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."

Re:Why is it tolerated?

[wizardforce]

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:Who says it is tolerated?

[calebt3]

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 being an ISO standard. People are starting to grumble about the .docx change, but ISO "compliance" could sway them a bit.

Re:I know OOXML is going to go through

[The Master Control P]

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.

ISO Standards for Sale

[Bayesela]

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.

Re:Voting irregularities

[surfi]

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

you haven't learned your lesson.. as long as more money flows in than out, microsoft doesn't care. noone can punish microsoft, only their best clients can apply pressure on them (governments and large enterprises), for example now, demanding opendocument support. ang guess what? they have made this ooxml theater to bypass this pressure too, and leave everything as it has always been: all competitors implementing their formats while they screw them up when they feel it's time to slow competitors down and give the impression they are inviable alternatives.. this is how microsoft has worked since the 80' and it has worked pretty well. look at openoffice, we have now opendocument support in ms-office but thanks to the stockholm syndrome they are enthusiastically implementing ooxml, endorsing it and helping to have it widespread, instead of boycotting it to give opendocument a chance. bravo!

Remember this...

[Joce640k]

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:Why is it tolerated?

[Crayon Kid]

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 water. Its work has just lost all meaning.

The NB's went to ridiculous lengths to pass OOXML. We've seen small companies joining commitees in drones days before the vote and voting to approve without any kind of justification; we've seen commitee chairs openly lobbying OOXML and spreading Microsoft propaganda; we've seen overwhelming opposition simply shut out, rules changed on the fly and generally doing everything but dancing naked on a pole just so that OOXML is passed.

Fuck ISO. I cannot believe how wide open they were to this kind of abuse. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. And the second they pass OOXML under these conditions, "ISO certified" transforms to shit. Who's to say what other ISO "standards" in the future won't be passed this way? An ISO standard used to mean something. Now it doesn't mean anything.

Thank you, Microsoft, for destroying a global organization. If after this anybody still doesn't believe that Microsoft will fuck up anything as long as it's good for them, they're cracked in the head.