Microsoft favored to win open-document vote

Amid intense lobbying, Microsoft is expected to squeak out a victory to have Office Open XML recognized as international standard.
The New York Times

The story "Microsoft favored to win open-document vote" published September 3, 2007 at 10:26 AM is no longer available on CNET News.

Content from The New York Times expires after 7 days.

[Hardrada]

What a BIASED article!

This article is incredible! Were c|net news.com also paid off by Microsoft. A few choice quotes:

"After what basically has amounted to unprecedented lobbying"
-- or "bribing", to the rest of the world.

"allowing developers to improve and derive new products without having to pay royalties"
-- err, no. The reason why the Microsoft format is inferior is that it is incomplete, meaning that they can blame everyone who implements it when a document is incompatible, because the spec doesn't cover everything.

"Trinidad and Tobago, Kenya and Ivory Coast, some of whom became active late in the voting at Microsoft's urging."
-- funny that.

[KayakFun]

So standards can be bought...

It will be a sad day when a convicted monopolist can buy its way into the standardization committees just by throwing money and partners into the democratic process, instead of repairing the flaws in their design. Read this before you say yes:
http://ooxmlisdefectivebydesign.blogspot.com/

[Commander_Spock]

CLUELESS.....

"Others say a standards designation would reflect reality, because more than 90 percent of electronic documents are in Microsoft format...."

Here are reasons why those "Others" are CLUELESS:

As a point of reference here is an extract from a 1998 Lotus Development Corporation communication; Re: "Concerning the issues with 1-2-3 that are talked about in the documentation you gave me, most of the issues are related to converting files between older and newer versions of product and converting documents between Lotus and Microsoft. Anytime a file is saved backwards or saved with an older file format than the format the file was created under, such as saving a 1-2-3 , 97 file for Windows 95 into a WK1 format for DOS, then naturally we are expected to loose certain features due to technology and features that are present now that were not present 8 - 10 years ago. Similarly, if we try to convert a file from Lotus into Excel or Excel into Lotus, due to differences in the products not every feature will be converted perfectly with the file filters that are available. Both Lotus and Microsoft create similar spreadsheet programs; however, there are several differences in both programs and these differences will remain to distinguish the products apart. We do try to design conversion filters that will allow as much of the file formats as possible to be exchanged and converted without disrupting the actual file design and format.

In one of your letters you made mention of the @IRR and @ERR functions in the 1-2-3 product. By design the @IRR (notably "absent" in Open Office) will calculate the Internal Rate of Return; where the @ERR is used in conjunction with other formulas, posted was an "ERR" showing an error was received in the calculations. As far as I can see in the program I cannot find an @ERR function that will allow us to calculate an Economic Rate of Return"

How CLUELESS can some "Others" (without any experience in project evaluation requiring international considerations) be not to have the understanding/intelligence that Code-Base Lotus SmartSuite (still Work-In-Process) Microsoft Office 2007's Excel) will always be Code-Base Lotus 1-2-3 (Better known as - The Spread Sheet That Rock The World - Again)

What Are The Reasons The "CONCORDE" Cannot Fly and The Bush Administration, the Brazilian Producers, American Farmers (Corn Growers)... Are Flying High On "ETHANOL" Folks?

The Clinton Administration said it best- It Is (Always Going To Be) The (Engineering) Economy Stupid (Clueless "Others")!

"OPEN" LOTUS (ERR) SMARTSUITE ANYONE!

[Troll Hard]

Ah yes the Clinton Administration

***The Clinton Administration said it best- It Is (Always Going To Be) The (Engineering) Economy Stupid (Clueless "Others")!***

The same Clinton administration that took campaign money from China and India in order to outsource and offshore IT and Engineering jobs over to China and India. Which lead to the Dotcom bust of 1998-1999, which lead to the black monday of 2000, which led to a lot of angry ex-IT and ex-Engineering workers in the USA who lost their jobs and were forced to take lower paying jobs in retail or some other lower paying job.

You have to admit, there is nothing better than trying to compete for the same IT or Engineering job at the same time as 500+ other applicants in one week. Then getting hired, working for a while, only to be flown out to India to train your replacements after which you will be let go due to budget cuts because labor in India and China are cheaper.

Unless you can land that contracting position due to some niche market you are in, like database migration, extreme programming, or being able to code to fit the needs of the employer because the Offshore workers and ex-employees weren't able to fit the needs.

Clueless is quoting from 1998, the things that aren't even relevant today. Clueless is forgetting that you already claimed there was an IRR solution in the 1980's:
http://news.com.com/5208-7344_3-0.html?forumID=1&threadID=30509&messageID=305340&start=-1
Yet you keep on mentioning that there isn't one. Now that is clueless!

[Commander_Spock]

When "winning" an "open document (format) vote"...

... is "loosing" (desktop productivity suite) market share: When sensible folks realise that IBM's Lotus Notes 8.0's ISO Standardised Office Productivity Suite is "all" you need to complete your sophisticated analyses and to be able to Collaborate, Coordinate, Cooperate with your colleagues all around the world.

http://www-306.ibm.com/software/lotus/notesanddomino/

[jr_tyrrell]

I wish people could be rational for a moment

Lobbying (bribing) and market share aside the OOXML shouldn't be a standard.

"Others say a standards designation would reflect reality, because more than 90 percent of electronic documents are in Microsoft format"

Well yes that's certainly true, in fact probably more than 90% of worldwide users use Microsoft formats to store information, however, without obtaining licences no-one else could actually implement parts of the documents or generate them, that's the difference between a standard and a proprietary monopoly.

Now OOXML was in essence meant to solve that issue, an ISO standard is one you can implement without having or requiring anything other than the ISO standard (maybe allowing accompanying or referenced material which is also freely available).

The real problem is that OOXML doesn't fulfil this criteria all the defaults of much of the OOXML appear to be patented, it references books without volume numbers or specifics. It is incomplete, I don't really care about Microsoft bending the system to win, that's what businesses do, I'm more concerned that the ISO standards body is (apparently) letting them force through a obviously flawed standard.

When something is so blatantly broken it shouldn't be voted on, it should be fixed.

[Penguinisto]

Tidbits:

[i]"Well yes that's certainly true, in fact probably more than 90% of worldwide users use Microsoft formats to store information..."[/i]

Actually, most data nowadays is shifting either to SQL '97 -compliant format, or that proprietary munge-a-thon of it that MSSQL tries to use. ;)

Now 90% of documents? A bit more accurate. That said, I suspect that the percentage is roughly only 75%, and shrinking. PDF has done a lot to suck down large swaths of what used to be stored in .doc format.

[i]"without obtaining licences no-one else could actually implement parts of the documents or generate them, that's the difference between a standard and a proprietary monopoly."[/i]

Sorta. I can use OOo to open 95% of existing .doc and .xls files and retrieve data from them without any sort of hitch. most of the rest I can extract the data from with a little effort, leaving only about 0.5% which would be otherwise unreadable w/o MS Office to do it.

[i]"When something is so blatantly broken it shouldn't be voted on, it should be fixed."[/i]

Agreed. ODF does that.

/P

[Troll Hard]

And so it shall be fixed

Microsoft will address the comments on the votes that voted "No" and resubmit the modified OOXML standard in February 2008. This is actually how the ISO works, and it is a good thing.

Microsoft already released the standard to the EMCA:
http://www.ecma-international.org/publications/standards/Ecma-376.htm

What part of those standards didn't you understand? It seems to be the accompanying, and referenced material that seems to be freely available on the EMCA web site. It seems to be complete to me. But if 26% of the voters, the ones who voted "No" apparently didn't see these documents on the EMCA web site. Oh well, Microsoft can still make required changes and resubmit it later. This isn't over until Commander Spock whines about OOXML becoming an ISO standard along with the rest of you Anti-Microsoft zealots.

I look forward to February 2008.

[Troll Hard]

OOXML becomes an ISO stanard

even if you Anti-Microsoft zealots don't want it to become one.

Get ready when 90% of the documents in the world are in OOXML format. Then you can eat some crow.

[jr_tyrrell]

Quite right... and so, so wrong.

Well "Troll Hard" first off, just to be clear, I'm not a zealot of any kind, I just want what's easier for me and OOXML just looks like a train wreck in waiting, second of all what's a "stanard"? Maybe you should check spelling standards like a dictionary it's fine don't panic you don't need to pay to use that data.

You are partly right of course, it's very likely that OOXML will indeed be used a lot, however as far as large companies institutions and governments are concerned they will hardly all buy new MS office, install conversion plugins or change all their prior documents overnight so we can expect all those binary doc, xls and ppt will be around awhile.

I'd also imagine a trade over far slower than say IE7 which only takes about 20.1% of the internet market despite being out for over a year and a half and being forced out in updates.

Also with this implementation of OOXML it makes it easier for alternatives of office to flourish by giving them much better (although not complete) conversion information. All in all it's a win, win situation for the anti-microsoft crowd. Lets be fair Microsoft wouldn't have lobbied so hard if it hadn't have been worried about the odf alternative.

It should be intriguing to see what happens to the market in the coming years don't you agree?

[Commander_Spock]

Freedom Of Speech!

"Writing", as in all art represents freedom of speech; and, the Constitution Of The United States Of America and other countries around the world guarantee the rights of the "emerging" more than 10% market share to standardise and migrate to their real Office Productivity Suite Of Choice. How realistic then would be your assumed 90% market share claim?!

[Penguinisto]

Eatin' Crow...

http://news.com.com/8301-10784_3-9770507-7.html?tag=tb

Chow down, fanboi!

:D

/P

[inachu]

It may be recongnised but.

It may be recongnised but it doesn't mean you have to follow it.

I submit that once this draft has been passed and everyone does accept it then fine.

But the moment Microsoft sends an update through windowsupdate that changed the underlying format then this should be construed as a new different format and not the same one that was submitted.

May the nail biting begin.

[grossph]

They Lost

So basically C/Net said it would be close but MS would prevail...well they lost....on both accounts...

[Phillep_H]

Not completely

There's one more vote coming. And, if MS wins it, then they can sneer at those who point out their methods.

[The_Decider]

Chairs are hiding in Redmond today

A good day for open standards. Lets hope that ISO resists further attempts by MS to pervert the standards process.

A bad day for MS, who have suffered yet another failure in a long string of them. Maybe they will have to find another way to trick people into buying Orifice 2007.

This is another sign that MS has lost its clout.

[tundraboy]

If you have to standards for the same category, is it still a standard?

For ISO to even consider OOXML is putting the word 'standard' on its head.

Never heard of a country that has both metric and english measurements standard. Anyone heard of one?

[tundraboy]

Sorry, that's "two standards"

.

[Sumatra-Bosch]

All Your Document Are Belong To Steve !

Open document now cost a buck, yes, a buck. What's a buck? Why you cheap? All Your Document Are Belong To Ballmer until he get a buck, even then, still own, you just pay to see it once. Yes, once. You need to send another buck to me if you want to see it again. Ballmer take PayPal. Easy pay. Good deal. You see Windows Live?

[Sumatra-Bosch]

ISO Barphs At Attempted MSFT Power Grab With Proprietary Document Format

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/09/04/technology/msft.php

The vote in Berlin just crushed OOXML, a format that is so complex MSFT only got it to render a document once and then 16 divisions of MSFT filed suit against other divisions for patent infringement.

MSFT apparently flew in people from island nations in the Pacific that are sinking beneath the waves of global warming-swollen seas and threatened to bring them back to drown unless they voted for OOXML.

ISO delegates were appalled and the ones that could stop laughing long enough voted against it. The ones that couldn't had their votes counted as abstained.

President Steve Ballmer predictably threw desks, chairs and conference tables all over Redmond's Microsoft campus, before tearing the air conditioning unit off of Building 33, carrying it to Route 520 and throwing it across two lanes of east bound traffic where National Guardsmen took down the lumbering giant with tranquilizer darts.

[bhushan bhaagii]

What's Cnet upto?

The news that Microsoft's OOXML lost the ISO vote has been out for more than 24 hours. It's there in the papers all over the world.
Yet, Cnet doesn't carry any report. Wonder what's the reason. Editorial laziness, carelessness, or something more...