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Standards Expert — "Microsoft Fails the Standards Test"
levell writes "Alex Brown, Convenor of the Ballot Resolution Meeting on OOXML, has written a blog post saying that Microsoft is failing the standards test. Mr. Brown notes: 'In its pre-release form Office 2010 supports not the approved Strict variant of OOXML, but the very format the global community rejected in September 2007, and subsequently marked as not for use in new documents — the Transitional variant. Microsoft are behaving as if the JTC 1 standardisation process never happened, and using technologies (like VML) in a new product which even the text of the Standard itself describes as "deprecated" and "included... for legacy reasons only"...' He also says that defects are being fixed very slowly and that 'Looking at the text, I reckon it is more like 95% that remains to be done, as it is still lousy with defects.' It's an insightful look at what has happened with OOXML since ISO approved it from someone who was not opposed to its becoming a standard."
"But Microsoft said it would respect me in the morning! And call me later!"
The best bit of this gushing fountain of schadenfreude is the comments. Rob Weir pointing out that they were entirely fucked over precisely as Tim Bray predicted, and Alex and Rick Jelliffe still insisting that Microsoft will love them really once it sees just how pure and worthy their love is.
Guys. You got fucked over. Ballmer had his sweaty way with you and got his ISO number. He deleted your number on his way back home. He is never going to light up your phone.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
... because he was sure full on in favour of his masters work and blind to its faults when the ballot took place.
Why is this news? Microsoft doesn't follow any standards, and never has. It's part of their strategy. Since they're bigger than everyone else, everyone has to adhere to their (non) standards, which means everyone else is always playing catchup, and can never get ahead. This way implementation is never judged on speed or size, but instead judged on "how Microsoft-like" it is. Microsoft always wins that comparison.
Really? End of subject.
thanks to the average user, who does not care about these kinds of things.
That and more from my 2009 blog post
Every one of these has come to pass. If the scales are falling from Alex's eyes, then great. But the rest of us saw this coming a long time ago. In fact, Microsoft told us at the SC34 meeting in Seattle last year that the "Strict" conformance class would not be supported until Office 16. Alex knows that. So it is odd that he is pretending that this is something unexpected.
Wow.... What a surprise. Just when I thought Microsoft was starting to get better. We really need to get away from these binary formats anyway... A LOT of security vulnerabilities come from binary formats.
Microsoft did not want a standard. They wanted a tick in the box to say that their file format was standard so they could sell to company's and governments who had a policy of storing documents in an open way to ensure that they could be retrieved in the future.
Wait, what!!!? Microsoft is ignoring standards?! Noooo waaay!
even if you were born 2500 years ago:
http://www.aesopfables.com/cgi/aesop1.cgi?4&TheScorpionandtheFrog
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
MicroSLOP is the most destructive botnet unleased on the Intertubes.
Yours In Ulyanovsk,
Kilgore T.
Many previous posts said it was unrealistic to expect microsoft to implement proper support in Office 2010. I think what is unrealistic is expecting microsoft to implement any kind of standards.
The only time they will implement anything that is standards compliant is when they have no choice. Think about IE. It took 15 years to get them to implement standards in IE (In IE9) and they only did so because Mozilla, Apple, Opera and Google forced them. Only after they lost significant marketshare against this companies that they implemented HTML5. And, remember, embrace, extend, extinguish. IE9 is only phase1 (Embrace). In a year or so, we'll see IE9 marketshare grow, and the proprietary extensions will start rolling. In a few years, It'll be 2001 all over again. IE15 will be as incompatible as IE6 was.
This is microsoft. That's what they do. They won't change. They are the most hostile company I've ever seen. They blatantly attack the rest of the industry, and as long as people put up with it and buy their products, they have no reason to change their tactics. They've worked well for them for almost 3 decades.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Fool me 48 times, shame on you, fool me the 49th... Shit! You did it again!
But you won't fool me 50 times. I'm sure you wouldn't do that.
The requirements need to be set by purchasing and strictly followed.
Buy only Software that meets OOXML-Strict or OpenDocument. If no supplier is able to meet OOXML-Strict then no purchases will be made.
For each and every project that specified that a standardized format should be used, they can now be hold liable. Lets hope that they get sued to bits over it. I'm not holding my breath though, the EU seems to have some random rights and wrongs they pursue.
Is this person for real?
Yes, what really is the difference between 'office app space' and 'internet browser space'? Let's not forget Microsoft's swift rush to Internet standard conformance! They were like frolicing collies running over the meadows, busy herding eager to please!
Belief is the currency of delusion.
I'm glad that Alex Brown talked to the responsible Microsoft Program Manager for comment rather than basing his article solely on a pre-release version of Office that is many months old.
The article says
Microsoft employs many eminent and standards-aware people of unimpeachable record – they also obviously “get it”
Actually, Microsoft employs many people who were previously of unimpeachable record. When these obviously intelligent and "eminent" persons get in bed with Microsoft and then don't cry foul at the first, second, third, or fourth time that Microsoft willfully and intentionally manipulates standards bodies, then how can we possibly consider their record anything but stained?
I know several people who work for Microsoft, and while I am happy that these friends still have work, especially in this time of massive layoffs, I wish that they had an opportunity to apply their skills at a company not so unbelievably hostile to standards groups.
coding is life
Too bad we're just preaching to the choir here...
coding is life
Go ahead. Tell me "I told you so" if you must. But I, for one, am SHOCKED. Utterly and stupefyingly shocked and dismayed by this move from the new kinder, gentler Microsoft. I refuse to believe this is on purpose. They turned over a new leaf and this can ONLY be described as a minor mistake, a hiccup, a bump on the road to reform, so to speak.
... Guys?
Microsoft is just kind of like my wife. She promised me after I found out about her cheating on me all those times that she'd stop. She's turned over a new leaf. She never MEANT to hurt me. And she's really trying to mend her ways but it's hard to change all those years of learned behavior, you know. It's not her fault she has needs I can't fulfill. And she loves me, I know she does. She says so every time I text her to ask her where she is. So I know it's true. And when she comes home smelling of some other man's junk I know it was just an accident. She would never intentionally take advantage of my naivete after all these years I've been with her. And neither would Microsoft.
Right?
I totally agree with you - binary file formats are like totally insecure for sure... I mean one need only look to web browsers which parse those "binary" html and xml formats and how many hundreds of critical security bugs they have had over the years. Its the low level parsing of document structure where all the bugs are - switching to XML will make your documents secure and I have a caribbean vacation getaway I would like to sell you. Only $99..whats your fax number?
[quote]This annex is normative for the current edition of the Standard, but not guaranteed to be part of the Standard in future revisions. The intent is to enable the future DIS 29500 maintenance group to choose, at a later date, to remove this set of features from a revised version of DIS 29500.
Read more: http://www.adjb.net/post/Microsoft-Fails-the-Standards-Test.aspx#ixzz0jxg6R5sd[/quote]
seriously, they have been taken for a ride and i hope they recognize this before office 2010 comes out and they market it as being standards compliant.
Isn't OOXML, you know kind of, XML like rather than a binary standard???
--- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
I believe that in one of the last suits, Samba (and thus the rest of us) had a pretty big win in which Microsoft agreed to hand over a lot of technical documentation. I believe that there was even some part of the agreement that basically defused a number of patents that might have been brought to bear against Samba and other FOSS, but I can't remember the particulars off the top of my head.
So sometimes the EU's suits do bear good fruits.
Which we can pick up for Free and enjoy deliciously!
coding is life
I stopped reading when I got to this nugget - "It is also a worrying commentary on the standards-savvyness of the Office developers that the first amateur attempts of part-time outsiders find problems with documents which Redmond's internal QA processes have missed." Is the author really this naive? If so, how did this guy become involved in the process in the first place?
...and not something people will actually pay for. I like Windows 7, but Office is still a steaming pile of horse shit.
What is it about the times we live in right now that spurs elitists to form a small group that tells us how to do everything?
Is Microsoft a company that can do as it pleases with it's software or is it a group of slaves that must do the will of the group of elitists?
The same thing happens with political correctness. Am I free to speak my opinion or am I a slave to the elitists who say my opinion is offensive?
Doesn't anybody appreciate the delicious irony of TFA's URL: "www.adjb.net/post/Microsoft-Fails-the-Standards-Test.aspx"?
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
I agree that complex proprietary formats are a big problem, but can you define "binary formats" a little better? Everything except for stuff in a few experimental architectures (trinary, analog, etc) is stored in a binary form.
I get such things (docx and xlsx) from our CEO's executive assistant. I don't think our CEO even knows what a computer is.
http://www.happychild.org.uk/nvs/cont/stories/aesopsfables/page0214.htm
Maybe next time M$ will truly be trying to mend their ways and become less evil?
Yesss, maybe... mwahahahaha...
it's some XML in a zip container from my knowledge. In fact on *NIX systems the file utility shows them as zips. I remember at uni that we had issues with the linux based mail system marking the attachments as zips and then they didn't auto open in word.
All of the above was encrypted with a Quad ROT-13 method. Unauthorized decryption is in violation of the DMCA.
Microsoft CAN'T go along with standards. If they did, then when they release a new version and change the file format to yet another proprietary variant it wouldn't force everyone to upgrade when their early-adopting friends (who probably got it free from MS) send them a document or spreadsheet in the new format and they can't open it, modify it, and send it back without buying an upgrade. Ka-CHING! We got another one Jocko!
Mr. Brown's mom fails the standards test.
Tend to agree about Microsoft's hostility to standards processes (I'm involved in some of them). But why isn't ISO taking any licks here? It takes like 3 years to move a standard through ISO; what development organization has that kind of time?
And remember, there's only one vote per country in JTC 1 committees, which makes it easy for US-based companies to feel like the process is a bit imbalanced when it comes to software standards.
Remember. It's not OOXML. It's Microsoft Office Open XML aka MOOXML. Much easier to pronounce ;-D
They are just afraid that someone with a submarine patent is going to sue them if they use it. They are probably right.
I have to disagree with Alex. Not with his summary of what happened, but with his conclusions. The OOXML standards project hasn't failed, and isn't heading for failure. It's been wildly successful. Remember that Microsoft's goal with it wasn't to produce a standard document format. It was to get an ISO standard passed with OOXML in the name so Microsoft could provide the correct tick-list item to sell to governments, while still keeping MS Office using a format that only Microsoft could reliably read and write. In fact, a document format that conformed strictly to a published standard that was completely and correctly specified was for MS an explicit non-goal, something to be kept from happening.
And if Alex expected anything else from Microsoft, I have to think he's deluded. There's nothing in Microsoft's history to suggest they'd do otherwise if they have any alternative open to them.
How about you stopping telling GNU what to do? And shut the fuck up and leave out all this bullshit about how it's GNU/Linux's fault not yours. Man up, if you want to do what you want to do without being told, man up and accept it is YOUR failure, not GNU or linux.
Anybody taking 5 minutes out of their precious lives to Google^H^H^H^HBing Microsoft's past business practices and integrity as a company should have known better. To be surprised by any of this now means you are either a complete moron or were bought and paid for. We all know that metric tons of politicians were bought off. I suppose the obvious conclusion is that the remainder are complete morons. Nothing to see here. Please move along. "We" told you so.
Microsoft worked with industry partners and standards organizations to create the RTF standard for document interchange. The first version of Word that could save RTF saved a badly broken non-standard version of RTF. WordPerfect and other competitors who tried to implement the standard for document import were screwed because they couldn't faithfully import MS Word documents. Users blamed WordPerfect.
Who knows whether MSWord's buggy RTF export was deliberate or merely incompetent. The point is that history once again repeats itself.
Binary formats have little to do with it, except that it's much harder to figure out how they tick if you don't already know. Binary formats are very useful, when used appropriately-- for instance, nobody complains that TCP packets are binary format, because the format is well-known. They are much more compact than textual formats, and they can be much easier to parse. The problem is when they are used to keep out prying eyes, and I have no doubt that Microsoft often employs them to this effect. They sure ain't using them to make Word files smaller!
Apple's plists are a good example of a proprietary binary format that is both used for the right reasons and is trivially read by a human. IIRC, in 10.4, they made them binary by default, but provided a converter (plutil) to make them plain-text. Since their structure is obvious when in plain-text, and because their plist parser is very forgiving (it doesn't care if you never convert the file back to binary), these are very useful. Apple even documents the plist format in their man pages and website. So the formats themselves aren't the problem-- it's how they're being used. Apple clearly doesn't see any value in keeping people out of plists.
What's really bizzarre is their Office software is so obviously awful because of this, yet it still meets (exceeds actually) my needs as a user. How do they do it?
We cannot be sure that Microsoft is evil, but it does turn out to be the best working hypothesis.
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OMG.
Office produces 100% compliant ODF files that Open Office can't properly handle.
Well, duhhhh. Isn't this what Microsoft does for a living? Haven't they been doing this since the beginning? What's the story here?
Heard any good sigs lately?
What you are describing is the way standards used to work before they became so political. It's not surprising that MS doesn't adhere to new standards - many were designed specifically to break from existing de facto standards if those standards were created by MS.
Since our company has a requirement for Open Standard file formats we can still forbid MS. When Microsoft apologists whine "but it's OOXML, that's an ISO standard" we can reply "sorry, it isn't standard OOXML".
The last real Netscape Navigator release was 4.x, which was the contemporary of IE4 not IE6.
And IE4, as reviewed by most, was a steaming pile of crap. But it still steamrolled over Netscape because of Microsoft's tying it to Windows.
MS painted their elephant Pantone Pink to give their beast a certain aura of standardization. People were fooled into thinking that real standardization would follow but it all turns out to be a cheap tactic in a nasty campaign of steamrolling the ISO and bamboozling the rest of us who weren't terribly aware of Microsoft's history.
The ugly fact is that no American corp in a monopoly position can do anything other than cheat and lie and steal in the end. It is ingrained in the business culture and all that is required for any traded corp to be made to work this way is a bit of investor and executive turnover with a sprinkling of lawsuits. Even Google will succumb to this as their regular M.O. eventually.
No one else with software that writes "100% compliant" ODF has been able to manage such a feat.
But we know that MS is expert in creative reinterpretation of standards (or even what standard means).
This reads to me a little bit more like "They promised they'd take care of me for destroying the credibility of ISO. It's been years, and still no check!"
You couldn't watch this train wreck without knowing that Alex Brown had sold his soul. He jammed this thing through, destroying the value of ISO in the process. Now he's learning that if you dance with the devil, you pay his fee. We told him that then to no effect, and telling him again will do no better.
From here no slack for him. He did what he did and not only he but we have to live with it. He'll be a pariah forever.
On the upside, managers everywhere have the ISO standard to cite for their completely proprietary installations of Office and Exchange. Who knows, but maybe soon they'll have a similar standard to cite for IE: "It's standard, in the hypothetical sense that they sell a lot of it and so the standards bodies should write their standards to it."
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Microsoft? Credible? On what planet? They didn't even write the DOS that was their reason for being. IBM helped them out with W32, and suffered from it when they killed OS/2. Dave Cutler took the features they needed from VMS to create NT - and today he's filing the serial numbers off of EC2 to complete their cloud offerring. They have been a sham this whole time and no change from that paradigm is anticipated.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Linux has had X 11 since about 1992. It's direct, unlike on Windows where you have to run the Cygwin X 11 server.
We fully support DRM now too. The "D" stands for direct, just to be sure you know that our X 11 is really direct.
In other news: Anyone who is the slightest bit surprised by this needs their head checked.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
It's true that more and more public sector agencies are looking for standards conformance from document formats, but... I'm still looking for an application that respects the ISO version of ODF....interestingly, Microsoft Office 2007 does parse ODF faithfully, something that OpenOffice notably does not (it conforms to the OASIS ODF spec not the ISO one....
"They are the most hostile company I've ever seen. They blatantly attack the rest of the industry, and as long as people put up with it and buy their products, they have no reason to change their tactics"
Oh, and Google and Apple are active on the standards scene are they? They give a shit about standards at all? Come on, get real, Microsoft have moved a long way since their 20th Century approach of proprietary lock-in to data formats. Jeez, you even have to ask an Apple specialist to change your fucking battery, let alone get any access to your data locked in to their machines. get some perspective and take off your blinkers