If This Was a Month Ago, OOXML Would Be Over 230
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."
OOXML has failed, but it isn't over. (Score:5, Informative)
That doesn't mean it's over: there's a resolution process over the next few months, culminating in a vote in February, to address the comments submitted with "no, with comments" votes. If the comments are resolved to the voter's satisfaction, the "no" vote can be changed to a "yes".
Expect Microsoft to pull out all the stops to get countries to change there votes even without the comments being resolved. You thought there were dirty tricks before? You ain't seen nothing yet.
Or perhaps they'll just fix the standard. Ha ha ha ha...er, sorry.
Re:Help me out (Score:5, Informative)
Well, ODT became an ISO standard and government bodies have started requiring documents to be in this format. This, as you can imagine, does not make Microsoft happy. Microsoft publically claims that ODT is a limited format. However, many people suspect that Microsoft's opposition to ODT is that a widespread adoption of this format will make it so people don't feel forced to use Microsoft Word in order to communicate with business associates, since Word is a closed, proprietary format. So Microsoft invented OOXML, which is a, in theory Open Format that is basically a Word
OOXML, to put it mildly, is an extremely messy format. The general consensus seems to be that, OOXML, as specified, is very complex and the spec is incomplete, making it impossible for third parties to make effective OOXML import/export filters.
what Microsoft is trying to do now is make OOXML an ISO standard, so PHBs (pointy-haired bosses) can claim that OOXML is an open standard (really, it's not), and force people to continue using Word to make documents (since no other program is ever going to have an effective OOXML import/export filter). Microsoft, quite bluntly, is playing very dirty pool in order to make OOXML an ISO standard, and a lot of people are crying foul.
So now, the current battle is to stop OOXML from becoming an ISO standard, so that Microsoft no longer has less of a monopoly on document exchange formats.
Yes, Microsoft could actually help ODF catch on by making it a format that Word can read or write (such as what this converter [sourceforge.net] does for MS Office), but they don't seem to want to do that.
OOXML should be revised to make it map ODF (Score:5, Informative)
As pointed out in this U.S. supreme court decision [justia.com], "Agreement on a product standard is, after all, implicitly an agreement not to manufacture, distribute, or purchase certain types of products." In the case of OOXML, the agreement is primarily about not manufacturing, distributing or puchasing products relying on the truly open document format standard ODF.
Really it is only acceptable for the standardization of OOXML to proceed if OOXML is first revised to make it "map ODF", see this article [siug.ch] for a precise definition and detailed argument.
Re:Help me out (Score:5, Informative)
By which he means you find things like "do margins like Word 95" with (of course) the actual code that explains how margins are done in Word 95... missing. And with Word 95 itself being closed source... well, nobody but microsoft can implement OOXML fully without reverse engineering several microsoft products. Except microsoft of course, which has the souce code for said products. The document is also 6000 pages long, compared to 700 for ODF.
"Microsoft, quite bluntly, is playing very dirty pool in order to make OOXML an ISO standard"
By which he means "a microsoft employee admitted they were buying votes" as well as the doubling of voting members of not only the ISO but govermental bodies deciding votes for their country in the ISO and how nearly every one of these new members plans to vote YES to OOXML as a standard.
Also, the name "Office Open XML" is suspiciously similar to a *real* open-source product, Open Office.
Committee stuffing legally different from lobbying (Score:4, Informative)
Here [justia.com] is a U.S. supreme court decision holding that committee stuffing in standardization organizations is fundamentally different from lobbying.
From the decision: "Petitioner, and others concerned about the safety or competitive threat of polyvinyl chloride conduit, can, with full antitrust immunity, engage in concerted efforts to influence those governments through direct lobbying, publicity campaigns, and other traditional avenues of political expression. To the extent state and local governments are more difficult to persuade through these other avenues, that no doubt reflects their preference for and confidence in the nonpartisan consensus process that petitioner has undermined. Petitioner remains free to take advantage of the forum provided by the standard-setting process by presenting and vigorously arguing accurate scientific evidence before a nonpartisan private standard-setting body.[Footnote 13] And petitioner can avoid the strictures of the private standard-setting process by attempting to influence legislatures through other forums. What petitioner may not do (without exposing itself to possible antitrust liability for direct injuries) is bias the process by, as in this case, stacking the private standard-setting body with decisionmakers sharing their economic interest in restraining competition."
Not quite, but... (Score:2, Informative)
Actually that particular form of corruption is not allowed by the rules [jtc1sc34.org] (the comments have to be "technical reasons").
However there are other possible ways of corruption that are not disallowed by the rules. For example, in Switzerland, the relevant committee was chaired by H. R. Thomann [thomannconsulting.ch], a consultant who earns money by representing business interests in standardization organizations. The rules of the Swiss standards organization did not require him to disclose whether he was getting paid by one of the interested companies. Thomann was appointed to this role by Sebestyen who besides his role in the Swiss dtandardization organization is also secretary-general of Ecma [ecma-international.org]. For some more details about this conflict of interests, see SIUG's appeal [siug.ch].
Summary (Score:5, Informative)
OOXML - Microsoft's format based on their Office Suite. It is about 6000 pages long.
A couple of my favorite reasons for not allowing OOXML to become a standard include:
1. 1900 is defined as a leap year because that's what MSOffice does.
2. The specification includes numerous definitions of tags like autoSpaceLikeWord95, which is defined as:
This element specifies that applications shall emulate the behavior of a previously existing word processing application (Microsoft Word 95) when determining the spacing between full-width East Asian characters in a document's content.
[Guidance: To faithfully replicate this behavior, applications must imitate the behavior of that application, which involves many possible behaviors and cannot be faithfully placed into narrative for this Office Open XML Standard. If applications wish to match this behavior, they must utilize and duplicate the output of those applications. It is recommended that applications not intentionally replicate this behavior as it was deprecated due to issues with its output, and is maintained only for compatibility with existing documents from that application. end guidance]
The "Standard" contains an erroneous date calculation, and won't tell you how to properly do something defined in the standard.
Recent stuff:
It seems that companies that never before bothered to show up for standards votes are magically showing up on the day of the OOXML vote, paying their dues, and voting. And we're not talking about a few. Suddenly, votes that would normally have ten to twenty companies show up all of the sudden have 20 new businesses. Also, there have been reports of companies that support Microsoft getting access to Microsoft technology they wouldn't otherwise have access to. Also, countries are supporting OOXML that never bothered with these votes.
BTW, have you been living under a rock? This story shows up almost as often as the BSD/GPL tussle.
Re:Help me out (Score:4, Informative)
Some examples are given here [msdn.com].
Mod parent up, please (Score:3, Informative)
No. (Score:2, Informative)
OpenOfficeOrg (Score:3, Informative)
NYT: Microsoft Favored to Win Open Document Vote (Score:5, Informative)
Here's Microsoft's take on it... (Score:4, Informative)
I would like to note that those "unconfirmed" reports have been confirmed by many sources at this point, and that the list given is FAR too short. Something like 40+ countries have decided they want a voting ("P" level, rather than "O" level) membership in the ISO and this interest corresponds with Microsoft's "voter registration drive."
Never mind such a drive being inconsistent with US anti-trust law. A few anti-trust settlements are merely a cost of doing business these days, and the Iowa settlement is an aberration. Most of them have settled for far less, like the Arizona settlement where they got to give away software that would not only cost them pennies on the dollar (actually, probably less than pennies) but would help further their lock-in in the educational market.
Current Scoreboard (Score:3, Informative)
There have been reports on far more votes. See this blog post [blogspot.com] for the current standings.
Re:Summary (Score:3, Informative)
Hungary, 45 new voters, incorrect voting procedure (Score:2, Informative)
A bunch of new voters registered, instead of the normal 10, the 55 were voting.
On the first vote, the General Director of the Standards body sent out the voting forms late, then changed the rules so that 50% majority was enough for a yes vote instead of normal 2/3rd majority.
He was ordered to redo the vote properly by the Hungarian Minister of Economy.
He did the vote again, but again he didn't follow the rules, sending the votes out himself. All very suspicious if you ask me. They should consider removing this man from his post if he can't follow the rules he's supposed to enforce.