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IBM Threatens To Leave ISO Over OOXML Brouhaha
barnackle writes "In addition to threatening to leave certain standards organizations over the OOXML shenanigans, IBM created new guidelines for its own participation in those organizations in an attempt to pressure the ISO and ECMA to be more fair in their approval procedures."
Hmm... didn't they used to be some important international standards body at one point, before they got into the marketing business and went under?
I thought they were already gone...
Why is this news?
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Well IBM is big enough to Push their own standards with or without the ISO label. So what that IBM may be able to do is invaladate ISO as a leader in International Standards Organization. If ISO label has no meaning then they become useless.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Well, the cynic in me agrees with you -- I doubt IBM will follow through, and if they did, I doubt it would make much difference.
However, if people start viewing the ISO as irrelevant and just doing what a big company like Microsoft wants, then they run the risk of becoming irrelevant. That might be the kind of thing they take notice of.
I would like to see some correction to the fact that it's a standard that really only MS can implement. Rubber stamping OOXML basically just legitimizes it for governments to buy it.
Cheers
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I have some friends and an ex-wife that work for IBM. While I would go as far to say that, by and large, my dealings with them have been fair an ethical, I would resist any sort of "white knight" metaphors, it is still a publicly traded company and stock holders mean more than standards.
It is only that IBM is a technically competent competitor that it *can* compete and win on a level playing field that they promote good standards.
That being said, having dealt with double dealing scum of Microsoft many times in the past, I'll take IBM any day.
A quick look over at Groklaw has a good article about the motivations here. I'd still be cautious, but it's optimistic when IBM stresses open standards as being important to them. I'm actually surprised this didn't happen sooner with the garbage of OOXML.
If a really major player leaves the organization it is a major "no confidence" vote in the organization itself.
While the official standards are a great idea, a really big player or a consortium of them can easily just create defacto standards that will have a great chance in the real-world marketplace. This is doubly true if they actually make their standards truly open, as IBM seems to advocate.
I'd say that if companies that manufacture about 10% of the market leave ISO, then it is wounded. If it hits a number like 25%, then it's basically useless.
Also, large companies pay an obscene amount in yearly dues to be part of the standards bodies. Losing that cash will sting badly.
If IBM joins up with major countries that are on record against this infamy (like Brazil and India) and convinces other big players like Sun to join to form a rival to ISO, this could be a good move. I daresay, smaller players like Linux vendors (except Novell) will gladly join the new organization. They should then set up rules that an improperly documented and vendor-tied standard cannot even be brought up for a vote in that new organization, let alone bribed through like this OOXML bullshit.
PJ has, as usual, her own thoughtful analysis on the announcemnt at Groklaw.
Surely IBM will have more influence over future ISO decisions if it remains a member.
I don't believe that's true. IBM was a part of this OOXML process and yet it was, along with Sun, barred from the portuguese technical committee. This level of corruption doesn't leave fond memories of the whole process.
Slashdot, fix your code or at least hire someone who is competent at it to do it for you.
I know ever since Google came along, we have a tendency to attribute personalities and other human characteristics to companies. However, this is a very dangerous fallacy. Companies, in fact, are amoral. They are neither good nor evil. The nature of a company is to make money and to survive. Survival requires growth, so it isn't wrong to say that companies exist to make more and more money. So for them, to do right is to bring in revenue, and to do wrong is to lose revenue. That is all, no more, no less.
IBM will champion open source and open standards so long as it makes them money. It is the same with Novell and Sun. They don't contribute to open source software if the people running the show doesn't somehow think that such contributions will bring in revenue, and eventually profit. It is the same for Google. If participataing in open source or making somehow loses m
Yes, the goodwill of the people does count, but for very little. Look at Microsoft. Despite all of their actions that have antagonized people here, and even their userbase, how many people own XBoxes? Sony is another good example. How many people have Bravia televisions or own a PS3? We talk about rewarding companies who do good and voting with our wallets, but not only are we on the fringe, but at the end of the day, it doesn't matter. As long as they make a good product, a useful product, nobody really cares about what else they do.
And yes, there are humans behind the scense who run the company and decide on its direction. However, those people come and go. They are not permanent. One day, the CEO could be for open source software, and the next day, that person could be replaced by someone hostile to open source. And get this, the ones who go are usually the ones who don't make money for the company. Philanthropy has no place in a company if it can't make money.
Today, IBM works for openness now, in this instance, for this situation. And it is a "good" thing. But they do it not for the sake of "good" but because it will make them money. It isn't to say that they're not doing something "evil" at the same time, or that they won't tomorrow.
This inability for one to recognize reality for what it is is very dangerous. Call me a cynic, but if we continue to attribute "good" and "evil" to companies, we won't see what's really happening until it's too late.
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."
This isn't about specific software, hardware or other standards per se.
This is about a corrupt process, which this debacle happened to reveal. The organisation is fundamentally corrupt, the procedures are fundamentally corruptible, and the appeals process has proven that there is no effective corrective mechanism for dealing with corruption.
This makes every standard they stamp, be it the crappy and unimplementable software standard that proved their level of corruption and incapacity for correcting it, or another standard that may be legitimate, or the result of equally corrupt processes to which we are not privy, equally suspect. We cannot know which standards are good, and which are the result of industrial corruption, so all are relatively worthless.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy