OOXML Rumored to be Approved, Announcement Wednesday 223
dominux writes "Rumors are already circulating that Microsoft's OOXML has been voted in by the standards board. The Open Sourcerer claims to have results of the ballot on dis29500. According to the site Microsoft managed to flip enough countries to make it stick. 75% of the P members who didn't abstain voted for Microsoft (That is 58% of all the P members). 14% of all the P and O members voted to disapprove it, this includes all the new O members that joined just in time to cast their vote. Norway has asked that their vote be suspended due to voting irregularities, but it would take more than that to make a difference to the result. ZDNet is still playing it cautious, noting that an announcement either way is set to be made on Wednesday."
Basically... (Score:5, Insightful)
ISO dead, blog at 11 (Score:5, Insightful)
Thanks MS.
Re:Let's see (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, wait... democracy doesn't override cold hard reality, does it. My bad.
Looks like a forgery (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:ISO dead, blog at 11 (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:With thanks (Score:5, Insightful)
But it is to ISO's massive, disgusting and probably reputation-destroying shame they they simply laid back and allowed themselves to be corrupted, defiled and sodomised by a large multinational. And they didn't even get a kiss afterwards.
Now seriously, ISO is fucked (even if this is an April Fools news), but MS is still the party that did it. The blame should be on them.
Yeah right! (Score:4, Insightful)
So can we hope to see Microsoft dismantling it's various monopolistic positions in the near future (voluntarily). I look forward to it.
Microsoft wins (Score:3, Insightful)
If OOpsyXML is approved, then the ISO credibility will actually mean nothing, because the standards is, by all accounts I have seen, utter garbage.
Microsoft has proven, once and for all, that democracy is a failure, even if it is the best failure to date.
--
Toro
Waiting until the 2nd (Score:5, Insightful)
If this is an April fools joke it isn't funny.
If this is real and the (gasp) "standard" was approved, we should all start calling it the "Fools Standard" in everything we write, thus putting the proper "spin" on it.
Re:Yeah right! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:ISO dead, blog at 11 (Score:3, Insightful)
You think the opinions of mainstream people matter where ISO is concerned? It's the opinion of the propellerheads that work with the technology that matters. If it's not the propellerheads opinion that rules the day, people have been known to call what eventuates a "boondoggle".
Re:Basically... (Score:2, Insightful)
Seems to be true though... (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately, it seems to be true.
I've been tracking this for the last few months, and it's clear that this was essentially a victory of corruption over merits.
What's being said now is that this will be a pyrrhic victory [wikipedia.org] for Microsoft. Many will discredit this standard (even with the ISO stamp on it) because of the history of corruption that lead to its approval. Those who already disliked Microsoft will only hate it even more and become more vocal.
I hope this whole process served to show the world (once again) what "business as usual" means for Microsoft.
Penalty for cheating == break even? (Score:5, Insightful)
That doesn't really seem fair to me. It seems like, if you cheat, then you either win, or at least break even. It's like saying that the penalty for shop-lifting is that you have to put the stuff you stold back.
In fact, it seems like, in the case of Norway, msft did better than break even. Instead of a "yes" msft rigged a "nothing" which is better for msft than a "no."
Considering the massive number of irregularities in the OOXML approval process, I think OOXML approval should be put on hold, until an investigation can be completed.
Unfortunately (Score:5, Insightful)
YEs it is (Score:5, Insightful)
All they have to do is implement more than everyone else, then change the "standard" so that others are not compatible.
Re:Seems to be true though... (Score:5, Insightful)
That is the goal.
Microsoft does not like being held to standards. The devaluation of ISO is as big a win for them as the acceptance of MSOOXML.
Re:Why the hell did they abstain? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Not all bad (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Microsoft's implementation of other standards is often [intentionally] broken. One needs to look no further than HTML for evidence of that.
2. As you pointed out, the Office 2007 documents do not comply with the OOXML spec, so currently, no one supports a rigidly defined implementation of OOXML. But it's rather telling that many "yes" voters are discussing "changes" "growth" or "evolution" of the standard. ISO does not support this notion. Standards are rigidly defined and adhered to. If there is a change that needs to be adopted, a new standard is created. But as evidenced by all prior Microsoft behaviors and methods, they can't leave a file format alone for 5 minutes, let alone 'forever.' For Microsoft and ISO to be compatible, they'd have to have a new standard adopted with every new service release of their office and Windows products. (Either that, or ISO will have to change everything it stands for... which has arguably happened already)
3. One of Microsoft's most identified behaviors has been to keep changing standards, methods, procedures and behaviors of its products and protocols. Some would suggest that is to prevent people from being "too compatible" and for the longest time, the Samba project, for example, was having a difficult time keeping up with the changes. (They did, and it would seem Microsoft ran out of ways to break SMB/CIFS to thwart Samba as that doesn't appear to have been an issue lately) Microsoft is more inclined to move the mountain closer to them than they would be to move closer to the mountain.
"Hope" and Microsoft have been words that rarely connect. I have hoped Microsoft would behave better than it does for quite a long time. they simply won't. The tragedy is that they have the resources to make really good stuff. They don't want to do it that way. Instead, they'd rather use tricks and tactics to get their way about things. It's really unfortunate that they'd take the less honorable approach, but clearly by keeping the competition suppressed, they have been far more successful which is good for share holders... just not so good for the rest of "technology" and the world that uses it.
pause for thought (Score:3, Insightful)
there will be appeals.
and like a jumper that has been badly washed, the ISO system will never be the same. trust takes a long time to build, but can be destroyed in an instant.
groklaw did a superb (as normal) run down on the appeals process, and this will be so inevitably roundly condemned that an appeal will almost certainly happen.
but really I'm quite OK about this being voted in, I always predicted a Pyhrric victory for MS. Here's my logic - if they did not manage to force this through then they lost. But they did manage to force it through and in the process created such scrutiny, condemnation, criticisms of OOXML and contempt from the industry that they still lost. OOXML is widely regarded as a flawed, massive, unimplementable standard, an evolved jumble of legacy components with little clarity. It will be fascinating to see if any other implementation will ever be implemented. Already moves are underway to specify cross platform implementations as required for many, many governments - and I think we can all see where that leaves MS.
Even if another portable implementation is ever implemented, then once again MS loses as their cash cow is no longer required on the corporate desktop.
I mourn for a once respected standards body, of course. But I think ISO has allowed this to happen to itself - it has lost its impartiality and technical clarity and I do not know where the future lies for it. In in ideal world only technical merit should of won out, and only one standard should ever of been introduced to meet a this requirement. If OOXML was demonstrably better then ODF should of been deprecated.
Just my 2 cents.
Re:With thanks (Score:4, Insightful)
Any countries found to have broken the rules should have their vote changed to abstain and possibly have their status within the organization demoted.
If there's sufficient evidence of corruption to call the result in to question (ie if all the countries forced to abstain were changed to yes or no it would change the result) then the process should be restarted, or dropped from the fast track.
The entire process should be opened up, each voting country should be required to document in detail why they voted yes or no (explanation shouldn't be necessary for abstentions), and in the case of a second vote should be required to address all of the comments submitted at the first vote, and explain why/how they have been addressed or aren't relevant to that country.
Those who vote on the issue should also be able to demonstrate a competent understanding of the proposal in question, and have done a sufficient level of research into the proposed standard and the issues surrounding it. It is entirely unreasonable for people with little or no understanding in particular fields to have any say in their standardization, for instance many people on slashdot will be qualified to discuss a standard for a computer document format, but considerably fewer will be qualified to help define a standard for fixings used to connect water pipes together etc.
Bad analogy (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:ISO dead, blog at 11 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Basically... (Score:4, Insightful)
The real issue is that the "leaders" of the Norwegian standards organization have interests in promoting Microsoft technology, and have apparently swallowed the largely incorrect arguments from that camp. (For instance, OOXML does not automagically transform older Office documents, they are just "swept under the rug" inside the new file format, still as unparseable by non-Microsoft tools as before.)
Re:ISO dead, blog at 11 (Score:4, Insightful)
No one, not even MS can implement it because they haven't published a version that makes the required changes, it is ambiguous, it references other formats that are not published, and it contradicts itself. Basically, it is just like the existing MS Office formats. You can't follow a standard. You just have to try to reverse engineer what MS did for the common cases in the most popular version of MSOffice and ignore the uncommon cases.
In the Office suite industry two of the four biggest competitors are OSS projects. Creating standards that for legal reasons are not implementable by such a huge portion of the market, undermines the standards process. This is MS's normal tactic, copy a feature of other software, but at the same time undermine the benefits that feature brings to users. It is creating a hollow bullet point for salespeople while not benefiting users in a way that might allow them to choose anything other than MS.
I have. I've even been involved in writing some of them. I dare you to go look at ODF and then look at OOXML. The difference is night and day, even for a layperson.
No it wouldn't. Some committee rubber stamping something does not make it a standard. ISO's purpose is not to make an existing format a standard, but to help create and certify that formats are standards. By them certifying OOXML as a standard does not make it one; it just fools people who have relied upon ISO's reputation into thinking it is one. OOXML will not be any more usable or implementable by others or clearer next week after ISO announces they have approved it than it is today. It is just false advertising bought by Microsoft. Strangely some people here object to false advertising, especially when MS has destroyed the credibility and integrity of a standards body to get said advertising. It is also, probably, criminal.
Re:ISO dead, blog at 11 (Score:3, Insightful)
It contains passages like "Treat the binary contents of this section the way that Word 97 would have treated them" without specifying with any precision how Word 97 would have treated them.
These passages make the spec impossible to implement as it is written. Not hard, flat out impossible.
You're an ignorant lout. Shut the fuck up already.
Re:ISO dead, blog at 11 (Score:3, Insightful)