IBM Threatens To Leave ISO Over OOXML Brouhaha 200
barnackle writes "In addition to threatening to leave certain standards organizations over the OOXML shenanigans, IBM created new guidelines for its own participation in those organizations in an attempt to pressure the ISO and ECMA to be more fair in their approval procedures."
ISO? (Score:5, Interesting)
Hmm... didn't they used to be some important international standards body at one point, before they got into the marketing business and went under?
I thought they were already gone...
Why is this news?
Re:Great, but does it really matter? (Score:4, Interesting)
Well IBM is big enough to Push their own standards with or without the ISO label. So what that IBM may be able to do is invaladate ISO as a leader in International Standards Organization. If ISO label has no meaning then they become useless.
Re:Great, but does it really matter? (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, the cynic in me agrees with you -- I doubt IBM will follow through, and if they did, I doubt it would make much difference.
However, if people start viewing the ISO as irrelevant and just doing what a big company like Microsoft wants, then they run the risk of becoming irrelevant. That might be the kind of thing they take notice of.
I would like to see some correction to the fact that it's a standard that really only MS can implement. Rubber stamping OOXML basically just legitimizes it for governments to buy it.
Cheers
Settle down now.... (Score:5, Interesting)
I have some friends and an ex-wife that work for IBM. While I would go as far to say that, by and large, my dealings with them have been fair an ethical, I would resist any sort of "white knight" metaphors, it is still a publicly traded company and stock holders mean more than standards.
It is only that IBM is a technically competent competitor that it *can* compete and win on a level playing field that they promote good standards.
That being said, having dealt with double dealing scum of Microsoft many times in the past, I'll take IBM any day.
Not all as it seems (Score:5, Interesting)
It COULD Matter (Score:5, Interesting)
If a really major player leaves the organization it is a major "no confidence" vote in the organization itself.
While the official standards are a great idea, a really big player or a consortium of them can easily just create defacto standards that will have a great chance in the real-world marketplace. This is doubly true if they actually make their standards truly open, as IBM seems to advocate.
I'd say that if companies that manufacture about 10% of the market leave ISO, then it is wounded. If it hits a number like 25%, then it's basically useless.
Also, large companies pay an obscene amount in yearly dues to be part of the standards bodies. Losing that cash will sting badly.
This can be a good move (Score:4, Interesting)
Obligitory Groklaw Plug (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Influence (Score:5, Interesting)
Surely IBM will have more influence over future ISO decisions if it remains a member.
I don't believe that's true. IBM was a part of this OOXML process and yet it was, along with Sun, barred from the portuguese technical committee [boycottnovell.com]. This level of corruption doesn't leave fond memories of the whole process.
Re:Not all as it seems (Score:3, Interesting)
I do not question Groklaw as a source at all. I've found it fun to watch SCO twist in the wind and Groklaw point out the progress of the cases they're involved in. PJ has done everyone a service by being so diligent following the legal shennanigans of Darl and Co.
What I'm referring to is IBM. Maybe it's just my natural distrust of large companies, but every word I see from big business I take with a grain of salt. Yeah, it's great they are saying these things about open standards. However, given the nature of business, if offered a different business model that would allow them to make a ton of money, who's to say that IBM wouldn't do that as well. They haven't always been the friend of the small business owner.
Now what puzzles me is how, out of my original, tiny post, you perceived anything other than an informative link and also my opinion of how while I'm happy that IBM has done this, that I can still be cautious about their (IBM's) motives as a business. If you are referring to my title, I was responding to mcgrew who stated that IBM had it's own standards to push. Honestly though, did it seem like I was trashing Groklaw? 'Cause I don't see it.
Re:ISO? (Score:3, Interesting)
I can assure you, ISO is alive and well, and will be around for a many good years. Many different types of industries use ISO for some type of standards certification. Hell, there's an entire industry for registrars to do pre-auditing for ISO.
Re:ISO? (Score:4, Interesting)
I can assure you, ISO is alive and well, and will be around for a many good years.
What are standards needed for anyway anymore? The record companies already regularly break the "Red Book Standard" for audio CD's and sell those fake data CD's as real audio CD's.
Re:IBM logo in the summary looks more beautiful (Score:3, Interesting)
I know ever since Google came along, we have a tendency to attribute personalities and other human characteristics to companies. However, this is a very dangerous fallacy. Companies, in fact, are amoral. They are neither good nor evil. The nature of a company is to make money and to survive. Survival requires growth, so it isn't wrong to say that companies exist to make more and more money. So for them, to do right is to bring in revenue, and to do wrong is to lose revenue. That is all, no more, no less.
IBM will champion open source and open standards so long as it makes them money. It is the same with Novell and Sun. They don't contribute to open source software if the people running the show doesn't somehow think that such contributions will bring in revenue, and eventually profit. It is the same for Google. If participataing in open source or making somehow loses m
Yes, the goodwill of the people does count, but for very little. Look at Microsoft. Despite all of their actions that have antagonized people here, and even their userbase, how many people own XBoxes? Sony is another good example. How many people have Bravia televisions or own a PS3? We talk about rewarding companies who do good and voting with our wallets, but not only are we on the fringe, but at the end of the day, it doesn't matter. As long as they make a good product, a useful product, nobody really cares about what else they do.
And yes, there are humans behind the scense who run the company and decide on its direction. However, those people come and go. They are not permanent. One day, the CEO could be for open source software, and the next day, that person could be replaced by someone hostile to open source. And get this, the ones who go are usually the ones who don't make money for the company. Philanthropy has no place in a company if it can't make money.
Today, IBM works for openness now, in this instance, for this situation. And it is a "good" thing. But they do it not for the sake of "good" but because it will make them money. It isn't to say that they're not doing something "evil" at the same time, or that they won't tomorrow.
This inability for one to recognize reality for what it is is very dangerous. Call me a cynic, but if we continue to attribute "good" and "evil" to companies, we won't see what's really happening until it's too late.
Re:ISO? (Score:3, Interesting)
Absolutely correct on the industrial stuff like child safety or structural integrity...
However, ISO has shown its weakness in the software field - and dare I say, also demonstrating their corruptibility.
I would suggest that this is because of the subjective nature of software and that generally it's a "survival of the fittest" thing resulting in more than one suitable result (of which OOXML is not one - it is the terminally ill offspring of very wealthy parents). Imagine what would happen if I where to say here that "C is better than Java" - I could start a riot.
Maybe ISO should be removed from this field - but then I'm not sure what would be the alternative. Maybe /. polls?
ISO is fundamentally corrupt (Score:3, Interesting)
This isn't about specific software, hardware or other standards per se.
This is about a corrupt process, which this debacle happened to reveal. The organisation is fundamentally corrupt, the procedures are fundamentally corruptible, and the appeals process has proven that there is no effective corrective mechanism for dealing with corruption.
This makes every standard they stamp, be it the crappy and unimplementable software standard that proved their level of corruption and incapacity for correcting it, or another standard that may be legitimate, or the result of equally corrupt processes to which we are not privy, equally suspect. We cannot know which standards are good, and which are the result of industrial corruption, so all are relatively worthless.