Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

India Third to Appeal ISO's OOXML Approval

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on Fri May 30, 2008 04:56 PM
from the uphill-battle-not-over dept.
Software Microsoft
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "India is now the third country to appeal the ISO's approval of OOXML, with their appeal arriving just before the deadline last night. According to PC World, this makes OOXML the first BRM process under ISO/JTC 1 to be appealed, which leaves us in uncharted territory. Although there was substantial confusion in the comments on yesterday's story, Brazil is really appealing, not merely disapproving, of OOXML, having sent a letter that begins with 'The Associação Brasileira de Normas Técnicas (ABNT), as a P member of ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC34, would like to present, to ISO/IEC/JTC1 and ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC34, this appeal for reconsideration of the ISO/IEC DIS 29500 final result.' Groklaw speculates that this may have something to do with Microsoft hedging their bets by supporting ODF 1.1 in Office 2007, though we probably won't see any more countries appeal now that the deadline has passed."
+ -
story

Related Stories

[+] Brazil Appeals OOXML Decision 129 comments
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Brazil is now appealing the ISO's decision to standardize OOXML, following South Africa's lead. Interestingly, part of the reason this took so long was that Microsoft supporters at the meetings kept asking for delays because they 'weren't prepared' to discuss the issues raised. And the ISO as a whole is moving rather slowly, after that delay in releasing the DIS. But at least the ISO is also rewriting the directives in a special working group so this doesn't happen again. Of course, they'd have to be strict about making sure the directives are followed for it to help."
Submission: India Third to Appeal ISO's OOXML Approval by Anonymous Coward
[+] Politics: Denmark Becomes Fourth Nation To Protest OOXML 171 comments
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The rumors of a fourth OOXML complaint turned out to be true. Denmark has become the fourth nation to protest the ISO's acceptance of OOXML, and Groklaw has a translation of their complaint. They now join India, Brazil, and South Africa. There are going to be plenty of questions about deadlines, because people have been given two different deadlines for appeals, and the final DIS of OOXML was late in being distributed and not widely available. In fact, that seems to be one of Denmark's complaints, along with missing XML schemas, contradictory wording, lack of interoperability, and troubles with the maintenance of DIS29500. In other words, we should expect a lot of wrangling over untested rules from here on out, and Microsoft knows how to deal with that."
[+] ISO Puts OOXML On Hold 138 comments
schliz alerts us that ISO, in response to the four appeals (Venezuela, India, Brazil, South Africa) filed in recent weeks, has put the OOXML standardization process on hold. Here is ISO's press release, which says that ISO/IEC DIS 29500 will not be published for at least "several months" while the appeals process goes forward.
Update: 06/11 10:13 GMT by KD : Reader Alsee points out that the fourth officially recognized appealing country is Venezuela, not Denmark as originally stated. The protests of Denmark and Norway are being disregarded, as they do not come from the administrative heads of their national organizations.
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.

India Third to Appeal ISO's OOXML Approval 50 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.
  • Andy Updegrove says a fourth country may also have appealed [consortiuminfo.org].

  • Fast Track (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Gewalt (1200451) on Friday May 30 2008, @05:04PM (#23605109)
    If the approval was fast tracked, then the appeal should be too. Get that spec disqualified, FAST.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by jd (1658)
      No, I've a much better idea. Place the specification on a genuine fast track - say, the Monte Carlo F1 circuit - and let it be utterly crushed into oblivion before being smeared across the landscape.
  • I'd love to believe this will make a difference, but I suspect the same bribing/stacking/manipulation MS used before will succeed again.

          • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

            by Anonymous Coward

            IVe EXCELENT karma
            My dogma is to browse at -1. Karma don't kount!
    • It belongs to YRO topic in fact. Your rights online.

      They should put all ODF stories to YRO and people which will soon have to pirate/install/forced to buy Office 08 or Office 08 .NET subscription (oops crackers!) to read a frigging 2 page document can easily ignore them. ;)

    • Re:Yawn... Is This Important? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Miseph (979059) on Friday May 30 2008, @06:11PM (#23605669) Journal
      Uh, actually, I'm sure they're thinking plenty hard about playing nice, and seeing as there is a competitor (OO is taking away some of their customers, even if only the ones who don't care about spread sheets going beyond 256 columns, and since it keeps getting markedly better where Office keeps getting markedly more irritating...) have decided that is a risk they simply cannot afford to take.

      You must have been asleep for the past 2 decades, because otherwise you'd know by now that Microsoft's version of "playing nice" is creating a de facto standard that they alone control then avoiding making any changes 9even positive ones) to it so long as nobody else is in the game.
      • Microsoft sells student copies of MS Office dirt cheap. I've seen a few schools install OOo side-by-side with MS Office, and some invididual users make the switch, but until major companies cancel mass volume licensing of MS Office, I don't see MS breaking a sweat.

        The fact that several large governments were talking about ditching MS Office (over open file standards) is what got MS to play ball. Now that they support ODF (and likely OOXML once they iron that out as well a bit) those government agencies are likely to stay with MS Office.

        • Re:MS losing business to OOo? (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Miseph (979059) on Friday May 30 2008, @07:07PM (#23606143) Journal
          "until major companies cancel mass volume licensing of MS Office"

          Which will happen when *drumroll* enough individual users make the switch. I didn't say that OO was beating MS Office or even universally better than it (although for my needs it actually is, which is why I have declined to install MS Office even when offered it for free-as-in-beer), just that it is becoming a credible threat for the relatively near future.

          The bottom line is that Firefox has demonstrated to Microsoft that FOSS can come out of nowhere to beat the crap out of their products, and now that one of their golden geese is being threatened they aren't about to take any chances. If they lose their Office monopoly, that's easily as bad to them as losing the Windows monopoly, not least because it directly threatens that one as well (why would corporate users want to pay money for Windows to run software that runs better and safer on any number of cheaper solutions?). It seems like they are realizing that they let OO continue and grow for far too long already, and they're actually concerned they might have to compete again, and on much worse terms with a far inferior track record than the last time around.
          • I think people often forget that a big part of Firefox's growth and succcess was a good marketing campaign. Many other FOSS projects have great alternatives to Microsoft products, but just haven't been marketed.

            The GetFirefox and SpreadFirefox campaigns were great. I'd love to see a campaign for OOo 3.
            • True, but I think that firefox diffusion is a great threat to microsoft not for the internet explorer lose of market share, but for the change in the mindset of the common people, which for thousand years believed that you get more for more. Now that people are starting to see this firefox thing, which is better AND cheaper, people is starting to think in a dangerous way for microsoft.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by moreati (119629)

          Now that they support ODF

          A minor nitpick. MS have stated their intention to support ODF. Until they deliver it's dangerous to assume or to state as fact, that support. Alex.

          • Re:MS losing business to OOo? (Score:4, Insightful)

            by jimicus (737525) on Saturday May 31 2008, @03:48AM (#23608205) Homepage

            A minor nitpick. MS have stated their intention to support ODF. Until they deliver it's dangerous to assume or to state as fact, that support. Alex.
            More to the point, Microsoft are famously good at corrupting standards. I wouldn't be too surprised to see ODF "support" that amounts to "will happily read and render sensibly anything produced by OO.o, will go out of its way to write ODF files that for whatever reason OO.o doesn't like".
        • Since when is a promise to support ODF the same as actual support of ODF? As in "will" does not mean the same as "does." Maybe it's me, but the future isn't the present, and as they said in "The Terminator," the future is not set. I also remember well Microsoft promising to support Kerberos, and look how much fun that wasn't.
          • Having worked for a few different Fortune 500 companies, OSS is often a dirty word. Executives only trust big names they know.

            We only buy Microsoft and Dell for most things. We just bought an expensive Sharepoint Server, when a simple wiki would have saved tons of money. We use Linux, Unix and Solaris only in implementations largely dictated to us by vendors.

            I think it makes sense to save money by going to OpenOffice, but corporate America doesn't always make sense.
            • corporate America doesn't always make sense.

              Which is why they'll be overtaken by hungrier organisations that do make sense.

            • Re:MS losing business to OOo? (Score:4, Insightful)

              by Fri13 (963421) on Saturday May 31 2008, @01:45AM (#23607877)
              "OSS is often a dirty word."

              Then stop using "Open Source" and start using "Free Software" and do not mention that "Free" means "Free as speech" and not "Free as beer", when ever you talk with persons who are money-slaves. Let them think that they get software for free and they dont need to pay for it. Then let the lawyers to take care of GPL and other people to understand they are actually using OSS.

              Bosses and other persons who makes the decisions, dont need to know those, because they are so afraid that "Open Source" force them to publish their treasure. They are like pirates, you need to trick them. They are greedy, you need to give them to think they have control for everything.

              They will learn actually...

              • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

                by jimicus (737525)

                Bosses and other persons who makes the decisions, dont need to know those, because they are so afraid that "Open Source" force them to publish their treasure. They are like pirates, you need to trick them. They are greedy, you need to give them to think they have control for everything.
                They will then instead adopt the age-old idea that you don't get something for nothing.

              • OpenOffice may be OSS, but it is also backed by Sun. Thus, it seems to me that OpenOffice is already backed by a big name and your executives should be happy with OpenOffice.
                Sun is a big name that's well known in technology circles. Unlike IBM or Microsoft, however, they're nowhere near as well known by people outside technology circles.
          • That's why I said, once they get that ironed out. I'm fully aware that they don't currently support their own supposed standard.
    • This isn't about OOo versus MS Office. I don't mind paying for software. I just want to make sure that when I save a file, people can open it and read it, especially me a few years down the road. Microsoft's closed, proprietary formats keep changing (forcing unnecessary upgrades) and they drop support for old formats after a while.

      I'm just some bum writer who wants to open my old files, but what about actual important documents? Right now PDF sadly is about the only way to go and feel safe the document

        • Something wrong with ASCII text files?

          Absolutely nothing at all. I used to save things as RTF files or in proprietary versions of such (and still have loads of doc files, being an Office user also). But everything that matters to me gets saved as plain text. (in either TextPad or BBEdit, platform depending).

          I understand that the issues with file formats, and the corporate uses of Excel and whatnot, are a separate issue, entirely, but, for regular people like me, plain text is perfect. Content is king. (wi

    • Anybody following the OOXML ISO approval process (or anybody who followed the Peter Quinn case) can see that msft is desperate and willing to go to any lengths to shove its bogus "standard" through the system.

      BTW: ODF has nothing to do with openoffice. OpenOffice is an application, ODF is a document standard - like HTML or ASCII.

      I use openoffice 2.4, it works for me, does all I need to do. Although I will admit, I considered every version of openoffice before 2.4 to be too slow.

        • The Open Office/Star Office file format was the basis for ODF but it received fairly extensive reworking in the process of creating ODF.

        • > Huh? ODF is the standardization of StarOffice's document format, the same way OOXML is the standardization of Office's document format.

          Not at all. ODF is used in about 20 different applications. It can even be used with ms-office. ODF is wide open, and any vendor is welcome to use it. OOXML can only be used by msft, and vedors approved by msft.

          Saying that ODF can only be used by OpenOffice, is like saying that ASCII can be used by vi.

    • Maybe if OO became a REAL competitor Microsoft would think much harder about playing nice!
      I hope you come back later and realize how little sense your sentence makes. Companies don't waste time, money, or resources on non-competitors. That's essentially the same as shitting money out.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by hedwards (940851)
        Well run corporations don't do that. But corporations the size of Google or MS or IBM have a lot of money at their disposal, I don't believe that any of those 3 couldn't shit an obscene amount of money and still be in business.

        Sure, it's a poor way of doing business, shitting money that is, but large corporations do it all the time on stupid stuff. I mean just look at IE and silverlight. You can't say either of those was ever particularly centered on profit. IE alone has probably cost MS billions in terms o

    • Re:Yawn... Is This Important? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by howlingmadhowie (943150) on Saturday May 31 2008, @01:27AM (#23607817)
      who modded this insightful?

      this isn't about openoffice.org, this is about people having access to their own information. This is about governments being able to read all the documents they are making now in the future. This is about unfettered, exact communication between countries.

      in short, this is remarkably important. I can't think of anything more important in communication than open standards.
    • If OpenOffice wasn't seen as a threat, then MS wouldn't need to work so hard keeping their formats closed and obscure.
      If they truly had the better product, it could stand on it's own and they wouldn't need to use dirty tricks to keep market share.

    • Probably, but then, shouldn't it be the 'poor' countries who are wary of Microsoft? After all, its Microsoft that's providing all those 'free' software to their educational institutes after all.

    • Re:They won't count. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by underpants_gnome (1226602) on Friday May 30 2008, @06:24PM (#23605763)
      Second and third world countries that represent a huge market.

      Brazil for example, is in the top 10 countries by both Internet Users and Time Spent Online, usually in the 2 top spots in the latter. Ok, most of this time is spent by teenagers in useless thing like Orkut and MSN, but whatever.

      The important thing in this is: information can and WILL spread like a wildfire. And be sure that many people will embrace it.

      If these "not-real" countries continue their "line of thinking", in the near future we could have more than 1 billion people that reject anything that comes from MS.

      It wouldn't be wise to ignore THAT.

      • Re:They won't count. (Score:5, Informative)

        by bigpicture (939772) on Friday May 30 2008, @06:50PM (#23605981)
        The math, the math, India is the No.2 most populous country and Brazil is No.5, with India expected to be No.1 within 15 years, because of China's population control measures. The opinion of a significant market of PC and smart phone users, probably does matter to MS.

    • Re:They won't count. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ZarathustraDK (1291688) on Friday May 30 2008, @06:32PM (#23605825)

      You will probably find that in the end that no weight is given to these appeals because they all come from second and third world countries.

      Yet the new technological meccas Azerbaijan and C'ote D'ivoire gets taken seriously when voting in favor of OOXML?

      Something sure smells fishy.
      • "Something sure smells fishy."

        Well, in Azerbaijan, that would be the sturgeon and the beluga taken from the Caspian Sea, according to Wikipedia.

        Though you will be glad to know that Azerbaijan stocks of sturgeon and beluga are going down, so the fishy smell should diminish over time.
      • I didn't realize that, the coworker I had from India some years back would shake yes and nod no. But it wasn't the same as when I shake no, it was a less sudden motion.

        Anyways it wasn't really hard to figure out what he meant, even if you didn't realize that Indians from that part of India use a reverse system to the one in use in the US.

      • If you read somewhere that Indians shake their head for a YES, that is incorrect
        So that's 'no, they don't'.

        though it can be (and has been) considered a weak form of agreement.
        And that's a 'yes, they do'

        And people wonder why tech support doesn't make any sense...

    • I just wonder one thing that, why someone/ some countries can appeal to a standard once it is passed to be a standard? I thought once it is a standard then everyone must agree that it is a standard, no matter you agree with it/ vote for it.

      The appeal process was known about from day one. Kind of like a provisional grant, which becomes permanent after the time to appeal is up, which it was on the 31st of May

      All countries are entitled to appeal. Three did. More may have done so without the desire to make it public.

    • Re:Appeal after the standard was passed? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Jesus_666 (702802) on Saturday May 31 2008, @06:49AM (#23608693)
      Yes, but if a country suspects that there have been irregularities they can call schenanigans.

      Imagine this: The country of Lithuanistan is a voting member of ISO. United Megacorp has a smaller standards body like ECMA put a standard they cooked up on the ISO fast-track process. Everything proceeds as expected and the Lithuanistanian national body votes YES on the standard, even though most Lithuanistanian techies are very sceptical about it. A week after the vote, though, someone from UniMeg leaks documents that show that the entire Lithuanistanian NB had been bought off by UniMeg and they didn't vote because the standard hat merit but because they liked their new cars.

      Lithuanistan is pissed. They want a chance to stop the standardization process (or at least freeze it for further investigation), now that they can prove it has been tampered with. However, all votes have already been cast. This appeals process is what they'd use: If you have doubt that the standardization process went as it should you can appeal before the standard becomes final.

    • Re:Three countries wasting taxpayers' money (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Insanity Defense (1232008) on Saturday May 31 2008, @03:42AM (#23608185)

      I wonder how the citizens feel about their money being wasted on these appeals to satisfy the hatred of Microsoft by a few loudmouthed geek fanboys?

      It couldn't possibly be because the proposed standard was too complex and too defective to be fast tracked in the 1st place? Consider that over 80% of the problems with the specification had soloutions proposed by ECMA but "due to lack of time" not reviewed or discussed. The committee should have been able to review and if needed revise those "solutions". The fact that one private body was given unsupervised control of "fixes" when it was supposed to be the committee composed of National representatives that had the actual say to me is a good enough reason to appeal.

      All that of course ignores the ongoing scandals and accusations that the system was twisted by Microsofts wealth and power rather than following the rules.

      An excerpt from South Africas appeal giving the core of their reasons.

      This appeal is made in accordance with Clause 11.1.2: "A P member of JTC 1 or an SC may appeal against any action, or inaction, on the part of JTC 1 or an SC when the P member considers that in such action or inaction:

      * questions of principle are involved;

      * the contents of a draft may be detrimental to the reputation of IEC or ISO; or

      * the point giving rise to objection was not known to JTC 1 or SC during earlier discussions."

      We believe that there is an important question of principle involved and that the reputation of ISO/IEC is indeed at stake. There has been speculation about the need to revise the directives around fast track processing. While such revision might indeed be necessary, we cannot accept the outcome of a process which the existing directives have not, in our opinion, been applied.

      It appears that they are appealing not to satisfy peoples hatred of Microsoft but because the rules state that appeals should be launched for one of 3 reasons all of which South Africa feels apply.

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2010 Geeknet, Inc.