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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.
Really, I really mean this question.
Funny, there are some Chinese guys here that sell ISOs in some sort of garage sale...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
... The Best Standards That Money Can Buy ®
I find an accusation that Brazilians have no life coming from a Slashdot posting Microsoft fanboy so excellently funny that I can only salute you.
These countries should just all start using ANSI. It's a much better organiza--
Wait, you're telling me A doesn't stand for awesome?
It is unacceptable for any organisation to buy a standard that provides it with a competitave advantage.
ISO has produced the OOXML situation and has ridden roughshod over its own rules to do it. So the relevance of ISO is now highly questionable.
ISO can no longer be considered independent for Technology standards.
> "questioning the judgment and relevance of the ISO/IEC and the standards they approve... said they are 'no longer confident' in the ability of..."
Judgment: Bought
Relevance: Irrelevant
Your Confidence in ISO: Of no concern to us now that we have nice fat OOXML consulting paychecks flowing in.
Don't use OOXML. A standard is not a law and ISO/IEC not an enforcement agency. They are an authority which you can judge on its worth.
Since they are arguing that they spent money on using ODF then why care about OOXML?
deal with it, it isnt the end of the world.
It is if you are the unfortunate bastard who has to figure out how to read in a Mickeysoft Word doc and convert it to another format! What do you do when a section is tagged as "Format like Word 95"?!
metzomagic
granted ISO isn't handling these appeals and this scenario the way they should (imho), questioning their validity as a standards organization is probably the best thing for monopolies like Microsoft.
At this point even if OOXML gets turned down as a standard and enough countries (especially the big players like europe and the US) scoff at the ISO then Microsoft has turned us against our standards ideal and won.
Without even pointing a finger, MS will have stripped the ISO of legitimate credibility as a standards institute. Not a good thing.
Standards can be wrong or incomplete but they are still completely vital to the proper functioning of modern computing.
If Microsoft's dodgy dealings have managed to invalidate trust in one of the main standards bodies, thereby making less people adhere to standards, this will be a serious blow to interoperable computing in the future.
On technical matters lies and corruption do not work. These countries show they bother about technical standards being built on rational and consensual decisions, not being bought just for helping Microsoft control document formats.
These countries appear closer to integrity than Western wealthy countries, interesting.
Part of the advantage MS gets from this is that they can now sell their software to organizations that require open document format specs. So even if you don't want to use OOXML, you local government might (and likely will - it's not like they'll stop buying office licenses, particularly if they can get around the open format law in this way).
Of course, I've you've ever seen an ISO-9001:2000 certified process, you probably already know how completely meaningless the specs and certifications are in practical terms.
It's sad that non of the countries tries to take the appeal on the next level, the Secretaries-General, because it would show us how high the corruption in ISO goes.
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
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.
You miss the main point. The "standard" is incomplete and cannot be implemented without access to source code within Microsoft's office suite. On this basis alone, it should have been rejected until the documentation is complete. I wonder why you defend them so much when it's obvious this "standard" is utter shit and totally unusable?
640x480 pixels, blue background, no window decorations, and 80 columns wide big white characters?
These countries appear closer to integrity than Western wealthy countries, interesting.
Because these countries have nothing to gain from supporting the entrenched suppliers, thus they are able to view the situation more objectively.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
ISO did not have to go along with MS's scam. ISO could have done the right thing. MS did not hurt ISO, ISO did it to themselves.
I'd think it's quite obvious this is not about ISO approving a standard some of us don't like; it's about how this standard was approved.
ISO has demonstrated that anyone can get anything approved, if they are willing to spend a whole lot of money in the process.
An organization like ISO should at the very least appear to be objective. Instead, the sold out, it's as simple as that.
The fact that OOXML was approved, and the process leading up to that verdict, proves two things: 1) Microsoft is a scummy as it has always been, if not worse, and 2) ISO is corrupt to it's core, and can no longer be trusted to be fair about anything, period.
No, that's exactly the problem, we now have a standard that we can't work from. It's completely unusable and shouldn't have been accepted as a standard.
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?
Groklaw has more on this.
you had me at #!
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.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
I'm sorry, but I believe you have spectacularly missed the point of the complaints here. There are basically two separate issues that have upset people.
The first is that we don't have a standard we can work from. Have you looked at the OOXML documentation at all? It isn't just big, it's pretty much ill-defined. What's the point of an ill-defined standard? If you want backward compatibility, it should say that certain features must work as documenting in another standard that you cite. OOXML says they must work like various previous bits of software with unspecified behaviour.
The second is that despite these glaring technical flaws, the standard has been approved because Microsoft have basically paid for enough people to join formerly opposed national standards bodies to swing the votes. This demonstrates that a single group with enough financial power can subvert the mechanisms for independent peer review that groups like ISO are expected to follow.
It is hardly surprising that in the final tally of national standards bodies, most approved OOXML. The point is that many of those did not approve it until the last minute, when numerous companies with an obvious affiliation to Microsoft suddenly started sending representatives along just in time to get voting rights, and then voted the standard through, with no evidence that they had even read it. There is considerable opposition to OOXML in most of these places, particularly from those who have actually read the material, but they have been shouted down by money and procedural flaws. That just means the affected national standards bodies also need to revise their processes or become irrelevant.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
There is still the outstanding EU checks continuing. That and the fact there is still a path for the ISO appeals process to continue means this is not over yet. Considering ISO polices itself and does a pretty awful job, I suspect that the EU is going to be the best chance of putting this terrible 'standard' to sleep.
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.
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.
A lot of people act as if ISO was
A) some kind of guarantee that it'll be implemented 100% accurately and compatibly by everyone, and there is absolutely no room for wiggling in incompatible details, and
B) it's the first time this happens.
Hello? Both are false.
As a trivial example, C is an ISO standard. ISO/IEC 9899, to be precise. When was the last one you saw two C compiler implementations, from two different vendors and preferrably on different architectures, that were 100% compatible with each other or the standard? It's trivial to produce code that produces wildly different results, and offten incorrect results, based on unspecified details like endianness or word size.
Or take paper sizes. The ISO 216 defines paper sizes like A4, and multiples. Has that stopped anyone from selling "letter" sized paper instead? Or it's trivial to produce paper which is technically A4, but will jam your printer anyway, e.g., because it's much thicker than normal and the standard says nothing about that third dimension.
Most of the ISO standards are just guidelines, nothing more.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
If you think about it really hard, it may just be that Mr. Opportunist was making the exact same frikkin point but in a humorous and less labored way.
Mod me down but I couldn't help myself.
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
Alright, OOXML has been ratified an official standard by the ISO organization. But what does that mean? Just because ISO has made OOXML a standard doesn't mean somebody is putting a gun to someone's head forcing them to use it. All of the good standards have been discovered over time, by the trial of time. If people do not use OOXML, then the fact that it is a standard would be moot.
Of all the countries participating in ISO/OOXML standardization isn't it pretty amazing that South Africa, Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador, Paraguay, and Cuba are the ones that Microsoft can't buy...
I mean you'd expect western countries to have a certain level of integrity... Whereas less wealthy countries usually would be easier to bribe, but I guess not...
Okay, you can discuss whether or not the different countries/TC's was bribed, but dirty tricks were played!
Standards are great, but who says you have to implement them?
People mentioned that a lot of government entities require you to do so. That's a big one.
Standards bodies have always had a mixed record.
In some cases (e.g. early ANSI C), they did a reasonable job bringing together practitioners and standardizing and documenting a mature technology.
In other cases (e.g., ALGOL 68, MPEG-7), they brought together a bunch of academics who thought they could use the standards body to realize their untested and unrealistic ideas.
Neither of those cases is relevant anymore; people can communicate and build consensus over the Internet.
Where standards bodies still matter is in a legal sense: a standards body can guarantee that a "promise not to sue" actually has some legal force behind it, in the form of a binding agreement between the standards body and the vendor participants.
Of course, that requires a standards body that actually takes this aspect of standardization seriously and doesn't make exceptions. ECMA dropped the ball on this.
Think about it for a sec. How did western "rich" countries become "rich"?
yeah, you got it now...
Again, what else is new?
Especially in regards to the ISO 9000 series, especially as applied to software companies/departments who want that rubber stamp, you could be 100% compliant even if you work towards the wrong goals and achieve the wrong results. Essentially anyone with the money to blow on a byzantine bureaucracy where you have to document every bleeding obvious step, and document compliance with some brain dead rule, can get that certification. No need to even pay those money to ISO. You'll lose them the old fashioned way.
E.g., I know at least one company where they institutionalized the worst imaginable caricature of the waterfall model. And I don't mean the sane waterfall model, but the distorted caricature that sometimes is used under that name. In fact, a distorted caricature of even that. Everything must start with writing a cubic metre of use-cases and collect the signatures of a few dozen people on it. (Note that their model doesn't include at this step any kind of mockup or proof of concept to show them. You must just have faith that if you nag them enough they'll tell you _all_ their requirements in detail, and you'll write them down.) Then you work for some months on the implementation. _Then_ you have a couple of months for tests and fixing at the end. Then the customer finally sees anything, and _of_ _course_ it'll be exactly what he had in mind. And if more needs to be done, loop from the start now.
It's counter-productive, but if you could be arsed to document how you adhered to every step of it religiously, and can answer with a straight face things like, basically, "did you do what the rules said you should be doing?" you could be ISO 9000 certified for that crap process.
E.g., I had the mis-fortune of working with someone who wanted to have documented quality targets in advance, as per ISO 9001. Sounds good. Except he wanted to measure the entirely wrong things. He had only one tool he knew how to use, that is, a tool for benchmarking web applications. We, however, had made a framework. So instead of figuring out how he can benchmark the actual calls to the framework methods and classes, he wanted to benchmark the HTTPUnit unit tests. So basically he could write there as a quality goal, stuff like "the unit tests for the SomeComplexEJB module finish in less than 5 seconds." Woe if two iterations later, and having included test cases for any bugs reported and fixed, you end up taking more than 5 seconds.
Yep, if you're stupid enough, you can get _that_ sanctified as compliance with ISO 9001.
It doesn't say you should be doing the right thing or the effective thing. It just says you must have a type of process and can produce the relevant documentation if audited.
I'd say that bribing ISO to get that rubber stamp, might actually be an improvement in some places, compared to actually complying with a bad process thought up by a non-techie. At least if you bribe ISO, hey, at least you don't ruin everyone's productivity too. And the losses are basically limited to that bribe, which limit you don't get if you actually comply.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
...I am not very comfortable to see Brazil rubbing elbows with crazy Chavez in Venezuela or Castro's Cuba. It reminds me there are political besides technical reasons why some countries support FOSS. For many years I was very close to the FOSS movement in Brazil and I can say "not sending more $$ to the USA" was as good a reason as any to support FOSS in certain circles.
All that aside though, not too long ago I was talking to someone who makes a lot of money selling knowledge (in the format of software tools) to various Brazilian agencies both in the federal and local levels. I knew there is a law in Brazil that compels government agencies to prefer Open Source solutions over proprietary unless they can prove they could not find a viable FOSS alternative.
What I didn't know was that when asked "do you want this for Windows or for Linux" the answer from some agencies would be "please don't ask that question. We want the Windows version but if you tell us there is a Linux version we'll be forced to buy that. Let's pretend you didn't say anything."
In that environment being able to require an ISO standard is a tremendous tool to help level the playing field. If ISO had not approved OOXML those agencies in Brazil would have _no legal basis_ to prefer MS Office. By becoming a standard, OOXML now tilts the field back in MS's favor. MS knows this. That's why they did and will do absolutely anything to be able to let their reps and techs say "yeah, ours is an ISO standard too..."
ISO did not have to go along with MS's scam. ISO could have done the right thing. MS did not hurt ISO, ISO did it to themselves.
True, though Microsoft did have the brilliant idea of sabotaging the preeminent open standards organization and getting itself big government contracts all with a handful of payoffs. That's some evil judo they've got there.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
All I know is, most of the Brazilian girls I've ever encountered were seriously hot.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
This isn't about Microsoft. I don't think this episode does them any credit, but we're discussing ISO. ISO are easy to blame. Not necessarily for letting Microsoft stack the deck, (although they could have co-operated a little less enthusiastically) but for not following their own written procedures and for ramrodding through a standard that plainly was not ready for the fast track process, for doing so over the protests and complaints of many member countries, and for not even giving a hearing to the protests raised after the fact.
It simply isn't good enough. Sorry.
You keep saying that as if it lets ISO off the hook, but I really don't see your point. Yes, you're probably right and ISO have probably been permitting this sort of chicanery for years on end. One criticism of ISO I keep seeing in the wake this debacle is for their apparent inability to adapt to the needs of the technical community in a changing world. The sort of gamesmanship that mattered little when fixing the diameter of a bolt can seriously undermine the process when applied to something as complex as a multi-document file format. If ISO wish to remain relevant they need to realise this.
But really it matters little whether ISO have lapsed from once lofty standards, or if they have always been corrupt, with this issue but showing them in their true light to thousands of people who previously lived in happy ignorance.
What is important is that ISO need to raise their game if they are to continue to be taken seriously as a world standards body.
Many of whose issues were not discussed at all due to the inadequate time allocated for the discussion. Perhaps that's their fault as well? And the refusal of ISO to consider any appeal for these issues? Is that too the fault of member bodies? I'm sorry, but no. That doesn't seem at all reasonable.
I'm not sure I want ISO making moral judgements either. But this isn't a question of morality. It's a matter of a standard that quite clearly fell far short of the required level of consensus being forced through by a standards body quite happy to bend, break or re-write its own rules purely in order to favour one party over all the other participants.
This is not, I feel, behaviour we want to encourage. Not because of the ethics of the matter, questionable as they undoubtedly are, but because it leaves the distinct impression that ISO's standards are for sale to the highest bidder. And I don't think that's a particularly good way to choose a standard.
Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton!