ISO Miscounted Cuban OOXML Vote

An anonymous reader notes Groklaw's coverage of the apparent mix-up ISO made with Cuba's vote in the matter of recommending OOXML as a standard. Cuba apparently voted against OOXML in September, but ISO recorded their vote as a "yes" — which is odd on its face, as Microsoft is forbidden to sell any products in Cuba. The Cuban NB head has apparently now officially responded to the BRM, but Groklaw's PJ notes that verification remains problematical, and "...the bottom line to me is that a process that worked perfectly well when folks all trusted each other falls into chaos when there are allegations of dirty tricks or undue pressure."

obligatory

"the bottom line to me is that a process that worked perfectly well when folks all trusted each other falls into chaos when there are allegations of dirty tricks or undue pressure" ...well DUH...

No, NOT "Duh."

Dealing with unfairness and undue pressure is a central theme in building societies and groups that work. If everyone were good and played fair, any system would work. We need social systems precisely because some people do not play fair. Thus, we have checks and balances in our American political system. Where are the checks and balances here?

The author is basically saying, the system is flawed because it does not take into account certain facts about human nature, and fails at one of the most basic tasks any socio-political system should strive to accomplish, namely limiting the ability of participants to put undue pressure on each other and use dirty tricks.

Re:No, NOT "Duh."

If everyone were good and played fair, any system would work.

With the corollary that if nobody had any reason to cheat, then everyone would play fair, and the system would work.

I think this is part of why "communism" only seems to work on the scale of the "commune", where ultimately even the most corrupt person could, what, lord over the persons and crops of fifty people? Have the most sweet potato of any villager? Scale that up to the level of a nation-state, and suddenly taking control and abusing the system provides a lot more gains in wealth and power.

Similarly with ISO, in the past the system worked because, by and large, nobody had any significant reason to game the system entirely. Sure different companies had their reasons to promote their standard, but ultimately it was still about cooperation and interoperability. While I may be missing some cases, I feel confident stating that this is the first time a standard presented to ISO has the potential to make or break a multi-billion dollar monopoly.

So of course when that kind of cash is on the line, a system that before survived because there wasn't much incentive to abuse it is found to be completely vulnerable. Kind of like if that commune suddenly found itself sitting on a gold mine.

Rules always rely on trust

The author is basically saying, the system is flawed because it does not take into account certain facts about human nature,

I'd argue that it's impossible to build a system that will work when people don't respect it. For example - the third-party payola loophole [wikipedia.org] farce. Another example - democracy might work when people respect it, but the rules mean nothing to "I have a PhD in violence" Mugabe.

In essenence, the rules themselves are only useful if they are followed in spirit. When they are not followed in spirit, then we need more clarifying rules until we come down to some basic rules that are followed in spirit. That's why are law books are so large - and it's still not large enough for people like Darl McBride... proof that the more we disrespect each other, the bigger the rule book needs to become.

The traditional solution is to turn your back to people fail to follow the spirit of the rules. You just tell them that they can go bother someone else. You can't force other people to learn ethics, and there'll always be that fuzzy area where the amorale can do horrible but legal things like deliberately spread disinformation about global warming [alternet.org]. These people should be charged with treason, because they are subverting the public good.

When an untrustworthy entity enters a situation where a certain level of trust is already assumed (M$ and ISO), then the rulebook needs to catch up *a lot*.

Honour culture

Simplify the rules, simplify the consequences.

What you are talking about quickly becomes the rule of the strong, and an honour culture. I most definitely do *not* want to live in an honour culture. The invention of trial by jury was a significant leap f

I knew it

As soon as they bought the Diebold voting system, I knew we were screwed.

Re:I knew it

We all know how close Cuba is to Florida, maybe they *meant* to vote No but really voted Yes, and the ISO committee couldn't agree on whether the chad was hanging or just dimpled.

They get their computers from Hugo Chavez

The Red Revolution People's First October Socialist Workers Computing Platform. Which is either a Linux distro or pirated Windows anyway. Communists don't care about code you have to buy from the running dog lackeys of Capitalist Colonialist Aggression.

Undermining our way of life...

These Cuban scum! They are trying to ruin our American way of life with their instance on "open standards." Their dangerous ideas of "freedom" and "choice" are directly opposed to our system of allowing us to choose whatever option we are told to choose. Damn Commies! If we don't stop them now, they will want to monitor our machine controlled elections! We have to stop these anti-Americans now, while we still have the chance!

Re:Undermining our way of life...

Know what? If something changes Cuba's mind about OOXML and very shortly after the US embargo of Cuba is ended... fuck, I just don't have words for that.

I think those Cuban cigars come in handy when Hillary is in "Office". It could open her up, you know! ;-)

This is news?

the bottom line to me is that a process that worked perfectly well when folks all trusted each other falls into chaos when there are allegations of dirty tricks or undue pressure

Like we haven't learned that from the spammers abusing e-mail, the various hacks to slashcode to prevent carpflooding, etc. etc. etc.?

Re:

[OT]Sir, I'm not a native speaker, but would you explain what carpflooding means and how it relates to slashdot/code ? Google returned three incomprehensible references (incl this citation). well, four, now that I posted this.[/OT]

Orly?

which is odd on its face, as Microsoft is forbidden to sell any products in Cuba.

It is only odd if MS had a hand in it. However, if it was just a dumbass doing the counting, then it is not odd at all.

Standards were ALWAYS cutthroat politcs

PJ says: "...the bottom line to me is that a process that worked perfectly well when folks all trusted each other falls into chaos when there are allegations of dirty tricks or undue pressure."

But standards operations have ALWAYS been about cutthroat politics and dirty tricks to gain competitive advantage. (For instance: There's stuff in an international protocol standard from the '70s or so that was transparently-crufty weirdness a US delegation proposed to get the French to back down from something they didn't like - but the French instead embraced the cruft wholeheartedly and the US negotiators couldn't admit it was just a bluff...)

The ideal is to standardize exactly what you're already marketing (or are about to release), so you continue to sell it and become (or become more) the dominant and entrenched market player while everybody else is delayed while they make changes - and become incompatible with their previous prototypes or products. This is a massive advantage even if you DO have to give up your patent locks on the technology to make it into a standard.

What's different about this is just the scale and the ability of the multibillion-dollar gorilla to afford tactics that weren't cost-effective enough to be common.

Is the ISO a joke?

There is also an article on groklaw titled: A Delegate from Brazil Challenges "Law of Silence"

A delegate from Brazil is challenging the "Law of Silence," The ad-hoc restrictions on revealing details of the BRM meeting. He alleges that he believes Microsoft has itself violated it. It relates to Microsoft's claim that 98% of issues were resolved at the meeting, which he says is inaccurate, but his question relates to why Microsoft can talk about the BRM and no one else can.

The ISO seems to make "rules" ad-hoc, according to what Microsoft dictates, then they don't even follow their own bogus rules.

The ISO has lost all credibility with me. Unless the ISO completely reforms their processes, I will consider them about credibilitily as an Enderle article.

Re:Er, um...

I hope none of those guys designed the equipment my eye surgeon will be using when I have my vitrectomy (shudder).

Don't worry, it was designed by Microsoft, and it runs on Vista.

Ahhh, my eyes!

An eye surgery tool running Vista? What if it gets hacked? That's just asking to have the goatse guy literally rather than figuratively burned into your retinas.

Re:

Of course they do. The only country to embargo them is the United States. They can get all the computers they want from other countries. You are aware there are other countries out there, right?

Re:Y'know...

While it's true that controversy is not unknown at ISO, there are things happening during this particular process which seem to have surprised and/or alarmed a fair number of those who regularly follow ISO and its processes.

See this web site [consortiuminfo.org] for one example.

Re:

And those standards went through, I'd guess, on the non-fasttrack route? Like the SQL standard? That took years to go through.

The abuse here is trying to push OOXML through on fast track, when it's obvious to anyone following the process that this should t

Re:Y'know...

The abuse here is trying to push OOXML through on fast track, when it's obvious to anyone following the process that this should take the same route as SQL, for example. But that wouldn't be quick enough for Microsoft to stem the organisations mandidating open standards to look at their options, and choose OpenDocument over OOXML.

It's more than that. The normal process is a specification-creating process. The "fast track" process is just ISO urinating on some company's product in an attempt to convince people to use it. Microsoft doesn't want to make a system, they want their existing system to be advertised.

The whole OOXML noise is a joke - but then, ISO shouldn't have a "fast track" process in the first place, and the "standards" worship that is in vogue these days is just silly. The purpose of ISO (and all similar organisations) is for people to come together and create an agreement on how they are going to make their systems work together. If there is no intention for people to make their systems work together, then there is no value in any of it.

A "standard" is not some kind of law about how computer systems have to work (despite what a lot of very stupid people seem to think), it is the symbol and partial documentation of a completed process of development and negotiation, which all parties agree they can work to. If you try to just make up the document without that agreement, then all you have is a worthless piece of paper, since nobody is going to be able to build systems around it even if they wanted to.

When all the proprietary UNIX vendors sat down together and worked out a specification for the common elements of their systems that anybody could write programs against, that was a real standards process which resulted in real benefits, because they started with the intention to make it possible to write portable software and designed a specification which they could and would all implement. When somebody just makes up a new bunch of rules off the top of their head and gets some official-sounding organisation to put out a press release, that's purely marketing, of no particular use to anybody, and it doesn't matter who the organisation is.

Re:Y'know...

Your characterization of the Groklaw crowd is quite inaccurate. Plenty of people there are familiar with standards processes. And yes, they know that there has been controversy before, but rarely has there been controversy of this magnitude, to my knowledge, NEVER in the fast-track process. The purpose of the fast-track process is to expedite the formalization of what are already de facto standards, which means standards that are well thought out and carefully written, that exist in multiple implementations, and on which there is substantial consensus. Microsoft's attempt to use the fast-track process for OOXML is outrageous given that OOXML is a bloated mess, has yet to be implemented by anyone, not even Microsoft, and is a single-company effort on which there is no consensus.

Re:

No matter how high you set the bar, there will always be an "over the top".

Ever read Milton's essay on Machiavelli? One of the points that he makes is that it's not straightforward for an outsider to judge what is barbaric in a historical or cultural cont

Re:

That's a very interesting analysis. And it makes a lot of sense.

Assassination is a lot less barbaric than a full-blown war... but less 'honorable' somehow. War, on the other hand, is more barbaric, messy and painful and supposedly more 'honorable.'

But le

Re:Works fine here in Italy

He is probably referring to the peering conflict between TeliaSonera and Cogent. See this Slashdot story [slashdot.org]. I have Telia as an ISP and can't reach Groklaw. This probably mostly effects Scandinavia.