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Norway's Yes-To-OOXML Is Formally Protested
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Mar 31, 2008 07:08 PM
from the how-not-to-get-accepted dept.
from the how-not-to-get-accepted dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Norway's yes-to-OOXML may tip the vote in favor of accepting it as an ISO-standard, but the committee chairman just faxed a formal protest to the ISO. 'I am writing to you in my capacity as Chairman (of 13 years standing) of the Norwegian mirror committee to ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34. I wish to inform you of serious irregularities in connection with the Norwegian vote on ISO/IEC DIS 29500 (Office Open XML) and to lodge a formal protest. You will have been notified that Norway voted to approve OOXML in this ballot. This decision does not reflect the view of the vast majority of the Norwegian committee, 80% of which was against changing Norway's vote from No with comments to Yes.'"
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[+]
OOXML Will Pass Amid Massive Irregularities 329 comments
Tokimasa notes a CNet blog predicting that OOXML will make the cut. Updegrove agrees, as does the OpenMalasia blog. Reports of irregularities continue to surface, such as this one from Norway — "The meeting: 27 people in the room, 4 of which were administrative staff from Standard Norge. The outcome: Of the 24 members attending, 19 disapproved, 5 approved. The result: The administrative staff decided that Norway wants to approve OOXML as an ISO standard." Groklaw adds reportage of odd processes in Germany and Croatia.
Firehose:Norway's Yes-to-OOXML is formally protested by Anonymous Coward
[+]
The Inside Story on Norway's Yes to OOXML 254 comments
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.
[+]
Your Rights Online: Unix Group Takes UK Standards Body To Court Over OOXML 229 comments
superglaze writes "Halfway through the two-month window of opportunity during which OOXML's ISO standardization can be derailed by a formal objection from a national standards body, the UK Unix Users Group is trying to force the British Standards Institution to do just that. According to the Unix Users Group, the BSI used a flawed decision-making process when they chose to approve OOXML in the ISO vote. 'The UKUUG is also folding in many other complaints about Office Open XML (OOXML), such as unresolved patent issues and a lack of completion in the specification's documentation, and is calling for the High Court of Justice to force a judicial review of the BSI's decision.' This is not the first time a country's ISO vote has been challenged."
[+]
ISO Puts OOXML On Hold 103 comments
schliz alerts us that ISO, in response to the four appeals (Venezuela, India, Brazil, South Africa) filed in recent weeks, has put the OOXML standardization process on hold. Here is ISO's press release, which says that ISO/IEC DIS 29500 will not be published for at least "several months" while the appeals process goes forward.
Update: 06/11 10:13 GMT by KD : Reader Alsee points out that the fourth officially recognized appealing country is Venezuela, not Denmark as originally stated. The protests of Denmark and Norway are being disregarded, as they do not come from the administrative heads of their national organizations.
Update: 06/11 10:13 GMT by KD : Reader Alsee points out that the fourth officially recognized appealing country is Venezuela, not Denmark as originally stated. The protests of Denmark and Norway are being disregarded, as they do not come from the administrative heads of their national organizations.
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Money can't buy you love. (Score:5, Interesting)
Or truth or science. A lie is a lie no matter how many people you pay to repeat it. Corruption has no place in any technical organization that will be litened to and respected.
Groklaw predicts more challenges [groklaw.net]
and notes the results will now be announced on Wednesday [reuters.com], so and ISO standard for M$XML is not going to be one of the worst April Fools jokes of the next decade.Yes, money can buy you love (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Money can't buy you love. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Stupid governments (Score:5, Interesting)
This is why we need open source governance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_governance [wikipedia.org]
Nice Sentiment (Score:5, Interesting)
I leave it to the EU (as the US DoJ clearly has no interest in this any more) to take Microsoft to task, and hopefully empty their coffers a little bit. That seems to be the only thing to be done with Microsoft until the time comes when they're anti-competitive behavior is finally met by government agencies of sufficient power to break the company up.
Re:Nice Sentiment (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Nice Sentiment (Score:5, Insightful)
We already had OOXML rubber-stamped by Ecma, proving, once again, that Ecma likes to rubber-stamp things. Having it ISO-certified, while a blow, is perhaps not the most serious result of this...
If OOXML is certified, we're put in a lose/lose situation. Either we accept it, and OOXML becomes a "standard", even though it really isn't -- or we continue to write letters and refuse to accept it as a "standard", which implies we can't trust ISO -- which means we're just about out of standards organizations to trust. And a world without official standards is a world of defacto standards, which means Microsoft will win every future battle.
Think of it this way: If we couldn't trust the w3c, or the Acid2/3 tests, the standard for websites would likely fall back to "Works Best with Internet Explorer 8." That's effectively what's about to happen to everything ISO.
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Re:Nice Sentiment (Score:5, Informative)
Even if OOXML becomes an ISO standard, that doesn't mean we're obligated to use it. For one thing, it won't be the only ISO standard for documents: we already have ODF. For another, ISO certification still will not make it an open standard. Governments and other organizations that require documents to conform to an open standard will still have to use ODF, not OOXML. We need to continue pressure for the use of open standards and to refuse to use OOXML ourselves.
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Re:Nice Sentiment (Score:5, Interesting)
With Microsoft's Office monopoly becoming further entrenched as a side effect. Haha, side effect? More like the point of the whole operation.
Here's the deal as it stands right now (or rather shortly before this farce began):
- ISO was well respected.
- Open Document Format was accepted by ISO as a standard.
These two things combined give Open Office (and any suite that implements ODF, since its an ACTUAL open standard so you can do that) a lot of built-in approval, and makes them look very good to governments/organizations who are starting to mandate open formats for documentation. This is bad for MS, half of their business being the Office monopoly (which supports and is supported by the Windows monopoly).
So what's their strategy here? Well one (or both) of two things happen:
- Their BS non-open "open standard" is accepted, so they can claim their format meets the needs of governments who mandate open standards.
- ISO is no longer respected as a standards organization, so their approval of ODF no longer means as much.
Whichever happens, their little problem with ODF being a standard goes away and MS Office remains the only "standard" (de-facto or ISO-approved) that matters. They don't really care which. Oh no, their manipulation of the process is exposed! Guess that means you can't trust ISO any more! Frankly I give even odds to both happening. But even if ISO ends up rejecting OOXML, it's going to take a hell of a lot to stop the second from happening.
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Re:Nice Sentiment (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Nice Sentiment (Score:5, Informative)
In this case only Microsoft can possibly implement it, because various sections refer to proprietary MS software and basically say "do it like that".
Since only Microsoft knows what that actually means, nobody else can implement it. Therefore it is worthless as a "standard".
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The only way this ballot makes sense... (Score:5, Insightful)
Is if ISO contracted Diebold, er, I mean, Premier Election systems, to tally the votes. This is the most ludicrous thing I've seen since 2000.
HardeeHarHar!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:HardeeHarHar!!! (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:HardeeHarHar!!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Had Norway been corrupter, it might have been silent corruption.
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In related news today. . (Score:5, Funny)
Quality base-level of ISO very LOW (Score:5, Interesting)
If you want to see how bad was this process handled, see one of its awfuls deliverables.
Open the document "Response_DE-0028_dates_v9.doc" in this zip
http://www.itscj.ipsj.or.jp/sc34/open/0989_reference_docs.zip [ipsj.or.jp]
This is one of the changes frenetically [ece.ntua.gr] accepted [tbray.org] in BRM, regarding treatments of dates in OOXML. See the salad of colors trying to explain the modifications. And this is a fix ( BRM ) of a fix ( one of ECMA 1027 proposed fixes ) of a NB comment of a draft text ( original ECMA submission ).
And this document contradicts this another BRM document: http://www.itscj.ipsj.or.jp/sc34/open/0989.pdf [ipsj.or.jp] because the first says that the .DOC file replaces ECMA responses 18 and 43 but the "Response_DE-0028_dates_v9.doc" document says that it replaces ECMA responses 18, 43, 76 and 690 !
ECMA and Microsoft have not provided a final text with all this changes applied. In the BRM they frenetically changed Scope, Conformance , Schemas , and lot of normative text. Microsoft is now rushing to get a final text in less than one month, to comply with ISO normative.
This is how ISO delivers IT international standards, mandating fundamental changes to drafts, leaving national bodies with the only alternative to cast a political [slashdot.org] vote leaving aside the technical content of the specification.
Congratulations to the countries that had *balls* and didn't agree with this way of deliver standards to people:
And congratulations Microsoft, your friendly little countries supposedly experts in XML document description languages ;-) ( now ISO P-members ), who joined ISO JTC1 just to cast an unconditional-yes-votes [noooxml.org] payed off:
There's an important lesson here (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:There's an important lesson here (Score:5, Interesting)
As a good parent, I let her. That's the "fair" way to cheat, but I don't let her make them up as she goes like Hillary Clinton and Microsoft. I make sure we agree to the rules before we play.
The ISO should have done the same. I hope Microsoft is up against the wall for this crap.
--
Toro
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Send in the Lost Vikings (Score:5, Funny)
I think Linus should go over there and kick some ass, too.
--
Toro
O...M...G... (Score:5, Insightful)
Use the Judo Argument (Score:5, Interesting)
Further, it appears that the real reason they did this is so that they can put that all-important checkmark in the box that says, "Interoperates with ISO standard file formats" when trying to sell MS Office into accounts.
OK, great.
Now PROVE IT!
Prove that MS Office is OOXML compliant. Last I heard, OOXML was like Office 2007, but not really there. Last I heard, OOXML was an incomplete spec with no full implementation.
If Microsoft is going to to for that "ISO standard file format" checkbox, for that matter if anyone is going for an ISO standard checkbox, isn't it necessary that there be compliance testing? And long as we're compliance testing, the certification of compliance should NEVER be given until the appropriate committee evaluates the product against the spec and decides that that the product unambiguously implements the spec.
No full, unambiguous compliance, no check in the little box.
No matter how long the evaluation takes.
...obvious innit? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Norway corrupt too? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Microsoft is in for a PR nightmare... (Score:5, Insightful)
There are certain government regulations about acceptable file specifications. This is to preserve interoperability, facilitate competition between vendors, and to guarantee accessibility in one or two hundred years.
By getting this sham declared a "standard," they can continue to sell to certain government agencies, who can continue to produce docs that are only readable on proprietary Microsoft software and platforms.
Microsoft could most definitely offer a valid save-as file filter to create ODF documents. But it is in their best financial interest to retain user lock-in as much as possible. Ironically, this is exactly the sort of thing that standards bodies like the ISO are supposed to prevent. If this goes through, one must seriously reconsider the weight attached to an ISO certification.
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