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ISO Says No To Microsoft's OOXML Standard

Posted by samzenpus on Tue Sep 04, 2007 11:12 AM
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.
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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."
[+] 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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  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 04 2007, @11:14AM (#20464457)
    It ain't over 'till the fat man throws a chair...
    • by jkrise (535370) on Tuesday September 04 2007, @12:03PM (#20465183) Journal
      It ain't over 'till the fat man throws a chair...

      Interesting you should say that:
      http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/articl e.php?story=20070718060228231 [consortiuminfo.org]

      OOXML is not to everyone's liking, with Sun Microsystems being denied a seat, and Microsoft holding the chair (President) ...
      • by Proteus (1926) on Tuesday September 04 2007, @12:20PM (#20465455) Homepage Journal

        Go ahead and accuse Microsoft of bribing the electorate, but FFII gets to offer a 'prize' to people who lobby against OOXML and nobody bats an eyelid.
        You do realize that there is a difference between paying people to lobby and paying people to vote a certain way, right?

        By your logic, bribing a Senator is no worse than giving money to the AARP.
      • Re:Pursuit (Score:5, Insightful)

        by IWannaBeAnAC (653701) on Tuesday September 04 2007, @12:53PM (#20465903)
        You are an American, I guess, by your immediate recourse to legal action as the solution to every problem? That may well be the best way to solve the problems with the ANSI committee, I honestly wouldn't know, but I can certainly say that in most other parts of the world, legal action would be about the last thing that is needed (except in cases where there was provable fraud, or some other illegal occurrence, but I suspect the number of such cases where it could be proven in a court of law is approximately zero). International standards work because of goodwill and cooperation between interested parties. Without this, there is no point having a standard in the first place. Microsoft (or at least some sections of Microsoft) clearly has a different view of how standards work, and also they clearly have no shame. IMHO they are beyond redemption, but they are just one company, and only plays a small part of the overall ISO organization. The committees responsible for the future progress of OOXML need to get back to focussing on technical issues, how to best proceed to come up with a workable standard, and get rid of the politics. (My personal feeling is that there is no way to achieve a workable ISO standard out of the current OOXML spec, but who knows, stranger things have happened.) A lot of things about the OOXML vote have no precedent in ISO history, and probably some ISO and/or National Body procedures will be changed as a result. Forcing these changes by legal action would be expensive and counterproductive, and in the process surely lose the goodwill of the member nations.
  • by Constantine XVI (880691) <trash.eighty+slashdotNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday September 04 2007, @11:16AM (#20464475)
    Faux standard was not certified.
    [A]bort, [R]etry, [F]ail?
    • by jkrise (535370) on Tuesday September 04 2007, @11:52AM (#20465043) Journal
      Faux standard was not certified.
      [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 ?
      • by Xiaran (836924) on Tuesday September 04 2007, @12:12PM (#20465307)
        Hi! I see you are trying to ram a ill conceived standard through ISO. Would you like me to

        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?
  • by petercruickshank (1132185) on Tuesday September 04 2007, @11:17AM (#20464497) Homepage
    I'll get you next time, Gadget! Next time!
  • Hurrah! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by crush (19364) on Tuesday September 04 2007, @11:18AM (#20464525)
    A small victory, but an important one. Maybe Massachusetts [fsf.org] can now be persuaded to move to an actual open, easy-to-implement and reliable standard to preserve government records. It can join [odfalliance.org] Russia and Norway in using ODF.
  • by btarval (874919) on Tuesday September 04 2007, @11:25AM (#20464623)
    All the people involved in shutting down this attempt at extending a monopoly by hacking the voting system through bribery deserve a hearty congratulations in stopping this for now.

    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.

  • In a recent development MSFT spokesman said that, one standard specifying body meets all is not a viable workable solution for the whole world. Mr Tong'n Cheek said that Microsoft will promote an alternative standard specifying body Open ISO. He said that Microsoft wants its customers to have a choice in international bodies creating standards, choice in standards themselves too. This way users can have various choices like, OpenISO certified OOXML saving MSFT product, or ISO certified OOXML saving MSFT product or, uncertified OOXML saving MSFT product or unsupported ODF saving MSFT product or...
  • Some details... (Score:5, Informative)

    by frakir (760204) on Tuesday September 04 2007, @11:34AM (#20464767)
    breakdown by country votes: http://www.theopensourcerer.com/2007/09/03/ecma-37 6-dis-29500-ooxml-the-voting-so-far/ [theopensourcerer.com]

    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.
  • ISO press release (Score:5, Informative)

    by eknagy (1056622) on Tuesday September 04 2007, @11:44AM (#20464903)
  • more info (Score:5, Informative)

    by qcomp (694740) on Tuesday September 04 2007, @11:46AM (#20464927)

    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 futile ;-)
    • by MightyMartian (840721) on Tuesday September 04 2007, @11:34AM (#20464765) Journal

      Of course, Microsoft will address the changes and probably buy a few more votes. Their timetable is probably still not in jeopardy.


      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.
    • by drsmithy (35869) <drsmithy&gmail,com> on Tuesday September 04 2007, @11:52AM (#20465055)

      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.

    • Re:Good (Score:5, Insightful)

      by nine-times (778537) <nine.times@gmail.com> on Tuesday September 04 2007, @12:21PM (#20465463) Homepage

      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.

    • Re:I have an idea! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by MightyMartian (840721) on Tuesday September 04 2007, @12:34PM (#20465645) Journal
      The minute that Microsoft accepts ODF, particularly through easy integration via "Save As..." and allowing it to be set as the default document format, they have started down the path to the ending of their monopoly. At some point, some manager is going to ask "Why are we paying $xxx,xxx in licensing to Microsoft when this OpenOffice my brother-in-law installed on my computer can save in this OpenDocument format costs nothing?"

      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?