Microsoft Bought Sweden's ISO Vote on OOXML? 340
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.'"
Google Joined to say No (Score:3, Interesting)
Kudos to Google for being one of those to "suddenly" join, but on the "No" side. Most of the other companies on the list of new arrivals [tryggve.se] are unfamiliar to me, excepting Google and HP, and we don't officially know how HP's vote went.
Shame on the others for having no sense of decency.
Re:Ahh... (Score:5, Interesting)
Why wasn't this the case here?
Re:Sore losers (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Now that's how to really stack the deck - you completely remove the option to vote against the standard.
Re:Interesting ... (Score:4, Interesting)
http://ooxmlhoaxes.blogspot.com/2007/05/has-ibm-a
Sounds like both sides aren't playing fair.
Re:Who paid? (Score:2, Interesting)
- OOXML gets rejected by ISO
- Public procurement policies dictate ODF
- Microsoft supports ODF
- Customers are free of lock-in
- Larger percentage will choose F/LOSS
- costs shift from license fees to training / consulting
- more money for local companies.
Re:What part of "capitalism" don't you understand? (Score:4, Interesting)
Only, instead of a state, we have a corporation, Microsoft.
They buy their power with their money. And a big part of their money comes from our wallets via taxes.
I mean, a really big part.
I mean a part much bigger than what you'd think.
I mean, much bigger than what I'd think, too.
I mean, *huge*.
Then, with this power, they take away what really is common goods. Or aren't "standards"?
Communism.
irrelevant (Score:3, Interesting)
see:
http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/05/so-where-are-
http://www.geniisoft.com/showcase.nsf/archive/200
of course, the MS tactic is to get OOXML recognized and then default to it across the windows suite.
but as I remember they have tried this was a number of formats before - but once a file format is recognized as a de-facto standard (MP3, HTML, JPG) they are notoriously hard to shift.
irrelevant as it may be its still a damn depressing indication of the way business is done and sensible, rational decisions are perverted to line company pockets. this sort of thing annoys me.
Re:What part of "capitalism" don't you understand? (Score:3, Interesting)
Perhaps it's time to write a "Capitalist Manifesto"
What of ISO's credibility now? (Score:4, Interesting)
I can't help thinking that the OOXML standardisation effort should be shelved until one of two things becomes true: either at least two or more independent implementations, developed by distinct organisations from the specification alone, can be shown to interoperate to a degree that justifies the moniker "standard"; or preferably, a complete reference implementation, with full source code available under a BSD (or equally permissive) licence, is submitted with the proposal. In fact, I can't understand why this isn't, er, standard practice. Were it so, the OOXML efforts could be trivially dismissed on technical grounds, and this whole dog and pony show could be avoided.
conspiracytheory (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Ahh... (Score:3, Interesting)
All of you that are helping make computers more like contracts and less like lumber: fuck you. Quit your job like I did. Everyone's better off.
What infuriates me... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Who paid? (Score:3, Interesting)
If a community is full of Christians and they vote along their beliefs, does that mean the church controls the city?
Considering the market share of Microsoft products, is it possible that there would be more technical companies aligned with them than others? Do you think Microsoft and all of its partners should only have 1 vote? If a Microsoft partner voted against the standard, what happens to that vote?
Re:Sore losers (Score:3, Interesting)
I think you'll find that the law changes are only to require "open" standards, which is *why* MS are pursuing ISO certification now. If this wasn't the case, then why would a company who own (I'm guessing here) 99% of the "office" application market and have done for a good number of years, suddenly decide they need certification?
Also, the only reason OOXML gets a slating 'round these parts, is because it is a very poor "standard", and it appears to omit enough detail to make it hard (if not impossible) for anyone to create an alternative implementation.
It's worth noting that MS is entirely free to create an implementation based around ODF if they want to, and given their immense resources, they could probably do a good job of it if they so chose; but sadly, they seem to base all of their decisions on perceived threats. For example, if OOXML failed to get ISO certification (or if they had not even tried to obtain it) and a number of governments mandated open standards, given MS's *huge* installed base, I expect the majority would be far more inclined to switch to an MS ODF implementation. But MS seem to believe that if their customers had a choice, they'd leave! Microsoft lacks confidence IMHO; that's why they behave like bullies.
Re:Sore losers (Score:3, Interesting)
We (can and should) expect from that organisation decisions based on technical merit, the OOXML has no such thing.
But even if the ISO cert would be granted I eventually expect court cases evolving out of the inherent contradiction of calling it an Open Standard and at the same time referring to closed sources.
Re:Ahh... (Score:5, Interesting)
Bullshit! Do you know just how bad OOXML is? It's so bad that the only way even Microsoft can benefit from it is by using it as a tool to prop up its monopoly. Hell, I'm not even convinced it's in Microsoft's best interests to be pushing OOXML -- its monopoly might be better served by MS Office implementing ODF, since MS Office still has great mindshare and interface advantages over OpenOffice.
Microsoft's tactic of pushing OOXML is like trying to gain territory via nuclear war: sure, they might get the territory in the end, but it'll be radioactive and worthless.
Re:Your Windows monopoly money at work. (Score:4, Interesting)
Why can't Microsoft compete without buying the outcome of the game? Are their products that poor?
Well, it's pretty obvious they're "that poor." What's interesting though is that these sort of tactics show that it's obvious not just to us but to them as well. They have far more confidence in their ability to game the system than they do in their ability to produce products that are competitive on a level playing field (though fortunately, they're often poor at gaming the system as well).
It's simply their corporate culture. I expect it may have to do with the fact that a large number of their programming workforce were hired right out of college without a lot of real-world experience, combined with the fact that their management style is apparently, management by intimidation. Combined, those factors make a pretty lousy recipe for producing quality products on time.
MS bashing (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: Controversy should nix acceptance (Score:3, Interesting)
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:ODF vs OOXML FUD with spreadsheets (Score:3, Interesting)
2 year."
What legacy reasons? Was there an ancient excel version that MS didn't bother to fix a date bug in that they are carrying through even today? Why should they? Anyone bothering to use some ancient excel version likely wouldn't bother with the brand new office 2007 and its "open" Office XML filesystem would they? I mean if they were going to change, they'd probably prefer to have it correctly working now. And what about people who want to put in data from 1900? Thats just going to screw up everyone wanting to do that!
Whats funny, is that their spec says if you DON'T want to use the screwed up 1900 system you don't have to... but then your dates have to start with 1904, with no possability of using a date earlier than that!
And you'd better not be wanting to use any dates prior to 1900, neither date system will accept it. Yeah, I'm sure no country in the EU has any useful historical data prior to 1900, after all they composed of such young countries, right?
Re:Evil bastards (Score:3, Interesting)
Recruiters always told me that working for them I could "make a real difference, be a voice for the customers/end-users, unlike anywhere else". I saw that my managers, many of whom had put in 8+ years already, were just getting to a point where they were consulted during initial requirements gathering phases.
Re:The list (Score:3, Interesting)
My previous employer (one of the GC partners above) has been pushing open source to be used within the company. I joined this effort thinking it could bring more focus on open formats, but I saw a while ago that this attitude did not seem to apply to top management, so I left the company. I hope others join me in doing so.