Norway's Yes-To-OOXML Is Formally Protested 324
An anonymous reader writes "Norway's yes-to-OOXML may tip the vote in favor of accepting it as an ISO-standard, but the committee chairman just faxed a formal protest to the ISO. 'I am writing to you in my capacity as Chairman (of 13 years standing) of the Norwegian mirror committee to ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34. I wish to inform you of serious irregularities in connection with the Norwegian vote on ISO/IEC DIS 29500 (Office Open XML) and to lodge a formal protest. You will have been notified that Norway voted to approve OOXML in this ballot. This decision does not reflect the view of the vast majority of the Norwegian committee, 80% of which was against changing Norway's vote from No with comments to Yes.'"
Re:Nice Sentiment (Score:5, Informative)
In this case only Microsoft can possibly implement it, because various sections refer to proprietary MS software and basically say "do it like that".
Since only Microsoft knows what that actually means, nobody else can implement it. Therefore it is worthless as a "standard".
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft is in for a PR nightmare... (Score:4, Informative)
Is anyone going to use ISO specifications again if Microsoft purchases the OOXML vote?
What really gets my clusters in a bunch is that Microsoft could elect to work with Sun, IBM, Apple, Adobe, Whoever, to really come up with an Open Document specification if they wanted too. This specification isn't about Apple, Microsoft, Sun, and IBM. Its about government documentation funded by the public that needs to be available a thousand years from now. Way to be a good corporate citizen Microsoft!
People will still choose MS Office because they like it, not because it does or does not save documents in a government mandated open specification. Microsoft could simply add a new "Save As" filter following the Open Specification.
Enjoy,
Re:Nice Sentiment (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Money can't buy you love. (Score:3, Informative)
That said, at least twitter has been writing a bit more civilly with his newer sockpuppets than he used to with his older ones (he may actually be learning something!). His Twitter and Erris accounts are in karma hell for good reason. He has a fanatical hatred of MS (which isnt so bad by itself) but routinely misrepresents, takes things out of context, or just flat out lies in his posts. A lot of real open source advocates around here think he does a lot more harm than good for that reason.
Re:Norway corrupt too? (Score:2, Informative)
For example, there was the case when the ruling and massive Labour party had written false "letters to the editor". Essentially, what they did was write things like 'I am a single mother and I hope for the sake of my three children that the opposition's policies will never be implemented because they would fill my life with so much pain. My youngest daughter cried when I told her what might happen'. Or, a bit more advanced, writing arguments that purport to be in favour of the opposition, but very poorly worded, and then they "refute" them in a reply with their own brilliance. Noone has ever been criticised, "fired" or in any way had their politics influenced by this, and it stayed in the (local only) media for all of a week.
Norwegian article: http://www.bt.no/lokalt/bergen/article393005.ece [www.bt.no]
Translated title: "Knows about false letters to the editor in the newspapers. Former Labour party member Audun Holme says he is aware that fictitious letters to the editor under the direction of the Labour party has reached the newspaper columns". Incidentally, this happened in Sweden as well, though there the secretary (who had done all of this independently and without anyone's knowledge, of course) just had to resign.
And oh, there was the case when the biggest newspaper and TV organisation (A-Pressen) in Norway was going to get a new chairperson, and a panel had been set down to judge between the selection of candidates according to how they scored on a set of formal criteria. The head of the panel had assessed one person as 'weak' or 'very weak' on four out of six criteria. Shortly after this, however, the Prime Minister (Jens Stoltenberg) and Foreign Minister (Jonas Gahr Støre) went on a private home visit to the head of the panel, and argued very warmly for the person in question, praising his personal qualities. They say they were simply going as private individuals to provide a personal character reference, of course.
http://www.aftenposten.no/meninger/kommentarer/article2193377.ece [aftenposten.no]
And oh, there was the case when the military and defense advisor of a supporting party to the ruling and massive labour party (incidentially, the Socialist Left), sat at a luxury restaurant in Oslo (the one where a full night costs ~$400 p.p. sans wine) and discussed airplanes. Effectively there is an ongoing evaluation of fighter airplanes in Norway, whereby the Eurofighter competes with the Joint Strike Fighter. This evaluation is supposed to be assessed by a strictly neutral objectives as to efficiency and performance. A journalist present however heard the politican in deep discussion with two advisors for the Swedish billionaire Wallenberg family, and the politician promised that, not only would the Swedish JAS Gripen airplanes also be considered, they had actually as much as won the contract already!
"I like this fucking bad!" is the headline, quoted. Some exchanges are,
Paper: We saw you at Statholdergaarden yesterday evening and wonder what you were doing there?
Advisor: (laughter) You see, I don't think I have any reason to say who I have dinner with.
Paper: No?
Advisor: Nei, do you think so? Who did you have dinner with last night?
Paper: A colleague.
Advisor: Oh yes. At the Statholdergaarden. Who paid for you?
Paper: We did ourselves.
Advisor: You did? You make that kind of money in Dagbladet ('the daily times')?
Paper: The question to you was, what were _you_ doing there?
Advisor: But dearie you, I really have no intention of telling you.
http://www.dagbladet.no/nyheter/2007/08/30/510484.html [dagbladet.no]
Re:Norway corrupt too? (Score:3, Informative)
That said, I seriously wonder where you got the idea that America is somehow more corrupt than European countries. Do you pay any attention to international news?
http://www.google.com/search?q=norway+corruption+scandals [google.com]
Replace Norway with your European country of choice
Re:Nice Sentiment (Score:5, Informative)
Even if OOXML becomes an ISO standard, that doesn't mean we're obligated to use it. For one thing, it won't be the only ISO standard for documents: we already have ODF. For another, ISO certification still will not make it an open standard. Governments and other organizations that require documents to conform to an open standard will still have to use ODF, not OOXML. We need to continue pressure for the use of open standards and to refuse to use OOXML ourselves.
Re:Yes, money can buy you love (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Nice Sentiment (Score:5, Informative)
Of course, it's not really possible to write a C99 compliant compiler as the the standard mandates behavior that is sometimes either completely impossible or just completely undesirable.
Re:Nice Sentiment (Score:5, Informative)
It also matters when governments start imposing standards-compliance on themselves. For a brief moment, we had hoped that we'd be able to get government documents in a reasonably standard format (ODF) -- that is, I think, why this is actually a big deal.
I'd argue that's actually a good thing, if and only if said implementation is at least as free/open as the standard itself. No spec can capture every single quirk of a real live piece of software, and in case we discover two alternate implementations which both fit the spec, it would be nice to be able to say which is correct.
That's not originally my idea, but I can't remember where I heard it first.
But for large parts of the spec to basically say "Whatever MS Office does" -- or, actually, "Whatever a particular piece of extinct proprietary software does" -- that seems pretty unacceptable in a spec which is meant to define the now and future standard, rather than simply document (partially) what a particular implementation is going to do anyway.
Re:Send in the Lost Vikings (Score:2, Informative)
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Linus_Torvalds&oldid=200704953#Later_years [wikipedia.org]
Re:Nice Sentiment (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Quality base-level of ISO very LOW (Score:3, Informative)
Re:...obvious innit? (Score:3, Informative)
scandle [aftenposten.no]
a list of scandles [wikipedia.org]
Keep drinking the Kool-Aid.
In Finland.. (Score:5, Informative)
Majority of board was against OOXML Standard but in the end, board's decision was "yes". Why ? Board consists of big businesses, government and some other groups. 3 of the bigger companies in the board where IBM, Sun & Google and their votes where not counted because "they would vote as their head offices dictate" and thus the overall voting results from "absolutely no" where turned into "yes with clauses".
Yey!