The Inside Story on Norway's Yes to OOXML

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.

Coincidentally

He's also managed to change their domain suffix to .yes, and their country name to Yesrway.

Further coverage

Groklaw also has information on this story for those interested. But some may have missed it because it's part of the update in this story [groklaw.net].

Re:Coincidentally

Yes, you are absolutely correct. We need less yes me. Who is in agreement with Eugene. Let us all join forces and say "YES to less yes men"

Three Line Novel

At this point, in a bizarre and tasteless trans-Atlantic timewarp, Dr. Johnny Fever, Venus Flytrap, Herb Tarlek, and Jeffifer Marlow, dressed as the Spanish Inquisition, burst in, and say, in chorus:
"NO! One expects Les Nessman!"
They bundle up Eugene and haul him off to stunned looks from all present.

What can be done now?

The real question for me is what can be done now?

- demonstrations? This is what happened in Norway. Sure it would be good to have them elsewhere.

- Virgils? this is what happened in India and almost on the same level.

- moving on a building teams to stifle OOXML adoption by national governments as their standard

- ???

Re:What can be done now?

The real question for me is what can be done now?

- demonstrations? This is what happened in Norway. Sure it would be good to have them elsewhere.

- Virgils? this is what happened in India and almost on the same level.

- moving on a building teams to stifle OOXML adoption by national governments as their standard

- ???

- Profit

Nothing needs to be done

Microsoft have done it for us. The money they paid to push through their "standard" is wasted because the body the standardized it is no longer respected. Their purpose for seeking approval from a standards body has been defeated by the way in which they obtained it.

Re:Nothing needs to be done

But the ISO is also the one who approved ODF. So if ISO is no longer trustworthy, who is left to say what is a good standard. If the whole standards body has lost credibility, where can we go to find out which standards to really use? If a government is looking to mandate open standards in it's document formats, which standards body should they go to to ensure the standards chosen are actually standards?

Re:Nothing needs to be done

Presumably a government would want to mandate open standards for a reason.. other than just to be hip.. so they should do what the US military does: demand that there be at least 2 suppliers for software that can read those formats. That should just about immediately eliminate OOXML, as I hear the biggest complaint was that there is parts of it that are just not implementable by anyone but Microsoft.

Re:Nothing needs to be done

Anyone except open source programmers, since the license for ooxml is incompatible with the GPL. 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.

I'm still trying to decide if you're just a Microsoft fanboy, or an actual shill.

Re:Nothing needs to be done

bwahaha.. yes, because using someone else's SDK is "implementing the standard".

Another direction

Join OOXML forces and show just how devoted you are: In order to preserve the reputation of this beautiful standard, make sure that no company can use the name if they're not 100% compliant with the complete spec. Chances are that no product can claim full OOXML support, not even MS Office. If "OOXML" doesn't appear on any product's feature list, the standard won't matter.

Re:What can be done now?

Sell anti-OOXML T-Shirts?

Re:What can be done now?

"My Parents went to Norway and all I got was this stupid document standard"

Odd...

After the vote, did the bureaucrat jump up and starting dancing like a monkey?

After the vote did the bureaucrat start throwing chairs around?

Did the bureaucrat appear slightly chubby and a whole lot balding?

If the answer to any of the above is yes, I might be able to shed some insight on this...

ISO corruption

The whole OOXML vote debacle has really showcased corruption of the ISO. Those in the ISO who want to restore the integrity of their organization need to address the massive rule-breaking this vote and Microsoft's role in it present.

Word of advice to ISO: head in the sand is not going to help!!

Re:ISO corruption

I second this motion. Can we bring to a vote the matter of incompetence in the ISO voting procedures? Not just because this is about OOXML, but because it is so obviously filled with discontent and deceit.

In most other situations we would call for a 'do over' or call it a false start or some other phrase that describe how wrong and generally unfair it was.

Time for a do-over rule.

Re:ISO corruption

The corruption came with ECMA, so ECMA as the ISO parasitarian instrument needs to be removed: no ECMA fast-track without ECMA's special relationship...

How Microsoft corrupts the world...

...SegFaultLikeWord95DoesIt

In this case, a meatspace seg fault. The MCP is getting more powerful. We need a heroic Program to save us all.

Standards Norway's own words

on why & how they changed the vote can be found at their website:

http://www.standard.no/pronorm-3/data/f/0/18/67/6_2401_0/2008-04-01_Standards_Norway_handling_of_the_OOXML_voting_in_ISO__3.pdf [standard.no]

Re:Standards Norway's own words

on why & how they changed the vote can be found at their website:

Which was just a very long-winded way of saying that the decision had been made long ago and they just had to come up with some weasely way to push it through regardless of all the comments that weren't addressed satisfactorily, the problems with the proposed standard, and what the experts said about it.

Re:Standards Norway's own words

Actually, I thought this was the most telling line from the article:

The VP asserted that ... the most important thing now was to ensure that OOXML came under ISO's control so that it could be "further improved".

This puts me in mind of that old quote about academia "The fights are so vicious because the stakes are so small".


The delusional hubris of a (European standards group) bureaucrat that they can somehow "control" or "improve" (shit - "influence in any non-quantum way") Microsoft's behavior just makes me groan.

So what's new?

Many (if not most) similar committees and associations are made up not of the right people for the job, but instead those that were corralled into the positions or couldn't find anything better.

On the other hand, Microsoft's primary goal is to maintain their privileged monopoly wherever and however possible. I actually had an eerie conversation with a Microsoft paralegal, who described her job as "palm-greasing officials in the Asian market". She also described how the executive were no longer concerned with making money, "they're in a position to change the world". I asked her what level of government they planned to get elected, and she replied, "why would they run for office? That would be a demotion!" And that was almost 10 years ago.

Assuming she was giving a truthful account, and her office was directly below Bill Gates, so I imagine she does know what goes on, the Microsoft executive believe that since power is available to them, they are entitled to use their influence wherever and however possible, and that their ability to do so justifies itself.

So show me a group of vigilante multi-billionaires and I'll show you dozens of half-witted committees that bend to their will, despite overwhelming reasoning to do otherwise.

alternatives..

I wondered what alternative standards bodies could exist and I tried to find a web peer method that might work.

The best idea I came up with was a standard body for GPL standards based around something like sourceforge.

If people are familier with wide band delphi estimation then this next bit might sound familiar.

Everybody on sourgeforge has a rating determined by amount of code submitted, and any peer review ratings on their code - this then gives them a weighting value for voting. The more technical they are, the more code they submit the higher their rating is. Everybody can then vote on their amendments or proposals for standards and a moderation scheme would run to promote or demote comments based on their ratings. Changes can then be voted in or removed democratically and the best ideas would naturally float up.

The advantages are:-
1. very large audience peer review of any standard
2. best ideas automatically promoted (even if you are a newbie reviewer if you have a good idea then it should gather momemtum of its own and be promoted)
3. system automatically handles voting, promotion, weighting scale and is therefore impartial arbiter.
4. transparency accross the board, everybody can see how the system works
5. if anybody wants to become more influential then they have to donate more source code to be a prolific reviewer. Everybody benefits.
Ok that is an isolated example, and I chose sourceforge as a well known example.

For standards instead of source there would need to be some changes obviously.

But in this day and age, agreeing on a technical international standard seems an excellent candidate for a web based system. In reviewing this kind of thing I have always thought the more the merrier.

Anyhow, only an idea, a pipe dream really.

I now await the /. regulars to tell me what a tit I'm being and why it would never work :-(

(I also wondered on how the voting would of turned out if the current provess was peer reviewed - i.e. filmed and distributed for all to see on the standards websites.)

Re:I was kind of puzzled

I suggest you go read the article again.
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.