Norwegian Standards Body Members Resign Over OOXML

tsa writes "Ars Technica reports that 13 of the 23 members from the technical committee of the Norwegian standards body, the organization that manages technical standards for the country, have resigned because of the way the OOXML standardization was handled. We've previously discussed Norway's protest and ISO's rejection of other appeals. From the article: 'The standardization process for Microsoft's office format has been plagued with controversy. Critics have challenged the validity of its ISO approval and allege that procedural irregularities and outright misconduct marred the voting process in national standards bodies around the world. Norway has faced particularly close scrutiny because the country reversed its vote against approval despite strong opposition to the format by a majority of the members who participated in the technical committee.'"

Comments

Take this job and shove it dept. ???

[zappepcs]

I thought it was the 'Take this chair and throw it' department? What gives?

Re:Take this job and shove it dept. ???

[Celeritas]

I thought it was the 'Take this chair and throw it' department? What gives?

I think you're confusing that with Ballmer's department

Conflicted

[Hemogoblin]

My first thought was "It's good that these people are taking a stand against injustice.", but my second thought was "These principled people just resigned. Norway's board is entirely corrupt now." Bummer.

Re:Conflicted

[Anonymous Coward]

My first thought was "It's good that these people are taking a stand against injustice.", but my second thought was "These principled people just resigned. Norway's board is entirely corrupt now." Bummer.

Bummer? Not really. There isn't really any good reason to stay on the board and give it legitimacy when the entire process is corrupt. Do you honestly think that their input mattered or could have changed anything?

Re:Conflicted

[phantomfive]

Yeah, so much for the idea of Scandinavians not being corrupt. If the Norwegians are corrupt, who can we trust? That's why transparency in government is so important.

Re:Conflicted

[clarkkent09]

Exactly, that's why I always say if you're going to resign on principle, at least make sure to take out those who remain, otherwise what have you achieved? A few poisoned herrings would have done the trick.

Re:Conflicted

[lysergic.acid]

didn't IBM also resign from ISO over OOXML? i think this form of passive protest is important as it draws attention to the corruption at hand. if nothing else, it's garnered media attention and highlighted how serious an issue this is.

i think all principled members of ISO need to show solidarity and resign together. a mass exodus from the organization would force the industry to stop ignoring the issue. it says to governments and companies who care about standardization that ISO is no longer a legitimate vendor-neutral standardization body.

the next step would be for IBM, the Norwegian technical committee members, and other parties serious about standardization, to form a new organization for promoting international standards--and to make reforms to safeguard against an incident like this from happening within the new standards body.

Re:Conflicted

[enos]

Have you seen Norwegian TV news? It goes from one scandal to the next. There's always someone stealing big chunks of money in one way or another.
Of course the magnitude is smaller because they have far less people, but they're far from corruption free.

Transparency helps, but there's not much you can do if you can't kick the crooks out easily. Plus, who are you going to replace them with? Honest people don't like government work very much.

Re:Conflicted

[Easy2RememberNick]

It's like Homeopathy, they are using something that's bad to cure something else that's bad, in this case a corrupt group will fix the corrupt organization.

Re:Conflicted

[Anonymous Coward]

That would be Denmark and Sweden that are the least corrupt countries on earth, along with New Zealand.

I agree about transparency though, for all the things they do right, there's still a ton that could be done better.

Re:Conflicted

[the_arrow]

and to make reforms to safeguard against an incident like this from happening within the new standards body

I thought there already existed safeguards within the ISO/IEC framework, but that they basically were sidestepped. Whats to stop a new organization from doing it again?

Re:Conflicted

[the_womble]

Yes it undermines the corrupt: "IBM have resigned from the ISO because it is crooked, perhaps we should not bother about there standards."

It could also pave the way to setting up an alternative standards body for file formats.

Re:Conflicted

[Anonymous Coward]

I disagree.
There are much scandals because of transparency.
Opposed to other countries where everything happens under the hood.

Re:Conflicted

[Sardaukar86]

Oh, that it were as you say!

As a Kiwi I'm sorry to say that we're also suffering some serious issues with corrupt politicians down here in NZ and with the encumbent party in particular.

The New Zealand Labour government - ostensibly centre-left in political leaning - finds itself somewhat out of touch with its constituency, having furthered some very sinister policies (believe it or not, it is now actually illegal to smack your child for discipline in NZ).

After three terms in office with a sycophantic media burying Labour's political gaffes and providing a pleasant sideshow to distract the great unwashed, they've managed to quietly gut the social structure of what was once a rather nice place to live. It seems as a nation we may have finally woken up to this, making 08 November 2008 a very important day for us indeed.

Re:Conflicted

[rts008]

"Plus, who are you going to replace them with? Honest people don't like government work very much."

That is one of the more profound statements I have encountered here (on slashdot) about politics for quite s while!

I hope some moderators are here and share some '+insightful' love with you.

That is the situation with the upcoming Presidential elections here in the USA.

It seems to be a choice between a turd sandwich, or a shit casserole.
Does it really matter at this point? You already know it will taste like crap!

I guess all you can do is vote as you think is best, and hope it will work out.

Another option would be a revolution, and overthrow of the existing government.
This has not worked out well in the past, as the incoming 'party/gov't.' has not planned much farther ahead than getting 'there'.

I, for one, do not have the answers to the questions that have/can/will come about...just more questions.

Re:Conflicted

[PinkyDead]

the correct next step is for the ISO to cop on, and realize that, like other supernational bodies (eg ICANN), it can only be effective (and hence exist) if it is seen as incorruptible and representing the best interest of those involved in an industry and their clients.

While a new organization will clearly be more effective than the ISO in its current state, it is really should be a last resort option.

That said, maybe the ISO model just isn't the right one for the software industry.

Re:Conflicted

[Anonymous Coward]

A few poisoned herrings would have done the trick.

Poisoned herrings? Come on, us Norwegians eat *lutefisk* (and some even claim they like it) - poisoned herrings won't even give us bellyaches!

Re:Conflicted

[rts008]

"The New Zealand Labour government - ostensibly centre-left in political leaning - finds itself somewhat out of touch with its constituency, having furthered some very sinister policies (believe it or not, it is now actually illegal to smack your child for discipline in NZ). "

The far reaching implications are indeed scary. I frequently joke about getting spankings as a child like vitamins: One A Day (tm). But I would also acknowledge the fact that I never received one undeserved-I worked hard for every one of them! I have also 'officially' thanked my mother for my upbringing...she has had quite a few unknown compliments over the years. Gotta pass it on!

*nix fans should know this instinctively, as it is all a matter of acknowledging the source code. :-)

If you are a 'SciFi" fan, Keith Laumer wrote a series of stories about advanced AI in armored vehicles ('tanks' to us). The tanks were labeled 'Bolo'.
After Keith died, several authors continued the series.(by way of Baen Free Library http://www.baen.com/library/
One of the books:"The Road to Damascus"
'by John Ringo and
Linda Evans,
created by Keith Laumer', addresses this very thing by way of a political party that gains power that goes by the moniker of 'P.O.P.P.A.'

Re:Conflicted

[I cant believe its n]

A few poisoned herrings would have done the trick.

Agreed, but you seem to have overlooked the old scandinavian "put a few sour herrings in the ventialtion" ploy.

Re:Conflicted

[Taagehornet]

No, they've threatened to do so, but as of yet haven't resigned.

I doubt they ever will. ISO is about a lot more than just the OOXML. Consider the number of standards a company like IBM needs to deal with on a daily basis. Giving up their rights to influence what goes into said standards because of one failed process wouldn't make any sense from a business point of view.

Re:Conflicted

[Bj�rn]

Transparency international recently launched the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) for 2008. CPI is supposed to be a measurement of the amount of corruption in the public sector. In the 2008 results Denmark, New Zealand and Sweden are at the top and Norway comes in at 14th place while the US at 18th.

Re:Conflicted

[dotancohen]

didn't IBM also resign from ISO over OOXML?

Is there a list of high-profile ISO members who have resigned over the OOXML scandal? I would like to naively ask why X, Y, and Z left at the next ISO inspection, and hear what the techs say.

Re:Conflicted

[Anonymous Coward]

They have fewer people, not less.

Re:Conflicted

[hey!]

You miss the point.

Norwegians still have a concept in their culture of a "scandal" that isn't just juicy, salacious news.

Re:Conflicted

[Anonymous Coward]

There are plenty of honest people iin government service. The problem is that the top level is filled with jobs appointed by political process, and those are often available to the lobbyists and special interests that are trying to move the government to a position profitable to them.

Re:Conflicted

[lysergic.acid]

i understand what you're saying, but if their membership still does not allow them to overturn such an obvious case of commercially motivated corruption/corporate strong-arming tactics, then they really don't have much of a say anyway--at least not in any meaningful sense.

basically, this incident shows that ISO is up for sale. if you can afford to purchase the votes, then you can have whatever you want become an ISO standard. this not only makes ISO standards meaningless, but it also demonstrates that ISO decisions are not made by public discussion & open discourse between members, but rather by secret dealings conducted behind closed doors by commercial interests. therefore, ISO is no longer an impartial democratic body, but rather a standards auction house for rich corporations.

Re:Conflicted

[hot soldering iron]

People that want political office are usually the same people that you would least want to have it. Honest, smart people never want the job. You have to inflict it on them!
I think one way to help clean things up is to make the office holder PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE for their choices and actions while in office. There will suddenly be an absence of fat-asses in cushy chairs, and a lot of people deciding that private sector work is where it's at. Of course, they'll fail there too ...

Re:Conflicted

[savuporo]

Yes, mass exodus ! Here is an artist depiction of the future of ISO

Re:Conflicted

[Anonymous Coward]

ISO has only country members (see http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_members) and to my knowledge there is no country called IBM. If you are referring to the company IBM they can participate only through national bodies such as ANSI, BSI, SFS, etc.

It's unrealistic to think that countries and their national standard bodies would leave ISO. OOXML is just one IT standard and ISO covers a huge array of different standards for different sectors of society.

Re:Conflicted

[Anonymous Coward]

not going to happen, this idea relies on being passed as law from the same crook being regulated.

Re:Conflicted

[sumdumass]

That is the situation with the upcoming Presidential elections here in the USA.

It seems to be a choice between a turd sandwich, or a shit casserole.
Does it really matter at this point? You already know it will taste like crap!

I guess all you can do is vote as you think is best, and hope it will work out.

Another option would be a revolution, and overthrow of the existing government.
This has not worked out well in the past, as the incoming 'party/gov't.' has not planned much farther ahead than getting 'there'.

I, for one, do not have the answers to the questions that have/can/will come about...just more questions.

Your forgetting the obvious, damage control.

In the American elections, more often then not, your voting to limit the damage. I'm not one to sit here and say corporate corruption and lobbyist and blah blah blah. There is a strong chance that we won't even agree with what is wrong with government or the people running for the offices in America. But voting against someone seems to be the most viable option. If you go third party looking for someone you can trust, you just succeed in getting someone you don't want in. Not to mention that a third party president will be a lame duck and useless from the word go.

If you really believe the way you do, you need to look at voting against someone rather then voting for someone. This has recently, we since the 70's that I'm personally aware of, been the way politicians campain too. It's always the opponent is evil, I'm not. If you don't like him, vote for me. Rarely is it simply "vote for me, I'm the best". Even Obama attempted to start that way and reverted quickly. So the word of the day is "damage control". Vote against someone not for someone who will disappoint you.

And seriously, I would love to have a none of the above selection on the primary ballots.

Re:Conflicted

[sumdumass]

We already hold them personally accountable when they do wrong. Look at all the congress members who are in trouble right now.

What your wanting to do is punish people for political opinions and being wrong or mistaken about the outcome. That isn't really possible if we are going to claim to be a free nation with freedoms such as free speech.

Re:Conflicted

[enos]

agreed, which is nice.

However the GGP had the impression that Scandinavia has very little corruption. No matter how dry the scandal is, it's still a sign of some sort of corruption.

Re:Conflicted

[ps2os2]

IBM is not necessarily Mr Good in all this ISO discussion. IBM has in the past been Mr BAD in other items. Can we just say IBM made a decision that was semi politically motivated? I dislike MS$ like almost everyone else and the idea of re-establishing the ISO might be a good idea as the current people are either MS$ mouths or looking for MS$ money.

Re:Conflicted

[Eivind]

Anyone who thinks any region of the world is entirely free from corruption is naive. We've got our share. Transparency helps, and we're more transparent than most of the world. But it's no miracle-cure.

Nice statement, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a nice statemnt, but you know that now that these people have left, they will be replaced with people more willing to just rubber stamp whatever comes down the line. Sure their voices were being ignored by their bosses, but at least they had a chance to be heard by the rest of the world.

Microsoft at its best

[jhol13]

Microsoft seems to want to to take over ODF too.
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080825162905645

Apparently they are not happy there is a working specification in the wild. It being a standard must hurt even more.

Form a new standards body

[Tablizer]

It's a good time to start a new standards body with a new goal.

Re:Form a new standards body

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a good time to start a new standards body with a new goal.

And hookers! In fact, forget the standards body and the goal.

Re:Form a new standards body

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

Hopefully the newly resigned folks will... perhaps with backing from IBM? In a sense, it could be done quickly; (1). establish new procedures that provide 100% transparency, (2). rubber-stamp all current ISO standards *except* OOXML.

The toughest part would probably be being recognised as a standards organisation. But something really needs to happen as ISO do not appear to be sorting their shit out.

Can the EU courts look at this?

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't believe no laws were broken in this process. Why can't the EU courts take this up?

Re:Can the EU courts look at this?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought ISO and all the other standards boards were just private entities. They're not answerable to any governments, so there's no laws broken.

Re:Can the EU courts look at this?

[mysidia]

It's not the ISO entities themselves; it's M$ and their hired cronies.

Re:Can the EU courts look at this?

[slashqwerty]

I can't believe no laws were broken in this process. Why can't the EU courts take this up?

Normally, it would be illegal for a bunch of companies to get together and collude like they do at a standards body. But anti-trust laws have exceptions to promote the creation of open standards. You would think such an exception would not apply if participants were paid or otherwise compensated/coerced into voting to benefit an existing monopoly.

Re:Can the EU courts look at this?

[jimicus]

I can't believe no laws were broken in this process. Why can't the EU courts take this up?

Most laws are written on the assumption that everyone will play fair most of the time, and only changed after it becomes apparent that under some circumstances this isn't happening in order to prevent anyone else getting any smart ideas. I daresay few people anticipated orchestrated international fraud and corruption.

Furthermore, standards bodies don't have any legal weight. Their sole purpose is to provide a recognised standard which companies can use to say "Your product must meet or exceed the specifications laid down in ISO nnnnn" - the idea being that this allows businesses to work together without constantly reinventing the wheel.

Thus, the only way corruption can be resolved is by members walking away, thus weakening the organisation. Members will likely walk away because they don't think there's any point in participating - either because of blatant corruption or because the orgnisation itself is being thoroughly ignored.

The right thing to do.

[GNUChop]

Would you want your name on something you completely disagree with? Leaving with a loud public stink is the right thing to do when technical matters have been nerfed aside by asshats like M$. The next thing to do is form a proper standards body and protect it from shenanigans. You can't always keep others from doing evil things but you can always refuse to cooperate. ISO's leadership will not be able to ignore this for long.

Re:The right thing to do.

[willyhill]

You already posted and shilled your own comments with three accounts, this is the fourth. Is it too much to ask to limit yourself to one account per article? You know, the way most of us do.

Re:The right thing to do.

[MoogMan]

Wow, looking at your journal, you seem to have an obsession. Who cares if someone has a couple of accounts - if a person's comment is worth something then it will be moderated up.

Re:The right thing to do.

[Frosty Piss]

You and Twitter need to get a room. There's obviously something between you two.

Re:The right thing to do.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you really think about it, I'm pretty sure you'll see the flaw in your argument. Hint: Who does the moderating?

Re:The right thing to do.

[willyhill]

I assure you I am quite straight. Being married for 24 years will do that to you *grin*

Re:Boycott Novell has More to the Story.

[willyhill]

For anyone thinks this "conversation" is a little strange, twitter, "right handed" and "inTheLoo" are the same person.

Long list of rejects, all coming to a head.

[GNUChop]

• Vista, which you mention.
• Office 2007, no one likes the new interface and users are better off with OO.org now.
• Zune, laughing stock of crappy music players and M$'s media efforts. They did all of that DRM foolishness for Zune? Ha ha. They fought ogg vorbis for this? What a waste.
• Xbox, billions down the drain to place third behind Sony and Nintendo. Broke even for a quarter or two. Wait till the Red Ring of Death and ignighting power supply lawsuits get through with them.
• M$ search. Can't break 10% of the market even when they pay people to use it.
• Servers, losing to Apache and Google every day.

This list can go on and on because M$ is a huge company wasting lots of money. What's hard to find are unqualified successes - products that people actaually like and want. The failure of their new OS and Office should be crippling blows they can't hide with novel licensing schemes like "Assurance" programs for big dumb companies and "free downloads" at Universities that cost students hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees.

Re:Long list of rejects, all coming to a head.

[Anonymous Coward]

dude, no offense but... do you have any idea whatsoever how psycho you come across replying to yourself this way?

Re:Long list of rejects, all coming to a head.

[ozphx]

Twitter, you are clearly an idiot. MS posts one of the highest net profit margins of the sector, easily outstripping all "open source" friendly companies.

Re:Long list of rejects, all coming to a head.

[Super Jamie]

Actually, the Zune is a really nice player. I own a Zune 80 and an iPod Video. The Zune has superior audio and screen quality to the iPod, the controls are great, and they have radio.

Just sucks they use this encrypted MTP format to copy music over, so they only work with the Zune software under Windows.

But VirtualBox + USB Proxy + Wireless Sync solves that problem.

one more

[Anonymous Coward]

don't forget GNUChop, who just jumped in.

any bets as to whether or not he'll break the record of 6 socks replying to each other on the same thread? anyone?

Re:one more

[Anonymous Coward]

He hit 7 when he name-trolled macthorpe (as usual).

Re:one more

[Anonymous Coward]

ayeee, he also has a name troll for willyhill!

what is this guy's problem? this whole thing is completely bizarre.

Re:one more

[Anonymous Coward]

He should take his pills... Seriously.

The only thing he manages, is to show how mentally deranged he is.

Re:Norway? Does that even count?

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, Norway? What that is useful comes from Norway? Besides being cold as ice, with a population described the same, what is Norway? I mean, Sweden, OK, it's got a ski team of buxom blondes, but Norway? What is Norway but an ice desert?

Oil, money and hi-tech? Maybe you should think before you write?

How soon people forget ...

[SL Baur]

FTFA:

Actually, you can only read part of the resolutions passed by this stacked committee. As usual, there are deep secrets that the public can't access. That's just one part of what's wrong with those people and why ODF must never fall into their secretive clutches. If it does, I have little doubt that ODF will end up brain dead, on life support, turning blue for lack of oxygen, and then suddenly, sadly, we'll find it dead as a doornail.

This was the same state Unix was in around the early 1990s. We're not dead yet! In fact, we've taken over the large computer market since then.

ISO has lost its street cred so expect an Open Source replacement. Open Standards benefit everyone, so I expect someone to fill in the gap.

Re:How soon people forget ...

[symbolset]

This was the same state Unix was in around the early 1990s. We're not dead yet! In fact, we've taken over the large computer market since then.

Ahem. Linux Is Not UniX. Linux owns the big iron these days, holding over 85% of the Top500. It's pretty dominant on the small end too, with home routers and file servers being the extreme of that bracket. The middle is getting squeezed out as thin-is-in netbooks and nettops push into the mainstream.

ISO has lost its street cred so expect an Open Source replacement. Open Standards benefit everyone, so I expect someone to fill in the gap.

Unix was never open source until Open Solaris (the provenance of which is still subject to vigorous debate).

But of course you knew that. I was a Unix admin in 1984. At the time it was the stuff. Unfortunately because it was born before the age of software as property it wasn't designed to be protected from the greatest threat progress has ever faced: intellectual property lawyers. Linux was.

Re:How soon people forget ...

[greenbird]

Unix was never open source until Open Solaris

BSD isn't Unix?

Re:How soon people forget ...

[SL Baur]

But of course you knew that.

Of course. But what that comment referred to was the lawsuit that effectively ended Unix' chances at the time, but spurred all the BSD spinoffs and later Linux. Maybe I had the year wrong, that was during the time I took a sabbatical from Unix hacking to pursue professional bowling.

I was a Unix admin in 1984. At the time it was the stuff.

Ah. Right on and yes, Unix was very much the cutting edge then.

Now that I think about it, I'm at the tipping point. I started with Unix in late 1981, Linux in late 1995 and I have very nearly spent more time with Linux than Unix. Unix in the form of its descendents Linux and Mac OS X is still very much alive. Powerful, fast and it doesn't crash, so it's still the stuff.

Re:How soon people forget ...

[symbolset]

No, BSD is not Unix. To say that BSD is Unix is perhaps like saying that grass is rice. That's not quite correct. Some grasses are rice. Some grasses are differently purposed and differently used. They may share some genetic material but a putting green is not a bowl of cereal.

However, all rices are grasses. All of the currently used Unixes owe the vast majority of their genetic material to the University of California at San Diego and Berkeley. It would be fair to say that modern Unixes are all Berkeley System Developments with proprietary "enhancements". This is perhaps the acknowledgment you were looking for. That's not the same thing as saying that BSD is Unix.

But the whole of a Unix was never Open until Open Solaris, which as I said is still in doubt. In fact, since Open Solaris hasn't been accepted by The Open Group, who bought the name "Unix" and certify Unix systems, it's not a Unix either. Nor is any particular flavor of BSD.

And still... Linux Is Not UniX. It was never intended to be. Linux is Linux. It's its own brand and that's all it needs to be. It doesn't need to carry forward the heritage from the Information Science pirates of a byegone era. To the extent that it pays homage to the great minds that went before, it's standing on the shoulders of giants as all great art does. It doesn't steal their intellectual property -- it just acknowledges the best of their ideas in new and creative ways and creates on that foundation new expressions that, in our litigation constrained environment, can be used and expanded upon freely.

Re:How soon people forget ...

[symbolset]

I took a hiatus too. I didn't miss the show - I was just sidelined playing with stuff I knew was good. It didn't take me more than three months of Windows development to figure out that it was a trap. The last month of that I spent looking for specifications for a sound card so I could do audio capture before I discovered that the company that wrote the drivers for SoundBlaster was actually a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary that wasn't giving up the specs at any price or terms I could live with.

I started with Unix in late 1981, Linux in late 1995 and I have very nearly spent more time with Linux than Unix. Unix in the form of its descendents Linux and Mac OS X is still very much alive.

OS X bought Unix certification because it was an important selling point. They had to do significant engineering to qualify for the mark, but they have it not in recognition of their engineering, but because they licensed the right to call OS X a Unix from The Open Group.

Unix is not what it was in the 1960s and 1970s - the love child of great minds. It's now just a service mark. A brand. Intellectual property law ruined it, and Ransom Love killed it with his hubris. It's time to let it go.

Re:How soon people forget ...

[jez9999]

No, GNU's not Unix.

Re:How soon people forget ...

[TheRaven64]

This is true now, but not in a historical context. After the AT&T lawsuit, AT&T UNIX was found to contain BSD code, and BSD was found to contain only a few headers from AT&T, which were subsequently replaced. The subsequent 4BSD releases were both UNIX and open source. The assignment of the UNIX trademark to the Open Group happened much later, and it wasn't until 1993 that the UNIX93 specification was released, which redefined what UNIX meant. Oh, and The Open Group didn't buy the name, it was given to them by the Open Software Foundation, who were given it by AT&T.

Before 1993, UNIX meant 'a descendent of AT&T UNIX, source compatible with with programs written for this operating system.' After 1993, it meant 'an operating system conforming to the UNIX93 specification and certified as conforming by The Open Software Foundation.'[1] Note that neither of these is a subset of the other. A Linux distribution[2] could be certified as SUS conforming and then it would be UNIX (according to the post-1993) definition, but it would not be according to the pre-1998 definition. All BSD systems are UNIX according to the pre-1993 definition, but only OS X 10.5 on Intel[3] is UNIX according to the newer definition.

[1] After 1998, it meant 'an operating system conforming to the Single UNIX Specification and certified as conforming by The Open Group.' It was redefined in 1995, 1998, and 2003, and so some systems in each of these years went from being UNIX to being not-UNIX, due to increasing demands by the standards.
[2] The Single UNIX Specification covers a load of userspace utilities, including the C compiler and shell, and defined the functions the C standard library must implement, so Linux alone can never be SUS certified. A minimal GNU/Linux system conforming to SUS would have around an order of magnitude more GNU code than Linux code. A BSD/LLVM/Linux system could also, potentially, be certified, or one containing userland stuff taken from OpenSolaris or even something like Minix.
[3] Certification is per version and per platform. As such, Solaris is usually not UNIX - only the major releases are certified and some are only certified on SPARC, not on x86. Note that the other versions are still able to pass the tests, it's just that no one wanted to spend money getting them certified.

Re:How soon people forget ...

[symbolset]

There we go. Much better. Thanks.

Re:How soon people forget ...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's time to let it go.

What are you trying to say here? Are you implying there's a good reason we shouldn't use the term unix-like to describe an operating system? If so, what do you suggest we use instead?

If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, but the law says it's not a duck, then what do you call it? Duck-like makes sense to me.

Re:How soon people forget ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahem. Linux Is Not UniX. Linux owns the big iron these days, holding over 85% [top500.org] of the Top500 [top500.org]. It's pretty dominant on the small end too, with home routers and file servers being the extreme of that bracket. The middle is getting squeezed out as thin-is-in netbooks and nettops push into the mainstream.

Uhm.. linux owns some big iron. Those are supercomputing toys. Big iron as in mission critical I think not. You can talk to IBM, HP, and Sun for running their own OSs real behind the scenes grunt work.

Re:How soon people forget ...

[symbolset]

Again you're right. I should have given more credit to GNU, the FSF, and the thousands of projects built upon their foundation do the useful stuff.

Re:How soon people forget ...

[darkonc]

Gnu/Linux isn't UNIX(tm) only in the trademark sense. You have to pay some POSIX organization to be able to use the UNIX trademark (I think that one or two LINUX distributions have actually done this). Other than that, however, It's been a very open point of the Linux and GNU community to make the OS comply to the POSIX UNIX standard to the point where if you read the manual pages for any classic UNIX command/library call, you'll find descriptions of any way in which that element is out of sync with the official POSIX standard.

To say that Linux isn't Unix is like saying that a Mandarin Orange isn't an orange because it's not a Naval Orange.

Re:How soon people forget ...

[Trogre]

I also expect someone to fill the gap, and I promise you'll not like who I'm thinking of.

Re:aw, come on, it's not that bad.

[Macthorpe]

Get help.

Re:Boycott Novell has More to the Story.

[guyminuslife]

You know, if I had a million different Slashdot troll accounts, I'd make sure I had one account to point out to everyone else that they were trolls.

Not an attack. Haven't been following Slashdot long enough to be "in the loop." I'm just crazy like that.

Re:Boycott Novell has More to the Story.

[willyhill]

Probably... this guy is hardly that clever, though *grin*

Re:Norway? Does that even count?

[Anonymous Coward]

Norweegians hibernate half the year so cut them some slack

Re:aw, come on, it's not that bad.

[Macthorpe]

Do better than what? It's a serious suggestion. Get some psychiatric help - you've clearly lost a screw somewhere important.

Who pays their salaries?

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera, IBM, Linpro, NUUG, OpenOffice, FreeCode.

No hidden agendas there.

What is a standards body?

[mcrbids]

I can't believe no laws were broken in this process. Why can't the EU courts take this up?

Easy - a "standards body" is not an entity with any legal weight. All it is is a group of people who get together and make recommendations that others may choose to follow. It's purely a political process but not at all a legal one. The only value that a standards body has is that other entities (EG: companies) trust it to determine what technologies to implement and in what fashion.

For example, there there is no legal requirement that any software vendor implement TCP or IP. But TCP and IP are detailed by the ISOC. If you are a software company, you will implement your TCP stack in accordance with ISOC standards or your implementation will be considered sub-standard.

But if you screw up your implementation, there's little ISOC can do, and nothing legally. They can say you are bad, they can make recommendations against your software. But that's it.

The only weight that a standards body has is that others trust the insight and recommendations made by the standards body. When a standards body can be legitimately accused of shenanigans, that's pretty much it's end.

Goodbye ISO, it's been nice knowing ye...

Re:What is a standards body?

[TheRaven64]

Quite a lot of standards these days are covered by trademarks. The trademark is licensed for use (free, or for a small fee) by any conforming implementation. Anyone can implement something like USB or IEEE 1394, or the 802.11 family, but if you want to put the USB, FireWire, or WiFi log on your product, it needs to conform to the specification. You may also have problems with local truth in advertising laws if you claim compliance with a standard that you don't properly implement - most standards come with a test suite that can be used by an expert witness to show a court that the claims are fraudulent.

Re:What is a standards body?

[TheLinuxSRC]

"...most standards come with a test suite that can be used by an expert witness to show a court that the claims are fraudulent."

Wasn't this one of the areas of highest contention in ISO with regard to OOXML; the fact that since a reference implementation had never been produced, a test suite could also not be produced?

Re:shut up, dumb fuck.

[willyhill]

You've explored this "angle" before. Unfortunately for you, it doesn't work. No matter how many times you insult me.

It will help...

[jd]

...if (and only if) those principled individuals set up a rival standards organization, have as part of their charter that they refute corruption and automatically negate standards tainted by corruption, re-certify where legal all known-to-be-"safe" standards under their own name, and then lobby research shops and companies hurt by the ISO scandal to work with them. Fork the certification market, but because of rebranding existing standards, no other standards body would ever need to be involved.

Another alternative - standards bodies rely on the income from charging absurd fees for standards, relying more on secrecy than anything. If you pay enough for a standard, you won't just give it away, in theory. If some suitably rich investor with lots of contacts and enough cunning bought up copies of those standards and then just dumped them onto public sites, it could cripple standards organizations for a long time. If it was clearly linked to the ISO debacle, ISO might not be too keen to be seen to complain - most countries deem bribery (even outside of government) a more serious offense than a petty trade secret violation and the press are more into scandals (which ISO is undoubtedly riddled with) than knuckle-rapping.

Re:It will help...

[h4rm0ny]

On the contrary. Good people remaining in the service of a bad organisation only adds to that organisation's strength. Walking away takes from the strength of that organisation. These people tried to redeem the organisation - they protested, they appealed and they went public. The organisation did not reverse its actions. To remain is to continue to lend support to its actions, to walk away is to diminish its authority. Whilst it could in theory help if they set up an alternate standards agency, these are merely people from a national group. Unless they started organising with other protestors from around the World, they can't set up anything to rival ISO. But they don't actually need to. Standards emerge and get organised without the aid of ISO. In fact, ISO often merely turns up and codifies such standards. Weaken ISO and where there is a need, other parties will start to fill in the gap in authority. I don't think you can ask more of these people than they have already given up. I assume there's a paycheck they have renounced somewhere in this, as well a privileged position.

I have full respect for their actions.

Re:It will help...

[TheRaven64]

What you say may not be generally true, but it certainly is in the case of standards bodies. These groups generally don't make anything, they simply adopt or reject standards proposed by others. They add value by attaching their reputation to a standard. They can therefore only exist if their reputation is seen as valuable. A group like ECMA, which is little more than a rubber-stamping body, has a lot less credibility than something like the IETF.

Re:Boycott Novell has More to the Story.

[guyminuslife]

That just made my day. I'm simply amazed at how dense you have to be to write stuff like that with a (metaphorically) straight face.

And that makes you my friend! ;-)

They have achieved something

[symbolset]

When principled people withdraw from an endeavor, they take with them the credibility they leant to it. The credibility of principled participants is all a standards body has to offer.

They are by their action hastening a day when a new, credible standards body can displace the corrupt corpse of ISO.

Good on 'em.

Re:They have achieved something

[sumdumass]

That is only true when people associate the credibility of the organization with the people in it.

I think the day has passed when the individual members were needed to support the credibility of ISO. It holds it's own in a special right because of all that has been done successfully in the past. Staying and protesting would probably have more of an effect then leaving. Perhaps introducing junk standards that mimic the corruption like a standards compliant framework for making ISO OOXML protest signs that say ISO is corrupt or something. Now wouldn't that be more effective then just quitting, I mean having an ISO standard for saying "ISO sucks" is a pretty powerful message.

Re:Sweatly B will save them!

[hairyfeet]

Uh Twitter,you DO know that having conversations with yourself using multiple voices is a sure sign of insanity,right? I'm serious dude,get some help. When anyone says "microsoft" you turn into a complete foaming at the mouth looney. It is just sad,really f*ckin' sad.

Many laws were broken

[symbolset]

First among them treason. Agents of a US corporation have subverted major agencies of sovereign nations. Those government employees of non-US nations have by their participation betrayed their nation, the public trust they held in their positions, and their duty. They've done it to preserve the profitability of a foreign enterprise, and by extension line their own pockets.

It's only a matter of time before this is figured out. Heads will roll - in some cases figuratively and in some cases literally.

Re:Many laws were broken

[bertilow]

It's only a matter of time before this is figured out. Heads will roll - in some cases figuratively and in some cases literally.

You must be new here. And I don't mean "new on Slashdot". I mean "new in the real world". No heads will roll. Nothing will happen. Life and corruption will go on just like before. Business as usual.

Re:Many laws were broken

[vigour]

First among them treason. Agents of a US corporation have subverted major agencies of sovereign nations. Those government employees of non-US nations have by their participation betrayed their nation, the public trust they held in their positions, and their duty. They've done it to preserve the profitability of a foreign enterprise, and by extension line their own pockets.

It's only a matter of time before this is figured out. Heads will roll - in some cases figuratively and in some cases literally.

I wish this was true, but sadly most people, including politicians have no interest in OOXML debacle. Politicians have paid "experts" to direct them, and tell them what their opinion should be. It doesn't help matters in a country like Ireland where MS have a relatively large presence and have people on the advisory committees.

It also doesn't help when you read comments like this from the official National Standards of Ireland website

After months of intensive review, analysis and discussion, NSAI has voted Disapproval - with Technical Comments, in respect of the OOXML submission. This effectively is a qualified yes, whereby Ireland has some technical issues with the submission. If the Technical Comments are satisfactorily resolved and incorporated into a new draft, the vote is subsequently amended to Approval.

Re:Many laws were broken

[jimicus]

Beautiful though it is to imagine arrest warrants for treason in several countries - including a lot of banana republics that aren't exactly known for their progressive attitude towards capital punishment - against top-level Microsoft executives, I really don't think it's going to happen.

The only way it can happen is if all these countries which were previously shown to be corruptible suddenly decide that they have some principles after all and aren't afraid of the US bombing the hell out of them when they start executing extremely rich US citizens.

What the hell

[Anonymous Coward]

Erris
Mactrope
gnutoo
inTheLoo
willeyhill
westbake
Odder
ibane
myCopyWrong
right handed
GNUChop

All these accounts belong to the same person And he's getting modded up? Where do I sign up
for this deal? Where I can game Slashdot so blatantly and be rewarded for my troubles?

Once you've crossed that threshold, whatever you had to say is completely irrelevant. I don't care
who you are. Rules exist in online communities for a good reason, and this... sorry, shitstorm of
"I agree with you" replies by a single person is just too much.

Re:What the hell

[Anonymous Coward]

And you forgot... twitter

Re:What the hell

[Vexorian]

Err, one question, how do we know exactly that they are the same guy? Right now the argument seems to be "they agree with each other, therefore they are the same person" Not a very strong one...

Re:What the hell

[willyhill]

I'm curious (and I don't mean this in any sort of confrontational way), do you really think all these accounts are owned by different people?

Re:Sweatly B will save them!

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, you said the same thing Macthorpe. Can't you keep your sock puppets straight?

Re:shut up, dumb fuck.

[TheLink]

He's got a good point though. Your stuff is cluttering up the place too.

It's probably impossible to get you and twitter to take your battles elsewhere, but could you at least try to keep it down a bit? Ignore the stuff already at -1 or 0.

Re:aw, come on, it's not that bad.

[Whiteox]

Mactrope is pretty much on the ball here. He may have some issues, I really don't know, but Microsoft can make as many mistakes as they want, stuff everybody up and generally be the worst player in the field.
The world is so entrenched in the MS paradigm that to them MS=Computers and Computers=MS. That's all he is saying.

Re:Norway? Does that even count?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oil. It and Britain work the North Sea, a place you don't want to be. It's said the next Euro-war will be between Britain and Norway, over the North Sea oil. We all know the outcome of that one (Saudi Arabia).

The Inquirer story has a translation

[steveha]

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/10/02/norway-standards-members-walk

I was shocked by how excellent the "rough Google translation" was. Unless they had a human clean up the translation a bit, that is amazingly good English prose for a machine translator to emit. (I can't speak for how accurate it is, but it seems plausible enough.)

English is a mess, with lots of irregular usages. How about Norwegian -- is it particularly easy or particularly hard to translate?

steveha

Re:The Inquirer story has a translation

[orzetto]

Aside from the fact it is fairly likely a human did actually edit the translation, Norwegian (and all Scandinavian languages with it) has a syntax that is quite similar to English, except for some rules like the verb always in second position, as in German. (Yes, I speak Norwegian).

Re:The Inquirer story has a translation

[Ser_Olmy]

Just a guess but, speaking as a Norwegian, somebody cleaned that up quite a bit.

Re:The Inquirer story has a translation

[howcome]

Actually, I cleaned up the mechanical translation after if was first posted here; http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-93970/norwegians-leave-their-standards-body-in-protest The mechanical translation was pretty good, but still needed 15 minutes of editing.

Re:The Inquirer story has a translation

[jopsen]

How about Norwegian -- is it particularly easy or particularly hard to translate?

I'm Danish it's mostly the same language... And they are not said to be easy...
I'd imagine that google uses some statistical analysis, but it surprises me they'd be able to find enough training data...

Re:Crazy like a fox.

[ozphx]

Hahaha.

Seriously. I don't get paid to mod down twitter & friends' inane drivel. It gets modded down because its complete rambling bollocks, on par with the time-cube guy.

Re:Norway? Does that even count?

[Anonymous Coward]

Trolls? (come from Norway)

balanced reporting?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's worth pointing out that only one of the resigning members was a member of the SN/K 185 committee before OOXML was brought in for review.

These are essentially members that joined principally to block OOXML as a standard, and have been very vocal in their opposition.

Given their "OOXML - Go to Hell" public demonstrations, their professionalism and objectivity should probably be taken with a pinch of salt.

Re:balanced reporting?

[Sardaukar86]

You deserve modding up for this, although you do not cite your references.

It is important to remember there are two sides to every story. I'm dead-set against the gaming of the ISO and so of course I want to hang on to every nugget like this; anything that shows up the appalling behaviour of Microsoft and the ISO itself in the public eye.

Without your comment I would have been unaware that this is a Pyrrhic victory and of little consequence; in fact, the real story would have been if they hadn't resigned in 'disgust'.

Re:balanced reporting?

[TheRaven64]

I can't help but think that this whole mess was started by the ODF backers. I've not read either spec, but I've read commentaries on both, and some of the criticisms of ODF are quite serious (e.g. no sensible way of localising numbered lists). It sounds like ODF was pushed through as a standard before it was ready, and Microsoft's reaction was 'well, if you're going to approve one crappy standard for office docs, you should approve ours as well.'

The ODF backers pushed their standard through too early, because they didn't want Microsoft's standardised first, and the result was that ODF didn't get the level of review it needed to turn it into a great standard and OOXML got standardised because it's not much worse than ODF.

Re:balanced reporting?

[irtza]

In a way, this does lend credence to how much of a joke ISO is/has become. The fact that people saw what MS was doing and countered in a like-wise fashion does not dismiss the flaw, but only highlights it. OOXML being accepted wasn't the fundamental problem - it was the means by which it passed. This still draws attention to how broken the system is.

lets by the gp argument and suppose these people did come by to block ooxml. Lets assume these people were able to successfully block the passage of OOXML through ISO. Is this truly a better outcome? ISO is still broken. We still have a bunch of people sitting on a technical comittee that are there for a political agenda on one issue rather than on truly defining usable standards.

GP did not clarify how these people got this job. Did they sign up? were they elected? did they buy into it? Being vocal about something is not itself a sign that they joined principly to block ooxml.

Furthermore, this is a distraction from the bigger picture - the irregularities amongst iso in following its own rules in the passage of ooxml. these people were drawing attention to that occurance. Regardless of whether or not they supported ooxml, they have raised legitamate issues and in this context, this is more a smear to their character than an argument against their point - aka argumentum ad hominem

Re:balanced reporting?

[Anonymous Coward]

anyone who pays the membership fees to Standard Norge can join a committee.

http://www.standard.no

A Personal membership is 5000 NOK (roughly USD 900), a company membership 15000 NOK to join the first committee, then 5000 NOK for every new one.

So no, you don't need professional qualifications to join, only an interest in the subject matter.

Re:balanced reporting?

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

Whilst I'd agree that ODF probably isn't a perfect standard, it is most certainly the best one we have. AFAIK, the problems with ODF are omission rather than broken definitions... so it can (and hopefully will) be resolved in future revisions.

ODF, unlike OOXML, was *not* fast tracked through standards, *and* it is a far more concise standard; OOXML was far too large to reasonably be managed via fast-track IMO, so it shouldn't have been.

It sounds like ODF was pushed through as a standard before it was ready, and Microsoft's reaction was 'well, if you're going to approve one crappy standard for office docs, you should approve ours as well.'

No, MS couldn't really care less, but some of it's clients (large organisations/governments) were starting to demand standards-based software. If MS did care, they would've dealt with it some time earlier.... they had probably a decade or so time to do so.

Also... it's been covered a million times before, but DO NOT FORGET that OOXML currently has absolutely no working implementations. None. There is no software that currently implements this "standard". MS have said themselves that they will not implement it until the *next* version of MS-Office, and strangely, they have said that they will implement ODF in a future service-pack to MS-Office..... but time will tell!

The really odd thing [to me anyway] is that I believe that MS have recently opened up their legacy binary MS-Office standards. If they had done this, documented them, and pushed them through ECMA/ISO then there would perhaps have been less complaints given that the legacy formats are widely implemented and used.

Re:Norway? Does that even count?

[level4]

It's said the next Euro-war will be between Britain and Norway, over the North Sea oil.

What?! Who the hell says that?

Firstly, prosperous modern democracies with large middle classes and a lot to lose do not go to war. There has never been a single case. It is just not going to happen.

Secondly, there could be no victory. If Norway attacked Britain, the rest of Europe would stand by and watch Norway reap its well-deserved stomping from the vastly superior British armed forces. If Britain attacked Norway, the rest of the EU would declare war on them. Either way would bring utter disaster for the aggresor.

If you'd said Russia v. Norway, that would be at least a little more within the bounds of extreme probability, though still highly unlikely. The world will have to get a lot crazier before Russia attacking mainstream Europe over relatively minor resources would be anything other than a suicide mission. Russia may be a little aggresive but they're not insane.

Whoever told that to you is an idiot.

Finland

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually Finland came out far worse than even Norway in that scandal. The language differences help keep things under wraps now that the government stopped publishing translations in Swedish.

Thats scandinavia for you

[unity100]

Now if only norway stopped whaling, i would be able to put it in my small list of 'Wonderful countries of the world' next to sweden.

Re:Thats scandinavia for you

[vidarh]

Stopping whaling? Not going to happen, thanks to Greenpeace and other, more extreme, protesters that have pissed off the Norwegian public to the point that it's now a symbolic action to keep it going.

Whale meat used to be a cheap alternative to beef when I was a kid. That was the only reason we ate it, as it's damn tough and needs a lot of work to get tender, and needs to be cooked properly to get it to taste nice - you used it when you couldn't afford beef.

Thanks to the way opposition to whaling acted, however, whale meat is now being sold as an expensive delicacy, and people have really romanticized it. Which of course makes it more interesting to ramp up whaling, not less.

It's a classic example of how NOT to handle things. In fact, if anything it looks like things are now set for an eventual return to allowing commercial whaling of some species.

Re:Thats scandinavia for you

[hey!]

My father was a chef; my brothers went into the food industry. We were food people before there were foodies. I have tasted many "delicacies" in my time. Delicacies are, by definition special, but they don't have to be good. Good is quite beside the point. If you want good, go for a loaf of bread fresh out of the oven.

Based on my experience, I have to conclude that to be a delicacy a food has to be either hard to get, or a bit revolting at first, or ideally, both.

Sounds like whale meat's a winner.

is there ANYone to explain me why parent

[unity100]

and the parent's parent's parent are modded insightful ?

are there any morons among us, who are STILL saying that microsoft did nothing wrong in this ooxml scandal ?

Re:is there ANYone to explain me why parent

[Macthorpe]

I wasn't commenting on that, I was commenting on the 7 sockpuppet conversation that twitter decided to have with himself at the start of the comments.

I am seriously beginning to question his sanity - I mean, in the last 6 months he's accused me of sending him death threats, of working for Microsoft and of harbouring multiple Slashdot accounts, none of which are remotely true and the latter being supreme hypocrisy. He's a newspaper headline waiting to happen.

are there any morons among us, who are STILL saying that microsoft did nothing wrong in this ooxml scandal ?

Come to mention it, some actual concrete proof would be nice, but I've already found out that I'm as likely to get that as Ellen Degeneres is of settling down with a nice man. Call me a moron if you like, but I tend to like evidence that isn't circumstantial groklawed hogwash before accusing people of anything.

A lot of people on Slashdot forget how many companies rely on Microsoft's dominance of the market to make a living. Instead of thinking "Well, maybe the reason a lot of companies registered to vote is because their profit margin relies on OOXML becoming a standard", they instead jump to the most extreme conclusion they can find.

Re:is there ANYone to explain me why parent

[unity100]

A lot of people on Slashdot forget how many companies rely on Microsoft's dominance of the market to make a living. Instead of thinking "Well, maybe the reason a lot of companies registered to vote is because their profit margin relies on OOXML becoming a standard", they instead jump to the most extreme conclusion they can find.

there were a lot of companies who depended on the nazi party to make a living. and they did.

results were less than desirable for entirety of the rest of the world.

just because someone needs to make a living doesnt justify any of their actions by itself.

Re:is there ANYone to explain me why parent

[Macthorpe]

there were a lot of companies who depended on the nazi party to make a living

This kind of comment is why it's so hard to have a serious conversation about this with anybody on Slashdot.

Re:is there ANYone to explain me why parent

[Bert64]

I can't see how anyone would rely on the dominance of microsoft except microsoft themselves... Surely having a single incumbent supplier is a negative for everyone else.

Re:is there ANYone to explain me why parent

[Macthorpe]

I agree - competition is good for everyone.

However, there are still a lot of companies who are heavily invested in Microsoft technology to the point where it's cheaper to pay the fee and vote for OOXML than to think about retraining in other specifications.

Re:is there ANYone to explain me why parent

[Kratisto]

Godwin's Law.

Re:is there ANYone to explain me why parent

[Bert64]

Yes, but depending on a single supplier is a very short term position...
Just look at the problems caused by short term strategies in the financial markets!

Re:aw, come on, it's not that bad.

[Macthorpe]

As mentioned below, I wasn't commenting on the content, I was commenting on whether the 7-personality self-aggrandizing shitfest was particularly necessary in making the point.

Re:Sweatly B will save them!

[Macthorpe]

No offense to GP, but I'd like to think I write more eloquently than that. Furthermore, I'm not scared of writing "fuck" on a website.

Re:aw, come on, it's not that bad.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh god, another twitter/mactorpe/erris sockpuppet. Why don't you get a life?

Simple math and vandalism.

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's see. As of this moment (7:30 AM), this article has 102 posts.

Going through the accounts listed in willyhill's journal, I
count 19 posts by 13 different accounts, most of them in
this thread.

That means that a single person posted 18.6% of all comments
so far on this article alone.

willyhill posted exactly four times on this article, all with the
same account (that I can tell).

Who's 'cluttering up' the place again?

Slashdot is broken when twitter can post some "M$ sux" drivel, have
someone point out he's shilling his own comments with so many accounts,
and then come back with 'dumb fuck' in the same thread - and still be
modded 'interesting'.

But hey, not all of us can have 14 accounts. It takes a special kind
of special to handle that.

Re:Crazy like a fox.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ibane, Odder and Whiteox are all twitter sockpuppets. The current list is:

• twitter
• willeyhill, created to attack willyhill
• mactrope, created to attack macthorpe
• ibane
• Odder
• Whiteox
• gnutoo
• freenix
• Erris
• right handed
• inTheLoo
• GNUChop
• deadzero
• myCopyWrong
• westbake

Please read the full, but incomplete, description

Throw [out] the chair[man] of ISO?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you found the right solution there.

After rejecting all those national appeals on a whim, I'm surprised that the ISO leadership hasn't been given the boot yet. It's stunning that they can get away with such a dictatorial approach to setting international standards.

Eject them, using rotten tomatoes if needed.

Which media attention?

[SgtChaireBourne]

didn't IBM also resign from ISO over OOXML? i think this form of passive protest is important as it draws attention to the corruption at hand. if nothing else, it's garnered media attention...

Where? MSNBC? MS Newseek? MS WashingtonPost?

Re:Which media attention?

[lysergic.acid]

you make a good point, but that has more to to with the consolidation of mainstream media, which is really a separate issue (though its implications and effects are broad and far-reaching).

in the meantime, the web has done a lot to diversify the media sources that the average person is exposed to. from here, it's up to the individual to make a conscious effort to get their news from independent news sources and check multiple news sources to account for inherent biases and verify accuracy of reported info. news aggregators like slashdot/digg have also played a large role in facilitating this process.

i haven't checked digg lately, but i know /. has been following this incident closely. as slashdotters, we're probably ahead of the curve in staying up to date with the latest IT news. therefore, we also need to play our part. i think most IT professionals are probably aware of this issue, but perhaps some of the upper management decision-makers aren't so well informed. if you happen to work at a big company who's an ISO member, you could stimulate discussion within the company, and hopefully put more pressure on ISO to appeal the approval of OOXML.

Re:Norway? Does that even count?

[Anonymous Coward]

When the oil gets to $200, 300, 500 - and priced in euros by then - there will be skirmishes. I wouldn't call that a "war". Norway is full of stoned-out conscripts whose main goal is to get more stoned. I jest, they can't get any more stoned. Britain will squeeze and Norway will pop.

He's mentally ill.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've read a lot of his posts, trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, but my conclusion remains: He's mentally ill. As in "paranoid schizophrenic".

Norway is not a member of the EU

[andersh]

The EU courts have no jurisdiction in Norway because we are NOT members of the EU. And we don't want to become members thank you very much. We have our own courts and want to remain a sovereign country.

Re:Norway is not a member of the EU

[Anonymous Coward]

Read up on the EFTA Court which does have jurisdiction in Norway. For better of worse, the EEA agreement gets you the worst of both worlds: you follow EU law without being able to influence EU decisions.

You need help

[Anonymous Coward]

Twitter, seriously, you need help. You and Roy -- the black helicopters are coming to get me -- Schestowitz.

This isn't the voice of some conspiracy, it's a bunch of Slashdot users who think you're batshit insane. Which you are, please see a psychologist, you are probably mentally ill.

Re:You need help

[Vexorian]

I find it interesting that you are using the suspicion with no evidence whatsoever that this guy twitter is doing multiple accounts as a way to also attack Roy. Sorry, Roy might be a lot of things, but he is very often right, and Novell's attacks on Linux are getting worse and worse, I also wish this whole stuff was plain wrong and Novell was this free software saint some of you guys seem to think it is , but it isn't.

Re:You need help

[fejjie]

Roy Schestowitz is routinely proven wrong on his own website because he fails to read the articles he claims support his accusations. If you actually READ the articles he links to (after following link-back after link-back to his own articles), you discover quickly that the article does not support his claims and often outright rejects the claims he made.

Interesting site

[Mathinker]

But I couldn't help laughing at the "Donate online" link being close to the "Bribe Payers Index Survey 2008" link on their policy & research page...

Re:Sweatly B will save them!

[hairyfeet]

Not to mention I don't think I have ever seen you write y'all or ain't in any of your posts so it ain't very hard to tell that we aren't from the same geographical region. Whereas Twitter can't resist using M$ at least once per post.

Twitter if you are reading this,dude let go of the M$ BS,'kay? That bit was old when I was running a Windows help chatroom during the mid '90s. If you don't want to type Microsoft simply use MSFT,which is simple,cuts out half the letters,is easy to understand and look up for those that are too young to have used DOS,and if it makes you feel better we all know that with Vista MSFT was looking at the stock price instead of making an OS that was actually good. But everytime you use that tired old M$ bit you not only out yourself but the first thing anyone thinks,no matter whether what you had to say actually had some merit or not,is this

Needs a truckload of poisoned herrings

[Anonymous Coward]

if you're going to resign on principle, at least make sure to take out those who remain, otherwise what have you achieved?

This is what they achieved.

With only corrupt people left behind, they can now help take out ODF entirely.

Re: Why can't the EU courts take this up?

[walter_f]

Norway is not a member state of the EU.

Some other European countries whose standardization bodies showed pretty biased behaviour in the OOXML issue (like Sweden, Austria,...) are, however.

well, thats a negative point for you then.

[unity100]

protesters that have pissed off the Norwegian public to the point that it's now a symbolic action to keep it going.

acting with stubbornness, like a middle eastern nation who havent been able to grow out of religious dictatorship yet ...

norway got way lowered in my perception scale of civilized countries just now, with your post.

Re:Boycott Novell has More to the Story.

[samwichse]

by willeyhill (1277478) on Saturday October 04, @01:10AM (#25254041)
Twitter sock puppet, mod down.

Looks like he took that idea to heart. willyhill, willeyhill... thank goodness members have numbers by their names.

Sam

Brilliant!

[plopez]

1) Destroy standards body.
2) This makes your closed proprietary format the de facto standard.
3) Which locks out the competition and locks in users.
4) Profit!

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re: puppets

[Anonymous Coward]

ya its prety hard to follow the real story with those around. maybe he should apply for pets.com.

Article is BS?

[Deslock]

While MS pulled some dirty tricks to get OOXML approved and many of us are rightfully questioning ISO's credibility, this article appears to be (at best) sensationalizing things according to one of the arstechnica comments:

Lars Marius Garshol
This article is basically bullshit.

What's happened here is that lots of people joined the committee to oppose the standard, and while in the committee that's all they've done. Now that OOXML has been approved, they no longer have any reason to be in the committee, so they are leaving. That's hardly the committee imploding.

So let me say this again: not one of these people have done anything in this committee other than oppose OOXML being taken up as a standard. These people are not key people in the committee. They did try to get other people in the committee to join them, but nobody else wanted to leave in protest over this.

What they are, however, is media-savvy. They've worked on all kinds of IT-related advocacy (anti-DRM, pro-open source, etc etc), so they send out a press release stating that this is a big protest, and the committee is imploding etc etc. This article is basically that press release translated to English and prettied up to look like an article.

I guess at this point people will be wondering how I know this. I've been a member of this committee since 2001, and I know many of the people on that list personally. I voted against OOXML, because I thought it wasn't ready to become a standard. The trouble is: however much you may hate Microsoft, this article remains a piece of useless propaganda.

Re:aw, come on, it's not that bad.

[MeNeXT]

No one is migrating to OOXML because no one is supporting it. Not one product on sale today. Not even from Microsoft. They claim they will in the future but I will wait and see. If Microsoft holds true to form then there is no chance in hell that OOXML will ever be supported as written (and the written documentation is incomplete as it stands).

His head is in the clouds or is being paid to write crap like that. Get help???? Don't waste your time with this he's probably running norton to clean his system as we speak.

Re:Norway? Does that even count?

[Anonymous Coward]

My family, you jackass.

Re:Boycott Novell has More to the Story.

[guyminuslife]

Yeah, but in that case, he's attacking (apparently) someone else for being one of his trolls when they're (apparently) not. As opposed to attacking one of his own trolls for being a troll..

I'm a bit annoyed that I got modded down for being a troll when my posting history clearly proves I'm merely a smart-aleck.

Must...avoid....Internet....drama....

and ?

[unity100]

why is that ?

its because a multitude of stupid morons using the internet have taken to a stupid fad named 'godwinning' and started to debase and trivialize the biggest lesson mankind ever learned ?

Re:and ?

[Macthorpe]

its because a multitude of stupid morons using the internet have taken to a stupid fad named 'godwinning' and started to debase and trivialize the biggest lesson mankind ever learned ?

Comparing companies trying to make money from software licensing to them profitting from the wholesale slaughter of the Jews puts you firmly in the multitude.

Re:and ?

[unity100]

you shouldnt comment about stuff you dont know zit about. lest, you may get shamed. now on to shaming :

before the slaughter of jews, there was the power grab. and in the power grab there were a lot of companies that aided nazis because they were benefiting from their rule. a lot of big german industry names you know today, shamefully fall within that group. it was their support that provided the nazis with the final leg of their power grab, ending in 1933 reichstag fire.

analogy holds. the behavior model of those corporations and these corporations at hand, coincide.

Re:and ?

[Macthorpe]

Then I misunderstood your point, and I apologise.

I still disagree, as I don't believe that Microsoft can be objectively compared with the 3rd Reich, but I understand where you are coming from.

Re:Norway? Does that even count?

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering synthetic fuel and oil supplies can be readily manufactured for $100-$150/barrel, that just isn't going to happen. Additionally, at $150/barrel, whole new oil reserves become financially viable to obtain. This alone will keep the price of crude down for many, many years to come.

And before that happens, you'll see people using crops like hemp (which is not pot and can have zero THC and has almost twice the yield of corn) for biofuels before people will pay $200/barrel for raw crude; let alone $300-500.

Re:aw, come on, it's not that bad.

[Macthorpe]

Microsoft only fails Transitional OOXML on one count, which is that one function returns the wrong type of positive result, which you can find from the blog of the guy who originally tested it:

Sure enough (again) the result is as expected: relatively few messages (84) are emitted and they are all of the same type complaining e.g. of the element:

since the allowed attribute values for val are now "true", "false", etc. this was one of the many tidying-up exercices performed at the BRM

You can find a list of other supported implementations here: ECMA 376 implementations.

I'm not paid to write crap like this, it's all my own work I'm afraid to say. What about your crap? Do you get paid to write that, or are you a freelance crapper like myself?

If you call Groklaw 'hogwash'...

[darkonc]

PJ, on Groklaw is pretty meticulous about documenting her claims -- pointin to the original document(s) and providing on-site backups, either in case the original is changed or deleted, or simply to make them easier to find.

If you call that 'lack of proof' and 'hogwash' then you might as well change your name to "Microsoft shill #732"

Re:If you call Groklaw 'hogwash'...

[Macthorpe]

PJ has a history of misrepresenting various pieces of evidence, especially regarding Microsoft. For example, take PJ's take on OOXML compatibility:

"17MB (around 122,000) of invalidity messages" in the strict test; less in a "transitional" model, meaning one no one on the planet will be using, since the entire point of the BRM was to fix stuff and none of those fixes are yet incorporated into Microsoft Office 2007. And by the time they are, will Microsoft Office 2007 have moved on, so we can continue to play catch up with Microsoft forever and a day?

She failed to mention that the transitional model only had 84 failure messages, all of which relating to the renaming of a naming schema which was fixed in the BRM, hence why the version of Office at that time didn't support it, which I'm led to believe it now does.

PJ is a blogger. She has her own personal agenda and she approaches every story from the same point of view. It makes her human, but it also means she's not objective, and it shows when all evidence she finds is presented to fit her point of view. So, like any story on Slashdot I feel free to take her opinions with a pinch of salt.

Re:If you call Groklaw 'hogwash'...

[makomk]

Yeah, they renamed something really minor in the schema (I think it was some truth/falsity values). Except there's a small issue - let's suppose that Microsoft fixed Office to use the new, standards-compliant names. Then when someone using the fixed version sent a document to someone who hadn't installed the fix, their copy of Office would be expecting the old name, and wouldn't open the document correctly. This is a problem. (And remember, this is just for transitional compliance.)

Also, Microsoft Office isn't compliant with the OOXML standards, and Microsoft have said it won't be for another couple of versions. Plus, it should be trivial to produce valid OOXML documents whose drawings won't display at all in MS Office, since I think SVG was added to OOXML as an alternative method of doing drawings and Office doesn't support this yet.

Government work

[jesterzog]

"Plus, who are you going to replace them with? Honest people don't like government work very much."

That is one of the more profound statements I have encountered here (on slashdot) about politics for quite s while!

Well I quite enjoy government work, but maybe my situation's different since I'm working in the New Zealand government which doesn't sound as if it's very stereotypical as governments go around the world. I also know that the other people in my IT department know their stuff and are really good at what they do, which seems to contradict what I hear about other governments and also quite a few of the businesses we've dealt with who've tried to sell us stuff with all kinds of problems. (eg. Companies who don't understand or try to hide basic security issues about the software they're selling are common.)

This would be all about the design of the government and the people it attracts to work for it, as well as the environment they're put in, would it not? Introspectively I consider myself to be "honest" (at least as much as anyone considers themselves honest), and I enjoy working for the government in New Zealand. There are a few exceptions on occasion, but generally government departments here are independent from the politicians. If and when interference is discovered (and it does happen occasionally), it tends to be frowned upon from everywhere and most people who get caught don't last long. We definitely don't have politically-aligned appointments in the same way that the US Feds do.

I like working here because it's a good working environment, the people are good to work with, and the idea of doing something towards public service actually appeals to me more than just being in a business to make money (perhaps for someone else) often at the expense what I might think of as quality work.

Granted that the entire country is about the same size as a typical US State (~4.1 million people) so the structure's different and the government's probably more directly responsive to people who vote for it than in some other places. There's also some very strict legislation (notably the Official Information Act) which essentially states that anyone (or at least NZ citizens, I think) can request information about anything from a NZ Government Department and the department has to provide it unless there's a good reason not to. (Allowable reasons to withhold might include sensitivity of information, privacy of individuals who aren't very relevant, questions that aren't specific enough or would take an unreasonable amount of work to answer, not actually having the information in which case the request might be transferred to somewhere that does, etc.)

If there are disputes about how the department is interpreting the law in responding, an independent ombudsman can investigate with a lot of authority and basically force the department to release it, if they agree with the complaint. (Here's an Australian journalist raving about it.) The IT areas I work in have a lot to do with records management, and there's a huge amount of emphasis in getting everyone who works here to file their information properly so it can quickly found if and when it's ever requested. (We'd get in trouble if it were later discovered we missed something important after it was requested.)

Everyone who works in government departments here is doing so on the assumption that what they do today might be reported publicly the next day, but it's not really that bad if you're doing it as habit because people just get used to doing work with the expectation that in the future, they might have to back up what they've done. It's usually the managers who'll have to take responsibility, so they're immediately interested in making sure that what their employees do is as high quality as possible and will stand up to public

what difference ?

[unity100]

the household brand names you are so accustomed to from germany today were producing similar stuff pre-nazi era. with the advent of nazis, they have transitioned to producing machines of killing and profited from it highly and therefore both supported the nazis before they got power in anticipation of this, and supported them after they got power and started a world war.

they were just corporations like microsoft, normal companies, back in the day.

this is a transition. a company's actions transforms both its big wigs and employees and its characteristics. if we let microsoft to have its way like this, it will resort to this kind of action more and more, and totally transform the i.t. scene and itself in the process.

Re:shut up, dumb fuck.

[willyhill]

Your stuff is cluttering up the place too.

If that's the case, then I apologize. You can always foe me so you can ignore my posts. The system makes it easy to do that.

14x for twitter, of course. Better get clicking *grin*

Re:Crazy like a fox.

[willyhill]

Whiteox is not a sockpuppet of twitter. All his accounts except this one have user IDs over 1.2M.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder

[Anonymous Coward]

From the Wikipedia entry (yeah, yeah, I know...)

DSM Criteria

A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:

1. has a grandiose sense of self-importance
2. is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love
3. believes that he or she is "special" and unique
4. requires excessive admiration
5. has a sense of entitlement
6. is interpersonally exploitative
7. lacks empathy
8. is often envious of others or believes others are envious of him or her
9. shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes

That sound about right, Twitter? I think you could tick off at least five on that list before breakfast.

Re:Norway? Does that even count?

[Anonymous Coward]

Assuming what you claim is the way it would be, the difference is it doesn't cost $100 to pull a barrel, not even close - it's pure profit after 10. It does cost that and so much more for alternatives, and there simply is not enough. There were millions upon millions of years to stockpile crude. You ain't gonna get that in a couple of years. Hemp? You must be a stoned-out norway hippie freak. Figures, but I suppose you freaks have to do something with all those seeds from your low-grade pot.

Re:aw, come on, it's not that bad.

[makomk]

Microsoft only fails Transitional OOXML on one count, which is that one function returns the wrong type of positive result, which you can find from the blog of the guy who originally tested it

This may look like a minor issue, but it isn't. It means that any program written to the standard won't be able to read documents created by Microsoft Office, since it will encounter invalid truth values. It probably also means that Microsoft Office won't be able to read documents created by compliant implementations, for the same reason - they may have patched this since, but it won't help with people who haven't installed the patch. (Yes, this does mean old Microsoft Office could end up incompatible with documents created in newer versions if they fix their standards compliance.)

You can find a list of other supported implementations here: ECMA 376 implementations.

That's implementations of the ECMA 376 version, not the ISO version. There's no point implementing the ISO version, since it's not compatible with Microsoft Office and the purpose is interoperating with MS Office. For example, you'll notice that the iWork apps advertise support for "Microsoft Office 2007 (Office Open XML)".

Max OS X

[krischik]

Nor is any particular flavor of BSD.

Mac OS X is a certified BSD based Unix.

Martin

Only Mac OS X

[krischik]

Only Mac OS X is a certified Unix with BSD roots. The other BSDs aren't certified. But then - as symbolset has pointed out: OpenSolaris isn't certified either.

Martin

How is this modded up again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Everybody realizes that this comment and the GP to which it is a response were posted by the same person, right?

Regardless of what he's saying... how can he be moderated up?

Is there something I'm missing here?

Re: ISO only in it for the money anyway

[Douglas Goodall]

ISO only exists to sell printed material anyway. They are the official source of printed standards. If we all decide to take our standards and go home, they will have nothing to sell. They do need to pay attention and keep us happy. They like their little monopoly, and if they want to keep it they do need to play fair in the long run. And by the way, deciding that the criteria for voting was showing up with money made it too easy for Microsoft Gold Partners to overrun the meeting.

oooohhhhhh !!!!

[unity100]

aaand ?

Blatant Gaming Of Slashdot.

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's twitter asking for mod points from his buddies on IRC to influence this thread.

Here's twitter admitting to operating the 'GNUChop' account.

You can't get any more blatant than that.

Re:Norway? Does that even count?

[level4]

When the oil gets to $200, 300, 500 - and priced in euros by then - there will be skirmishes.

Maybe so, but not between Euro nations like Britain and Norway. They have far more to lose from sanctions and possibly military reciprocity than they could ever gain from a bit of oil, not matter how much it was worth. You're talking like oil is the key to all world riches - hardly. Nice to have but everywhere else seems to get along OK without it.

And as another reply mentioned, there are long-term ceilings on oil price above, say, $200 or so in today's dollars. It could spike amove there short to medium term, but at that level production of alternatives would be extremely profitable, no war needed. Hell, you can make gas from coal liquifecation. Guess which country has 250 billion tonnes of coal? Hint: you probably live in it.

And let's not forget that resourceless islands like Japan have had the shit scared out of them by the latest oil price bubble. They are *pouring* money into research to get themselves off the oil teat. And you know, I heard they might make a car or two down there...

Although your silly comments about the stoned nature of Norwegian troops makes me wonder if I'm just feeding some weird kind of troll.

Re:Norway? Does that even count?

[level4]

If Eurozone countries were willing to go to war over making $100 more on oil they could drill for rather than make themselves, they'd already be doing it, since they could make that right now. Obviously, they are not.

And please, yank, don't you dare criticise anyone else's pot. Marijuana in the USA is the worst in the world bar none. Plus, it's illegal!

Of course

[andersh]

Of course we trade with the EU, but we are not members of the EU and they have no powers over us.

I should know having studied law and the EU at University. EFTA is a separate entity controlled by Norway, and we police our own compliance or non-compliance. The EU would have to complain to "our" own EFTA Court.