ISO Recommends Denying OOXML Appeals 203
An anonymous reader passes along word that ISO has responded to the four appeals filed against the approval of OOXML as a standard. To no one's surprise, ISO says that there was nothing wrong with the process. Groklaw's coverage is (as usual) the most comprehensive. Andy Updegrove summarizes ISO's position this way: "1. All judgments made during the course of the process were appropriately made under the applicable Directives. 2. The fact that the BRM voted on all proposed resolutions in some fashion satisfies the requirements of the Directives. 3. The fact that a sufficient percentage of National Bodies (NBs) ultimately voted to approve DIS 29500 ratifies the process and any flaws in that process. 4. Many objections, regardless of their merits, are irrelevant to the appeals process."
Meaning. (Score:5, Insightful)
ISO has failed (Score:4, Insightful)
They either need to replaced or it must be built up from scratch. If this does not happen, there can NEVER be any trust in them again.
Fuck ISO
Appeal vs. Objection (Score:2, Insightful)
Many objections, regardless of their merits, are irrelevant to the appeals process.
Hmm, what is the difference between an objection and an appeal again?
define:objection - expostulation: the act of expressing earnest opposition or protest.
define:appeal - challenge (a decision); "She appealed the verdict"
Ahh yes, completely different.
Bleah. (Score:5, Insightful)
Even MSFT gave up on trying to use the thing as a standard (for now)... but at least ISO's actions show us just how worthless and suspect (and probably corrupt) an ISO standard can get nowadays.
Guess I should've seen it coming back in the 1990's, when companies were plastering "ISO (insert number) Certified!1!1!!11!" across every marketing material surface that would hold ink.
Ah well... back to the good ol' RFC's, methinks.
So ISO wants to become irrelevant? (Score:5, Insightful)
The way I see it is that they have exactly two options:
1) Clean up their process and make resilient against amoral scum like Microsoft, that have a lot of power and absolutely no restraints on using it.
2) Let them get away with it and have all their standardization efforts become meaningless.
Seems to me that ISO is bound to beceome irrelevant unless they chose 1). This would be detrimental to the whole world and a real pity. Can they just admit that their process has been successfully hacked and take a stand and poclaim that they will not tolerate it? Obviously not. Pathetic.
Re:ISO has failed (Score:5, Insightful)
What do you expect? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Does it matter (Score:1, Insightful)
It does matter: anybody who has to use a standard format (goverment organisations, etc...) can just go on using MS Word and claim they are using an ISO standard.
Re:Does it matter (Score:5, Insightful)
Because of legislation that requires governments to use only "standards compliant" formats. If OOXML is an ISO standard, then those governments can continue to use MS Office formats that no other software can use.
Re:Does it matter (Score:5, Insightful)
zz (Score:4, Insightful)
really, who cares?
Who are the losers here?
MS - because this has all come out in the wash, they are going ODF anyhow and its made them look daft for not even using their own standard. I mean, how could they now?
ISO - because this has generated enough mud to stick and tarnished their reputation maybe beyond compare.
Re:Time to move away from standards bodies... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Meaning. (Score:5, Insightful)
The processing of the ISO/IEC DIS 29500 project has been conducted in conformity with the ISO/IEC JTC 1 Directives, with decisions determined by the votes expressed by the relevant ISO and IEC national bodies under their own responsibility, and consequently, for the reasons mentioned above, the appeals should not be processed further
Typical desk jockey jargon with no content whatsoever... "Vote was counted and records are signed, that is the end of it, just shut up, we do not care if a company bought out some (most) of the votes or not..."
Damage done to ISO and Commercial Standards. (Score:4, Insightful)
The corruption is so obvious that the ISO's reputation has been harmed. This is a bigger win for M$ than the coo-coo standard they never intended to follow. It is as if RJR got the AMA to approve a cigarette through bribery and a truncated "fast track" process. OOXML is against everything the ISO stood for and that contradiction is the forest that should be seen through all the clear cut trees. Commercial standards are now obviously compromised.
Here's the blowback, that M$ may not have anticipated. It is now up to GNU, Debian and other community efforts to define reasonable standards. People who have "respect" for convicted monopolists will no longer be trusted. The more M$ abuses their power, the more people want to escape.
Sign to Move On (Score:5, Insightful)
We don't care about fair process because it's our game anyway.
ISO need not have a monopoly on games. Sure, it's going to take some work to replace it. So the question is, "is it worthwhile doing?"
And that doesn't matter (Score:5, Insightful)
MSOffice will support MSOOXML*
* but not the ISO standard implementation of MSOOXML **
** written in VERY small print. On a disused paper. In the basement. Without a light (lost) or stairs (lost) behind a closed door saying "Beware of the leopard"
Re:So ISO wants to become irrelevant? (Score:5, Insightful)
2) Let them get away with it and have all their standardization efforts become meaningless.
ISO standards may be meaningless to all rational people if they continue down this road. Sadly, there are a lot of powerful organizations that have a lot of influence on many of our lives that are not even close to rational. As someone who has occasionally had to deal with standards for products used by the US government, I can tell you right now there is nothing rational about the requirements or procedures. It is millions in consulting fees being handed to people for completely useless certifications, largely as a way to prevent competitors from bidding on contracts. I actually saw a Windows 95 based "device" win a contract we wanted to bid on, because that was the only OS "certified" for security for that use. The "certification" basically amounted to MS stating it was not guaranteed to be fit for any purpose and paying contractors to fill out a boatload of paperwork. Any vendor with a pile of money could get "certified" but it took time and cost a lot of money.
The problem with ISO and OOXML is that it won't be viewed rationally and it will likely be used as a way to make MS Office a legal requirement in certain government applications without any regard for the real merits of other software packages. Even if all rational people know ISO certification no longer means anything, that doesn't mean we won't be spending millions in tax dollars needlessly because of it.
ISO fails/refuses to see the issue (Score:3, Insightful)
It's like asking a paralyzed man to piss and hit toilet.
ISO feedback (Score:2, Insightful)
the ISO's website has a nice feedback form, I would encourage people in a restrained and intelligent way to point out what OOXML has done to the ISO's now ruined reputation.
Re:zz (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:ISO has failed (Score:5, Insightful)
Standards keep your car from flying apart, jets from dropping out of the sky and bridges from collapsing.
Yes industry standards matter. Screwing around with them as real world consequences. This is about more than just software.
Re:And that doesn't matter (Score:5, Insightful)
"Beware of the Leopard" indeed, and perhaps also the Heron.
Re:Damage done to ISO and Commercial Standards. (Score:4, Insightful)
Here's the blowback, that M$ may not have anticipated. It is now up to GNU, Debian and other community efforts to define reasonable standards. People who have "respect" for convicted monopolists will no longer be trusted. The more M$ abuses their power, the more people want to escape.
Trouble is, the vast vast majority of Microsoft users will have no interest in this whole fiasco. The "more people" who want to escape will be lost in the noise. The things that concern the majority of /. readers are rarely the things that concern the corporate suits who make the purchasing decisions.
Re:Time to move away from standards bodies... (Score:3, Insightful)
Like, I'm a total Windows bigot, but I do more C++ on Linux and I now expect that Visual C++ should actually perform the same way that GNU does, rather than vice versa, because I trust GNU more.
Problem #1: You trust GNU more, but that doesn't mean the GNU way will win out. What happens when the most prevalent de facto standards is held up by someone unscrupulous, and you want to do something about it? We'll all be sitting around saying, "We sure wish there was some group that could study the different formats to use and make unbiased recommendations, so that the less-knowledgeable among us can make better decisions about what to implement."
Problem #2: Standards bodies (when they're working properly) allow multiple parties to collaborate on the standards. For example, if you don't want Mozilla, Apple, and Opera to start implementing different incompatible versions of HTML, then it's really helpful for them to have a common forum to discuss the changes they want to make, figure out the upsides and downsides of various approaches, and come to some compromises about what will be the "normal" way HTML will be rendered.
Standards bodies are absolutely great so long as they're uncorrupted and unbiased. If ISO is owned by Microsoft now, then it just means that it's time for some other body to step up, and hopefully create rules that will protect against the same thing happening again.
Re:Let the Whinging begin! (Score:2, Insightful)
It's all about the technical community. (Score:-1, Insightful)
You do a disservice to "corporate suits who make the purchasing decisions." The technical community is moving from commercial to their own standards. The more M$ fouls commercial standards, the easier it will be to make the case for community standards. Believe it or not, corporate leadership often comes from engineering and they respect the opinions of their staff more than those of salesmen. Everyone now knows that OOXML is a deeply flawed and impossible to implement "standard". Business is more likely to move to cheaper and better ODF editors because of the ISO scandal.
Re:OOXML is a standard. Get over it (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Does it matter (Score:5, Insightful)
Did you understand that? Not even Microsoft has any product which implements the standard.
You seem to have the quaint notion that any debate by a government department of contractor over whether .docx is an ISO standard will be based on accurate information and rational argument by open-minded people who understand the technical issues.
Welcome to our planet, stranger!
The reality is that the ISO has handed Microsoft advocates a massive FUD weapon. Before, ODF was ISO certified, .doc wasn't. End of story. Now, the salesman can tell your pointy-haired boss (who's genes tell him that nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft anyway) that MS's ISO-certified OOXML format will leverage support for legacy documents without the potential loss of fidelity* associated with ODF without telling an actionable lie.
(* 'cos half of OOXML seems to boil down to "render this blob exactly like Office 97, right down to the leap-year bugs" - and MS are really going to pull out all the stops to ensure that their ODF implementation is absolutely rock-solid, right?)
Re:OOXML is a standard. Get over it (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact there is corruption and fraud elsewhere do not make this one a tiny bit more tolerable.
Re:Does it matter (Score:3, Insightful)
Honestly, even before this, ISO wasn't really particularly relevant. I mean seriously, by their own admission, they were allowing multiple competing standards to develop to solve the same problem.
I'm not really sure I understand what the point of ISO is if they're going to allow multiple competing standards to develop. Perhaps it's that I don't work in IT, but how on earth is multiple standards a good thing? How exactly is it useful to the consumer or whoever is implementing them to get to choose amongst multiple incompatible standards?
Saying (Score:5, Insightful)
Reminded saying heard long time ago. [ Probably native speaker can give original saying for my memory is bad with such things. ]
When process is against you - argue facts
When facts against you - argue procedure.
Facts are against ISO. So they are pushing the procedure thing. After all procedure was so to say followed and voting on the so called standard so to say have happened. Or probably "had been happened" is more appropriate wording in the context??
Sense of an Appeal (Score:1, Insightful)
Everything considered, the sense of an appeal is to say that something that happened should be reversed because of some issues. ISO allowed for appeals (two months time for that starting from the end of the BRM, you remember?).
But now, the third point of Andy Updegrove's summary is the final[*] nail in the coffin of ISO's credibility:
In other words: You may appeal within two months after the BRM if something went horribly wrong there. But, honestly, poor chap, after the BRM is over it's already too late, because everything that went horribly wrong was justified in that same horribly wrong process.
[*] Honestly, I believe this was still not the last one ...
Re:Damage done to ISO and Commercial Standards. (Score:1, Insightful)
Using M$ is not "childish"; it is community spirit. It was inaccurate for the Irish to talk about "the British Hun", and the name "Viet Cong" was just made up by the Americans (the forces were actually called "Viet Minh").
A derogatory epithet for the enemy binds the community together against a common foe. It is not childish, though it is militant. To use someone's own chosen name is to honour them. Micro$hit do not deserve that honour.
Re:In other words... (Score:5, Insightful)
Have you ever heard of the term "rule of law"? If not, look it up.
The idea is, opinions do not matter in rule of law (other than legal opinions). If you don't follow the rule of law, then laws become meaningless.
The same is true for organziations like ISO, and while their rules aren't law, they may as well be for them. If they don't follow them and allow public opinion to sway their actions, then the rules are meaningless. If you don't like the rules, you have to work to get them changed, not cry foul for having followed the rules.
Most people against the ISO decisions don't seem to understand this. They think that if they just stand up and yell loud enough, then the ISO will (or should) violate it's own rules to side with them. That would be an even worse situation for the ISO and would make them even more worthless if they can be swayed to violate their own rules by public opinion.
Re:OOXML is a standard. Get over it (Score:3, Insightful)
the result? one more chain keeping the banana republics enslaved.
Re:Does it matter (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps it's because so many of the processes used in this were used improperly (such as fast tracking) or subverted entirely (ignoring appeals, allowing microsoft shills to be on the boards voting for ratification). What really gets me is the line about "All these appeals, despite how much merit they have, are being ignored by us. Suck it."
Re:Damage done to ISO and Commercial Standards. (Score:1, Insightful)
Microsoft are not "just a symptom", the people there actually shaped the current environment and continue to shape it (largely by political machinations). They are a part of the disease, not just a result.
Anyway, is it childish to address symptoms _anyway_? Of course not. Treating the symptoms of a cold may mean you don't get fired which means that you can afford medical care for when you have colds. Similarly, keeping micro$loth under attack keeps them from wiping us out totally before we can do something about the larger problems.
Re:Damage done to ISO and Commercial Standards. (Score:3, Insightful)
Microsoft are not "just a symptom", the people there actually shaped the current environment and continue to shape it (largely by political machinations). They are a part of the disease, not just a result.
Part of what makes OOXML such a terrible standard, is that it can't be implemented as written, and so it can't be a standard.
In other words - people need standards for documents for them to be useful.
This is precisely the emergent factor which drove Microsoft Office to dominance in the first place -- in lieu of a commonplace internet, people needed to go to the store, buy a few floppy disks and know that the contents would guarantee them interoperability.
Did Microsoft abuse it's monopoly position? The courts say yes -- but the point is that technological limitations and basic emergence mandated that there had to be one major OS/Application suite combo for each application area.
They are a symptom - nothing more important or significant than that.
Anyway, is it childish to address symptoms _anyway_? Of course not. Treating the symptoms of a cold may mean you don't get fired which means that you can afford medical care for when you have colds. Similarly, keeping micro$loth under attack keeps them from wiping us out totally before we can do something about the larger problems.
Not quite enough cars in your analogy there.
It is childish to keep the debate at the name-calling level when presented with evidence that the problem is actually a bit more complex than you originally thought. Calling Microsoft names is not an effective attack, in that it legitimizes them in relative terms by making those most vocal in their dissent look childish.
Re:In other words... (Score:3, Insightful)
The rule of law works because there are checks and balances, meta-laws that laws are subject to, judges and juries to interpret the laws, an appeals process. When these are short-circuited, the law becomes ineffective.
If the rules of a body do not include equivalent mechanisms, if they *have to* be blindly followed, as if every one of these rules was the equivalent of the mandatory sentencing rules that tie judges hands and prevent them from applying the judgement that oils the wheels of justice, then the rules are broken.
For example, one of the decisions made by the ISO was to permit this standard to have a fast track process. The resulting standard is clearly not ready. Therefore the original decision to allow a fast track process was the wrong decision. This has nothing to do with how many people are unhappy with the decision, it's proven to be the wrong decision by the fact that they do not have a usable standard at the end of the process.
One possibility is that there is no rule that says a fast tracked standard has to be essentially ready for publication.
One possibility is that there is such a rule, and it was ignored.
In the latter case, the rules were not followed.
In the former case, the rules are meaningless. Whether they follow them or not doesn't matter, and the fact that the ISO has approved a standard is no more than informational.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Does it matter (Score:3, Insightful)
I've never understood why standards bodies can't understand that patents are anti-standards and cannot be permitted to exist within a standard.
They should apply a click-wrap patent licence clause. "By submitting any idea or specification to this standards body, submitter irrevocably grants a world wide royalty free license to all entities on any patents contained within.