Ecma Receives 3,522 Comments on Open XML Standards 182
Bergkamp10 writes "Microsoft's Office Open XML document format attracted 3,522 comments from the national standards bodies that participated last summer in balloting that has so far derailed the effort to certify the format as an ISO standard.
Brian Jones, an Office program manager at Microsoft and the sole Microsoft employee on the Ecma Technical Committee, revealed the total number of comments that had been received in a blog posting this week. Ecma International is a Swiss standards body that already ratified Open XML and is guiding the format through the ISO.
According to Jones many of the 3,500-plus comments, consisting mainly of objections and suggested changes to Ecma's standards proposal, overlap with one another. "When you group them into similar buckets, it narrows down pretty quickly into a more manageable list," he said. Still, he apparently acknowledged that the number of comments was "still pretty impressive."
Open XML just missed out on a fast-track to approval as an ISO standard in the initial balloting that concluded in early September. Ecma's proposal won a majority of the votes that were cast but not enough to meet the requirements for approval.
Ecma has until January 14 to provide responses and rebuttals to the comments submitted by the national standards bodies. The issues raised will then be debated at a so-called ballot resolution meeting that ISO will hold starting February 25, after which the various national standards bodies will have a chance to amend their vote — the last chance for Open XML to be approved."
Slashdot comments about the comments (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Slashdot comments about the comments (Score:5, Informative)
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The groklaw article is referring to the comments from the ISO committee members, the ECMA is a different standards body covering Europe.
I'm not supporting Microsoft (I'm a dyed-in-the-wool *nixer), but you're confusing the two bodies.
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So perhaps the total was 10,000 recieved, but only 3,522 via ECMA? MFTFA: "...Ecma International, a Geneva-based standards body that already ratified Open XML and is shepherding the format through I
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The article is talking about documents sent to ECMA by ISO.
But, maybe ISO did condense them a bit.
Re:Slashdot comments about the comments (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070910110639612
Where does that leave the 6,500 missing comments?
Re:Slashdot comments about the comments (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Slashdot comments about the comments (Score:5, Funny)
Florida
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The IETF was recently the target of a clueless lobbying 'campaign' by the FSF. Post after post appeared on the IETF mailing list saying 'no standards base
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You find a collection of comments [noooxml.org] here compiled. The comments submitted are a tip of an iceberg. Some National bodies submitted bullshit for instance the Tur
Unfortunately (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Unfortunately (Score:5, Funny)
More people wasting their time ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Not that my opinion matters, but I think a lot of really talented people are wasting their time getting pulled between OOXML and ODF. Right from Jody Goldberg and a lot of others are spending a lot of time supporting both (and debating why).
And looks like I'm not the only one who thinks that - quoted from Jdub's email to gnome-lists [gnome.org].
I've already shouted down MooXML [dotgnu.info], but I think I'm done talking about this, if I'm not going to do anything in particular (say, does the Koffice ODF guys need some help?).
Re:More people wasting their time ... (Score:5, Interesting)
My only question is how much will it cost Microsoft to fix this for themselves? Yeah, mod me down fanboys. But, the reality is this is something Microsoft has done all too often. So have many other companies. This seems to be a huge issue to Microsoft. Maybe they will let it slide for now and spend time building up their bastardized version of open format (truly a closed format) while doing what they can to destroy a truly open format (like they did with so many other standards before), or will they decide to go for the quick kill and buy the standard?
I used to really like Microsoft products. I used to look forward to when they came out with new products. I also used to like Monsanto for their *engineering*. Reality is they both have too much in common. I believe Open Format is far more important than anything else in computing at the moment. The implications for the future and the present are huge. Open Format is truly what is needed to create competition. As long as the documents are interoperable across applications, then the applications will have to compete on best of breed, not best of lock in. And, as a bonus if the formats are open, then the worry of data loss due to format loss or is much lower. How many times I have had to pull something from an archive in the Microsoft world only to find none of the current tools can open a document that old (happens in law and finance). That is one of the reasons everyone I have worked with keeps digital images of their documents. They are still human readable, though it does defeat several of the strengths of digitally stored documents.
What do you all think? Will Microsoft go for the long term takeover or try to force the issue now (and why do you think so)?
InnerWeb
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Taunting Microsoft fanboys on Slashdot, huh?
Next up, taunting neo-cons at a Barbara Streisand concert?
Re:More people wasting their time ... (Score:4, Insightful)
In today's Slashdot, you're far more likely to be modded down for negative comments on Microsoft.
Personally, I suspect their marketing team (or a proxy) is gaming user-moderated tech sites.
Re:More people wasting their time ... (Score:4, Insightful)
My theory is that we have an influx of wet-behind-the-ears IT "professionals", fresh out of a 3-month course at some diploma mill and now proud holders of a MSCE diploma or some such, and therefore knowing-- with absolute certainty -- that Microsoft is the be-all and end-all of all things IT and their ticket to success. And now here on Slashdot out to "show us" old farts.
Which reminds me of a guy I know who never used a computer for anything, tried starting various businesses ranging from candy dispenser machines to hot-dog stands, and eventually got one of those MSCEs or A+ or what not (in 3 months) following which he started an IT business whereby he "fixes" people's computers. The business is wildly successful in appearance, with big ads all over town and the clientele mostly consisting of people even less computer literate then him (of which there is a lot) ... although there appears to be not much repeat business. Fear not, ads are big and flashy and one is born every ... you get the idea. His selling point? "No computer gurus here!". I kid you not. It is of course impossible to talk to him now, since he "knows" the IT industry better then everyone, according to him and his wallet. Still hasn't seen a rack-mount server though. "Who uses those anyhow? (snicker)".
Needless to say he worships greed and sees Bill Gates as the living incarnation of some sort of God of Profit. But which does not stop him from selling copies of MS Office on CD-Rs to old ladies ...
I would not be surprised to see him spouting some nonsense here.
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If that looks like I'm following Twitter around, it's more of a reflection on his posting habits than mine, I'm afraid.
So, that's now out of the way. Are you going to respond to my point, or are you content to keep talking crap?
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We have to consider at least a reasonable possibility that there are paid posters here, given that the means and motivation are certainly established. We don't have to envisage warehouses of people doing nothing but reading Slashdot. Encouragement of existing employees, allowing it as paid overtime, etc. would be all that was needed.
However, if there are such people, they have to at least consider whether their efforts are productive or counter-productive. There are plenty of smart people here on Slashd
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I think the main point I disagree with on a repeated basis is the assertion that the moderating system is somehow being 'gamed' by Microsoft. Seeing as modpoints are given relatively rarely, and if your moderations are repeatedly meta-moderated down you don't get modpoints again, anybody habitually trying to bury comments denigrating Microsoft will see their resources dwindle very, very quickly.
That leaves shilling by posting
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I'm not really sure what you meant to be honest.
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Re:More people wasting their time ... (Score:5, Informative)
Why can't they fix it? They've already shipped Ofice 2007, and that is built to suport OOXML as is.
As a result, their ISO efforts are likely screwed, or if not, any document format they do get through will be kept around for its status, but left all but unused. Probably support for it will appear in an office service pack that they will say is aimed at the civil service or some other crap.
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It could end up like POSIX (Score:2)
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Reality is that $EVIL_CORPORATION==$CORPORATION. Corps have their ups and downs. If it wasn't for corps, (or some other similar social mechanism) you couldn't possibly have your $20 Nike shoes or your safe, reliable car.
Corps are a logical extension of biology, where a group of people come together and fun
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Re:More people wasting their time ... (Score:4, Informative)
Not that my opinion matters, but I think a lot of really talented people are wasting their time getting pulled between OOXML and ODF.
I have been involved in some standardization efforts, and from what I can tell -- that's exactly the point.
In many standardization efforts there are participants whose sole purpose is to delay, confuse, or break the standard, or at least wear the active proponents down. Typically in these cases these disruptive participants are trying to protect their own product or implementation -- sometimes they are just playing for time to catch up to competitors in their R&D department, sometimes they are trying to water the standard down so that their proprietary solution would be more successful.
It's not very hard to see which would be the case in this instance.
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That's a feature, not a bug. If OOXML can't be made an ISO standard like ODF, bog down the talented people who would otherwise be recommending adoption of ODF to their national IT bodies, or *gasp* contributing to open source software.
The squeals of a dying company are really quite unpleasant; won't somebody (the EU?) please put it out of its misery?
common criticisms (Score:5, Informative)
Re:common criticisms (Score:5, Insightful)
Precisely. And why fix the problems? We already have a standard: ODF. Microsoft has yet to put forward a halfway persuasive argument as to why we need another. In some cases different standards meet different needs, but generally speaking having more than one standard is inefficient. Even if the problems are fixed, in the absence of a good reason for having multiple standards, the answer to Microsoft's proposal should be that they're too late.
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This of course, is on top of the many other aspects of the format that make it useless as an international standard, like it's inability to do Ar
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If Microsoft is going to use OOXML, having a specification would indeed be useful for interoperability. But why a standard?
Re:common criticisms (Score:4, Insightful)
Read out this statement : "OpenDocument Format is a world-recognised ISO standard. MOOXML is not a world-recognised ISO standard".
Now, if you were in charge of a monster-sized company which is also a monopoly, wouldn't you balk at that sentence?
In Microsoft's "mind", one of the ways in which they can counter the threat (to them) of ODF becoming a widely-used format, is to make its own format - MOOXLML - become an ISO standard - that way they can market their own format as such, and of course this format is also one their "lock-in" formats which they'll use to swat out the competition - yet again. This is why you see all these sudden new sign-ups to the ISO who suddenly saw the light and voted for MOOXML.
And that's precisely WHY they want MOOXML to be made an ISO standard.
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Sure, I understand why Microsoft wants OOXML to be a standard. My point is, I don't think that there is a reason for anyone else to make it a standard, even if it isn't broken.
In a word: "sort of" (Score:2)
Well, there's all those existing documents which would suddenly become "standardized". That would save a lot of upheaval.
The real goal of switching to an open, implementable (which rules out OOXML...) standard is to open up the market for software which can edit/display it.
The current Microsoft lock-in is unpalatable for anybody with long term vision. I doubt if many of today's documents will be usable in 50 years except via sp
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The real goal of switching to an open, implementable (which rules out OOXML...) standard is to open up the market for software which can edit/display it.
Open market = allowing office software other than Microsoft's. And, taking a look at where they take most of their profits from [microsoft.com], I say it will be a frigid day in hell when Microsoft stops using every underhanded tactic possible in this fight.
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The real goal of switching to an open, implementable (which rules out OOXML...) standard is to open up the market for software which can edit/display it.
And generate it too. This is something that is possibly not understood by ordinary users of word processing software, but it is a tremendous advantage to have the possibility to generate real documents from (a) database(s) and other data sources.
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Exactly.
Microsoft isn't scared of a few competitors to it's full Office Suite - they can do a lot of marketing to make up for the product's shortfalls.
What they're scared of is an entire ecosystem of specialised document producers and consumers. A standard and open document format has the potential to revolutionise the way we create and manage information. It could be as big a fo
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No, but I do have a 1929 wind-up gramophone, that I occasionally crank up to listen to Winston Churchill's speeches on 78rpm acetates...
And if I were given a phonograph cylinder, I reckon I'd be able to rig up a suitable phonograph fairly easily, since the patent is now open source.
Stuff like 'dolinebreakslikeWord95' isn't ever going to be open, no matter how much Microsoft claim in their OOXML proposal.
Immediate reason for wanting their own standard (Score:5, Informative)
-support ODF or another standard not controlled by them
-drop out of government business
-or have their own format promoted to a standard
Guess what they are trying now?
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Also, I disagree on one point:
I think the Massachusetts Information Technology Divisionand and its (then) boss Peter Quinn were serious about switching to ODF, rather than just trying to get concessions from Microsoft. Hence I would not use the term "milking".
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It would be far easier to address 3500 issues, especially with expression syntax, currency formatting, etc than it would be to take ODF to the level of functionality of OpenXML. Even if the time was put into ODF, by the time it was as mature in features as OpenXML it would also have a list of 3500 issues that would then need to be addressed.
It is easier to slim down and standardize than create from scratch missing functionality.
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Re:Or it could just die. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Surely the CONVERTER when converting to/from old formats must know how these buggy old apps handled things like line breaks, and represent this behaviour using the new format. If converting back, it can make the appropriate changes in reverse. It is utterly nonsensical to have kludges for all these buggy old apps in a new format, and will just make the new format unnecessarily bloated and difficult to parse.
You want a clean format spec, that handles all t
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Oh, yes, obviously this is a reason to create a new, entirely different standard, rather than extending ODF. You know, when Macromedia invented Flash, it was a mistake to embed it in HTML -- obviously, they should've invented FlashML, to power the Myspace Generation Internet.
Never mind that had the very idea been brought up in the ODF community, it'd be laughed down. Maybe we should have "boldandfontsizelikeWord2003Heading1"?
OOXML The best "standard" money can buy (Score:2, Interesting)
World record (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:World record (Score:5, Interesting)
-- Louarnkoz
Now let's see the reply (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Now let's see the reply (Score:5, Funny)
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They are like Bush or any other radical right wing politician - you are with us or against us. It has nothing to do with Open XML.
cha, as if (Score:4, Funny)
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VMS Doc Set (Score:3, Interesting)
The source was also on Microfiche as the poster said. There was even a part number in the price book where you could (for lots of $$$$) buy the sources on MagTape.
However,
The 'Open' in Open VMS Came from the inclusion of a full POSIX Interface & API into VMS.
Those were the days...
I used to work for them and wrote the TSU05 Magtape driver. (well, modded the TS11 driver and added code
Re:VMS Doc Set (Score:5, Funny)
Re:cha, as if (Score:5, Funny)
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Can ISO even make decisions anymore? (Score:4, Insightful)
I suppose they will crawl out of the woodwork for this vote but one would think there would have to be other votes in the lead up.
Ecma's proposal won a majority of the votes? (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number5.17/iso-procedures [edri.org]
"a leaked memo showed that Microsoft asked partners to influence the vote but had also offered to pay them to do so"
http://politics.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/05/133219&from=rss [slashdot.org]
"It turns out there's an interesting correlation between Transparency International's 'corruption perceptions index' and voting behavior in ISO's OOXML decision. Countries with a lower score (more corruption) on the 2006 CPI were more likely to vote in favor of OOXML"
http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=7E36CE19-D223-45C2-9704-A2F4B116AA26 [cbronline.com]
"the publication of the voting results brings to a close a hard-fought and often bitter battle to win the approval of national voting bodies that has been tarnished by allegations of corruption, bribery vote stuffing"
*sigh* pathetic
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Is EDRI an amateur organization? Using "but" as a conjunction is supposed to join contrasting ideas. They should have used "and", otherwise that line makes no sense.
Typo in the title (Score:3, Funny)
There, fixed it for ya.
Babelfish. (Score:2)
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Not so easy, since MsOOXML is neither documented, complete, nor XML.
Comments published as .doc? (Score:2)
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Not the last chance (Score:5, Informative)
>...the last chance for Open XML to be approved."
Shouldn't this be "...the last chance for Open XML to be approved through the fast track method.". It can then still take the normal, but quite longer and time consuming way .
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Finally a job for the goatse guy (Score:2)
Open XML JUST missed out on fast-track?!? (Score:4, Insightful)
More accurate would be "After extensive rigging of the fast track voting process, Open XML STILL failed to gain enough votes to progress into fast track voting".
What Microsoft did to the ISO voting process has damaged this standards setting institute in both credibility and functionality (and has quite nicely identified those participants who can not be trusted to remain with technical merits only, like what happened in Switzerland). The side effects of their ISO vote rigging are still felt because there are now issues with other, non-Microsoft related standards that grind to a halt as the wannabee voters (i.e. the MS paid crowd) are simply not interested or involved in the day-to-day running.
Personally, I think those late members ought to be banned for life from ever going near the process again, but so should be anything introduced by Microsoft if you want to do it right.
It seems anything MS touches turns to lead nowadays, and HP has finally started to reveal the truth about those 'great, "on track" sales of Vista': Yet Another Myth.
Surely Redmond must be able to see the light at some point? It's all good and well running after the innovation train and pick things up later, but it gets difficult when that train accelerates and you're not on board..
Please use the correct name! (Score:5, Insightful)
The standard format "Extensible Markup Language" otherwise known as XML, is already "open" and has absolutely nothing to do with XML itself (other than using that particular format for wrapping up its data/contet).
Why is that important? Because Microsoft has a (successful) strategy of sucking up general terms like "XML" and turning them into their own. If the world starts calling their new document format "Open XML" it won't be long before all non-IT people think that XML is either something out of Redmond, or that Microsoft made it "open". This has happened before, and Microsoft are really good at it. My boss and perhaps 80% of our customers insist that an "SQL Server" is a Microsoft product, and they falsely connect "SQL" with something from Microsoft. And I often meet young students (age 16-19) who think Microsoft invented the TCP/IP network protocol, only because Windows calls the protocol "Microsoft TCP/IP" in the Windows operating system.
I am not a Microsoft-flamer. In fact, I work with development of Microsoft-based IT systems. But I still object to the degradation/transformation of general terms or standards, which falsely make them sound like they are from Microsoft.
In short: The new document standard from Microsoft, used by Microsoft Office, is named "Office Open XML", and there is no such thing as "Open XML". The Extensible Markup Language, XML, is published by W3C [w3c.org] and is already "open".
- Jesper
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Is Anything Going to be Changed? (Score:2)
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http://blogs.msdn.com/jasonmatusow/archive/2007/11/20/open-xml-brm-a-response-to-bob-sutor-s-assertions.aspx [msdn.com]
I think there is general acceptance from all involved that there are still changes to come.
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I'm not worried.... (Score:2)
I'm actually rather tickled that the IT market place is maturing the way it is lately and that the ECMA and ISO standards bodies are sticking to th
662 Responses?! Office 2007 - Ramifications? (Score:2)
How can you make 662 responses to an existing file format without burning early adopters? And Microsoft isn't even finished yet!
Isn't there already an open XML standard? (Score:2)
Now if you're talking about an open document format, that's a whole different beast, but I believe there is already a standard for that as well... ODF right? and it should focus on the things that are needed for documents, which seems to me should only include at most a way to reference binary data and structured data and should mostly be just a
wanna see them all? (Score:2)
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Seriously:
It acquired its name in 1994, when the European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA) changed its name to reflect the organization's international reach.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecma_International [wikipedia.org]
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Mod parent up... maybe? (Score:3, Funny)
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Rubber stamped it. Same thing as with C# and the
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Most of their products are bad products which don't deserve purchasing...
Since when have microsoft thought twice about forcing something half assed onto their long suffering customers?