Brazil Appeals OOXML Decision

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Brazil is now appealing the ISO's decision to standardize OOXML, following South Africa's lead. Interestingly, part of the reason this took so long was that Microsoft supporters at the meetings kept asking for delays because they 'weren't prepared' to discuss the issues raised. And the ISO as a whole is moving rather slowly, after that delay in releasing the DIS. But at least the ISO is also rewriting the directives in a special working group so this doesn't happen again. Of course, they'd have to be strict about making sure the directives are followed for it to help."

It won't matter.

I don't care how ISO re-writes whatever.

The problem was NOT that they didn't have the rules in place.

The problem was that the rules were NOT followed. And ISO was unable (unwilling) to rectify the "errors" once they had been committed. And ISO is still unwilling to identify the individuals within its organization who committed the "errors" and take any action.

Re:It won't matter.

That's one way of looking at it.

The other way of looking at it are that the ISO is naturally really, really slow and these appeals are the appropriate first step in showing that there was a problem.

No.

The other way of looking at it are that the ISO is naturally really, really slow and these appeals are the appropriate first step in showing that there was a problem.

No. The reason ISO is slow SHOULD be to avoid errors in the process.

Fixing the errors slowly means that ISO is worthless.

And WAITING for someone to APPEAL the process means that ISO is worse than worthless. They cannot even manage their own internal systems. For a "standards" organization, that is beyond unacceptable. That means they produce corrupted standards.

As evidence, I give you OOXML.

Re:It won't matter.

That's not another way of looking at it, that's a complementary opinion.

That the final specification text for OOXML is not available [robweir.com] when it was due May 1st (or March 29th, depending on who you listen to) shows how the ISO aren't following their own rules. It also shows that there are a lot of problems getting OOXML into a state ready for public consumption because it's of such poor quality, that it was a premature abortion of a standard in no fit state to be useful to the world.

The ISO/IEC JTC1 and SC34 are now deprecated. Realy standards are made at OASIS.

Re:It won't matter.

The other way of looking at it are that the ISO is naturally really, really slow and these appeals are the appropriate first step in showing that there was a problem.

The purpose of being a slow, deliberative body is to prevent major errors from being made in the first place.

Making errors quickly and then fixing them slowly is the worst possible combination of attributes for a governing body to have.

The speed of law

Microsoft moves faster than the speed of the law.

Re:It won't matter.

South Africa's appeal says something to the effect that OOXML should have never been fast tracked much less approved. Fast Tracking is intended for mature standards that just need to be quickly rubber-stamped when there are no major issues. OOXML is not that standard. It still needs a lot of work and according to the rules, the issues should have been addressed before block vote. The ECMA simply declared that there were no major issues and moved for a block vote.

When will the US protest?

Oh, wait... sorry, forgot whose pocket my congresscritter was in. Carry on :)

Re:When will the US protest?

The US technical committee INCITS V1 was stacked [robweir.com]. Check that site for a graph of late joining members who suddenly voted for OOXML.

new rule

"Members cannot vote on any directive or standard that was introduced before they joined"

Too Little Too Late

The damage has already been done, to the ISO organization at least.

ISO = I Sold Out

The word that you can buy ISO standards.

Unless a bunch of heads roll and replaced non-corp people, the ISO would have a more credibility if they showed a price list than doing this.

Re:ISO = I Sold Out

If ISO is, itself, ISO9000-compliant then they must have procedures in place to ensure that they were at least this incompetent a year ago, from which we can extrapolate the number of bogus important standards.

Re:ISO = I Sold Out

Too soon? They already bought the standard.

This is attempting to correct the problem, yes. But saying that we should withhold judgment because ISO may redeem itself is nonsensical -- the concept of redemption implies that wrong has been done.

As it stands, ISO is worthless. If the appeal process goes anywhere, then we can talk about respecting them again.

and the briber?

ISO doesn't look good for having accepted the bribery.

What I don't understand is how Microsoft can keep pulling these sorts of stunts, and not suffer for it. What most people think is this: Office file format lock? Never realized formats could be open. WGA? Excused and forgiven. Bundling? Barely noticed, and when it is, feel that's a good thing. The anti-trust lawsuit? Delayed to death, then watered down to nothing. The CPU tax? Under the radar. DRM, and the attempt to suppress all non-MS multimedia formats? Mostly swallowed, because artists deserve a chance to make a profit. Though I understand Zune isn't doing too well. Miserable security? Fooled. Think that's normal, just part of life to have to live with Norton AV, and all the slowness and inconvenience. Vista? Jury is still out on that one, maybe this is the big one that will finally get people to question MS. As for this shenanigan, it will go unnoticed.

Why wait?

Why one earth should Brazil wait for MS to be ready? It is Brazil that is (theoretically) in charge here, not MS. If MS is not ready by the set date, too bad. After all, this isn't supposed to me MS's format anymore.

Re:Why wait?

I think you misread the summary. The situation is like this:

In Brazil, there is a working group made up of representatives of government, trade, and public organizations. Some of the trade reps to the working group are pro-MS and pro-OOXML. The group majority was ready to protest, but the OOXML-supporting minority asked them to wait so they could organize their side of the story. The working group, being made up of thoughtful and respectful people, gave them their chance to come up with counter-arguments. When nothing convincing was presented in time before the formal protest had to be lodged, they went and lodged the protest.

This doesn't have to do with the Brazilian government vs. Microsoft Corp. (at least, not on the surface). This was a group of people who represent Brazil at the ISO, some of whom happen to support MS and their views on the world.

Re:Why wait?

I think all the posts and the lead story misrepresent the position. Brazil is sending a "protest" against the BRM and delay in publishing the standard; it is not appealing.

The author of the linked article felt strongly enough about the distinction between protest and appeal that he has resigned his position.

I do not understand fully the difference between the protest and an appeal, but strongly suspect that the former does not lead to a requirement to re-open consideration of whether the proposal should be accepted as a standard.

As the author makes clear in his article, M$ has triumphed again, excellent meeting engineers that they are, and Brazil and the rest of us have lost again.

MOD PARENT UP

The article is very difficult to read, due to poor English (no offense meant - I don't speak a word of Portuguese!) However, having waded through it, it is clear the parent is correct, and the summary is completely wrong.

The article's author is resigning from the ABNT, specifically because it is not appealing. It is only "protesting", whatever that means. The article claims the failure to appeal is due to Microsoft supporters claiming they did not have enough time to weigh the arguments, which sounds a bit rich in the circumstances.

Why is ISO rewriting the rules?

Is the ISO rewriting the rules so the protest and appeals cannot happen again?

or

Is the ISO rewiting the rules so the corruption cannot occur again?

I would not bet my life on the second.

Re:Why is ISO rewriting the rules?

As mentioned earlier this week on Groklaw, we don't really know one way or the other, as the ISO group working on this is doing it in secret. Maybe a list of the members of the group and their affiliations would help.

Wrong Headline!

Brasil does NOT appeal OOXML decission but only PROTESTS against it because a Microsoft SHILL within their standards body imposed his/her view over even the FIRST NO vote of brasil regarding the standard.

Re:first post!

The license that the patented parts of OOXML is available under is not compatible with any open source license [softwarefreedom.org].

Instead developers do rely on reverse engineering laws (which have some provisions for patents) as they always have in the past for developing .doc filters.

If developers choose to ignore both the SFLC opinion of those who wrote the GPL and if they choose to ignore reverse engineering procedures and write ooxml filters anyway this does not make it lawful or disprove my point.

OOXML is against Open Source from a legal standpoint, an existing OSS software standpoint (doesn't build upon web standards like SVG but instead proposes things like VML), and against the philosophy of open development (developed at Ecma where even people like Goldberg could only ask for more information from Microsoft rather than actually helping fix or design the format)

Re:Opendoc

I certainly don't want to make light of Microsoft's blatant manipulation of the processes, but in some sense the Microsoft Office formats are `already in use and mature'. Anyone on a standards committee who is only a simple Windows/Office user because s/he is an expert in an entirely different field, may well be astonished that people would be against fast-tracking Microsoft's standards. After all, it's the only document standard they use daily. And of course all protests against the standardization are troublesome meddling by ivory-tower activists.

I believe that you are incorrect. It is my understanding that Microsoft's current document output formats do not meet this standard, and will not for some time. Thus, they are not in use at all and actually probably never will be (they are already planning a revision to the spec, which probably also won't be implemented).

Re:Opendoc

I certainly don't want to make light of Microsoft's blatant manipulation of the processes, but in some sense the Microsoft Office formats are `already in use and mature'.

If Microsoft had submitted Office 95 formats to the fast track, that would make sense; the formats are widely used and fixed in one format. There are issues with the format that would have to be addressed, and Microsoft would have to make those changes to its Office suite to conform to the new standard, but it would be doable.

In this case however, they submitted a format via EMCA that was bloated, broken, has undisclosed parts that are not documented, and which isn't even compatable with the single product, offered by them, that purports to support the format.

Of course, conflations like you've made above are part of the issue here as well: because Microsoft has a legacy Office set of formats, people might be surprised that others are so against this specific and distinctly seperate format because they think they're the same thing.

However, people on *technical* standards committees are (supposed to be) there because they know the details and the technology. They are by definition experts in the field, otherwise they wouldn't be part of that specific standards committee; they'd be in the one covering technology in their own field of expertise.

The problem here is that a lot of people "from the community" joined because Microsoft paid/pressured them to, with the instruction to push OOXML through. From what I've heard, none of these members actually have a clue about OOXML or office document standards.

This is the problem that ISO is purportedly trying to fix.