OOXML Vote Tracker and Calculation Guide

Andy Updegrove writes "The vote on Microsoft's OOXML closes today. The final result will not be announced (or leak) before sometime early next week. Meanwhile the votes of individual countries continue to come in, currently with more reported switching in favor of OOXML than against it. For the benefit of those who want to keep track of how the vote is tending until it's official, I'm posting the running tally of which votes have switched, what the net change has been, now many votes have come to light, and how many remain to be announced. It's likely that it will not be possible to know the final result until all votes are in, due to the complex double test for approval, and the complication that the final number of abstentions — and whether they move from 'yes' or 'no' votes — can decrease the total number of votes that need to switch to 'yes' in order for OOXML to be approved. For that reason, I also include the algorithm for arriving at a final result."

OpenMalaysia blog

I like the voting overview and discussion on OpenMalaysia blog [openmalaysiablog.com] better.

UK Switch from No to Yes?

The Register is reporting [channelregister.co.uk] a switch for the UK from "No" to "Yes". If it's true then they've put it over.

This is bad not only for this standard but for the ISO in general. Their process is no longer trustworthy. We're going to have to go back to the bad old days of every nation setting their own incompatible standards.

Perhaps you prefer a different source

Ok, so it's the Register. They broke the story, so I linked them. Try

• news.com.com.com [news.com]
• zdnet.co.uk [zdnet.co.uk]

If you prefer other sources.

Re:OpenMalaysia blog

I find it intriguing that according to Open Malaysia, Malaysia itself chose to abstain from the vote.

Their justification:

ABSTAIN - we're honest enough to -almost- say its a pile of shit, but we've read about Hiroshima in the school textbooks

*posting as AC because I cba to make an account*

Voting irregularities

The decision-making process appears to be highly irregular in many countries, including Poland [polishlinux.org] as well as Germany, Croatia and Norway [groklaw.net]

I hope that the EU antitrust investigation [slashdot.org] will somehow be successful in addressing this mess and punish Microsoft severely enough to dissuade them from trying such tactics ever again.

Why is it tolerated?

Why is Microsoft able to fuck up an international standards process so badly and so deliberately? Why does anyone tolerate this? Companies and governments should just refuse to use OOXML, and should refuse to accept ISO standards for certification.

Too ba

Re:Why is it tolerated?

Why is Microsoft able to fuck up an international standards process so badly and so deliberately?

their patent pending "Bag o' cash"

Why does anyone tolerate this?

The bag o' cash campaign contributions

Too bad they all care more about money than doing the right thing, huh.

Well at least in the USA this is true of MS but the EU seems not to take kindly to what MS is doing for the time being.

Re:Why is it tolerated?

Standard Oil [wikipedia.org] would be prior art for the "Bag o' cash".

Re:Why is it tolerated?

Why does anyone tolerate this?

In all situations where those who have power (regardless of whether it is primarily economic power or political power or whatever) abuse it to deny others a fair chance, it is easy for those who are thereby suppressed to understand what is going on. In this case, this means that for Microsoft's competitors, for free software businesses in general and for freedom-minded geeks like you and me it is easy to understand what is going on. It's much more difficult to understand the real underlying issues from the outside. In particular, understanding the severeness of the problem does not come easily to standardization organization officials (who typically do not have a background in IT, economics or antitrust law). At the same time, Microsoft partner companies are complaining to the standardization organization officials about their critics in ways which are easy for the standardization organization officials to understand and accept.

Re:Why is it tolerated?

At the same time, Microsoft partner companies are complaining to the standardization organization officials about their critics in ways which are easy for the standardization organization officials to understand and accept.

Yeah, bribes and kickbacks. Plus, Microsoft has instructed their people on how to stack and rig committees and bribe "experts":

Our mission is to establish Microsoft's platforms as the de facto standards throughout the computer industry.... Working behind the scenes to orchestrate "independent" praise of our technology, and damnation of the enemy's, is a key evangelism function during the Slog. "Independent" analyst's report should be issued, praising your technology and damning the competitors (or ignoring them). "Independent" consultants should write columns and articles, give conference presentations and moderate stacked panels, all on our behalf (and setting them up as experts in the new technology, available for just $200/hour). "Independent" academic sources should be cultivated and quoted (and research money granted). "Independent" courseware providers should start profiting from their early involvement in our technology. Every possible source of leverage should be sought and turned to our advantage.

I have mentioned before the "stacked panel". Panel discussions naturally favor alliances of relatively weak partners - our usual opposition. For example, an "unbiased" panel on OLE vs. OpenDoc would contain representatives of the backers of OLE (Microsoft) and the backers of OpenDoc (Apple, IBM, Novell, WordPerfect, OMG, etc.). Thus we find ourselves outnumbered in almost every "naturally occurring" panel debate.

A stacked panel, on the other hand, is like a stacked deck: it is packed with people who, on the face of things, should be neutral, but who are in fact strong supporters of our technology. The key to stacking a panel is being able to choose the moderator. Most conference organizers allow the moderator to select the panel, so if you can pick the moderator, you win. Since you can't expect representatives of our competitors to speak on your behalf, you have to get the moderator to agree to having only "independent ISVs" on the panel. No one from Microsoft or any other formal backer of the competing technologies would be allowed just ISVs who have to use this stuff in the "real world." Sounds marvelously independent doesn't it? In fact, it allows us to stack the panel with ISVs that back our cause. Thus, the "independent" panel ends up telling the audience that our technology beats the others hands down. Get the press to cover this panel, and you've got a major win on your hands.

Finding a moderator is key to setting up a stacked panel. The best sources of pliable moderators are: -- Analysts: Analysts sell out - that's their business model. But they are very concerned that they never look like they are selling out, so that makes them very prickly to work with.

-- Consultants: These guys are your best bets as moderators. Get a well-known consultant on your side early, but don't let him publish anything blatantly pro-Microsoft. Then, get him to propose himself to the conference organizers as a moderator, whenever a panel opportunity comes up. Since he's well- known, but apparently independent, he'll be accepted one less thing for the constantly-overworked conference organizer to worry about, right?

James Plamondon, Microsoft

Re:

Somebody mod the parent troll down.

ISO's credibility is shot. Period. When its NB's do whatever they can to approve a specification that is technically and legally impossible to implement, just because one company tells them to, I say ISO is dead in the wa

Remember this...

Microsoft probably spent as much time on "marketing" the spec as they did on writing it. They've worked out and rehearsed their sales pitch. All the way through the process they'd be, "how can we sell this...how can we get it past the committee?".

Anybody who thinks otherwise is naive.

Re:

No one has accepted M$'s crappy new formats

That's exactly why MS wants to put it through ISO. More people will accept it. Especially government organizations wanting to comply with an ISO standard.

Companies and governments do care about money and they will reject M$XML regardless of it's ISO status.

I have my doubts. They have been MS's planned obsolescence treadmill for years even without .doc be

I know OOXML is going to go through

Microsoft has throw way too much behind this for it to fail. What I would like to see is all the sellouts gets nailed legally for their nonsense. There are a lot of people putting forth ridiculous arguments in favour of OOXML. Valid arguments are cool, but some are just plain paid for. What I would like to understand from one of these people is how ODF can survive in the face of OOXML as an ISO standard.

Re:I know OOXML is going to go through

I agree, Microsoft is going to win.

ISO and the rest of us are going to lose.

We now know how much confidence to place in the ISO standardization process.

Re:I know OOXML is going to go through

Let's wait until more than 16/90 votes are in before pronouncing doom, gloom, and woe unto the world. Care to imagine how much big tobacco spent fighting the trials that ended in them being fined, what, $100 billion?

That being said... You only have to lie once and all future statements you make are tainted by doubt. The question has moved beyond ODF vs OOXML but to ISO itself. The ISO is like a bank in that their product is trust. The same way I trust the bank to hold my money, I'm supposed to trust that things certified by ISO deserve to have been certified. But if this passes, how can I do that? How can ISO survive in the face of having allowed itself and it's processes to be so transparently perverted? And not just by anyone, but by a known abusive monopolist which has proven for over twenty years that there is no lie it won't tell and no back it won't stab to get it's way?

I trust that buying film & photo paper whose boxes are labelled "ISO 9001 Certified" means I'm getting a well-made product. How can I trust any ISO standards after this? If this happens, Microsoft will truly be the destroyer of standards.

And then it will be over

Except for the European antitrust investigation, and other investigations.

Msft gives EU bribe money to whitewash everything

So what? Msft has $40 billion in the bank. So what if EU gets $25 million, or whatever.

And so what if the slashdot/groklaw crowd knows about all the corruption? Msft has hundreds of millions of customers, and 99% of them don't give a damn.

Has there ever been a recall of ISO certification?

If there has been or even if there is just established process for doing so, perhaps that should be the next move. There's no doubt that these voting irregularities are driven by parties interested in OOXML's adoption as an ISO standard format, but what redress actions are possible after this fraud goes through?

Further, what is there to be said about the fact that not even Office 2007 complies with the OOXML standard? Doesn't that fact also exclude Office 2007 documents from being used in areas where ISO file formats are required?

Re:Has there ever been a recall of ISO certificati

If there has been or even if there is just established process for doing so, perhaps that should be the next move.

There is the appeals process in ISO/IEC JTC1 which will certainly be attempted by one or more national bodies if the outcome of the vote is "approval". Valid grounds for such an appeal is provided for example by theh fact that at the Ballot Resolution Meeting, O-members (national bodies who only have "observer" status) were allowed to vote, although according to the rules they shouldn't have allowed to do that.

More promising IMO would be to file an appeal on the grounds of the WTO GPA (Government Procurement Agreement) and/or antitrust considerations, and at the same time file a lawsuit seeking a court order against ISO and IEC that the appeal shall be granted.

Re:

How about the fact that such an awful, immature, and unimplemented spec should never have been fast-tracked in the first place. Whatever ISO officials okayed that are either corrupt or grossly incompetent.

Re:Has there ever been a recall of ISO certificati

ISO is (supposed to be) a consensus-making body, not some kind of paper certification mill. What's supposed to happen is that all the interested parties sit down and hammer out a specification for a common interoperability system that they can all agree on; the voting procedure is just to make sure that nobody has derailed the process, and is usually just a final footnote after a long process that has generated real, compatible products by the time it is finished. Given that, there's really no need for a recall procedure - you know it's working because you have a market filled with products that work together by the time the specification is released in its final form.

This nonsense with OOXML is a gratuitous abuse that makes a mockery of the whole thing. There is not and never has been any attempt to build interoperability here. There is absolutely no value in it. The only ones to benefit are Microsoft, who are using it as marketing.

Hmmn

The final result will not be announced (or leak) before sometime early next week.

I wonder how the guy manages to know in advance it will not leak.

The coverage kind of sucks, I was hoping this story to link to some dynamic site that would get updated qu

ISO Standards for Sale

Join ECMA, pay the USD60000 and you can have your own ISO Standard guaranteed, even Fast tracked. For a 2.5% commission, I will file the proposed Standard on your behalf with ECMA, not matter what it is, even if there is no final spec, has never been implemented properly, has many un-documented bits, there already exist standards for the same field, will only benefit your company and the real plus: only you can approve changes to the spec and only you can implement it. Further, we promise complete secrecy on all issues related during the process. No consensus needed and the spec can be patented. Bulk submission welcomed.

If this "standard" passes, I will lose confidence.

I used to have a fair amount of confidence in ISO. I spent roughly ten years involved with C standardization, and you know what? The process basically worked. We consistently ended up adopting things that really did work and had consensus, and rejecting things, sometimes even good ones, if we didn't have real consensus.

The OOXML "process" is a joke, and it reflects very, very, badly on ISO.

It's hard to express, in terms that non-standards-weenies would understand, just how absolutely, totally, ridiculous this is. This doesn't even loosely resemble the functioning of a real standards process. The proposed standard is utterly unusable, and furthermore, has no relationship at all to the normal scope of standardization.

Imagine, if you will, that the C99 standard had specified the exact set of allowed command-line options, and had explicitly defined behavior under dozens of circumstances of "undefined behavior" to precisely match the behavior of gcc. Only, it had versions for "gcc 1 compatibility" and "gcc 2 compatibility". Imagine that the standard dictated the precise form and text of every error message, and required total compatibility with gcc. Furthermore, imagine that it specifically required that the source of your compiler must be distributed under the GPL v2, and must make use of the libgcc glue code.

And then imagine that, instead of actually being approved by regular participants, this was rushed through at the last minute by a number of entities which had never shown the slightest interest in C standardization before.

That's pretty close to what's happening here, only it'd have been better, because at least it would be an open standard.