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ISO Relevance Questioned After OOXML Appeals Fail

Posted by kdawson on from the burning-down-the-house dept.

Cowards Anonymous passes along an Australian PCWorld piece that begins "Countries whose appeals were dismissed regarding the ISO/IEC's approval of Microsoft's OOXML as an international standard are questioning the judgment and relevance of the ISO/IEC and the standards they approve. In a statement made at the Congresso Internacional Sociedade e Governo Electronico (CONSEGI) 2008 conference, representatives from three of the four countries that appealed against an April 1 vote to approve OOXML as a standard said they are 'no longer confident' in the ability of both the International Organization for Standardization and the International Electrotechnical Commission to be vendor-neutral and open when it comes to setting technology standards." Here is the statement signed by South Africa, Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador, Paraguay, and Cuba. The countries won't pursue further opposition to OOXML.

6 of 236 comments (clear)

  1. Iso Vs Reality by Narpak · · Score: 5, Interesting

    While I do not doubt that ISO will be around for a long while yet; the case of ODF and OOXML illustrates how their significance isn't all that it used to be. The case of ODF shows that even if a big corporation gets their own standards passed by unethical means people will still choose the superior product. At least so it would seem so far. More and more companies and nations are making ODF a document standard because it is Open and available to all their citizens. Why pay for expensive software when free software does the job more than adequately.

    What annoys me the most about cases such as this is the fact that they get little to no coverage in my nations media. No mention in any newspaper at all. Then again it's no big surprise since the "newspapers" are looking more like tabloids every day.

    --
    The Long Now Foundation
  2. Re:So let me get this straight. by gmack · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It's more than that. Microsoft pushed countries that otherwise would have had no interest in the process to sign on as voting members. They also stuffed country committee meetings with their own people and in one case got caught paying people to attend.

    It was so bad that the working group responsible is now paralyzed because too many of the new countries who signed on as voting members can't even be bothered to vote on anything that's not OOXML.

    This is not just a disagreeable decision. It's an abuse of process.

  3. What ISO is supposed to be about by Adaptux · · Score: 5, Interesting
    ISO is supposed to be about standards which work for everyone. There are written rules in place which are designed to guarantee that specifications will be accepted as international standards only when there is very broad acceptance. In the case of OOXML, these rules were bent again and again (having participated in the process both as a member of the relevant committee in my national standardization organization and at the international "Ballot Resolution Meeting", I know this from first-hand observation). In view of this, it is IMO quite reasonable to interpret the dismissal of these appeals (the first appeals ever in the history of ISO/IEC JTC1) as very strong evidence that ISO/IEC approval of a specification can not longer be interpreted as an indication that the specification has very broad acceptance among those who care about the topic area.

    As a matter of fact, what will become the ISO/IEC standard on OOXML is not likely to be truly implemented by anyone. Microsoft has already announced that they will not anytime soon implement the changes relative to the OOXML format that they're currently using.

    Just be glad we have a standard that we can work from

    Why would anyone want to "work from" the ISO/IEC version of the OOXML specification?

  4. France has nothing to gain from this, and yet by Nicolas+MONNET · · Score: 5, Interesting

    We have nothing to gain from funneling money into Microsoft's coffers.
    But here are a few facts:
    1. Sarkozy is best buds with the head of MS France
    2. At the national std org (AFNOR) meeting, there was an overwhelming consensus towards voting "no"
    3. The day before the final ISO vote, someone at the office of the president called our rep to the ISO
    4. Our vote switched to "abstain", magically. This allowed OOXML to pass.

    Corruption. There is no other word for it. It's interesting that Venezuela, Brasil, and Cuba voted, basically, against corruption. That should tell you something about what kind of "truth" we're being fed about those countries. (And no, hold your strawmen, I'm not implying that Castro is an angel.)

    We asked for explanations about this vote; I don't think they even bothered to respond.

  5. But: We can replace ISO by Adaptux · · Score: 5, Interesting

    That's how politics come to a close about an issue. Those who lost complain, publicly, loudly, and with no effect whatsoever on the process itself. Then everyone goes back to business.

    You can love it or hate it, but if you watch enough politics closely enough, you see this pattern repeat over and over and over again.

    There's a difference here though: In most political contexts, nonviolently establishing an alternative process is prohibitively difficult.

    In this context, it's still difficult, but much easier. ISO is not an intergovernmental organization. It's just simply a private-sector organization with seat in Geneva. Nothing and nobody has the right stop us from setting up a competing organization.

    The key challenge is in convincing governments that the new organization is more worthy of paying attention to than ISO/IEC JTC1. In this context it's very good news that some governments are expressing doubts about ISO/IEC.

    Note that since nations are sovereign, it is not necessary for an organization that aims to become a better alternative to ISO/IEC to convince a majority of countries. Even convincing a handful of countries is probably enough if a heavyweight like e.g. Brazil or India is among them, since that would suffice for putting very strong pressure on e.g. Microsoft to allow true interoperability.

  6. Re:What's new there, though? by Moraelin · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Yes, but GSM is a different standard. ISO 216 doesn't say anything about that. As far as ISO 216 is concerned, I could make a sheet that's 210mm × 297mm x 3000mm, in effect a _pillar_ with an A4 cross-section, and it would still count as ISO/DIN A4.

    As for C99, exactly who implemented a C99 compiler faithfully or at all?

    - GCC's own Status of C99 features in GCC page lists a _lot_ of C99 features as missing or broken.

    - Visual C++ at least as of 2005 did _not_ support C99. Some 6 years after the standard had been passed. A quick search on MSDN leads me to believe that VS 2008 doesn't either.

    - Borland AFAIK never did.

    - a quick googling on Sun's site leads me to believe that their implementation is also not quite complete and compliant

    - a quick googling on IBM's site, produced "Not all run-time functions and facilities required by the ISO/IEC 9899:1999 International Standard are supported on all the operating system levels that can run this version of the compiler." in the relevant section of IBM C for AIX v6.0. I wouldn't know if newer versions even exist, or how that was updated.

    Sorry, if I don't have the time for the full research that this deserves. But so far it looks like, basically, if I could be arsed to, I could probably write some standard-compliant C99 code which doesn't even compile on _any_ major C compiler. Does that sound like the OOXML situation yet? :P

    --
    A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.