ISO Relevance Questioned After OOXML Appeals Fail

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.

Comments

Hypocritical bastards!

[Hurricane78]

Everybody knows that they voted this trash that they call a "standard", because Microsoft bought them.
And everybody knows that they are doing this for the same reason.
It does not even matter if it is Microsoft.
This is the behavior of someone who has no soul and would sell his mother for a dollar.

When you try to destroy openness and someone blocks you, you fail.
When you then scream that the others want to destroy openness, that's an epic fail.

Your choice: -1, Flamebait or -1 Interesting

[Magic5Ball]

It's easy to blame Microsoft or the ISO for the host of things that could be perceived to be wrong here. Recall that in the course of voting in favour of this or any specification, each voting country or organization *represents in good faith* that this proposed standard will enhance their ability to interoperate in some way.

If we assume that Microsoft did not buy *every* affirmative indication of support through money or lobbying (and it has not been alleged or demonstrated that that is the case), there remains the potentially annoying facts: that at least one voting member legitimately wants OOXML as one of their standards for electronic editable rich document interoperability; and that some of these voting national standards bodies may not be fulfilling their mandate to meet the best needs of the technical and industrial stakeholders they represent.

I will repeat what I've previously stated for emphasis: Nothing has changed here in the nature of the ISO.

To the extent that the ISO may have appeared virtuous by the actions of its members in the past, it may now appear to be vicious by the actions of its present members. The responsibility for any poor decision-making should rest squarely on the members, which requires the fairly obvious, but posturing-deficient solution of fixing national corruption.

At a more abstract level, I'm not convinced that I want a technical standards body to make moral determinations of goodness or badness of an idea for standardizing something beyond the judgment that on the balance of probabilities, a particular proposal is or is not technically sound for implementation and potentially useful. If a sufficiently large mass of technically adept professionals will not or cannot compel a superior standard, they: are not presenting a superior standard; unwilling to sacrifice career and dollars for the sake of the superior standard (same position as anyone accused of corruption with OOXML); or they are poor at lobbying or communicating (not a fault of the ISO, Microsoft, or really anyone else).

By this, I make my peace with this matter, and will not stop anyone who feels the need to continue to carelessly assume things about standards to do so at their own expense.