ISO Releases OOXML FAQ 185
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "The ISO has put out a FAQ concerning OOXML, but it may raise more questions than it answers. For one, it promises to address problems if they arise in the future. PJ of Groklaw said that's akin to 'selling you a car with four different sizes of tires and assuring that that if you see it's a problem, you can always bring it in for maintenance.' It also handwaves the OSP discriminatory patent promise issues, when asked about contradictions states that some 'may still remain', and asserts that duplicate standards are 'something that need[s] to be decided by the market place.' Notably, the FAQ does not answer the question, 'what the hell were you thinking?'"
This one's good. (Score:5, Interesting)
So they're basically saying: "Since we've done a lot of successful standards before, there can't possibly be anything wrong with how this one was carried out."
Re:What the hell were they thinking? (Score:1, Interesting)
Should the baby be thrown out with the bathwater? And if not, then why only in this one case are you so willing to claim fraud? Surely if fraud was acceptable in this one case, there are other standards which have been similarly fraudulently accepted. And if that is the case, how can any of ISO's standards be acceptable?
Re:What the hell were they thinking? (Score:5, Interesting)
What people think of the 'standard' is totally relevant. Simply blindly accepting something as the golden rule is ignorant, and this will (probably) lower the esteem of this standards body for a very long time. That is damaging to the purpose of standards, and part of the reason that there are not 47 international standards bodies.
Yes, I know that sounds like being negative, but you must remember that using OOXML as a design example of what standards SHOULD NOT BE is a valid method to promote the standard of your choice.
I wonder... (Score:5, Interesting)
Just a small detail (Score:2, Interesting)
"A number of such claimed contradictions were identified...//...It is possible that others may still remain, but these can be taken care of during the maintenance of the standard."
Am I to interpret this as meaning that when they find problems with the standrad, they will change the standard to 'fix' it?
If my interpretation is correct, I wonder where this leads us. I could end up having bought a number of licences for some software that conforms to the standard, only to find, a month or two later, that they have altered the standard.
Since there is a great deal of movement in the EU to accept only standardised file formats, where would this leave me and my umpteen licences? When I bought the software it followed the standard, but does not later. Can I expect the manufacturer to provide me a free upgrade/patch, or is my software to be considered still standards-compliant, or will I simply have to fork out more money for the latest, currently compliant, version?
And the situation gets more interesting when you reverse it: suppose I get the absolutely latest version of some compliant software, and save a file that I send to someone with an older, now not compliant, version of the same software. How should this older version handle my file? should it spit out an error message: "I cannot open this standards compliant file, because the standard has been updated too much"? Or should it open the file and do the best it can? Or should it notify the user that this particular file is newer than the software and might not render correctly?
I can't help but think that a lot of potential problems would have been avoided if the work around this particular standard had been allowed to take it's time, so that a technically sound standard was accepted.
Re:Isn't the whole idea of a standard (Score:0, Interesting)
You're talking about the concept of THE standard, which would mean that there's one way to do things and that's it. I'll not delve into the curious double standard of decrying a monopolistic company while at the same time wishing one single format enforced on the whole industry. Suffice it to say that ISO is not in the business of defining THE standard for anything.
ISO is in the business of ratifying standards for various technologies. Just like RCA cables have a standard, Component cables have a standard, and Coax and HDMI cables have a standard even though they're all intended to allow you to pipe video to your TV. OOXML and ODF are differing standards to accomplish the same end of storing the information for a document. OOXML becoming a standard isn't about it becoming THE standard. It's been the de facto standard for quite some time already, challenged recently by newcomers to the field. It's about standardizing the format used by Office for storing files from now on into the future.
OOXML becoming a standard is a very good thing for anybody trying to make a program to edit documents with the intent of competing with Microsoft in the Office software space. Sure it's got stuff like "Format this like we did back in the Office '98 days" but that's just to cover the backwards compatability for old documents. I would imagine -- not having looked at the spec myself -- that there are very few complaints with the way current behavior is described. The standardizing of OOXML means that there will be a standard way to interpret the data. That makes it a whole lot easier to properly convert OOXML documents to ODF, should you so desire, without screwing up the document.
Depending on how you look at it, OOXML becoming a standard is one big giant step towards competing products being able to edge in on Office. It removes the lock-in for all MS Office documents going forward, cause now everybody knows how they're supposed to be rendered. Imagine Open Office and all your favorite editors of choice being able to properly render the
I personally like MS products and the level of ease-of-use versus nitty-gritty options available in them. Macs are way too user friendly for my taste and Linux distros a bit too hands-on for my preference, but I'm fine with accepting that other people may lean more towards one side or the other. I'd just ask that those of you interpreting this as Microsoft's big play to become THE standard stop selling yourselves short. In general you're all much smarter than to legitimately be up in arms over something that fosters the very thing that you want due to a misunderstanding in semantics.
Re:Just a small detail (Score:4, Interesting)
Just hours ago I was reading the TWAIN 1.9a specification. 1.9a being a big tip-off that the spec has changed over time.
My TV and DVD player are connected with HDMI 1.3 compliant cables.
So yes, if there are problems with the standard they will change the standard. That is standard behavior if you will.
ISO is not like IETF (Score:4, Interesting)
ISO generally first adopts standards, then waits for people to prototype implementations and discover the bugs in the standard (unless someone walks in with existing technology and asks for it to be standardized). When people start reporting that aspects of the standard can't be implemented, ISO works on fixing it.
After ISO adopted the Open System Interconnection (OSI) standards, they had to set up "implementers' workshops" to figure out how to make their newly adopted standards workable. (The OSI standards are the 7-layer reference model and related protocol suite that were pushed aside by the Internet protocol suite, a.k.a TCP/IP. Many OSI protocols were never fully implemented or never made to work.)
The workshops met (one was sponsored by NIST) and produced a lot of documents on things that needed to be done to make OSI work. When the Clinton/Gore administration came into office, they killed US government support for the OSI protocols and told its agencies to use the Internet protocols.
Re:What the hell were they thinking? (Score:3, Interesting)
Compliance (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm curious, because I've heard that no product, including Microsoft's, currently follows the OOXML standard... and I wonder if there's a chance they never will? I suspect it may not be possible.
Or are Microsoft products going to be rubberstamped for the approval process as well, even if their implementation is buggy?
Re:This one's good. (Score:3, Interesting)
It's funny. I think we can put their argument into perspective by comparing them to the Patent office of the US. The Patent office grants thousands of patents. That makes their credibility go down; not up.
Re:What the hell were they thinking? (Score:2, Interesting)
Now, with respect to those individual companies, I would never dream of saying that Google is not 100% capable of reviewing the proposed standard independently and deciding it's of poor enough quality that they must to join the committee in order to vote against it.
I similarly cannot say with 100% certainty whether or not the other companies who joined those same committees and happened to have contracts with Microsoft and who voted for the proposed standard were capable of and did independently review the proposed standard before voting.
FYI: In the interest of fairness, I will state that I do work for IBM, but these are my own opinions.
ECMA is at fault also (Score:2, Interesting)
But that does not excuse ISO. On receipt of this monster ISO could have laughed, refused it, and revoked their recognition of ECMA as a standard setting body for cause. They could have used a less harsh method of censure amounting to "get away from me kid, I've got work to do."
ISO didn't do that. Instead it went through the drama in three acts that was the validation of this garbage. Now in this FAQ they tell us they monitored the process quite closely all the way through. That means they observed all of the shenanigans in real time and allowed them complicitly. At the end they tell us how proud they are of their process. Since the whole way through the rules changed at every step dynamically to force the approval and silence dissent they imply that was their intent and the result is the one they desired: approval at any cost.
The price of "approve at any cost" appears to be their credibility. Now they've no credibility left and ECMA has none to lend them.
The status of international standards body of record is a prestigious one. With it comes a hefty responsibility. You don't get to blame the other guy. The other guy is not ISO.
They're toast.
If competing standards... (Score:3, Interesting)