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ISO Says No To Microsoft's OOXML Standard
Posted by
samzenpus
on Tue Sep 04, 2007 10:12 AM
from the try-again-later dept.
from the try-again-later dept.
qcomp writes "The votes are in and Microsoft has lost for now, reports the FFII's campaign website OOXML. The 2/3 majority needed to proceed with the fast-track standardization has not been achieved. Now the standard will head to the ballot resolution meeting to address the hundreds of technical comments submitted along with the votes." Here is yesterday's speculation as to how the vote would turn out.
Related Stories
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If This Was a Month Ago, OOXML Would Be Over 230 comments
Andy Updegrove writes "Public announcements of how Participating members of ISO have voted on OOXML are now rolling in one at a time, and the trend thus far is meaningfully weighted towards 'No with comments.' By my count, there are now four announced Yes votes, with comments, two abstentions, and seven public No with comments votes for OOXML in ISO/IEC JT1. Korea has reportedly voted no as well, and I expect at least Canada, Japan and the United Kingdom to announce 'No with comments' today or tomorrow. There will be more no votes on the roster when the final results are announced in a day or two. But even if the 11 votes I know of now were the only votes, the vote would now have failed — but for the 11 countries that upgraded their status from Observer to Participating member status in the last few weeks. Without those extra 11 'P' countries, it would only require 10 votes to block OOXML from immediate approval. If most or all of those additional 'P' members vote 'yes' as expected, it will confirm suspicions that Microsoft has promoted extra votes in favor of OOXML not only within National Bodies, but within ISO itself."
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Technology: Open Letter to ISO Calls For Standardization of Process 108 comments
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."
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It ain't over yet... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It ain't over yet... (Score:5, Funny)
Interesting you should say that:
http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/artic
OOXML is not to everyone's liking, with Sun Microsystems being denied a seat, and Microsoft holding the chair (President)
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Re:It ain't over yet... (Score:5, Informative)
You could have said that and people would have believed you, so why lie?
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Re:It ain't over yet... (Score:5, Interesting)
Have you seen the actual break down of which way countries voted? Scroll down a little way in the FTA comments and it's laid out in a table. It's amazing in that with the exception of the US, the voting is almost consistently "No" from rich, developed countries, and "Yes" from poorer Eastern European and African countries that are stereotypically more corrupt. The jokes people are making about Microsoft buying the votes of Banana Republics are not without a basis. Worth looking through the list.
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familiar scenario (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:It ain't over yet... (Score:5, Interesting)
I hope folks at NIST are suitably embarrassed about approving such a shoddy spec as a standard, regardless of who it came from.
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Re:It ain't over yet... (Score:5, Interesting)
After reading your comment I initially though "well, we were part of the almost, an exception to the rule", but to be blunt the truth is that *this is* a Bananas' Republic: only in one would the above happen.
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Re:It ain't over yet... (Score:5, Informative)
The article goes on to explain that this one member isoc.nl (who is the longest sitting member of that NEN committee and voted no) finds that it would be appropriate for the submitter of a standard to refrain from voting this actively, especially because Microsoft had already given out a press release that the result would become "abstain" before the vote was actually being held. In other words, they knew they were going to sabotage(*) the dutch "no with comments" vote and told the press in advance.
Please correct any inaccuracies in my post; I really do not want to misrepresent this article, which speaks volumes for itself IMHO.
(*) original meaning of sabotage: to throw a wooden shoe into a machine to prevent it from working properly.
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Re:It ain't over yet... (Score:5, Interesting)
"Please vote for our standard. BTW we make the only software can use it properly and we wont sell it to you".
http://www.microsoft.com/exporting/faq.htm [microsoft.com]
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Re:It ain't over yet... (Score:5, Interesting)
1) You have to be a dues paying member prior to the submission for consideration in order to vote on that submission. That stops countries from being induced to jump in simply to influence the voting on that one issue.
2) You have to participate in a majority of the discussions (say 75 percent) in order to vote (no last minute O->P upgrades of NBs which had not been involved in any of the discussions).
3) Representatives of the organization requesting the submission are disqualified from voting in any National Body (ECMA in this case).
4) Representatives of any company or organization involved in creating the specification of the proposed standard are disqualified from voting in any National Body (ECMA and Microsoft in this case).
5) Any National Body which is found to have irregularities in their process would be disqualified from participation in all votes for a period of time (say 1 year for the first offense, 5 years for the second). There are two many instances to list.
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Re:It ain't over yet... (Score:5, Insightful)
By your logic, bribing a Senator is no worse than giving money to the AARP.
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Re:Pursuit (Score:5, Insightful)
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The Delivery (Score:5, Funny)
[A]bort, [R]etry, [F]ail?
Re:The Delivery (Score:5, Funny)
[A]bort, [R]etry, [F]ail?
That is the DOS error message.. these are Vista days.
It appears Microsoft is polluting the ISO and offering gold to their 'Gold' partners...
Cancel / Allow ?
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Re:The Delivery (Score:5, Funny)
1. Bribe a bunch of guys to vote yes for you?
2. Provide a specification thats so incomprehensible the only Word will be able to fully implement it?
3. Make dubious FUD statements about OpenDocument?
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You forgot (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:The Delivery (Score:5, Funny)
Don't you mean "Yes / Yes, with comments"?
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Can a committee stop the rotation of the Earth? (Score:4, Insightful)
But now... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:But now... (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Can a committee stop the rotation of the Earth? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Dr. Claw.... (Score:5, Funny)
Hurrah! (Score:5, Insightful)
Not likely (Score:5, Insightful)
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How bad is this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How bad is this? (Score:4, Informative)
It wouldn't cripple a market but their monopoly status continues to destroy wealth, eliminate efficiency through interoperability, and chill innovation. Your story clearly highlights the lack of interoperability and inefficiency achieved through forcing upgrades.
This issue is critical and I don't count Microsoft out for the count. It will not surprise me when they play more parliamentary tricks. It remains to be seen how much money it takes to buy an ISO standard.
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Re:How bad is this? (Score:5, Interesting)
Anecdote time.
About a year ago, a client of mine gave me a PDF and some source files and said "We can't edit this. Please fix the problem." The document itself was in Word 2.0. The graphics were WMFs. This thing had been originally created in Windows 3.1 and updated (with the WMFs) in Windows 95. The client couldn't open up any of it.
The Word file was basically a non-starter. I just ignored it and stripped the text out of the PDF instead. The graphics, though...The PDF refused to be opened properly in Illustrator, so I couldn't recover them that way. I also could not open the WMFs directly -- it was something about how they were tied to the original platform. What I ended up doing was digging up an ancient copy of Windows and and ancient copy of Illustrator, building a custom machine just for this operation, and recovering the files that way. The client paid about $3,000 for the privilege of being able to update one of their own files. Just one file, mind, and it had yet to be actually updated -- this was simply establishing the ability to update. All because they were couldn't see what a bad idea it was to invest their data in lock-in formats.
When I explained to the client how they had gotten into this mess, and how they could avoid it in the future, they stared blankly back. We use up-to-date versions of Word now, they said.
Oh, well, I thought, here comes another few grand in my pocket. But then again, in another few years, maybe nobody has these old copies of Windows and old copies of Illustrator anymore, and then they are SOL.
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Re:How bad is this? (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if every company that you ever have to deal with in the history of your company's existance uses MS Office, you will still have a multitude of problems sharing documents between people that use Office 2007, Office 2003, Office XP, Office 2000, and god forbid, even earlier versions. Don't believe me? Get a random sampling of Office 2007 documents and open them up on the equivalent tools in an Office 2003 or Office XP suite.
All it takes is for one customer to modify a sales order that you sent them in Word 2003 format, and save it in Word 2007 format before sending it back to you to cause you a load of grief. If you haven't experienced this with the MS formats, perhaps you have been in a position where you are only sharing documents with other folks internal to your company that are on the same version? Or perhaps the documents you use are simple enough thta the differences in formatting between versions was not evident?
The problem is real, as this is how MS has designed the formats - to produce false incentives to 'upgrade' to the latest version of Office.
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Lessons learned - the job isn't over (Score:5, Insightful)
I submit though, that the job isn't over, but incomplete. The ISO seriously needs to look at fixing how Microsoft attempted to hijack the process to suit their own gain, and ignore the real purpose of International Standards.
Until this fixed, we'll see more of the same, on a greater scale. And not just by Microsoft. The end result would be the weakening of the usefulness of real standards, if the current system is left as it is.
Good luck to the ISO.
MSFT promotes choice among certifying bodies (Score:5, Funny)
Some details... (Score:5, Informative)
Note 7 countries ( marked *** ) just recently updated their status within ISO from 'O' (observer) to 'P' so they could vote. Those are mostly small countries and likely to be Microsoft puppets within ISO body. Which means MS can now actively block *any* new proposed standard and promote their own more easily.
Fair enough (Score:4, Insightful)
In the mean time, I'm going to continue sending PDFs around. Neither OOXML nor ODF provide the level of consistency in layout that PDF provides.
Re:Fair enough (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't being buggy and broken enough for it to take a lot of crap? Seriously, "spaceLikeWord98?" WTF?
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OOXML and ODF both suck (Score:4, Insightful)
I can take 20 year old TeX documents and render them just fine. But you give me even a 10 year old WYSIWYG file and there is a good chance I won't be able to do anything with the file.
What is it going to be like 50 years from now when you try to pull up an old manuscript? You know how Popular Science likes to pull up magazine issues from 40+ years ago, I wonder how they are going to manage that 40 years from now when the proprietary and open file formats are unsupported and "obsolete".
Really the only safe choice is to make a hard copy and hope the OCR of the future is better than it is now.
Re:OOXML and ODF both suck (Score:5, Interesting)
I fail to see the fuss, both formats suck and really have no place as a desktop publishing format. They are crappy WYSIWYG data dumps that are heavily tied to rendering algorithms of their respective editor and really are not archival safe.
Indeed. You'll also find that hammers are poor at undoing screws and cars aren't so good at taking you overseas.
What is it going to be like 50 years from now when you try to pull up an old manuscript? You know how Popular Science likes to pull up magazine issues from 40+ years ago, I wonder how they are going to manage that 40 years from now when the proprietary and open file formats are unsupported and "obsolete".
They'll use a format that actually meant for that sort of thing like, say, PDF.
The point of "WYSIWYG" is not - despite what a lot of people (including those that should know better) think - that a document looks the same on computer B as it does on computer A. It's that the document that comes out of the printer looks the same as it does on the screen.
Word processing != desktop publishing.
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Re:OOXML and ODF both suck (Score:5, Informative)
This is where word processing comes in to fill the gap between text editors (which don't have support for rich text or images) and desktop publication (which put out formats that aren't intended to be edited).
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ISO press release (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.iso.org/iso/pressrelease.htm?refid=Ref
eknagy
more info (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft puts its own spin on the result in this press release [cnn.com].
More information on the upcoming proceedings at ISO are explained in this discussion [noooxml.org] on the currently slashdotted noOOXML site. (my apologies for poor HTML in the original post that made <no>OOXML come out as OOXML.
Groklaw also has some commentary and more links [groklaw.net].
It's clear that this is far from over. Microsoft will convince more countries to become O or P members in the respective committees and Further effort (exposing fraud, convincing your national bodies) is required to prevent OOXML from being accepted as a standard. But it is encouraging to see that resistance is not futileRe:System continues to work (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:System continues to work (Score:5, Insightful)
If Microsoft addressed all the concerns, then they would likely have an open standard. Microsoft won't do that, because within a few months of them having an open standard, OpenOffice and KOffice will have OOXML support.
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Re:I wonder? (Score:4, Interesting)
I rather suspect that OOXML is in fact dead, even if they eventually manage to get an ISO certification. Its too late now. After all ODF is already an ISO, easier to implement then OOXML, patent free, with no issues of any type whatsoever. People will choose it simply because its the better format. OOXML will be what people use if they must interact with Microsoft office.
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Re:I wonder? (Score:5, Insightful)
In other words, OOXML will be what everyone uses?
Great.
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Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
As a disgruntled Microsoft customer, I'd like to ask "WTF?!"
Seriously, I don't believe the devs working within the company are bad, but you guys need to stage an uprising or something. The people running your company seem to be total dicks.
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WTF? This is insightful? (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, I don't believe the devs working within the company are bad, but you guys need to stage an uprising or something.
FFS! Take some responsibility for your actions people.
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Re:WTF? This is insightful? (Score:5, Insightful)
This "vote with your feet" bs needs to stop, seriously. It takes an overly simplistic look at the way a market actually functions in the real world -- which is not the same as the way it functions in this libertarian day dream. The fundamental problem with libertarianism is that it treats all markets as if they were perfectly competitive markets with low barriers to entry, when in reality, the vast majority of them are not.
If you seriously believe that substituting away from Windows, or from Word, is something that the vast majority of people here can actually do, then you're absolutely wrong. Listen, I don't own a Windows system -- I use Debian GNU/Linux exclusively. But Word and Windows are the defacto standard and living outside of that standard is impossible. Let's look at the facts:
Whether you want to admit it or not, there is massive inertia in the industry. Everyone runs Windows, and that keeps everyone else running Windows. "Just don't buy MS" is the most ridiculous statement in the world. Sure, if everyone stopped, then that would hurt their bottom-line. But even if every Slashdotter ever stopped buying Windows, MS would still be making billions. Every time a court slaps a fine of a hundred million dollars on MS, everyone on Slashdot whines about how it's a slap on the wrist and nothing more, because the company makes so much money it's sick. The exact same logic applies here.
What you're suggesting would only work if a large percentage of MS's clients all defected. It's like saying, "Big Oil acting badly? Just don't buy oil! That'll teach 'em!"
Come on, this isn't a perfectly competitive market. It's a monopoly. There's a reason economists think that those are bad.
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Re:Good? I think it's rotten! (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a saying where I live that goes... "You just need to sample a single grain of rice to judge an entire pot..." Microsoft's dubious and nefarious tactics wrt OOXML have shown them to be ruthless cowards; and enemies of technical merit; as software developers like you must know.
Other than rewriting the same code every 3 years when MS decides to rebrand an technology and stop supporting old versions... what are these 'benefits' you see in MS technology? Spreading disinformation amongst the developer community is a very grave sin, in my book... much worse than 'Get the Facts' aimed at consumers.
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Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
"single disgruntled employee who singlehandedly and without authorization from his/her manager bribed the national bureaux of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Congo, Costa Rica, Côte-d'Ivoire, Croatia, Cuba (Cuba? they're not even allowed to buy Microsoft products!), Cyprus, Egypt, Fiji, Jamaica, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Morocco, Kuwait, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, Qatar, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Sri Lanka, Syria, Tanzania, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan,
(take deep breath)
Austria, Bulgaria, Colombia, Germany (shame on you, DIN), Ghana, Greece, Kenya, Malta, Poland (only half of the committee(s)), Portugal, Singapore, Switzerland, Tunisia, Turkey, Uruguay, USA, Venezuela (wait 'till someone tells Chávez [vit.com.ve] this),
(remember to breathe)
and thwarted into abstinence the votes of a.o. Malaysia, the Netherlands and Sweden",
yet? (verb at beginning of sentence)
Let's all thank the 1 country above quotum that voted no, otherwise this would have destroyed the credibility of ISO, IMHO.
Thank you VERY much, Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, Czech Republic, Ecuador, France, India, Iran, Ireland, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, South Africa, Thailand, United Kingdom. I don't have money but you have my respect.
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Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)
Backwards compatibility should be handled by the converter, and shouldn't pollute the format itself.
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Re:Still not official (Score:4, Informative)
Like here? [iso.org]
Sesostris III
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Re:I have an idea! (Score:5, Insightful)
Once you break the Office lock-in, the potential for Windows itself to be compromised, because moving away from Office means having the capacity to move away from the entire Windows platform. For Microsoft, ODF is an enormous threat. Not today, not tomorrow, but within the next five to ten years, particularly if the trend of various governments and other groups to push for documents being stored in open formats continues. Microsoft has to find a way to get OOXML defined as an open format, and now it has made it clear that it is willing to pay to make sure that standards body are undermined so that it can do so.
It has failed in the fast-track, which, I'd say, reduces the possibility of OOXML as it now stands ever getting an ISO stamp. However, it has sent the message to its business partners throughout the world, and likely to a many nations themselves, that if they are willing to be bribed, it's willing to put money in their hands.
It's shown a rather ugly side of ISO, and international standards in general, but here's the real problem. No one cares. Where is the BBC, CNN or any major news site picking up on the story of a major corporation attempting to undermine the ISO to get a standard which even the most generous experts are calling flawed passed? Where are the investigative reporters looking into attempts to undermine open document adoption in places like Massachussetts? Where are the editorials condemning Microsoft for undue influence over public policy? I mean, every time Sony so much as appears that it's going to do something nasty, the BBC tech site has a writeup on it. When some director at AT&T burps, it's over the financial pages?
Is it just that open document concerns aren't as sexy as network neutrality or rootkits?
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