Open XML appears to clear ISO standard vote
Early reports Sunday indicate that Office Open XML (OOXML) appears to have enough votes to be certified an ISO standard. An official tally is not expected until Monday.
As the votes come in from the 87 national standards bodies, so have a number of complaints of irregularities and strong-arm tactics in different countries, including Poland and Norway.
The OpenMalaysia blog, run by openness advocates and students, found that the ballot, which closed Saturday night, had the necessary combination of more than two-thirds approve votes and less than a quarter for disapprove.
Lawyer and standards expert Andrew Updegrove, an advocate for rival standard OpenDocument, found the same conclusion, based on official statements and reports from participants.
If confirmed by the ISO, the vote is a victory for Microsoft and other industry backers of Open XML at Ecma, the standards body that submitted Open XML to ISO/IEC (International Organization for Standardization/International Electrotechnical Commission).
ISO certification will make products that use Open XML, officially called DIS 29500, more attractive to government customers concerned with long-term archives of digital documents. It could also be more appealing to developers who want to build products based on those file formats.
Calls for review?
However, people are already speculating on blogs that there will be challenges to some of the votes from national standards bodies.
The vote, which closed Saturday, followed a ballot resolution meeting (BRM) in February that was meant to address outstanding technical issues with the 6,000-page document and move to consensus.
In some cases, however, standards bodies did not change their vote to yes following the BRM. France, for example, has maintained its no vote, according to a newspaper report.
Some countries, including Venezuela, even changed from supporting the standardization to opposing it, an unusual move that underscores the political nature of the process.
In the run-up to this vote, there have been accounts of Microsoft employees or partners having undue influence on the results of national standards bodies, including Norway. Groklaw has a translation of a Computerworld Norge article, as well as accounts of close votes in Germany and Croatia.
Even before the end of voting on Saturday, participants and technology enthusiasts complained that Microsoft and other Open XML backers have exposed flaws in the ISO process. Ecma chose an accelerated fast-track process, which many view as inappropriate for a weighty technical specification that has what some consider unresolved legal questions.
Earlier stages of the multiyear standards bid reportedly raised questions with European Union antitrust regulators. The Wall Street Journal in February reported that the EU has looked into whether Microsoft misused its desktop software dominance in influencing the first attempt to certify Open XML at ISO in September, a measure which did not pass and precipitated Saturday's follow-on vote.
Martin LaMonica is a senior writer for CNET's Green Tech blog. He started at CNET News in 2002, covering IT and Web development. Before that, he was executive editor at IT publication InfoWorld. E-mail Martin. 
If this succeeds, the ISO's credibility is gone forever.
They were the one who paid the get the incredibly flawed ODF passed.
And they paid to try and stop OpenXML.
This is about nothing more than sanctimonious self-serving government orgs trying to control the market by saying that everything must be standards based. But standards are rarely standards, in that any two implementations of that standard behave in the same manner.
.docx isn't a standard
So why spend the time and money getting this crap standardized?
If somebody made a better/viable standard and product around that standard, I would buy them. Until then, good thing MS wins.
No one but MS will be able to implement it and they won't be able to follow the standard either.
How is that good for anyone but MS?
ODF is not only a standard, anyone can implement it and the paper describing it is 1/10th of the bloated OOXML nonsense.
without MS Office installed? I am speaking about
milimeter/pixel perfect, not some emulated junk.
Ordinary people will have to buy/rent (yes!) MS Office latest
version to open files from other ordinary people, the entire
package on Windows.
If MS paid a single dollar/euro bribe on this thing with such a
panic because they are losing monopoly, that could be their
death sentence from law. Remember what I said.
There are *lots* of perfectly good ways to structure formatted text. I don't
believe anyone has proved any of them to be "mathematically optimal", and
even if they have (which I doubt), that has nothing to do with OOXML being
standardised (or not) by ISO.
format which MS _CUSTOMERS_ having trouble with on OS X
which completely native MS Office exists. Don't even mention
Linux/FreeBSD , it doesn't simply exist.
MS can commit patches to OpenOffice to make it support that
format in matter of next update but they don't.
If the news are true, it is a very bad day for entire IT industry
and the progress of Offices World Wide.
Catchy, modern sounding "open XML" is a standard (!) which
has to support Word 97 bugs and only got support from usual
MS puppet, Icaza and his strange, .NET (Mono) dependent
converter.
"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"
It is a good thing that some 139 countries can still head for the "GOLEM HEIGHTS". See the attached links:
<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.unido.org/doc/3383" target="_newWindow">http://www.unido.org/doc/3383</a>
<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.win2biz.com/comfar/default.htm" target="_newWindow">http://www.win2biz.com/comfar/default.htm</a>
Live Long And Prosper! ;-)
C'mon, man.
C'mon, man.
If OOXML can be a standard then what does that say about the other ISO standards out there? I will never see an ISO standard in the same way again.
There are three phrases in the blog that highlight the lack of competence of the author.
1.) "Andrew Updegrove, an advocate for rival standard OpenDocument..."
ODF is not a "rival standard". It is _the_ standard for documents until we hear otherwise. Using the word "rival" implies that standardization is just a contest, whereas in fact it is supposed to be a sober evaluation of how best to formulate and document a specification. There was no contest and this is not supposed to be a game. ODF was adopted as the standard for documents long before OOXML. Perhaps Microsoft would prefer us to have a revisionist view of things?
2.) "Some countries, including Venezuela, even changed from supporting the standardization to opposing it, an unusual move that underscores the political nature of the process."
How does voting "no" underscores the political nature of the process? The author of the blog gives no insight or justification for that interpretation. Why is a "no" assumed to be a political response? Couldn't it be that voting "no" simply reflects the outcome of technical evaluation of a very flawed proposal?
3.) "If confirmed by the ISO, the vote is a victory for Microsoft and other industry backers of Open XML at Ecma..."
Again, creating a standard is not about winning or losing or victory or defeat. I have said it all in my first point above.
When I began this comment, I didn't want to imply anything about the author's motives since I have no way of knowing his motivations for writing this piece. However, now after reading my own comment I have to come to the conclusion that Martin LaMonica is either a very poor journalist or in fact, a very skilled spin doctor for Microsoft - take your pick.
Memory has informed the mind the appropriate word usage may be that of "EQUIVALENT STANDARD" that OOXML is currently not when compared to ODF. ;-) !
<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.durusau.net/publications/standardsbehavior.pdf" target="_newWindow">http://www.durusau.net/publications/standardsbehavior.pdf</a>
In 30 years of existence, when has Microsoft released something for the benefit of the its customers?
On the software side, what is REALLY different in Office since Office97? I mean, REALLY???
On the server side, the ONLY good product - SBS 2003 and up - is crippled so that you can't use it in charities (it's a license price issue, not a technical one), or in a proper AD domain configuration, or when you have more than 75 users (seriously, WHY???)
The benevolent Microsoft makes us pay here, and a bit more there, and a little more there, and we should take it all happily, as it's all for our benefit.
On the hardware side, not even the xBox360 can compete with lowly Wii (I mean lowly in term of specs and price, not in term of FUN) or high-end PS/3. The Zune looks like it's coming from the 80s, and Windows Mobile devices regularly have to be reset (with a very few exceptions, so if you have had no problem, don't mention it to me, just count your blessing)
On the Web side, the fact that Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo (for their engineers, they tell us, which is not very kind for Microsoft employees) says it all.
Now, if standards are clear sets of rules and procedures that are open and understandable, then Microsoft record is NOT very good (by the way, APIs only tell a programmer what he is able to do - not what the program can actually do):
SMB? AD (a bastardized LDAP)? *.doc/*.xls/*.ppt formats, etc.?
And by the way, why did Microsoft NEVER use existing standards PROPERLY (): TCP/IP, DNS, BootP, LDAP, IMAP, etc. The irony is that these standards existed on Unix systems long before Microsoft even designed their own implementations, and they are still used today in a harmonious way on all other platform EXCEPT Microsoft? And why? For a richer user experience? For quality software?
No amount of spin or pseudo-technical or made-up-logic can change the facts that if Microsoft REALLY had changed and REALLY wanted to use standards - for the benefits of the customer - they could have embraced the ODF and by sitting on the board, proposed 'rich experience' updates. I saw the same process when GE tried to hijack EDI for transportation features to suit its own EDI network and software, but the industry stood strong.
OK Microsoft, show us you mean business, open today's office file formats to the world, BEFORE we can trust you with the future.
And then, compete with the 'rich user experience'!
- Irregularities in Germany? Did Groklaw enough digging?
- by vaxmc March 31, 2008 8:42 AM PDT
- DIN comment on the accusation:
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
-
- No, they did not...
- by aemarques March 31, 2008 9:02 AM PDT
- Because if they did, they would end up with nothing to back their so-called "sources".
- Like this
-
(43 Comments)<a class="jive-link-external" href="http://www.din.de/cmd?level=tpl-artikel&menuid=49589&cmsareaid=49589&cmsrubid=56731&menurubricid=56731&cmstextid=75959&bcrumblevel=1&languageid=en" target="_newWindow">http://www.din.de/cmd?level=tpl-artikel&menuid=49589&cmsareaid=49589&cmsrubid=56731&menurubricid=56731&cmstextid=75959&bcrumblevel=1&languageid=en</a>
You can also see <a class="jive-link-external" href="http://notes2self.net/archive/2008/03/31/din-responds-to-quot-incorrect-and-misleading-quot-reports.aspx" target="_newWindow">http://notes2self.net/archive/2008/03/31/din-responds-to-quot-incorrect-and-misleading-quot-reports.aspx</a>.