India Decides to Vote "No" For OOXML

Indian writes to mention that after an intense meeting at Delhi's Manak Bhawan the 21-member technical committee has decided to vote against Microsoft's Open Office Extensible Mark Up Language (OOXML) standard at the September meeting of the International Standards Organization (ISO). "Microsoft said it respects the government's decision. 'There were only three options "Yes", "No" and "Abstain" to be taken and we respect the government's decision,' Microsoft's legal affairs head Rakesh Bakshi said. He, however, added that India's 'No' vote will become a 'Yes' if Microsoft is able to resolve all technical issues with OOXML before the ballot resolution committee of ISO."

Good news...

[Philotechnia]

The last time I looked at the OOXML spec, it was the most non-spec spec document I had ever seen. It was chock full of references to Microsoft's proprietary legacy code, failing to provide the details that would really allow for an open implementation. The only thing Microsoft opened up was letting developers know exactly what functionality they weren't being allowed to properly use. If this spec had been passed, it would have been an open invitation for more anti-spec specs down the road. Meanwhile, is it really a coincidence that with the advent of applications like OpenOffice, Office 2007 featured a complete revamp of the Office UI? Methinks not... Microsoft is the functional equivalent of that guy at the bar that can pick up just about any women he pleases, but is cursed with commitment issues that keep anything meaningful from developing. Bring something real to the table, billg.

Re:"Technical Issues"

[mrchaotica]

You know what the worst part is? Even if there weren't any "technical issues," OOXML shouldn't be a standard because ISO already has an existing standard covering the same thing! And that preexisting standard leverages other standards (eg. SVG, MathML) while Microsoft's travesty doesn't! So even regardless of "technical issues," making OOXML a standard is ludicrously stupid!

score 1 for professionalism, correctness, caring

[Anderlan]

This is the Right Thing to have happened. MS OOXML is not a standard:

• 6000 pages and still not a complete standard
• paraphrased: 'to comply with standard, you must implement these hundreds of features from previous versions, which are not in this standard, and which may be covered by patent'
• WTF!?!

Further evidence of MS's bad faith:

• I had never really thought about it, but the standard is named to be confused with the Open Office standard. The MS non-standard is called OOXML (Office Open XML). The Open Office standard is called ODF (Open Document Format), but you might just as well call it OOXML (Open Office XML) (I did indeed call it that before this non-standard effort came from MS). All they did was switch the words 'open' and 'office' around! That's like calling a Linux distribution SoftMicro Windows LX and saying you don't intend to confuse anyone.

Re:In related News: Germany will vote YES

[bzipitidoo]

This is the sort of thing Lessig was complaining about. Voting against OOXML is such a no-brainer. Heck, not even wasting time with a vote on OOXML is perfectly justifiable. But somehow, the West's political systems can't get there. Really the only questions are how was the German vote subverted? Corruption and bribery? Trickery and gaming? And what can be done about it? Can anyone persuade MS that this sort of behavior is not in anyone's interest, not even MS's own? India and Brazil voting against OOXML is no accident-- those 2 countries RMS's favorites for their enlightened stances.

The vote may be irrelevant anyway. Lot of people are going with ODF and not OOXML, no matter what these representatives decide. Even if some give OOXML a try, it seems likely to be so bad they'll abandon it.

India loves MSFT. It is just a ploy

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

Almost all the politicians in India are falling over themselves to please MSFT. They crow about getting research facilities and other investments they attracted from MSFT. It is possible that some of the professional civil service corps produced a well reasoned arguments why India should vote against OOXML. But all it takes is a grand statement by MSFT that it is going to open another research center in Uttar Pradesh or Punjab. That will give an excuse for the very corrupt, best pol money can buy politicians of India, to overrule the civil service. It is nothing more than a simple ploy by the Govt of India to wangle a better deal from MSFT. The only question is what they are wangling for. Something for the country or something for themselves.

Sorry to be so cynical.

Re:score 1 for professionalism, correctness, carin

[quantum bit]

How do you think "Open Office" came to get that name in the first place?

From the same place that MS got their equally generically-named "Microsoft Office" product from - the place that people go to work.

Re:Good news...

[kestasjk]

What format does Apple's Pages/Keynote save to? Is it an open standard? Would Apple apologists say that it isn't open because it allows them to innovate more freely?

Is MS Office really that bad to compare it to a guy that treats women as objects?! Personally I think MS Office is by far Microsoft's best application and they deserve credit for it.
MS Office 2007's UI revamp was also a big deal. It makes it much easier to make full use of all of Office, and I'll bet you anything that OpenOffice and iWork will end up copying it to some degree.

Isn't UI innovation what everyone loves about Apple, yet when Microsoft do it it's somehow sneaky and underhanded (like that creepy guy at the bar?!).

No-one is forcing them to create an open standard that will allow other software to interact with MS Office documents, but they are. Shouldn't they get credit for that?

Re:Good news...

[the_B0fh]

You may actually have a point, if Apple was trying to push whatever format keynote is, as a global *OPEN* standard.

Open Standard?

[kjkeefe]

But see, that's just it... They aren't creating an open standard. They are acting like they are creating an open standard, but since it requires several proprietary pieces to work, it is really proprietary. The result is a harder time explaining to non-technical folks the negatives of locking up your content in M$'s proprietary formats and more wasted time for OO.o developers who have to reverse engineer the proprietary elements in OOXML. OOXML is proprietary, plain and simple.

They should be rejected and beaten for trying to pull a fast one on consumers.

Re:"Technical Issues"

[burner]

"In reality they're just forcing their Johny-come-lately garbage down everyone's throat as usual"

It's worse than that.

Consider a manager making a decision of which implementation of a standard to use. Is that person going to select the implementation by the originator of the spec or an implementation by a third party? It's about using the standard to ensure market dominance and put any competition on uneven footing.