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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
Uh, you mean Lenovo ? That ain't the IBM
"Hardware Division" by a long shot
If Sun other large tech companies join them, it will do a lot more good. IRTFA (some kind soul bought me a /. subscription and you can't comment on stories that come "in the future") and part of the end of the article explains why IBM just can't leave the standards bodies. They have their own standards to push, for instance.
Free Martian Whores!
That was only their desktop hardware division, which they sold to Lenovo, presumably as the margins are not very good. Their server and mainframe hardware divisions are alive and well.
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Surely IBM will have more influence over future ISO decisions if it remains a member. This is particularly true of a 'Big Player' like IBM who will carry a lot of clout.
'Outsiders' can be discounted far more easily as they are simply not part of the process, and could therefore be said to be irrelevant.
IBM should collaborate with other large firms (but presumably not Microsoft) to enforce due diligence in future decisions.
Smivs on the intertubes!
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.
Last year, Microsoft had $51bn in revenue and IBM had $98bn. So if it's about money, IBM is twice as important as Microsoft.
today, dont you think ? it is to me at least.
Read radical news here
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.
Brought to you by.....IBM! Makers of bloated slow shit! OS/2, DB2, Websphere, and everything else they've ever did!
Er, you do know what IBM stands for, don't you? The "M" stands for "machines" and the "IB" doesn't stand for "Itty Bitty". IBM is primarily a hardware company. They make and have always made what's known as "big iron", i.e. mainframes, although they do and have made such diverse stuff as typewriters (their selectric was the king of the office at one time) and calculators.
Without actually googling I'd hazard a guess they made one of the top ten fastest computers in existance, and I'd bet money they're still in the top one hundred.
BTW it isn't an IBM app but it runs on their mainframes, my favorite database language is NOMAD.
Free Martian Whores!
Some countries are already making noises about not automatically adopting ISO standards. The more countries that adopt this "a la carte" approach to ISO, the more it will weaken ISO. The more countries that adopt the a la carte approach "until such time as ISO gets its act together" the more pressure there will be on ISO to get its act together.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
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.
"Without actually googling I'd hazard a guess they made one of the top ten fastest computers in existance, and I'd bet money they're still in the top one hundred."
Actually, IBM made 5/10 of fastest supercomputers according to top500... including first three positions...
Surely IBM will have more influence over future ISO decisions if it remains a member.
And surely ISO will be able to stay more relevant if it can retain IBM as a member. Standards bodies can be discounted for more easily if "Big Players" are simply not part of the process.
If IBM were pulling out simply because they weren't getting what they wanted, then the whole thing would seem childish. But when a standards body is approving bad standards because it's being manipulated/corrupted, and attempts to clean up the corruption are not being successful, then the appropriate thing for other "big players" to do is drop support for that standards body.
While IBM certainly still does make enough servers to put it at the top of the quarterly lists of server vendors, they make even more selling software and services.
SirWired
I don't think IBM feels like much of a 'Big Player', considering how much the ISO listened to them in regards to the OOXML stuff. If the ISO is going to act so stupid here, ignoring IBM, why should IBM expect their remarks to be considered by the ISO in the future? While it's true that MS isn't going to... influence the ISO's decisions quite so strongly on every tech-related issue as it did here (and so IBM will still have some voice) it is still a better idea to act now. If this happens again (and again and again), IBM won't have as much ground for fighting it. They'd have to justify why they didn't fight quite so hard before, and even if they make a perfectly reasonable argument (ie, your argument) the very fact they're put in that position weakens them.
IBM - and anyone else who cares to (and is in the position to) make a stance against the ISO's actions - must do it immediately and make it clear.
"A witty saying proves nothing." - Voltaire
#s 1,2, and 3 as of June of this year according to http://www.top500.org/list/2008/06/100 [top500.org]
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Please... IBM's 32-bit OS/2 ran circles around Windows NT in its day (as a fine example, search for YouTube video of David Barnes demonstrating OS/2 versus NT back in the early 1990's), and I'm sure the Warp 4.5x kernel will run runs around XP, Vista, and probably also Linux and *BSD kernels on similar hardware even today. The OS/2 kernel used rings 0, 2, and 3 which was very usual for x86 code, but it also was extremely good at juggling multiple tasks and threads under load and at dynamically adjusting process/thread priorities to make the entire system smooth.
I remember some magazine doing a test of OS/2 Warp Server versus NT server sometime in the 1994/1995 timeframe, and a single-CPU Warp box trashed a 4-CPU NT box running the exact same benchmarks.
Notes is a bloated hog, yes, but OS/2? The evidence suggests otherwise.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
"..OOXML...IBM...ISO....ECMA"
Danger! Acronym overload!!!
Must....keep.....head.....from......exploding. (MKHFE).
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.
maybe Microsoft will threaten to leave. Now that would be entertaining.
Do you even have a friggin' clue!
IBM and other raised serious objections to OOXML but OOXML was pushed forward, in violation of ISO's rules. IBM, with all it's clout, could not stop it.
More importantly the procedure that ISO had in place failed everyone. ISO violated its' own rules!
No discussions, no debates, no desents. People either approved OOXML or were forced to be silent.
ISO has been rendered usless as several countries have stated that are withdrawing from ISO and setting up their own standards body.
No one is more experienced at doing dirty footwork than IBM; they set that industry standard along with hundreds of others. That's what made the SCO thing so damn funny, and look at the outcome there...They didn't just not lose, they annihilated the poor bastards. Now remember who was using their money to prop up SCO? Microsoft. This is an old feud.
No, the reason IBM didn't blow a ton of money on it is because they had nothing to lose. Their desktop suite is a hobby project, whereas Microsoft's is their life blood. Now IBM is throwing their weight around, and may end up getting to eat their cake and have it too, all for a piddly outlay of cash.
Who looks smart now?
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
While the "M" in "IBM" stands for machines, the company (of which I'm an employee) has been moving away from hardware as a core product toward high-margin software & services, which now comprise 54% of the company's business. The hardware is important, because the different parts of the business feed each other. For instance, Microelectronics exists to ensure state-of-the-art chip access for server products which allows complete turnkey service solutions for many customers and provides a platform for new software sales. However, the revenue is now more than half from software and services and this will continue to grow.
You obviously don't know what you're talking about. OS/2 was an *excellent* operating system. I admit that the 1.x versions were lacking, but that is common for a new OS. Versions 2.1 and later were certainly not bloated, nor slow. This was a preemtive multitasking operating system with a full graphical shell that ran decently in 8MB of RAM, and ran *very* well in 16MB of RAM. It ran Windows 3.1 applications in a better environment than Windows 3.1 itself (3.1 ran on top of DOS). Yes, the OS was bigger than the Windows/DOS combo. Yes, it did require more resources than Windows/DOS, but that alone does not make it bloated. Windows/DOS was nothing more than a task switching OS. The cooperative multitasking it provided was completely useless. I used OS/2 from 1993 to around 1997 (Warp 4 being the last version). It was an extremely stable OS, and was a pleasure to use. If market share had been decided on technical merits alone, Windows of all flavors would have been many notches below OS/2 on the list. Alas, IBM didn't make a ton of deals with hardware manufacturers to practically give them OS/2 in exchange for not allowing any other OS to be sold on the PCs they sold (for obvious reasons--they were competitors to those manufacturers). Microsoft built its monopoly via those type of agreements with hardware vendors, and that is why we are where we are today.
BTW, there is no need to "educate" me by pointing out that in the old days IBM was just as bad as Microsoft in this regard. I am aware of the anticompetetive practices IBM has done in the past, and would not be surprised to hear about current things they might be doing in that regard. They are a large corporation, after all. And big money provides many people in a business with opportunity to misuse the power it provides. My point was that OS/2 did not "enjoy" the marketshare provided to Windows that was due to this kind of shady bundling deal.
Also, DB2 is no slouch in the database market. It performs quite well in comparison to other RDBMs. All RDBMs are fairly complicated, but I don't think calling DB2 "bloated" is an accurate statement.
I have no experience with Websphere, so I won't comment on that. I also won't argue that IBM never produced any slow or bloated software -- because they have. But to say "OS/2, DB2, Websphere, and everything else they've ever did" were slow and bloated is just making an ignorant statement.
And another "fascinating" comment by someone who did not RTFA and has no knowledge of the subject.
The /. title changed it to "ISO" instead of "Standards Bodies". That said the TFA did only reference ISO and ECMA, of which IBM is in fact a member.
And ECMA is a member of ISO. So is ANSI, of which you might think IBM is part of? And you'd actually be right.
You said yourself, ISO is comprised of various national standards bodies. Who do you think comprises these bodies? Fairies? ISO is comprised of groups that IBM is a member of. Therefore is it reasonable to state that IBM as a member of several of the bodies that comprise ISO is thus a member of ISO. As such, they can actually leave the ISO by leaving the standards bodies that comprise ISO.
Furthermore nearly every national standards body is in fact incorporated or whatever their country equivalent is. As such, your assertion that "there is no concept of corporate membership" is demonstrably false. ANSI is a not-for-profit U.S. corporation, and is a member of ISO.
QED.
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
Actually, IBM is not primarily a hardware company, but their hardware is definitely big. According to their last annual report, hardware (along with financing) was only 23% of their pre-tax income, down 2% from 2003. Software made up 40% and Services made up the remaining 37%. But their hardware is now focused on bleeding edge tech and R&D, servers, mainframes, and supercomputers.
PDF Warning: ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/annualreport/2007/2007_ibm_annual.pdf
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What are you talking about? This is in regards to a software standard. Lenovo is IBM's old "PC Company"...
Mr Anonymous Coward comment was replying to a question about outsourcing hardware divisions, it wasn't intended to be related to a software standard.