences - like, ISO standards not being worth the paper they're written on, for example.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
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There was a misstatement in point 1 - it should read:
1. All judgements made during the course of the process were appropriately made under the applicable tables.
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
This is where the anti-MS feelings come from, they do not play nice with the other children. It's like their mantra is 'Make money through evil'. This has nothing to do with FOSS and everything to do with standards, proper real standards, ones you can use and make something compliant.
It seems kind of odd to me that certain members of the ISO are fighting so hard to defend their questionable actions during the process. Could it be they are afraid of what may surface during an investigation of what really happened? Could it be they are afraid of what they might lose if it's overturned? Just curious...
Who is general failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
In practice though, it's really hard to do this - I used to know someone who spent a long time doing a real ISO reference C compiler. (Standards are mind numbing stuff - particularly the corner cases).
Andy
Reminded saying heard long time ago. [ Probably native speaker can give original saying for my memory is bad with such things. ]
When process is against you - argue facts
When facts against you - argue procedure.
Facts are against ISO. So they are pushing the procedure thing. After all procedure was so to say followed and voting on the so called standard so to say have happened. Or probably "had been happened" is more appropriate wording in the context??
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
Everything considered, the sense of an appeal is to say that something that happened should be reversed because of some issues. ISO allowed for appeals (two months time for that starting from the end of the BRM, you remember?).
But now, the third point of Andy Updegrove's summary is the final[*] nail in the coffin of ISO's credibility:
In other words: You may appeal within two months after the BRM if something went horribly wrong there. But, honestly, poor chap, after the BRM is over it's already too late, because everything that went horribly wrong was justified in that same horribly wrong process.
[*] Honestly, I believe this was still not the last one ...
I imagine this is not impossible: the ISO has decided they want to be irrelevant and shunned. What better way to oblige them than to start a foundation (I'm sure Sun, IBM and RedHat would love to chip in with a few bucks) that is in direct and totally blatant competition with ISO, just without the bribeability and corruptability of the ISO? After the OOXML fiasco, I think this new international standards organisation would have no major problems getting established.
Probably other donors would appear: Nokia, Novell, a few of the scandinavian organisations, etc.
I would love to see this happen, and the ISO bitchslapped into the mud, as it deserves.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Noooope. Word does not (currently) implement OOXML.
Half truth.
Word does currently implement OOXMl as defined by ECMA 376.
Word does not currently implement OOXML as defined by ISO 29500 (for the obvious reason that all the changes from the ECMA standard were made after Office 2007 had already come out).
Also, that second statement can be broken down into:
- Word very nearly implements ISO 29500/Transitional (the differences being tag semantic tidying, such as "on" "off" being replaced by "true" "false" etc.)
- Word is very far from implementing ISO 29500/Strict (Lots of things that Word uses, such as VML, are not present in the strict standard)
What's purple and commutes? An Abelian grape.
To paraphrase ISO's response: "We're still relevant!!!"
No, you are not.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Microsoft was hardly the only one doing the stuffing. IBM, Google, Oracle, and others were doing lots of their own stuffing. A lot of people like to point out all the people that joined recently and voted yes, but they ignore the fact that just as many (if not more) joined recently and voted no.
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So now they're afraid that because they were so easily 0wn'd by Microsoft and their cronies, they would lose face if they admitted it? Isn't this the same BS politics that CEOs, Presidents and Congressmen are famous for: "Never admit wrong because you're always right, and never apologize unless you're caught, and then only that you weren't careful enough in covering it up"? Who died and made them deities?
"We are Microsoft. You shall be assimilated. Competition is futile."
Pushing procedure above all else reminds me of this
twitter hit parades:
That's enough twitter for anyone, but really, what did gnutoo say that was wrong? All I see is your twitter obsession/promotion.
Before the first time I ever participated in a "standards body", I thought that the committees consisted of really smart technical people gathering together to figure out what was best for the industry at large. How naive!
Then came the rude awakening: The committees are almost entirely comprised of representatives (who often reflect minimal technical expertise in the domain of interest) of the major commercial players in the industry. Each of the reps does whatever he/she can to promote his/her constituent employer's stance on each and every detailed issue, without regard for ethics, and with no regard whatsoever to what is "best" for the industry at large. Buying votes is certainly considered within the pale, in these contexts.
Consequently, the only standards I can respect are the RFCs published by the IETF, for 2 major reasons:
I remember working for a company that went through ISO 9002. I was young and innocent then. I learned a great deal about the world when the VP Engineering explained it all to me: "ISO is a way for European clerks to extort thousands of dollars from American entrepreneurs. And there is nothing more corrupt than the Old World."
ISO's recent embarrassment with OOXML shows it to be nothing more than a tired old whore.
The ISO should be disbanded and replaced with an organization that has integrity and the respect of the world's engineers.
Are you going to provide evidence for any of this, twitter? You can't make such grand pronouncements of "how things are" without backing up your assertions with trustworthy citations. As someone who has worked in corporate environments most of his life, I tend to see the reverse of your statement in effect. Not to say I wouldn't LIKE to see it, but I don't.
...but billions of dollars of taxpayer money is riding on it. Does that make any sense?
If Microsoft convinces people that their documents are now "open" then they stand to become very rich and all your government data will be locked up, (and probably unreadable in a couple of decades).
No sig today...
Off topic, I know...
Most if not all international bodies are self-serving and subject to the same corruption.
But, the affected citizens are powerless to change the entity. Do you or I have any power to vote or protest or petition ISO?
Can you call the UN and leverage your influence as a registered voter to get an audience or make a complaint?
What can you do if NAFTA gets out of control? Kyoto?
I'd rather not vote for politicians who want to hand their power to something beyond the reach of their constituents. You will not be able to reach them, but oh boy, they'll be able to reach you.
If you want to effect absolute neutering of any power remaining in the hands of you and your fellows, by all means, encourage your government to ignore their national constitutions, national law and local constituents, and instead subject themselves to the rule of detached and self-serving international bodies.
Yes, I know, this was a stupid place to pose this. It's off-topic. Oh, and I am an anon coward today, how sad.
1) Governments will have to use an ISO approved standard, to make sure their documents can be exchanged, and that their documents will be readable in the future.
2) Since msft has a monopoly on office products, the ISO standard of choice is a foregone conclusion.
3) Anybody who does business with the governments will also have to use the OOXML standard. So those who do business with the governments will also standardize on OOXML. Those who business, with those who do business with governments, will also have to standardize on OOXML - and so on.
4) ODF will never have the slightest chance to get a toe-hold.
5) Msft wins again - QED.
Thought I recognized you from that crapflood.
That would be a nice explanation if ISO followed their rules. But they didn't, they changed the rules on the middle of the process atempting to let it keep going. If they didn't change the rules, OOXML would be rejected at the first voting session.
Now, why the second set of rules is so important, and the first set so irrelevant?
Rethinking email
I respect them for a single reason: If you ask for a RFC compilant system, you risk getting pigeons.
That way, everybody has to think about what they are buying.
Rethinking email
What a troll. There's no chance of you or your PR blow buddies donating anything but grief to a free software project. The "bickering" you talk about is all your own.
Maybe they should rename it MS-ISO.
I$O
It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
So the biggest scandal ever to hit ISO and they recommend not to look into it any further. Of course no surprise there. But now the process is that it gets sent to the technical management board for review and luckily Brazil and South Africa are members.
This is the TMB membership according to Groklaw. So who knows, perhaps with the added scrutiny people will have some integrity. Unfortunately, probably not.
Beyond a pitiful handful of GPL zealots on slashdot, who cares? My guess is that 99% or the world does not even know about the scam.
ISO may lose credibility with the groklaw/slashdot crowd, but so what? PHBs have no respect for the Linux loonies anyway.
Do any decision makers realize that MS is just a vendor? Granted they're everywhere, and as such are a sort of de facto standard, but they are just a vendor.
It amazes me that, in my job, I've implemented a couple of open-source tracking systems that have been running without incident, directly as part of our production process, for 2 1/2 years. At the same time, our main products that we sell to people are wall-to-wall MS, and we're constantly dealing with complaints which often boil down to the seeming randomness of MS stuff to decide to break during one transaction for one user where "try again" is the motto.
When I point this out, people look at me like I'm crazy. It's as if the saying "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" has morphed into "if it ain't completely broken most of the time, don't fix it." So, we're building poop upon poop upon poop and selling it, and employees have to reboot their Windows machines several times a day, or wait for the MS network servers to reboot. Meanwhile, I've been able to fix 100% of any bug with my systems within a day or less *permanently*, and haven't had to even do that in probably a year or more.
Slowly, we're seeing clients migrate to Vista and, despite the facts that it has caused issues and contractually we don't even support it, there is horror when I point this out; "But we do support Vista, deal with it," they say. (We don't even have Vista in our testing environment.) We even have one internal guy running on Vista, and the IT support team curses his name, but deal with it without question.
MS is just a vendor. Why do the decision makers just shrug and accept this crap, day in and day out. There is a cost associated with each of these little breakdowns, yet MS products are simply not in the line of blame for anything. Rather, it's the normal course of business to deal with the issues that the little MS quirks consistently cause.
So that makes it right? You sound like my teenage niece: well, everyone else is doing it.
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