Open Letter to ISO Calls For Standardization of Process 108
In a recent open letter to the ISO FreeCode CEO Geir Isene calls for standardization in the processes used by the ISO to help prevent future OOXML blunders. "It seems ISO is not prepared for a politicized process where a big and influential commercial enterprise will use any means possible to push its own standard through to certification. Committees are flooded by the vendor in support of the standard. Votes are bought and results are hijacked. Several national bodies have flawed and skewed procedures open for corruption."
calling for standardization in ISO (Score:1, Insightful)
I thought standardization was the point of ISO.
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Re: calling for standardization in ISO (Score:5, Funny)
Then we'll need an ISO standard for creating ISO standards for creating ISO standards.
Then we'll need... I don't think we'll ever catch up.
Like RFC 2026? (Score:5, Insightful)
welcome (Score:2)
Standards are great (Score:1)
Do as we say, not as we do... (Score:1)
Then let us name it: (Score:5, Funny)
IEEE as well (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:IEEE as well (Score:5, Insightful)
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Clearly, ISO is NOT ISO2000 compliant or even close.
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Were you thinking of this?
http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=9E6 A38B9-89B6-4C28-BD7D-B117D22E7C6D [cbronline.com]
China accuses IEEE of wireless standards conspiracy
In its appeal, China has asked the ISO to investigate 'whether the ethical and procedural rules and principals have indeed been violated and whether the ballots have been unfairly influenced by those ethical and procedural violations,' according to the report in the Xinhua media agency.
What we need is a standard (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:What we need is a standard (Score:5, Funny)
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Clearly, a standard is needed in order to establish a standards committee.
- RG>
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Standardized standardization? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Sure, but... (Score:4, Funny)
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You don't understand ... (Score:2)
Whao there.... (Score:3, Funny)
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You gotta be kidding... (Score:5, Insightful)
Whatever the merit of his suggestions, the idea that ISO is new to high-pressure corporate gamesmanship and requires a condescending lecture from a titan of industry like "the CEO of Freecode" has to qualify as the laugh of the day.
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ISO is supposed to serve all of us (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re:ISO is supposed to serve all of us (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, the company i work for is member of our national standard body (which in turn is member of ISO).
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Get a grip (Score:2)
Man, that went right over your head. The parent isn't saying we should sit around, and isn't even criticizing Freecode's "CEO". It's saying that ISO is perfectly at home with political pressure, not exactly a virgin in the field, and Freecode's "CEO" doesn't carry a lot of weight anyway, not exactly being a "heavy hitte
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Please, don't piss up a rope while we're trying to wipe your ass.
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Because they are in Microsoft's pocket, and thought they could railroad one of their corporate buddies through? Maybe that's a paranoid view, maybe it's a realistic view. What do you think?
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But I'm not actually a sitting member of the ISO, so what the fuck do I know?
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ISO is perfectly at home with political pressure, why did it take the outrage of the entire community to make them relent after they succumbed to political pressure?
They did ? When ? In what way ?
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Re: You gotta be kidding... (Score:5, Insightful)
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After Web 2.0; discussions on forums like Slashdot, Digg etc. have shown that they can be a powerful influence on individuals, companies and public entities. The recent admission by the Vista technical team of a design flaw that throttles network performance when playing audio
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Hmmm... I always wanted to give a piece of my mind to NASA, every time they screw up, I thought "even *I* can handle fireworks twice each year, what's so god damn complex".
You know what, I'm gonna send them an open letter.
- CEO of my mom's basement.
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If everyone was as worried about 'speaking out of turn' as you would like them to be, nothing would ever get any better. The world is full of people who see that that something is wrong with the world, but instead of doing something about it, they sit in their basements wishing someone else would do something. But if anyone ever does try to fix thin
Just the opposite call may be a better idea... (Score:3, Insightful)
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Do people really think they're all in there just winging it? There are already many rules, processes, procedures, etc. I don't even know what it means to "standardize the standardizatio
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You're referring to the situation in Sweden, right? There's a lot more suspicious going on than just that one incident.
12 new countries joined the ISO OOXML committee this year. 10 of those voted yes.
Lots of new participants in the national standards boards. Most of which contributed little to the national reviews of the proposed standard and voted 'yes with no comments'.
I'll not claim outright fraud on MS' part, but if the 'if it quac
Ummm, maybe not. (Score:2)
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And when Microsoft can purchase votes at will, who is it, precisely, that you think would prevent it from being gamed? Some meta-level of benign dictators who can ignore the votes of the membership when they feel like it? Is that OK, as long as it's "organic"?
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Only if we think out of the box and create a new paradigm.
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First tho (Score:2)
It shouldn't be a big deal... it's a fairly standard problem.
And then... (Score:1)
ISO must introduce fairness as well... (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Over 67% of P-grade members to vote Yes.
2. Less than 25% overall members could vote No.
The scope for abuse wiht the above criteria exists because 'countries' like Khazakstan, Cote' de Ivorie and Cyprus have equal voting rights; and can become P-members as well. So, the ISO could consider modifying the voting requirements on the lines of the Senate / House pattern:
1. The over 67% P-grade members criterion to be amended as "Positive votes corresponding to over 67% of the total population represented". Populous natins like India, China, the UK, Brazil have all voted No. The present ISO rules allow this popular opinion to be sidelined.
2. Secondly, lots of new 'countries' have opted for voting and P-status. None of these have participated or voted in any other sphere of the ISO actvities. This points strongly to financial inducements and corruption, and cannot be dismissed as coincidence. The rules must be altered before the BRM in February.
3. Thirdly, Microsoft has admitted to wrong-doing in the voting process in Sweden. This alone ought to be sufficient for the ISO to null and void the entire submission, and debar said firm for a minimum period. There is no credibility if rules are blindly applied, when benefitting parties themselves are guilty of subversion. This is similar to the submission of licenses to the OSI - the standards bodies must take into account past conduct and sincerity; not just rule on technicalities.
4. Fourthly, the "Yes, with comments" option must be removed. This is meaningless, and mischevous. What incentive does a vested interest have in listening to these comments, and redressing the grievances?
5. The ISO must take a clear stance wrt patents. Any patent-encumbered submission must be rejected until:
a. The submission is amended so as to be patent-free
b. The patents in question have expired all over the world.
More later.
Borat? (Score:4, Insightful)
a. The submission is amended so as to be patent-free
b. The patents in question have expired all over the world.
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Which at that point would be absolutely nothing, because Microsoft would have their kludge of a format declared a "standard" and at that point the managers have no incentive to allow further improvements.
Re:ISO must introduce fairness as well... (Score:4, Insightful)
By population: Should Nigeria have more say than France on nuclear standards?
By economic power: Should the US have more say on kimchi than Korea? (yeah, I'm stretching there, but hopefully you get the point.)
By ISO membership: well, you're looking at the effect of that.
And so on.
It might just be a matter of selecting the least worst.
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I, for one, welcome our new standardized Mandarin overlords.
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Please note that even if China, India and Brazil voted together, they would be well short of 67%.
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Patents may seem like a bad idea in ISO standards, but I would not disbar them outright. Would you really want ISO to set a standard on (say) aviation safety and pick patent-free solutions over superior patent-encumbered solutions?
Of course, ISO should make it very clear that any company representative at an ISO meeting automatically
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Sure, because we all know a Senate can't be corrupt.
My guess is the whole point of the ISO process for standardizing processes NOT being standardized is this: the lack of standardization negates (as far as I can think of at the
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That would give too much power for the government of populous countries (and I'm not saying this because I live in a small country. I live in Brasil, a quite big country). I, as a techie, would suggest some kind of middle ground: for examp
Standardisation will make things worse (Score:3, Informative)
I don't think standardisation will help. On the contrary, a rigid well documented standardised procedure for approvals will make it far easier for a large corporation to understand the process and exploit or subvert it, with ISO then stuck in its own standards.
What's more important is transparency, that each member documents exactly the process by which it reached a particular decision, and that decisions within each member of ISO, not necessarily across members, are roughly consistent.
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We don't necessarily need each country to standardize to what another country is doing. That might not fit with their culture. But if the process, whatever it is, was transparent, then we could minimize corruption.
Whiny little whatever (Score:2)
How old is this CEO - 13? He sounds like a whiny little whatever.
In any case, he's late to the party. Vendors ha
Re:Whiny little whatever (Score:5, Informative)
More like 31.
Quote [isene.com]:"On the professional side: After 10 years as the CEO of the recruitment company U-MAN Norge AS, I moved on and started my own consulting company Creo Pario AS. I then started working for the leading Norwegian Linux company Linpro AS. From March 2003 till March 2004 I was the CEO. In the summer of 2004 I started my own company - FreeCode It is fully dedicated to free software. As of February 2006, we are 15 people and expanding quickly.
On the private side: I was born in Oslo, Norway in 1966. I have been a scientologist since 1984 (see my rather out-dated scientology home page). I am spiritual rather than materialistic. I believe in the good in people and that everyone can reach their potential. I believe that giving is more important than receiving and that being productive toward a constructive goal is what make people happy." (emphasis mine)
Any further comment — except this one — seems void.
CC.
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2007 - 1966 = 41
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Buyout? (Score:3, Interesting)
Hey got an idea (Score:3, Funny)
2. Join ISO as a coting member
3. Say you will vote No with comments
4. ???
5. profit
If they do find a solution (Score:1)
Oversite Panel (Score:3, Interesting)
All that is required is a oversite panel. At the first hint of something not exactly right the panel would have the athority to halt the proess and investigate the problem.
This coupled with the requirment of P contries to be active participents within the ISO would also go along way to preventing this method of abuse.
In addition say you have to be an active observer for 2 years before applying for P status or something like that and in order to maintain your P status you have to be an ongoing active participent in n% of the processes up for discussion.
XML parsers are generic (Score:2)
Hell, I'll even parse both formats or convert one into another with same XML parsers.
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UEsDBBQAAAAIACBxKyxk+mOemWUK A ABWJAAMAAAAMDM0MC03NTAuZG9j7FxdjBtZVq5k8oPJeH/Y
S SSQsO5Gi7Zb2/HYVf5NVosc98+0End7XO4EtLNC1eXrdk3KVUV VuTs9gJgHdp9XQhoJnmYfWBjg
AQRCwAtaCfHCQxBvCAnBSqB 9WAkEK5hdYMI596f+7Ot08oylSrXLdb577rnnnHvuuefmb5599 h+/
9Yc/9U9a4fMV7TXtk+cl7Vrm2c/AdemK+PIZTXsN/r4Of 37y/PlzfPTxa5r2Q7h+BNd/w/U/cP0v
XJ/A9RwuDd6fwvUDu A6uatozuL4GDTyH630A+k+4Fj+maX8F10FJ034Xrrd/HJ7D9as 3NO1f4fo3
uLSypj2A65twvfMpTfsPuH7l09AmXL8EfP0QrvP PwvtwP
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That's only the encoding.
That's just telling you how to obtain the bytes back.
The problem is _meaning_. If I define a binary blob in my document,
and it is not standardized how I should interpret the thing
[ex: interpret this as an XY object in Word97]
knowing the bytes gets you nowhere.
Microsoft relies exactly on this confusion to try to
pass their format as "open". Don't be fooled.
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That's the case with any XML document, whether Microsoft's or "open". The point seems moot.
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What you need to know is all the stuff that XML doesn't specify.
That's the case with any XML document, whether Microsoft's or "open". The point seems moot.
No, it isn't!
The semantics of an XHTML file, for example, are precisely specified (and if that is not the case so that there be underspecified points, that is a bug in the specification and the intent of everyone involved is that it be corrected) MS's "open" format is nowhere close to that (neither wrt the specification of the semantics nor wrt the intent...)
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Hah. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's just the usual Microsoft doing "version 1.0" of "Influencing Standards Bodies" really badly. Wait till their 4th or 5th try at it.
Hardly anyone making new standards is really interested in the good of the industry much less the world.
In the past the geeks made TCP/IP etc because it was just a bunch of geeks who wanted to get things to _work_ and get stuff done.
Nowadays, it's "How can we influence the standard so we can get an advantage".
If someone actually comes up with a decent standard the competitors will just try to come up with something different.
Lots of crap standards nowadays - look at WiFi - they could have taken a leaf from SSL, and had a standard that allowed _secure_anonymous_ connections, but instead you get the huge mess that's WiFi- where it's easy to be open and insecure, and difficult to be secure.
Look at the upcoming HTML standards, all "throttles" and no "brakes", nobody _really_ cares about security. They just tell people to "please drive safely, and you should stay in your lane and not crash please raise a security exception instead", but do they really lift a finger to help?
AMD come up with Hyper Transport? No way is Intel going to support it.
And then there's RDRAM and the whole bunch of people trying to get their patents into standards.
A Possible Solution? (Score:2, Interesting)
Better than ANSI or IEC is not enough... (Score:2, Insightful)
Ethics (Score:2, Insightful)
So, all those that did take the bribes, all those that did the dirty work for MS here should be held accountable.
Doesn't anybody else find it st
Mmmhmm (Score:2, Insightful)
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To even suggest things this crazy, you must seriously misunderstand the purpose of the standardization process and how it works.
ISO/IEC policy on patents (Score:1)