OOXML Will Pass Amid Massive Irregularities 329
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.
Can ISO de-recognise standards? (Score:5, Interesting)
Standards process failure? (Score:5, Interesting)
The ISO has just lost their credability (Score:5, Interesting)
No one looking to establish a new, credible, standard in an field relating to software or information exchange will ever use them as a prime standards body again. They are now a marketing term and not a professional resource.
Weak Victory if you ask me (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft seems to be a lot about deal making now a days from lowering the specs to Microsoft vista capable requirements and their shifty legal contracts that they conned Novell to sign without enough review.
While this may "buy" them some market share they still have a butt-load of aging technology which mainly advertises "improved security" over any other sort of innovation or compatibility. Ultimately it means they will have to continuing paying-off for their market else face real critical comparison.
Microsoft has made enemies this week (Score:5, Interesting)
want to read the standard writeups? - ODF & OO (Score:5, Interesting)
http://docs.oasis-open.org/office/v1.1/OS/OpenDocument-v1.1.pdf [oasis-open.org]
OOXML:
http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/files/ECMA-ST/Office%20Open%20XML%20Part%201%20(PDF).zip [ecma-international.org]
http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/files/ECMA-ST/Office%20Open%20XML%20Part%202%20(PDF).zip [ecma-international.org]
http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/files/ECMA-ST/Office%20Open%20XML%20Part%203%20(PDF).zip [ecma-international.org]
http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/files/ECMA-ST/Office%20Open%20XML%20Part%204%20(PDF).zip [ecma-international.org]
http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/files/ECMA-ST/Office%20Open%20XML%20Part%205%20(PDF).zip [ecma-international.org]
Well that is because laws are inherently meant to: (Score:5, Interesting)
It sounds far better in its native tongue than it does translated to english, but pay heed that this holds true regardless of the country.
Likewise, for running roughshod over laws, most laws aren't written to help "the people" and never were. Recall the "regulative restrictions" placed upon CB (citizen's band) radios in the USA, requiring that individuals pay a 10 dollar license fee and getting "registered".
It was a shitty law meant to squeeze blood from the proverbial turnip. People did not comply, at all. When the regulation was reduced to mere "sign a form so we know you have one" (aka registration) people still refused. As a result, the whole thing was dropped formally due to "mass non compliance".
Irony? People still want to have legislators set the rules, when the simple rule is, as always has been, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you, but do it first and do it well." The legislators know this, which is why, regardless of the country or the century or the millenium, all governing bodies fuck the people good and hard, and then pretend it is someone else's fault.
"It is the free market's fault. It is the free individual's fault. It is society's fault."
If people disapprove of Microsoft's standards, then they should NOT USE THEM! PERIOD!! There are plenty of competing standards, and plenty of clean open source software out there. Use it, or lose it. Just like freedom. It isn't granted by others. It is freely available to those who would make use of it and be cognizant of its presence and benefits. Period. Everything else on this subject is bullshit excuse making from impotent and incompetent wimps unable to stop from penis envy with Bill Gates. Instead of trying to "beat" the big boys, start actually side stepping them. Like the airlines and the big telecoms, they are ALL obsolete. So is central government and big agencies and militaries. The world's people will never see this, regardless of how blatantly visible it is to some of us. Stop asking for others to prohibit all options you can have, and exercise the power of your choice and your wallet. You don't like Gates or Microsoft? Don't buy their shit. Don't like starbucks? Don't buy their cappucinos (in fact I make a far nicer one at home, and I get to put rum in mine too!!) Get used to it. If you don't approve of a company, STOP GIVING THEM PRESS... stop buying their products, and instead promote those that espouse the beliefs and values you support. I use Linux and BSD and rarely if ever drop back to windows to play a game WINEX doesn't support yet. That's it. My choices? Yes. Took me four years to find and purchase the right wireless cards I wanted. Did I switch back to windows because WPA supplicant didn't work right when they first started? No, I merely did without wireless and went so far as to patch mine in a crude and unapproved fashion. The fixes are in and it works okay now. I made choices. So should you. Stop being angry. It helps nothing and wastes your energy pointlessly.
Hope my advice helps. I spent a lot of time being angry and political campaigning, here and IRL. None of it helped. Letting go, and voting with my walleet and my feet helped more. Try it.
Re:Well that is because laws are inherently meant (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I Don't Get It? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:This is getting ridiculous (Score:5, Interesting)
However: as a member until a few weeks ago of the British Standards Institute panel on this topic (I resigned because it's simply impossible to review a 6,000 page document properly and keep a full-time job, the work is unpaid), all that I can do, amid the noise and shouting, is to say that in my opinion a) all the comments about what a pile of crap the draft is are entirely correct and b) I am totally mystified by why national bodies are changing their minds.
I attended the Ballot Resolution Meeting in Geneva, though as a non-delegate was not allowed into the deliberations. Discussions with numerous delegates confirmed my view that the draft remains unfit.
If I had still been a panel member last week my vote would have been no.
It appears that that would have then been 5 for 2 against inside the BSI if the leaks and rumours are to be believed. The BSI procedures are in fact that there is no voting but instead 'consensus' is sought. If that's true, the 5/1 split reported doesn't sound like consensus to me but I wasn't present and can't verify the leaks because the BSI process is closed to outsiders.
Re:This is getting ridiculous (Score:5, Interesting)
You know that is the truth since they have to push it through by force, instead of accepting the fact that there already exist a standard, that they refuse to support.
As far as I am concerned, all they have accomplished is to shame them self. The fact that they get an ISO-stamp, does not mean that OOXML is an open standard, and it is my belief that it never will be.
It's always been ridiculous. (Score:2, Interesting)
I've been in city council meetings and other places where people think they have a chance to wield a little influence to make things come out the way they want. It's amazing the lies people tell to each other, and to themselves, to "win" their point. (And you watch, after a few years, they generally find themselves hoist on their own petards.) As long as there are a lot of people who have bought into the "power" model of society, this sort of stuff will go on, because people get their self-images all tangled up in the amount of "power" they can wield.
Someone once said it this way:
And they keep it up while telling themselves that everyone is doing it.
Anyway, as someone pointed out on Groklaw recently, Gates very likely figures he can't lose. Either way, he's put the ISO down, and that makes it that much harder to prove that his software is mathematical snakeoil.
But he's fooling himself if he believes he can hide the power of plaintext from the world forever. It would have been more to his empire's benefit to have let the ODF spec stand unchallenged and simply joined in with software that works (more or less) by that standard. Now, because of the travesty that is OOXML (not to mention Microsoft's primary formats) people will start realizing that it doesn't take filling a file full of formatting (and maybe a precious few semantic tags) to send someone a message asking how the trip to Cancun was, or asking for a quick summary of a committee meeting.
We get what we pay for (at best). I don't know about the rest of you guys, but my work journals and most of the stuff I want to keep forever is now in plaintext with a few ad-hoc semantic tags. (Not even full XML, if I figure I can parse it later with my eyeballs.)
Re:Microsoft has made enemies this week (Score:4, Interesting)
It doesn't look as if the media had picked up the story at all. Many of the 500 articles don't mention the irregularities at all, from what I've seen.
Re:This is getting ridiculous (Score:3, Interesting)
That's pretty much what happened in Australia.
Over here, Rick Jelliffe was touted as an open standards advocate and given an extraordinary amount of influence in the MSOOXML deliberations despite being employed by MS as a consultant and being paid by Microsoft to help edit the draft of Microsoft's OOXML standards proposal..
Most attempts to communicate with Standards Australia were ignored or responded to with a form letter, and there was only one public forum in Sydney with little prior notice.
Re:This is getting ridiculous (Score:2, Interesting)
Exactly. If you're good enough or have strong enough connections, you don't need to bribe.
I think there may be several players in the field, both in the OOXML case and in general, who largely see supporting (or at least not opposing) MS as a viable political choice. The rationale may include special deals [www.hs.fi] offered for Microsoft systems [liveatedu.com], or important companies deemed to be important for national economy that are close to Microsoft. Add good lobbying from MS and its partners, and shake well.
I of course tend to disagree with the notion that it would be a good idea to support MS because of apparent short-term benefits. After all, a monopoly isn't beneficial to anyone in the long run except for the monopoly itself even if the deal initially seems attractive. On the other hand, you also have to remember that even if the EU (where most of this seems to be happening) is supposed to be built on economical collaboration, each nation still pulls their own rope. If the decision-makers view something as a national advantage even though it sounds like a bad idea globally, many of them are likely to support it.
Re:This is getting ridiculous (Score:3, Interesting)
Like CPI, money supply, since the reported unemployment matters, it has been changed (like the others).
Actual unemployment is much higher (just as actual CPI is higher). The money supply the just bold-faced stopped reporting to hide the fact they are printing cash at a huge rate. This destroys the actual value of the dollar-- which you can see by the slip from 1.20$ to 1.54$ to the EU. (http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=FXE&t=5y&l=on&z=m&q=l&c=)
Re:Well that is because laws are inherently meant (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, that's easy enough to say, but it can be pretty difficult if the "use" is reuired by a government agency with the power to send you to jail if you don't reply properly.
And the whole point of a "standard" like this is to make it legal for government agencies to send you docs in a Microsoft format that you are legally required to read and reply to. Either that, or you hire someone who can read it for you.
I have a few friends that are very busy right about now, because here in the US it's tax season, and their job is helping people do their taxes. They all explain how they hate Microsoft, but they have to use it, because a lot of the government's tax docs and forms are only available now in computer form, and most of them are only in MS formats.
The pretense of most standards agencies is that a standard is open to everyone, and anyone can implement software or other equipment according to the standard. But it's fairly common for standards agencies to rubber-stamp standards that are poorly defined. This is usually done by approving a standard written by "consultant" paid by a corporation, and the actual standard describes something that the corporation sells. This makes it nearly impossible for independents to develop to the standard, because you can't know the obscure details hidden in the big corporation's product. What you have to do is try to reverse-engineer the spec, and you always miss something. Customers inevitably come across cases that your product doesn't handle "correctly" (i.e., exactly the same as the big corporation's products). At that point, you lose all future sales to that customer, because their management decrees buying only the big corporation's products "to prevent similar future compatibility problems".
It's an old story. And the ISO has produced such standards many times. I worked for a few years back in the 1980s on some projects that involved developing ISO networking standards. We were repeatedly hit with proposed revisions to a new standard that made absolutely no sense to any of us. It always turned out that the text was written by people paid by IBM or Microsoft or Cisco or a few other major networking firms. It was clear that unless we could present a logical technical argument against the text, it would be accepted in the standard. And "We don't understand any way to implement it" wasn't a logical argument. (It was merely an admission of our ignorance.
Of course, the resulting confused mess was a lot of why OSI lost out to IP. And most of the corporate "contributions" to OSI were clearly intended as sabotage, since the corporations all wanted their own network rubber-stamped as the standard. They were sorta blindsided by the Internet, which they also didn't own (though they're working on that). But they did succeed in making OSI a standard that nobody much wanted to implement.
The only real news here is the extreme in-your-face arrogance of Microsoft this time around. Usually such problems are kept quiet until it's too late to do anything. But MS seems to feel that they can easily win this one. They may be right. Online discussions in the tech community don't seem to have affected the process very much, and chances are we can't really do anything about it. So we can look forward to a future of working with a poorly-specified standard that we'll never be able to implement correctly. In this case, there will be a big corporation selling software that complies with the standard, though of course "compliance" will be practically defined as working exactly as Microsoft's software does.