The Inside Story on Norway's Yes to OOXML 254
Steve Pepper writes "The former Chairman of the Norwegian ISO committee, who resigned two weeks ago in protest against his country's vote of Yes to OOXML, tells the inside story of how the decision was reached: how a single bureaucrat from Standards Norway sidelined the overwhelming majority of Norwegian technical experts and changed Norway's vote from No to Yes. The story is so surreal it's hard to believe." It's as depressing as it is brief.
Re:Standards Norway's own words (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Nothing needs to be done (Score:4, Informative)
And, really, the US military does this multiple supplier requirement for hardware only.. they dabbled with it on the software side with the POSIX requirements, but that's about it.
Further coverage (Score:5, Informative)
Norway had very low perceived corruption (Score:3, Informative)
Re:I was kind of puzzled (Score:5, Informative)
It wasn't 2 people for and 2 people against. They reached a consensus that 2 of the comments had been satisfactorily resolved and that 2 of the comments hadn't been satisfactorily resolved. They then couldn't come to a consensus on whether the remaining 8 comments were resolved. The 80% number was the number of people that were not satisfied enough to vote yes.
They had agreed that 2 of their comments were not satisfactorily resolved. Which way the remaining 8 comments fell could only increase this number. Roughly 80% of those present didn't want to vote yes.
The final change to yes came down to one man, who seems to have had his mind made up ahead of time.
Re:What can be done now? (Score:3, Informative)
Yes... excellent. Smithers! Summon the undead Greek poets!
Re:You are at fault. (Score:4, Informative)
Perhaps you don't know that they exist?
Re:I was kind of puzzled (Score:4, Informative)
Re:I was kind of puzzled (Score:3, Informative)
So what happened is for 2 of the articles, everybody agreed yes. For 2 of them everybody agreed no. For the remaining 6 not everybody agreed. According to the article the writer thought they were 80% no and 20% yes on these.
Reading comprehension is your friend.
Re:Perhaps someone could explain this: (Score:3, Informative)
There are also claims that it is impossible to implement the standard without using patented or copyrighted software owned by Microsoft.
Re:Nothing needs to be done (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Perhaps someone could explain this: (Score:2, Informative)
1a) there are standards just as large, but they were not fast tracked. It takes a long time to actually review that much stuff.
1b) the largest previous fast track standard was ~800 pages.
2) it is patented
2a) FOSS lawyers say the OSP (M$ promise not to sue for patents unless you become a threat) is incompatible with GPL
2b) M$ lawyers confirm that GPL is incompatible with OSP
3) M$ does not currently implement it
4) M$ has hinted it does not plan to implement it
5) This is overblown, but there are a lot of tags like "WorkLikeWord95". These are mostly for backward compatibility, but if you hoped that the 6000+ pages would actually describe how word95/word200x worked so you could read the documents, you will be disappointed.
6) The standard hasn't even been published yet (another ISO rule disregarded - with some sympathy given the size). Nobody knows exactly what they voted on. (Not that technical considerations seem to have mattered anyway.)
The bottom line is that only M$ could possibly implement the "standard", and they will only do so if they see a strategic advantage. M$ Office will be the only "reference implementation", despite not bothering to actually implement it either. M$ will be able to tout their format as "ISO standard" and sell to governments that require that without having to support ODF.
The best defence is for such governments to also require at least 2 functional implementations of a format.
Re:Nothing needs to be done (Score:4, Informative)
I can't believe I have to explain this.
Re:Nothing needs to be done (Score:3, Informative)
Licensing is a separate issue, and I won't discuss it, since I have not read the OOXML licenses. But, Microsoft is generally very permissive with software made with their SDKs - "Developers developers developers!" You think I send Microsoft a check every time I #include <windows.h>?
As for SDK support on later versions of Windows? Until Vista, you could still call 16-bit memory locking routines. Not that they'd do much, but your Windows 3.11 code would still compile without much porting (depending on what it does, of course.) DirectX is based on that icky COM model - all previous versions are there in their entirety, with new interfaces added over the top. Winsock APIs have had only 2 major "version" since 3.11, and version 1 code will work on systems where version 2 is the default (2000/XP/Vista/others maybe).
This is obviously a different kind of SDK than Microsoft has released before, but their track record is pretty damn good when it comes to maintaining APIs. (Again, personal anecdotal evidence trumps all!)
And, no - the only hardware platform/Windows version problems you will generally run into is "NT or 98?" The Windows API hasn't changed much, nor have most of their SDKs. And discontinuing the SDK won't keep anyone from using the old version; it'll only hurt if ISO comes out with "OOXML 2."
Whom to trust? (Score:3, Informative)
Looks like we have to do a bit of research ourselves. As in
-is the standard reasonably complete and concise? By most accounts, OOXML fails there but ODF looks better. That could be a reason to pick ODF if YOU have to support it
-is it actually supported? For both formats, there appears to be some support. See
http://www.opendocumentfellowship.com/applications [opendocume...owship.com] and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_Open_XML#Application_support [wikipedia.org].
Note that the ODF supporters are mostly Open Source and the OOXML supporters are from the proprietary camp. So depending on the direction your customer/organization leans to, you might not have much choice in the matter...
Re:Nothing needs to be done (Score:4, Informative)
Huh, I didn't know that "open source programmers" == "GPL". There are many OSI licenses that ARE compatible with OOXML even if GPL is not. And I don't concede your point even regarding GPL, since Gnumeric implements OOXML with GPL code.
"As well, the patent situation is another large roadblock for open source (not to mention anyone else). So really, not just anyone can use it."
The patent provisions are the same as for ODF.
Jason Matusow has recently posted two blog entries regarding the IP issues regarding OOXML (and compares it with ODF, PDF, etc), which are very good reads. (Yes, he works for Microsoft, so you might just dismiss him as a liar, but if you're willing to read Rob Weir and Groklaw, and take what they have to say as unquestioned Gospel, you might want to at least take a look what the other side has to say; if anything it'll make your own arguments stronger in the future.)
More Open XML Discussion - more misunderstandings about standards and IP [msdn.com]
IP, RAND, Standards, OSP, ISP - the conversation continues... [msdn.com]
Here's an excerpt from the first blog entry:
The ISO/IEC JTC 1 patent policy is applied uniformly to all standards in the ISO/IEC JTC 1 arena. The idea that the RAND declaration regarding Open XML is any different than a RAND declaration for ODF or for any other ISO Standard (such as...oh I don't know...how about PDF just for fun. Remember the huge list of patents that Adobe used to put on the welcome screen of the Acrobat reader alone?). The terms provided for the Microsoft patents in Open XML are legally irrevocable. They are global. Since they are broader than the RAND declaration for JTC 1, the attempt at FUD by the Groklaw post should be recognized for what it is...FUD.
Incidentally, both of the above blog entries point out that Linux distros already ship software under licenses that are incompatible with each other, making today's Linux distros technically illegal already. In the second blog entry, Jason goes on to say regarding this:
Legal snags like the ones I mentioned only matter if someone presses it in a court case. No one can say if these issues will ever become an issue but that has never stopped a single person from using Linux. So, when people then say that the MS OSP, or IBM's ISP, or RAND terms, or whatever means that Free Software developers can't develop something, I find it hard to take seriously when the intent, and all of the materials surrounding these actions speak of building bridges and enabling...not shutting down or threatening. Those same developers are willing to take those exact same issues as no concern on one hand and then scream foul on the other.
(BTW, regarding the GPL, I'll quote a comment made by 'hAL' to the second blog entry:
"Both the 'Interoperability Specification Pledge' from IBM (on for instance ODF v1.0/v1.1) and Suns 'Covenant Not to Sue' suffer from the same issue with GPL as Microsofts OSP licensing. GPL3 code can be reused outside the limits of those RAND licenses. Any patent protection by IBM and Sun on OpenDocument and from Micrsoft on OOXML will not apply if the GPL code is reused in a project that does not fall under those licenses. As Suns covenant only applies to OpenDocument reuse of patent protected code from an ODF code for anything else but an ODF implementation voids the covenant.")
Anyway, the post to which I replied talked of nobody being able to implement OOXML support besides Microsoft. He didn't say anything about "open source programmers", let alone "GPL". As long as there are other OOXML programs, even if they are closed source programs, ta
Re:I was kind of puzzled (Score:3, Informative)
Yes, in a prefect world, NO VOTING would result in NO ACTION. But the world isn't perfect. So, since the world isn't perfect, this time (and others) NO VOTING resulted in a BASTARDIZED PROCESS. Do you see that? Do you see why future committees might want to consider this when they unwisely decide not to decide? This reality is what the OP is trying to describe (or rather, successfully describing). Remember, it does not matter how the world should be, it only matters how the world really is. That is the message of the OP.
Now, why am I posting so many times? So that whoever is trying to crush the message of the grandparent runs out of mod points. I think they are doing it because of an agenda. If you have a mod point, go way up to the OP and mod him up, because he is dead on.
Re:I was kind of puzzled (Score:1, Informative)
Now it doesn't surprise me that a bunch of computer experts in a room couldn't reach a consensus. Getting any computer people to agree on something is like herding cats
But a bunch of computer experts did reach agreement on a document format previously - ODF