South Africa Appeals ISO Decision On OOXML 79
mauritzhansen sends us a blog post by Steve Pepper, former chairman of the Norwegian standards committee responsible for evaluating OOXML, reporting that the South African national standards body, SABS, has appealed against the result of the OOXML DIS 29500 ballot in ISO. From the blog: "In a letter sent to the General Secretary of the IEC (co-sponsor with ISO of JTC1), the SABS expresses its 'deep concern over the increasing tendency of international organizations to use the JTC 1 process to circumvent the consensus-building process that is the cornerstone to the success and international acceptance of ISO and IEC standards.' Having resigned as Chairman of the Norwegian committee responsible for considering OOXML for exactly this reason, I congratulate South Africa on its willingness to stand up for the principles on which standardization work should be based."
They can't do that (Score:3, Interesting)
Think of it as creative interpretation of the Directives.
Re:They can't do that (Score:4, Insightful)
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Nah, I think Microsoft actually likes ISO because they've found ways to distort it. However, the gp post is spot on: ISO will either clean up its act or lose credibility -- and for an organization whose existence relies on credibility that means extinction.
Re:Kinda ironic (Score:4, Insightful)
The objections become bellows when the same company, impatient with the approval process, sets out to buy votes to get the "standard" approved with minimal change.
I for one have a great deal of distaste for fanatics of all stripes, and I'm afraid Stallman and his more opinionated supporters do qualify as fanatics, but the process to date of getting OOXML qualified as an ISO standard has been a farce, and no amount of whinging on slashdot by AC fanbois (or MS sockpuppets) is going to change that.
Re:Kinda ironic (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not? The ISO mandate is to have one standard per task and ensure that any new standard should reuse other ISO standards and not try to reinvent the wheel.
Any company submits a duplicate standard and reinvents ISO standardized from the date stamp to graphics files for no other reason than to get government contracts and ensure vendor lock-in, it's right to complain no matter who is doing the submission.
> I for one have a great deal of distaste for fanatics of all stripes, and I'm afraid Stallman and his more opinionated supporters do qualify as fanatics
Actually, even though I don't subscribe to Stallman's rigid views, I don't see a problem of them.
He and his followers are equivalent to the Amish. The want to live in a world with certain constraints so that they can live in a society with certain rewards.
Anyone who's been the victim of vendor lock-in or abandon-ware or forced obsolescence or had to support software where you don't have access to the source (so you don't even know what's going on) or has had to deal with security (e.g. Sony CDs) or has had to deal with paternalistic vendors that say "You don't need to now that" or "You can only run this software on hardware the vendor decides when the vendor decides for how long the vendor decides in which way the vendor decides and the vendor has the right to change terms whenever he feels like it", should feel sympathetic.
I (or my family or my work) been burned by all the above, and I can understand why someone would want to build all the tools necessary so that they can become self sufficient.
OOXML violates pretty much every one of these issues raised.
I think your distaste has more to do with the evangelicalism within the Stallman camp. There's nothing wrong with evangelicalism per say. How are people supposed to know that there is a better way if they're not informed. The problem comes when the evangelical education and invitation turns pushiness and forced choice. As Sir Winston Churchill once stated, "A [bad] fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.".
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I would take Winston Churchill a step further and say that a bad fanatic is one who can't change his mind, but essentially your point is correct.
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Why not? The ISO mandate is to have one standard per task and ensure that any new standard should reuse other ISO standards and not try to reinvent the wheel.
I believe the grandparent was referring to to standards *in general*. That is, if they don't:
1) duplicate large parts of an existing standard
2) have an extremely large standard go through the fast track process instead of a more thorough review.
Grandparent does make one mistake, though: the "works like XX application" have been deprecated, and *supposedly* they have been defined in that deprecated section -- IE, use only for interpreting older documents, not new ones, as I understand MS's definition.
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Grandparent does make one mistake, though: the "works like XX application" have been deprecated, and *supposedly* they have been defined in that deprecated section -- IE, use only for interpreting older documents, not new ones, as I understand MS's definition.
The last I heard these were in "optional" sections, not in deprecated ones. That is to say, MS can and probably will use them in new documents they create, but others won't be required to implement them to meet the spec. Of course this still means documents will slightly "break" when switching between applications and as such still undermines the ability of OOXML to bring all the benefits of a truly open standard. For that matter, since OOXML has not yet been fully implemented by anyone, there is no reaso
Re:Kinda ironic (Score:4, Insightful)
The text is huge, much bigger than most other standards, so there wasn't enough time to review it thoroughly enough, and even then the first vote generated far too many comments to address in the time given before the resolution meeting.
Also the fact the text was written by a single company, without any input from other interested parties.
Instead, it should have been submitted through the normal ISO process, so that the standard could have been brought to a usable state (however long that took) before it was submitted for voting.
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Cuttin it close (Score:1)
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Eh, he was sleeping.
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It just seem that you are not aware of recent news [news24.com]....
I was making an observation not a recommendation...
Look like MS doesn't understand South Africa ... (Score:4, Informative)
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Depends on what your definition is. He does not live in South Africa (he lives in London), but he does like the image.
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The term makes me smile. It is actually much more descriptive and less confusing than the one MS invented.
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Some extra info (Score:5, Informative)
Ubuntu (Score:4, Insightful)
3 cheers (Score:5, Informative)
Hip Hip Hurray!!
BTW, the pdf letter linked in TFA is a great read, perfect summary of all the problems that were so apparent to anyone actually looking into the whole mess.
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Way to not even read the article summary.
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Take this analogy - quirky, but perhaps appropriate - say you have a high tech company and you find a serious flaw in your software. You throw all of your developers on this issue. It takes weeks. Yet, Thursday night, the janitorial staff come by and vacuum the floors and clean the washrooms. Surely there are more important things to be worried abo
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Who has filled the Soviet void? And since the ANC was always backed by the USSR, is "democratic" SA a 2nd World country?
see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_World [wikipedia.org]
http://www.libertyfilmfestival.com/libertas/wp-content/pMandela1.jpg [libertyfilmfestival.com]
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Having recently visited San Francisco, I must say that I could not wrestle from the impression that the US is starting to look like a second world country. Prices for food, clothing and public transport were far cheaper than in Europe. Also, the number of people you can find (living) on the streets who have not changed their clothes the last year is staggering. Beggars and outcasts on almost every street corner. Labour seems very cheap.
And at the Moscone Center (JavaOne) they had at least 6 employees telli
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South Africa is a 3rd world country with a small 1st world portion - but overall the description of a 3rd world would be 100% correct. As for the South African Buro of Standards (SABS), there competency has been highly suspect the past few years.
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another cornerstone: having an implementation (Score:4, Insightful)
However it's freakin' hilarious/sad/odd that there actually isn't even ONE implementation of OOXML and it was approved. Doesn't the ISO have any standards for standards? Or is it just a matter of gaming the process? Maybe the ISO itself should be reconsidered...
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OSI_model [wikipedia.org]
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Why? What is wrong with that? Perhaps you're thinking of fast track standards (what OOXML was in). They're designed to codify something that is widespread, has multiple implementation/manufacturers.
Something like C++ never has any conformant (or nearly) implementations at the time of standardisation. So, it takes a long time to thrash out as
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Re:another cornerstone: having an implementation (Score:4, Insightful)
NB I'm not saying that OOXML is a good standard.
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However, OOXML *was* fasttracked, and as I understand the purpose of fasttracking, it *IS* for standards that are already in wide use. If you go with the proposition that the Ecma standard which eventually became ISO OOXML was the standard that was submitted, then there was exactly
were those other standards "fast tracked?" (Score:1, Insightful)
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These were fully standardized, through the complete exacting process, which allowed the opportunity to ensure consistency of the standard.
Also, while there was no implementation of "standard C", there were implementations of "C", pre-standard C implementations.
Demonstrated the feasibility of having a "C standard".
There is no reference implementation of MSOOXML to demonstrate the consistency/feasibility of a standardized OOXML implementation.
Cyberpunk (Score:5, Insightful)
The first time I saw this was actually Max Headroom (I suppose that show could be called the grandfather of cyberpunk).
It always seemed like fantasy to me (a pretty horrifying one), but nothing that could come true.
What's going on these days though feels like the first battles. Industries placing people in top government positions, controlling votes, manipulating laws and standards, Chevron killing villagers who are protesting, all the private police forces protecting industrial concerns in Iraq (and being better equipped than the solders to do so)...
I'm surprised they were as accurate as they were, and I trust their predictions for our future in a corporate-run world if we let it go on--not that I know what to do about it...
We've always been able to overthrow governments that became too problematic. How do you overthrow a multinational conglomerate that is in control of multiple governments? How do you even know who to fight?
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That said, you're right--these are the first battles, and I fear we the people are losing.
Sean
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I think Blade Runner, Neuromancer and Brazil might have been a bit more influential.
I loved the 20 Minutes Into the Future/Max Headroom series, but they always stood on the shoulders of some fairly large giants.
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Only quibble is how far back "cyberpunk" goes, any grandfather is certainly older than Max Headroom. Check out Larry McCaffery's anthology "Storming the Reality Studio" and its Cyberpunk 101: A Schematic Guide. It starts with 1818's Frankenstein and goes up from there. Viewable at Google Book Search:
http://books.google.com/books?id=qcd-pFFEtHIC&dq=storming+the+reality+studio&pg=PP1&ots=M6Iri6TXg6&sig=PV88FEsDxjZROKv_Xl9yQJv5vdw&hl=en&prev=htt [google.com]
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As support sign the Hague Declaration (Score:1, Informative)