Slashdot Log In
Open Letter to ISO Calls For Standardization of Process
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Fri Sep 07, 2007 09:47 AM
from the corruption-arms-race dept.
from the corruption-arms-race dept.
In a recent open letter to the ISO FreeCode CEO Geir Isene calls for standardization in the processes used by the ISO to help prevent future OOXML blunders. "It seems ISO is not prepared for a politicized process where a big and influential commercial enterprise will use any means possible to push its own standard through to certification. Committees are flooded by the vendor in support of the standard. Votes are bought and results are hijacked. Several national bodies have flawed and skewed procedures open for corruption."
Related Stories
[+]
OOXML Won't Get Fast-Track ISO Standardization 165 comments
realdodgeman writes "The International Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS) recently held an internal poll to determine the position that the United States should take on Microsoft's request for Office Open XML (OOXML) approval. With eight votes in favor, seven against, and one abstention, the group was one vote short of the nine votes required for approving OOXLM ISO standardization. This will mean a huge slowdown to the standardization to the OOXML format. 'Given the controversial nature, relative complexity, and significant importance of the standard, the results of INCIT's vote is unsurprising. An INCITS technical committee also voted against fast-track OOXML approval last month prior to the executive board's vote. Further deliberation is clearly needed as well as further refinement of the format. It seems as though many of the organizations participating in the approval process are generally supportive of the standard itself, but are unwilling to voice unconditional support until their concerns are resolved. OOXML may be down, but it's certainly not out.'"
[+]
IT: Microsoft Bought Sweden's ISO Vote on OOXML? 340 comments
a_n_d_e_r_s writes "The vote on OOXML looked fairly secured. Most in the Working Group in Sweden was against the vote to approve OOXML. The day of the vote, though, more companies showed up at the door. Some 20 new companies — each one payed about $2500 to be allowed to vote — and vote they did ... for Microsoft. Most of the new companies were partners from Microsoft who suddenly out of the blue joined the Working Group, payed membership fees and voted yes for approval. From the OS2World story: 'The final result was 25 Yes, 6 No and 3 Abs and this would from the start be a done deal of saying No! Jonas Bosson who participated in today's meeting on behalf on FFII said that he left the meeting in protest and so did also IBM's Swedish local representative Johan Westman.'"
[+]
IT: ISO Says No To Microsoft's OOXML Standard 315 comments
qcomp writes "The votes are in and Microsoft has lost for now, reports the FFII's campaign website OOXML. The 2/3 majority needed to proceed with the fast-track standardization has not been achieved. Now the standard will head to the ballot resolution meeting to address the hundreds of technical comments submitted along with the votes." Here is yesterday's speculation as to how the vote would turn out.
Submission: An Open Letter to ISO by Anonymous Coward
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
IEEE as well (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:IEEE as well (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Were you thinking of this?
http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=9E6 A38B9-89B6-4C28-BD7D-B117D22E7C6D [cbronline.com]
China accuses IEEE of wireless standards conspiracy
In its appeal, China has asked the ISO to investigate 'whether the ethical and procedural rules and principals have indeed been violated and whether the ballots have been unfairly influenced by those ethical and procedural violations,' according to the report in the Xinhua media agency.
What we need is a standard (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What we need is a standard (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Standardized standardization? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, but... (Score:4, Funny)
Whao there.... (Score:3, Funny)
You don't understand ... (Score:2)
You gotta be kidding... (Score:5, Insightful)
Whatever the merit of his suggestions, the idea that ISO is new to high-pressure corporate gamesmanship and requires a condescending lecture from a titan of industry like "the CEO of Freecode" has to qualify as the laugh of the day.
Re: You gotta be kidding... (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
After Web 2.0; discussions on forums like Slashdot, Digg etc. have shown that they can be a powerful influence on individuals, companies and public entities. The recent admission by the Vista technical team of a design flaw that throttles network performance when playing audio
Re: (Score:2)
Hmmm... I always wanted to give a piece of my mind to NASA, every time they screw up, I thought "even *I* can handle fireworks twice each year, what's so god damn complex".
You know what, I'm gonna send them an open letter.
- CEO of my mom's basement.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
ISO is supposed to serve all of us (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:ISO is supposed to serve all of us (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, the company i work for is member of our national standard body (which in turn is member of ISO).
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Get a grip (Score:2)
Man, that went right over your head. The parent isn't saying we should sit around, and isn't even criticizing Freecode's "CEO". It's saying that ISO is perfectly at home with political pressure, not exactly a virgin in the field, and Freecode's "CEO" doesn't carry a lot of weight anyway, not exactly being a "heavy hitte
Re: (Score:2)
Just the opposite call may be a better idea... (Score:3, Insightful)
Ummm, maybe not. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
And when Microsoft can purchase votes at will, who is it, precisely, that you think would prevent it from being gamed? Some meta-level of benign dictators who can ignore the votes of the membership when they feel like it? Is that OK, as long as it's "organic"?
Re: (Score:2)
Do people really think they're all in there just winging it? There are already many rules, processes, procedures, etc. I don't even know what it means to "standardize the standardizatio
Re: (Score:2)
You're referring to the situation in Sweden, right? There's a lot more suspicious going on than just that one incident.
12 new countries joined the ISO OOXML committee this year. 10 of those voted yes.
Lots of new participants in the national standards boards. Most of which contributed little to the national reviews of the proposed standard and voted 'yes with no comments'.
I'll not claim outright fraud on MS' part, but if the 'if it quac
First tho (Score:2)
It shouldn't be a big deal... it's a fairly standard problem.
ISO must introduce fairness as well... (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Over 67% of P-grade members to vote Yes.
2. Less than 25% overall members could vote No.
The scope for abuse wiht the above criteria exists because 'countries' like Khazakstan, Cote' de Ivorie and Cyprus have equal voting rights; and can become P-members as well. So, the ISO could consider modifying the voting requirements on the lines of the Senate / House pattern:
1. The over 67% P-grade members criterion to be amended as "Positive votes corresponding to over 67% of the total population represented". Populous natins like India, China, the UK, Brazil have all voted No. The present ISO rules allow this popular opinion to be sidelined.
2. Secondly, lots of new 'countries' have opted for voting and P-status. None of these have participated or voted in any other sphere of the ISO actvities. This points strongly to financial inducements and corruption, and cannot be dismissed as coincidence. The rules must be altered before the BRM in February.
3. Thirdly, Microsoft has admitted to wrong-doing in the voting process in Sweden. This alone ought to be sufficient for the ISO to null and void the entire submission, and debar said firm for a minimum period. There is no credibility if rules are blindly applied, when benefitting parties themselves are guilty of subversion. This is similar to the submission of licenses to the OSI - the standards bodies must take into account past conduct and sincerity; not just rule on technicalities.
4. Fourthly, the "Yes, with comments" option must be removed. This is meaningless, and mischevous. What incentive does a vested interest have in listening to these comments, and redressing the grievances?
5. The ISO must take a clear stance wrt patents. Any patent-encumbered submission must be rejected until:
a. The submission is amended so as to be patent-free
b. The patents in question have expired all over the world.
More later.
Borat? (Score:4, Insightful)
a. The submission is amended so as to be patent-free
b. The patents in question have expired all over the world.
Parent
Re:ISO must introduce fairness as well... (Score:4, Insightful)
By population: Should Nigeria have more say than France on nuclear standards?
By economic power: Should the US have more say on kimchi than Korea? (yeah, I'm stretching there, but hopefully you get the point.)
By ISO membership: well, you're looking at the effect of that.
And so on.
It might just be a matter of selecting the least worst.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
I, for one, welcome our new standardized Mandarin overlords.
Re: (Score:2)
Please note that even if China, India and Brazil voted together, they would be well short of 67%.
Standardisation will make things worse (Score:3, Informative)
I don't think standardisation will help. On the contrary, a rigid well documented standardised procedure for approvals will make it far easier for a large corporation to understand the process and exploit or subvert it, with ISO then stuck in its own standards.
What's more important is transparency, that each member documents exactly the process by which it reached a particular decision, and that decisions within each member of ISO, not necessarily across members, are roughly consistent.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
We don't necessarily need each country to standardize to what another country is doing. That might not fit with their culture. But if the process, whatever it is, was transparent, then we could minimize corruption.
Whiny little whatever (Score:2)
How old is this CEO - 13? He sounds like a whiny little whatever.
In any case, he's late to the party. Vendors ha
Re:Whiny little whatever (Score:5, Informative)
More like 31.
Quote [isene.com]:"On the professional side: After 10 years as the CEO of the recruitment company U-MAN Norge AS, I moved on and started my own consulting company Creo Pario AS. I then started working for the leading Norwegian Linux company Linpro AS. From March 2003 till March 2004 I was the CEO. In the summer of 2004 I started my own company - FreeCode It is fully dedicated to free software. As of February 2006, we are 15 people and expanding quickly.
On the private side: I was born in Oslo, Norway in 1966. I have been a scientologist since 1984 (see my rather out-dated scientology home page). I am spiritual rather than materialistic. I believe in the good in people and that everyone can reach their potential. I believe that giving is more important than receiving and that being productive toward a constructive goal is what make people happy." (emphasis mine)
Any further comment — except this one — seems void.
CC.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
2007 - 1966 = 41
Buyout? (Score:3, Interesting)
Hey got an idea (Score:3, Funny)
2. Join ISO as a coting member
3. Say you will vote No with comments
4. ???
5. profit
Oversite Panel (Score:3, Interesting)
All that is required is a oversite panel. At the first hint of something not exactly right the panel would have the athority to halt the proess and investigate the problem.
This coupled with the requirment of P contries to be active participents within the ISO would also go along way to preventing this method of abuse.
In addition say you have to be an active observer for 2 years before applying for P status or something like that and in order to maintain your P status you have to be an ongoing active participent in n% of the processes up for discussion.
XML parsers are generic (Score:2)
Hell, I'll even parse both formats or convert one into another with same XML parsers.
Re: (Score:2)
Hah. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's just the usual Microsoft doing "version 1.0" of "Influencing Standards Bodies" really badly. Wait till their 4th or 5th try at it.
Hardly anyone making new standards is really interested in the good of the industry much less the world.
In the past the geeks made TCP/IP etc because it was just a bunch of geeks who wanted to get things to _work_ and get stuff done.
Nowadays, it's "How can we influence the standard so we can get an advantage".
If someone actually comes up with a decent standard the competitors will just try to come up with something different.
Lots of crap standards nowadays - look at WiFi - they could have taken a leaf from SSL, and had a standard that allowed _secure_anonymous_ connections, but instead you get the huge mess that's WiFi- where it's easy to be open and insecure, and difficult to be secure.
Look at the upcoming HTML standards, all "throttles" and no "brakes", nobody _really_ cares about security. They just tell people to "please drive safely, and you should stay in your lane and not crash please raise a security exception instead", but do they really lift a finger to help?
AMD come up with Hyper Transport? No way is Intel going to support it.
And then there's RDRAM and the whole bunch of people trying to get their patents into standards.
A Possible Solution? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: calling for standardization in ISO (Score:5, Funny)
Then we'll need an ISO standard for creating ISO standards for creating ISO standards.
Then we'll need... I don't think we'll ever catch up.
Parent
Like RFC 2026? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
welcome (Score:2)
Then let us name it: (Score:5, Funny)
Parent