OOXML Will Pass Amid Massive Irregularities

Tokimasa notes a CNet blog predicting that OOXML will make the cut. Updegrove agrees, as does the OpenMalasia blog. Reports of irregularities continue to surface, such as this one from Norway — "The meeting: 27 people in the room, 4 of which were administrative staff from Standard Norge. The outcome: Of the 24 members attending, 19 disapproved, 5 approved. The result: The administrative staff decided that Norway wants to approve OOXML as an ISO standard." Groklaw adds reportage of odd processes in Germany and Croatia.

This is getting ridiculous

[Pig Hogger]

This is insane.

No day goes by without hearing from some croporate giant running roughshod over the laws, procedures or institutions of democratic countries.

The United States have let a handful of mega-croporations totally wreck it's economy with the blessing of the government that was elected while pulling the wool over the electorate's eyes.

It is time for the people to revolt, and put the croporations back to where they belong by firmly asserting the power of the government over croporations, if need by, by the croporate death penalty and the confiscation of the croporation's assets.

The government has thoroughly been subverted by croporate cronies; those should be charged with subversive sedition and thrown in jail and the key tossed in the Marianas trench.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[mactard]

It seems this has little to do with the USA though. I agree with most of your points, but the countries listed can grow a pair too, you know!

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

I find all the 'reporting' on OOXML very hard to belive. I don't see how its possible to publicly bribe so many board member in so many countries and get away with it. The truth must surely be a little more plain -- that the process is working (at least the same as it would for any other standard) and nobody is greasing anybody's palm.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Achromatic1978]

I'm with AC here. Are Groklaw, etc, really suggesting that several standards bodies in several nations are /all/ corrupt? And not one leak? Not one failed, incorruptible whistleblower? Or is it just that, whatever you may think of the standard, Microsoft, etc, that OOXML just has enough to get past? I know it's an ugly concept, but it seems more plausible. And only natural / human that when your championed standard/objections to something are overlooked/fail, that you look for a culprit, any culprit, that overlooks your own weaknesses and / or failings?

That's more what it seems like to me, despite my personal objections and issues with OOXML.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

So, what's the difference between the government and a corporation?

I will answer that for you: none, except one can garnish your wages and throw you in prison if you refuse to pay for their services, whether you need them or not.

I agree. The ISO is now the M$O.

[PaulGaskin]

The League of Nations came and went. The United Nations has allowed it's self to be discredited by militant, hegemonic nations. Now the ISO has been compromised by a flawed process and corrupt bureaucrats enabling a monopoly corporation. This international bureaucracy is no more legitimate than the decisions they make.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

That's all a bit strong. A simple and peaceful way to do this is passive sabotage. Just use the rope they sold us to hang them with. This rubbish that's been pushed is broken, we all know that. The discussion has been about the merits of the systems and those whos opinions matter have voted and said no. But we are being bullied to use it anyway. All we (system administrators, programmers, computer people) have to do is work to rule. Everything relies on us going the extra mile. As soon as we stop pandering to that, it all falls down.

Implement the damn broken protocol.

Make sure every installation, every road traffic system, every government admin system, every critical utility enjoys this substabdard rubbish exactly as its written, Give them what they want. When it doesn't work, point to the spec. In 5 years time the name Microsoft will be dirt. Microsoft products will probably be banned by law after a number of high profile disaters.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

[The United States have let a handful of mega-croporations totally wreck it's economy ]
Um, yeah, ok. If this is wrecked I'll take it. Still gowing, low unemployment; I've been to Europe, South America, Japan, you can keep the economies there.

[with the blessing of the government that was elected while pulling the wool over the electorate's eyes]
Last election was a landslide. Think the gov is fooling the people, check out the Obama campaign.

[and put the croporations back to where they belong by firmly asserting the power of the government over croporations]
Won't happen. The corps have a business plan, the people don't.

Good luck.

Reasons to hate OOXML

[betterunixthanunix]

1. OpenDocument already exists. What good does a second format, based on identical principles, do for the world? 2. OOXML requires the use of patented algorithms, which makes open source developers nervous, especially when a company that despises open source and has an ongoing campaign to kill the open source movement happens to be the patent holder...and happens to be pushing the format. 3. OOXML is exceedingly difficult to implement, giving Microsoft an automatic advantage over everyone else and forcing us to play catch-up (though OOo3 will have native support, IIRC). 4. This is /., and the format is Microsoft supported. What did you expect?

Re:I don't get it

[JustShootMe]

This is what happens when academics go head to head with corporations.

The corporations will win every time. As smart as academics are, they just aren't prepared for this kind of thing.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[MrNaz]

Why? Because government has an entire intelligence agency at its disposal and regulatory control over the media? Wake up call: In the western world, for all intents and purposes Big government == Big corporate.

Re:I Don't Get It?

[dltaylor]

Because, unlike most other other ISO standards for documents, like fax G3 and G4 compression, and ODF (Open Document Format) OOXML literally cannot be implemented by anyone other than Microsoft. This is not because the entire rest of the world contains no competent programmers, but because the standard simply does not have enough information to do so. Microsoft wrote the proposed standard with what amount to calls into their libraries of legacy Word code, the actions of which are NOT documented, rather than "tag X requires an indent level of 30000 millipels from the indent level of the enclosing block", or whatever.

The entire purpose of OOXML is to subvert the increasing call for public documents to be stored in a format that can A) be read without buying Word/Office/..., on the theory that documents created in a citizen's government should be available to those citizens without paying a corporate "tax", and B) that by documenting the format of the documents, readers/editors can be created, as needed, at a future time when the original creation tool may no longer exist or have a computer on which to run, unlike, say, Word documents, where support for older formats is simply dropped by Microsoft.

Microsoft is an ongoing criminal organization, and as such, should be seized under the RICO act, and its parts sold off or its source code simply published for those parts without buyers, and the buyers should be forever blocked from forming a cartel, single company, sharing directors, ... to prevent a resurrection of Microsoft.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[mabhatter654]

Considering that the RIAA and others are lobbying for just those rights for companies I'd be worried...

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[countach]

Microsoft's core competency has always been in corporate deals, politicking and product positioning rather than actually making a product good enough to stand on its own merits. This can work for a while, but my prediction is we are near to the end game of this strategy.

So they aren't corrupt, but...

[aztektum]

What's the quote? Never ascribe to malice what can adequately be explained by ignorance?? It's pick your poison time. Do you rely on an organization run by complete idiots? Or one run by completely corrupt officials?? Either way, I'd say ISO has become a lot less important.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[VultureMN]

I don't think it's necessarily _illegal_ corruption (flat-out bribery) that people are complaining about; a company can still stay within the law while doing nasty, immoral stuff. Think about the sea of lobbyists and the resultant corporate influence in the US: legal, but still reprehensible.

Add that to the fact that the vast majority of people haven't heard of, or simply don't give a rats ass about, the ISO process. Tada, they can pull these kinds of shenanigans without much risk of a public opinion backlash.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

If I don't buy windows, no one really gives a shit and if they do there is jack they can do about it. If I don't pay my taxes, I get my wages garnished or go to jail.

At least you can boycott a company. You can't boycott the government.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[conlaw]

And not one leak? Not one failed, incorruptible whistleblower?

Obviously, you didn't RTFA. The German, Norwegian and Croatian members whose votes were essentially negated have all blown the whistle and it's having just as much effect as the detailed account of Dubya's lies about Iraq has had on continuing the war he started. I think people in many countries, starting here in the good old USA, should start reading some history; e.g., "When in the course of human events...."

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[orasio]

I'm with AC here. Are Groklaw, etc, really suggesting that several standards bodies in several nations are /all/ corrupt? And not one leak? Not one failed, incorruptible whistleblower? Or is it just that, whatever you may think of the standard, Microsoft, etc, that OOXML just has enough to get past? I know it's an ugly concept, but it seems more plausible. And only natural / human that when your championed standard/objections to something are overlooked/fail, that you look for a culprit, any culprit, that overlooks your own weaknesses and / or failings?

That's more what it seems like to me, despite my personal objections and issues with OOXML.

In my country, Uruguay, they were not corrupt. They were just ignorant. The vote of government organization was in the line of: we don't really know what this is all about, but MS software is important to us, so we think it's OK to standardize it. Vote YES.

I think that, because this is a key issue for MS, they exploited the system in every way they could, you don't even need corruption in most places, if the have the right vulnerabilities.

The reason why we are all saying that it can't be possible that they accept it is that some of us read the standard, of excerpts from it. The complaint is that, even to lay people, it is very easy to see it's not a standard at all, and tries to standardize an area that already has a real standard approved (ODF), without improving on it. It should be easier to spot for standards specialists. There are issues where you can have different opinions, but this seems too clear cut to even be discussed.

A standard should be something that allows you to test compliance. OOXML, in lots of points does not help you build a compliance test. Of course, those tags that say your should render content as Word9x come to mind. That is why it's so clear to me that I can't be approved, in its current form. Of course, it could be improved and become a standard, but it has not happened yet.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[MrNaz]

You can boycott a company hey? Try boycotting the fraction of your tax dollars that are spent funding an unpopular, unproductive and wasteful war that has been fully privatised. In other words, try boycotting Halliburton, Bechtel and KBR.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

We only know about these irregularities because voting members have leaked this information, even in the face of legal threats. The people at Groklaw don't presume that everyone is corrupt, but when they see four people deciding to override the votes of twenty other people behind closed doors they can see that just enough people has drunk the Microsoft kool-aid. Never mind that OOXML still has hundreds or thousands of unaddressed errors.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[stoicio]

When 19 out of 24 *VOTE NO* to a proposed standard
and it still passes, there's something wrong in
Norway.

The simplest answer is usually the best answer.

Re:I Don't Get It?

[erroneus]

Are you joking?

ISO standards are supposed to be clearly and completely defined. These standards definitions are created so that multiple parties can participate in government and other public activities through information interchange.

OOXML fails in very serious ways to fit that description. Not only are various aspects of the 'standard' vague, but they reference descriptions of behaviors of a particular software application on a particular platform without defining what that means. Without any issues of politics and anything 'human,' by ISO's definition and rules of adoption or creation, OOXML is technically not eligible to be an ISO standard.

Beyond this is the use of the "fast track" approval process. This process is supposed to exist to enlist standard formats that are in wide and common use. Formats like PDF and PNG, if they are not already ISO standards, might be good candidates for such since they are already in very heavy use and are very clearly defined and implemented widely. The OOXML format, as defined, is not a "ubiquitous" format. It's not even implemented completely or correctly by the company that has defined it. And because it is not clearly defined, cannot be correctly implemented by other parties. All of this means it is ineligible for the fast track approval process.

Finally, after it initially failed the fast track process in spite of wild irregularities in the process, this second attempt has resulted in passage but does so with further irregularities. Each participating country in the process operates through its own set of rules. In various examples, these rules were either changed, convoluted, or simply ignored. In some instances, the results seem to indicate simple and direct fraud.

All of this represents corruption and possibly the destruction of the purpose of ISO approval.

If ISO were a pure religion, what Microsoft has caused to happen would be called blasphemy. If ISO were a court, what Microsoft has caused to happen would be called a travesty. And if ISO were a business, what Microsoft has caused to happen, it would be fraud.

Acceptance as an ISO standard means that a file format is eligible for use in various official and public purposes. The purpose of requiring an ISO standard for such formatting is to allow any and all parties interested in participating the opportunity to do so by following a clearly defined and published standard. In the case of OOXML, this would be impossible for any party other than Microsoft to do this effectively since the definition is incomplete and defined by the behavior of its applications which are subject to revision. In the event that a government process or activity requires the use of this "ISO" standard, it effectively excludes all other vendors but Microsoft from participating.

I'm not sure how much more clearly the problem with OOXML's adoption as an ISO standard can be defined. It's not a question of "hating" OOXML. It's a matter of subverting a definition and process that has been depended upon internationally to clearly and precisely define standards of process and information interchange.

Re:The ISO has just lost their credability

[BRSloth]

I'm not sure about being respected after this. I guess some people will ask themselves "if this standard was approved in such a way, what about all the others?" (and, honestly, I'm asking this myself right now.)

The fact that this is the first time such thing happens is just because people in this standard are way more vocal and know how to use the current media (internet.)

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[AJWM]

I don't see how its possible to publicly bribe so many board member in so many countries and get away with it.

See, you've missed half the trick right there. It's not a matter of bribing "so many board members", it's just a matter of getting the committee chairs on your side and having them get creative with the voting or vote recording process. You don't have to bribe all the members (or even most of them) if the chairperson can tell them "'no' votes aren't allowed" for obscure procedural reasons (Germany), or if they ignore an overwhelming 'no' vote (Norway), or if they can say that voting will be extended to allow email votes by those that didn't show up at the meeting -- and any that don't send email will be taken as a 'yes' vote (Poland).

As for swinging committee chairs to your side, here's [slashdot.org] a pretty good explanation of that process.

Then of course there's just stacking the working groups by having all your Microsoft-Partner business buddies decide to join up and take part.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry about the "redundant" mod...hit the wrong item in the list. I meant to choose "insightful"

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[AJWM]

Are Groklaw, etc, really suggesting that several standards bodies in several nations are /all/ corrupt? And not one leak? Not one failed, incorruptible whistleblower?

Not at all. It's precisely because of the leaks and whistleblowers that we're aware of the corruption and interference that has taken place. And your "/all/ corrupt" is a strawman -- it doesn't require everyone in the standards body to be corrupted, just a few key individuals with influence over the voting process.

(Now, please put down the Microsoft talking points and step away from the keyboard.)

No cover up. Corruption is blatant. Who cares?

[walterbyrd]

Cover up? Msft is not even shy about their brazen corruption anymore.

Yes, there was corruption. Tons of it. It has all been very well documented. Read groklaw.net or noooxml.org.

What does msft care is the slashdot/groklaw crowd doesn't like it?

Re:I Don't Get It?

[symbolset]

Why does /. hate OOXML so much? Every time a story is ran about OOXML, everyone on /. seems to scream revolution and blasphemy.

Read it and get back to us if you still have questions.

No thanks.

[Mactrope]

Others have already read the OOXML docs and pointed out countless places it's incomplete, contradictory and impossible to implement. Worse, it has been pointed out that DOCX is already something different from the above. I have better things to do with my time than read 6000 pages of misdirection. NO ONE but MS is going to have a working implementation, if there can ever be such a thing. OOXML is a farce that will only fool the weakest minded non technical decision makers. It surely did not fool the majority of ISO representatives and we shall see if it really becomes a standard in light of all the irregularities. The organization's reputation is on the line. For prior art in this matter, look up Rich Text Format, the Microsoft last "open" specification that no one ever used.

Rational policy for the new documents is to return the thing to it's sender and ask for ODF. Editors can be had as a free download and they work well, so there's no reason for anyone to demand others buy a $400 text editor. It's that simple, for you and me to work together I can buy a $400 program or you can download one for free. Which do you think it's going to be most of the time?

Re:Where are the irregularities?

[man_of_mr_e]

Yeah, the problem is that you're only hearing one side of the story.

For example, the meeting in Norway was not to approve or disapprove of OOXML, it was to determine if there had been any irregularities in the Norway vote. As such, only the administrators votes counted towards whether to overturn their previous yes vote to no or abstain.

Since there was no vote to accept or reject OOXML, these stories that claim such are deceptive. I don't believe the authors are deliberately bending the truth, but I think they have bad information and are just repeating it.

Re:Gross sounding title

[Daengbo]

Hopefully, everyone else agrees that it's shit, but I don't think that'll happen. OOXML will pass, MS OFfice will use its own, non-standard version of OOXML, governments will claim they are in compliance with laws requiring open standards, and the rest of us will be in the same boat we've been in for fifteen years. It's all quite sick.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Anonymous Coward]

It is a corporation from USA but that's it.

I'm from Finland and really ashamed on how all went. In Finland, most of the people in the meeting opposed (many corporations, two of the ministries, etc.) so the chairman (who was a replaced one, the previous one opposed OOXML so he had to leave) decided they didn't vote but made decision based on general consensus even though "complete unanimity wasn't achieved". I mean... What?! There was one of the changed votes (5 votes need to be changed from previous try that OOXML would pass and this was one of them).

While it would be easy to blame it all on the evil USA and their nasty corporations... Ofcourse the corporations roam free if they are allowed to but why in hell are they? Finland (among other countries) needs to look into itself too and ponder "What the hell just happened and WHY?".

Captcha is very appropriate... Dishonor

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Daniel Phillips]

I find all the 'reporting' on OOXML very hard to belive. I don't see how its possible to publicly bribe so many board member in so many countries and get away with it. The truth must surely be a little more plain -- that the process is working (at least the same as it would for any other standard) and nobody is greasing anybody's palm.

So you think Microsoft cannot order its "partners" to stuff meetings and vote for its proposals by offering sweeter deals on Microsoft licenses, and implying license price increases ahead for those who do not cooperate? You are naive. Especially since Microsoft has been found guilty in federal court of employing similar tactics more than once.

Re:Gross sounding title

[johny42]

+1 Sad :(

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[gtall]

If you are referring to the current credit crisis, the blame goes to a lot more than a few mega-corporations. Let's assign the blame:

1. The Fed. Years of interest rates way too low made too much money available which had to go somewhere inflating somewhere's value, and it went to our next contestants...

2. The U.S. house buying public which bought houses on all interest payment loans, second and third houses, flipped houses, etc. This was enabled by our next competitors...

3. The real estate companies (and their lovely agents) and the builders...who believed everyone deserved a McMansion. This was heartily approved by our next scum suckers...

4. The local and state tax districts whose pols and legislators saw to it that zoning ordinances, lax environmental laws, etc. where there to Help Make America Strong. They were echoed by...

5. The federal Congress Critters and Administration who saw to it that a free market economy carried no responsibility for oversight since more economic activity meant more money to spend. That still wasn't enough so they deficit spent because what's a few more bucks for those policies needed to buy the next election. This enabled...

6. Your mega-corporations on Wall Street...even thought they are dwarfed by real mega-corporations but I figured you probably wouldn't know the difference...These Wall Street geniuses thought that packaging loans and thus cutting the link between value and collateral would be a great way to sucker the investors near and abroad in buying these "debt instruments"....and to make things worse...

7. Their other friends on Wall Street made more debt-instruments available all backed by the debt-instruments in 6, and this went several layers deep so that an entire domino tail was stacked up just waiting for a push. This also enabled...

8. Speculators in commodities to use this new found wealth to bid up the prices of oil, food, and other commodities.

8. The first domino fell when Joe Sixpack realized how overextended he was and couldn't afford to outlive his means and cut back...including defaults on those home loans.

And this is the simplistic view.

Gerry

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[cp.tar]

When 19 out of 24 *VOTE NO* to a proposed standard
and it still passes, there's something wrong in
Norway.

The simplest answer is usually the best answer.

As for Croatia — I live there, so I should know — lots of things are rotten here, and this process and Microsoft's interference are among the least of them.

Apart from the irregularities listed in the Groklaw article, Microsoft Croatia is rather well connected to the government, which brought Microsoft to all the schools and most universities exclusively. So I am not in the least surprised on how the vote went, though the HULK (CLUG) guys have fought valiantly.

Re:Gross sounding title

[fwarren]

Hopefully, everyone else agrees that it's shit, but I don't think that'll happen. OOXML will pass, MS OFfice will use its own, non-standard version of OOXML, governments will claim they are in compliance with laws requiring open standards, and the rest of us will be in the same boat we've been in for fifteen years. It's all quite sick.

You have forgotten all of the benefits the the ISO process.

Lets see. There is making a mockery of the standards making process. There is a cheapening of the term ISO standard. When I see that in the future, it won't have as much meaning to me. It does not mean something will work, or is used by the industry, or even that it is possible to implement. I know it is not multi-vendor. It will not prevent lock-in. Any data comitted to it may or may not be portable.

Also, as serves them right. The ISO has been crippled by this. All of those members that came on board to help Microsoft. Well, they are not showing up at any of the other meetings. So when a standards body meets. Has 40 members only 10 of them show up, and you get 4 YES, 4 NO, 2 abstain and 30 not present. Well shucks. Things just about grind to a halt.

Re:Well that is because laws are inherently meant

[itsdapead]

If people disapprove of Microsoft's standards, then they should NOT USE THEM! PERIOD!!

You miss the point - this all started because various (usually) government bodies in the US and worldwide were starting to worry about how much data they held and distributed in a proprietary file format which was only reliably readable by products from a single vendor. They started passing rules that required public documents to be stored and exchanged in some sort of non-proprietary standard format. Such rules have to be passed by the politicos who aren't capable of assessing the technical merit of a file format - but will respect ISO certification. With ODF as an ISO standard, progress was gradually being made (albeit an uphill struggle the teeth of MS lobbying). This would have been a major breakthrough towards a healthily diverse and competitive market in office software (in which MS could easily become an equal player by simply adding ODF support to Office).

If OOXML gets a ISO certification then non-techie politicos will take this as carte blanche that MS file formats are "open" and can be safely used (and that they can stick with their MS software because there's an "upgrade path" to .docx). This is the "path of least resistance" anyway and such people will be easily convinced that all these rumblings about inconsistencies in the approval process were just sour grapes from penguin-hugging beatnicks.

You don't like Gates or Microsoft? Don't buy their shit.

That's the problem with monopolies: they subvert the free market model because lots of people don't have the choice! - MS has such market dominance that everybody assumes that everybody else can read the same file formats. What do you do if someone sends you a MS word file that K/OpenOffice won't render properly? When you send your proposal for a new project to a funder as an ODF file and they say they can't open it, what do you do? Now, currently OpenOffice etc. do a tolerable job of opening .doc files - but that's entirely dependent on the OO programmers being able to keep up every time MS changes the format, and it will only take one patent lawsuit to put an end to that.

Took me four years to find and purchase the right wireless cards I wanted.

Q: Why did that take so long? Well, one reason is that because of the Microsoft monopoly wireless chipset manufacturers can hit 95% of the market just by supplying their own low-level windows drivers - and card resellers can (and do) switch chipsets without warning. Someone tells you that the NetSysLink 9000 card is supported by Linux, you buy one and find that NetSysLink 9000 sold in the EU on a Tuesday use a completely different chipset. I've had DVD drives that I've had to plug into a Windows system to set the region code before they'd work in Linux.

Without the "wintel" monoculture, they'd need to publish interface specs, or establish some sort of standardised communications protocol so that various OS vendors could implement drivers.

By your own admission, sticking with Linux has been a labour of love - the vast majority of the desktop computing market simply doesn't have your technical knowledge, let alone persistence.

Re:This is getting ridiculous

[Maxo-Texas]

It opens your eyes about what must be happening for the things that really matter when this can happen over something like OOOXML.