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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.'"
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.
It's a good time to start a new standards body with a new goal.
Table-ized A.I.
It's not the ISO entities themselves; it's M$ and their hired cronies.
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?
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.
Get help.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
Do better than what? It's a serious suggestion. Get some psychiatric help - you've clearly lost a screw somewhere important.
"It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him." - Tolkien
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...
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
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.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
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.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
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.
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.
Trolls? (come from Norway)
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.
Let my new 7-digit UID be a lesson to all - write down your passwords.
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.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
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 ?
Read radical news here
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.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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.
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.