Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

Microsoft Bought Sweden's ISO Vote on OOXML?

Posted by Zonk on Tue Aug 28, 2007 09:53 AM
from the and-here-i-am-buying-stuff-like-food dept.
Microsoft IT
a_n_d_e_r_s writes "The vote on OOXML looked fairly secured. Most in the Working Group in Sweden was against the vote to approve OOXML. The day of the vote, though, more companies showed up at the door. Some 20 new companies — each one payed about $2500 to be allowed to vote — and vote they did ... for Microsoft. Most of the new companies were partners from Microsoft who suddenly out of the blue joined the Working Group, payed membership fees and voted yes for approval. From the OS2World story: 'The final result was 25 Yes, 6 No and 3 Abs and this would from the start be a done deal of saying No! Jonas Bosson who participated in today's meeting on behalf on FFII said that he left the meeting in protest and so did also IBM's Swedish local representative Johan Westman.'"
+ -
story

Related Stories

Firehose:Microsoft bought Swedens ISO vote on OOXML ? by a_n_d_e_r_s (136412)
[+] NZ, Sweden, Hungary Reflect OOXML Turmoil 146 comments
A number of readers are sending news of the progress of Microsoft's attempt to get OOXML standardized by ISO. First off, New Zealand has voted "no" on the question. In Sweden, after the uproar following the "yes" vote there, a Microsoft representative has admitted buying Swedish OOXML votes (link in Swedish — follow the Read More... link below for some translated quotes). Computerworld has also picked up the Sweden story. Finally, from Hungary, reader ens0niq writes that the Minister of Economy and Transport has sent a letter to the General Director of the Hungarian Standards Institution requiring that the June 25 "yes" vote be re-done because of irregularities. Our correspondent notes, however, that many Microsoft partners have joined the voting committee in the meanwhile, so the result could be a replay of Sweden's experience.
[+] Politics: Sweden's Vote on OOXML Invalidated 232 comments
Groklaw Reader writes "Just days after Microsoft's attempt to buy the Swedish vote on OOXML came to light, SIS declared its own vote invalid. The post at Groklaw references a ComputerWorld article with revelations from Microsoft: 'Microsoft Corp. admitted Wednesday that an employee at its Swedish subsidiary offered monetary compensation to partners for voting in favor of the Office Open XML document format's approval as an ISO standard. Microsoft said the offer, when discovered, was quickly retracted and that its Sweden managers voluntarily notified the SIS, the national standards body. "We had a situation where an employee sent a communication via e-mail that was inconsistent with our corporate policy," said Tom Robertson, general manager for interoperability and standards at Microsoft. "That communication had no impact on the final vote." ...'"
[+] 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."
[+] Technology: Microsoft's Influence On Upcoming ISO Vote 79 comments
christian.einfeldt writes "Microsoft has experienced some criticism for its handling of its bid to have OOXML accepted as an ISO standard, including the use of financial incentives to affect the Swedish national vote, which resulted in Sweden reversing its pro-Microsoft position; and failing to honor a promise to relinquish control of the OOXML specification if it gained ISO status. A few days ago Groklaw published an article that raises questions about Microsoft's influence on the upcoming February vote, citing concerns with the limitation of discussions of patent issues, public accountability of the process, and even irregularities with choosing the size of the room so as to limit the delegates opposed to OOXML ISO status, as had been done in the past."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

Microsoft Bought Sweden's ISO Vote on OOXML? 25 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.

  • Corporate whores (Score:5, Funny)

    by Stanistani (808333) on Tuesday August 28 2007, @09:55AM (#20383319) Homepage Journal
    Never has the old phrase been so accurate.

    • Re:Corporate whores (Score:5, Funny)

      by Octopus (19153) on Tuesday August 28 2007, @09:57AM (#20383341) Homepage
      ME STANDARDIZE YOU LONG TIME!

    • How to defend against this (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mcrbids (148650) on Tuesday August 28 2007, @10:11AM (#20383537) Journal
      It's a tactic that's unfortunately too common, but easily defended against, with either of these options:

      A) Don't let new members vote for any issues until they've been members for a certain period of time, or

      B) Don't let new members vote on any issue that had already been opened for debate (or perhaps officially proposed) prior to their joining.

      It's as simple as that.

      • Re:How to defend against this (Score:5, Insightful)

        by garcia (6573) on Tuesday August 28 2007, @10:39AM (#20383829) Homepage
        It's a tactic that's unfortunately too common, but easily defended against, with either of these options:

        A) Don't let new members vote for any issues until they've been members for a certain period of time

        It's an issue that we dealt with before even approving bylaws for our organization. Someone in the proposed membership mentioned that they wanted protection against this and we decided to require 6 months in the org before allowing voting membership (or 7 days following the Spring Meeting). This was eventually lowered to 3 months by the membership by vote.

        We don't charge dues so anyone could have walked into a meeting and maliciously taken it over with no intentions on doing anything but spend the few dollars we have.

        The only reason an organization like this could allow that is because they wanted the money for their coffers and couldn't care less about the actual "standards" being approved.
      • Yeah, because nobody has ever thought of planting people ahead of time, and there isn't already a cadre of Microsoft employees, and indeed from every other major computing organization, on every major standards body. All that means is that Microsoft submarines half a dozen people onto any committee they want to work on for some up-front amount of time. It's the Price Is Right Conundrum: any amount of time you put up there on the board, Microsoft will add one dollar - pardon, day - and bid there. Why do you think Netscape, a tiny company, had so many people on the various W3 standards? Why do you think Opera does today? It's the exact same thing, and this is just how these boards work. There's no particular way around it; you can't set time limits, price limits, count of people from a company, because they're all trivially easily gamed.

        Any time you make a plutocracy, it will be commercially exploited. If they want to be immune to this crap, they need to move to a meritocracy or an election. Next time you have a solution, put your black hat on and see if you can break it in under 15 seconds of honest thought. (You could have, this time, several different ways.)

  • Your Windows monopoly money at work. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by QuietLagoon (813062) on Tuesday August 28 2007, @09:57AM (#20383339)
    First the movie studios and HD-DVD, and now standards committees are being purchased.

    Why can't Microsoft compete without buying the outcome of the game? Are their products that poor?

  • Who paid? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LordEd (840443) on Tuesday August 28 2007, @10:04AM (#20383429)

    One would think that SIS would not accept new companies to participate in the vote since they haven't been part of the earlier discussions and meetings. But according to SIS they didn't see any problem that new companies wanted to take part in this vote without prior notice. So what happened here is that Microsoft gather together a bunch of loyal partners that would vote yes to their standard without any questions.
    Did Microsoft pay their fee? If yes, then they stuffed the box. If not, then 23 companies with a common interest with Microsoft joined an organization to vote for something in their own interests.

  • Interesting ... (Score:5, Informative)

    by gerddie (173963) on Tuesday August 28 2007, @10:06AM (#20383453)
    ... in Germany, Deutsche Telekom and Google would have voted "no". However, both were not allowed to vote because they came in late. And another guy left the voting session early, but his "yes" was counted although before it was said that only votes count that were given in presence. (according to Heise (german) [heise.de])

  • But... didn't they want it like that? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Tipa (881911) on Tuesday August 28 2007, @10:07AM (#20383465) Homepage
    Step 1 - allow votes to be bought.
    Step 2 - take money from companies who wish to buy votes.
    Step 3 - Profit!
    Step 3a - Complain about the unfairness of it all, all the way to the bank.

  • More OOXML shenanigans (Score:5, Informative)

    by RelliK (4466) on Tuesday August 28 2007, @10:44AM (#20383881)
    I'm surprised it has not been covered on slashdot, but similar things have occured in Germany, Switzerland, Norway, Portugal, Australia, etc. Microsoft is determined to push its proprietary "open" format through by any means neccessary:

    http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200708241 23112581 [groklaw.net]

    http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200708151 25524759 [groklaw.net]

    http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=200707232 35113424 [groklaw.net]

    • Re:Ahh... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Hoppelainen (969375) on Tuesday August 28 2007, @10:03AM (#20383407)
      Any Swedish company can become a member of SIS buy paying somewhere around $300-$500 per year. To be allowed to vote in this particular issue an extra 15 000 Sek ($2500) was needed. So yeah, it is open for anyone with cash (but they had to be members of SIS since before.

      • Re:Ahh... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by VE3MTM (635378) on Tuesday August 28 2007, @10:08AM (#20383475)
        My understanding, from watching Bjarne Stroustrup's lecture before about the standardization process for C++ (also through the ISO), was that you need to attend a certain number of meetings (3?) before you can vote.

        Why wasn't this the case here?

          • Re:Ahh... (Score:5, Insightful)

            by perrin (891) on Tuesday August 28 2007, @10:57AM (#20384079)
            I fail to see how anyone other than MS would have anything to gain from pushing OOXML, unless they are getting kickbacks. Even companies partnering with MS would benefit greatly if a more open standard, such as ODF, was being used into which they could integrate into more easily and actually do something useful with. This all sounds like a corruption of the standards organization unlike anything I have ever heard of previously. If this does not become anti-trust material a few years down the road, at least in the EU and Japan, I would very surprised.

    • Re:Sore losers (Score:5, Interesting)

      by tinkerghost (944862) on Tuesday August 28 2007, @10:14AM (#20383569) Homepage
      Did they cheat somehow? No, They followed the rule required to vote - they payed the fees.

      Is there some reason that these companies should NOT have been allowed to vote?
      They failed to participate in any of the discussions leading up to the vote & in fact most have not partecipated previously in any discussions on any ISO related standards.

      Are any of them not legitimate companies? No? Then STFU and stop whining.

      You're right we should stop whining & petition ISO to change the rules on voting to block this kind of ballot stuffing. I doubt very much that any of these companies have seen the document spec let alone read & understand it.

      This is actually one of the fairer subversions of the process - in Portugol they denied IBM & SUN access claiming the room was too full, then allowed MS partners to enter & vote. In another place, the chairman - an employee of an MS partner announced the voting procedure as

      • Consensus to approve - vote to approve
      • majority approve - vote to approve
      • no majority - vot to approve
      • majority to dis-approve - vote to approve with comments
      • consensus to dis-approve - abstain

      Now that's how to really stack the deck - you completely remove the option to vote against the standard.

      • The funniest thing of all (Score:5, Funny)

        by TheSciBoy (1050166) on Tuesday August 28 2007, @10:37AM (#20383815)

        This is a quote from the SIS.SE home page:

        Det är inte pengar som får världen att fungera
        Vill du veta vad det är?

        Translation in english: "It's not money that makes the world go around. Do you want to know what it is?"

        Apparently the answer is: money

    • Re:Sore losers (Score:5, Insightful)

      by erroneus (253617) on Tuesday August 28 2007, @10:14AM (#20383571) Homepage
      There's a huge difference between "legal" and "right." I'd really like you to make an argument that this was a right and correct tactic for Microsoft to use. What if, for the sake of argument, people could buy their way into a jury in criminal prosecution? I think we'd see right away what would happen. Every person with an agenda would routinely buy his chance to vote to "hang'm high!"

      In this case, it's a chance to vote on an international standard -- one that many governments are obliged to allow, support or follow. This is, in effect, a chance to "buy" your way into government policy.

      But there are certainly, in my opinion, two problems here:

      1. That the ability to vote has such low entry requirements and that no amount of knowledge or understanding seems to have any bearing on whether or not someone is qualified to vote. (yes, I realize you could make the same argument for local elections, and I do.)
      2. That Microsoft has no shame in deploying such an obvious, self-serving tactic of essentially buying their way into being elected as an international standard. It may be 'legal' but it's unethical and definitely not right.

    • Re:Sore losers (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mastropiero (258677) on Tuesday August 28 2007, @10:19AM (#20383637) Journal
      I'm sorry to break this to you, but ISO approval of standards is supposed to be governed by TECHNICAL considerations. By this logic, a vote on whether OOXML is approved by fasttrack should be based on the TECHNICAL merits of the proposal, not on how popular Micorosft Corp. is.

      Sadly, the fact that these people joined the discussion only *after* the debate on those technical merits was over only shows that this process has become nothing more than a high-school president election in a bad B-movie.

    • Re:Sore losers (Score:5, Insightful)

      by NickFortune (613926) on Tuesday August 28 2007, @10:55AM (#20384047) Homepage

      STFU and stop whining.

      Stop whining? Certainly. STFU? I don't think so.

      There's more to this issue than "mummy mummy microsoft did a bad thing and it's not faaaaaair!". The question we should be asking is "Is this the sort of behaviour we really want to encourge?"

      Do we really want an industry where standards are sold to the highest bidder without any scrutiny as to fitness for their supposed purpose. If so, the ISO committees may as well pack their bags and go home now, because we are headed for a world where no one will pay any attention at all to their so called "standards".

      I think that merits some discussion. Not because Microsoft did a Bad Thing so much, but because the standards process served a useful purpose. Microsoft may well be willing to burn this process to the ground in order to protect their file formats. I think the least we could do is shout "FIRE!"

    • many government departments and even entire governments arround the world are threatening to require arhived documents to be in standard formats. MS is trying to do an end run arround theese requirements by getting standards bodies to approve a fake standard they have written. Unfortunately it seems that they are having quite some sucess in doing so thanks to thier use of various dirty tactics.

    • Re:Evil bastards (Score:5, Funny)

      by hxnwix (652290) on Tuesday August 28 2007, @10:58AM (#20384093) Journal

      Truly, they are evil, and any person of conscience could not work there and retain their integrity.
      Sir, walk carefully, for you are treading on other people's livelihoods. I know a number of Microsoft employees, and they couldn't possibly be more offended by your suggestion that they lack the right stuff. At Microsoft, they all feel like they are finally important, like they are finally part of something bigger than themselves. At Microsoft, everybody gets to be an integral part of stealing money from donation boxes and candy from babies.
       
      If that's not integrity, what is?
    • Here are the parts of Capitalism that I don't understand:
      - unsafe products
      - unhealthy products
      - unsustainable processes
      - suppression of the truth about unsafe products
      - exploitation of the poor and the uninformed
      - outsourcing (abandonment of the community)
      - tax evasion
      - consumerism
      - competition that puts profits before people
      - profitable relationship with war

      But then if you accept the premise that People Don't Matter, all the above makes perfect sense.

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.