Challenges coming to ISO Open XML vote?
Now that Office Open XML (OOXML) has been certified as an ISO standard, there is a possibility that the vote leading to that result will be challenged. It seems Microsoft is already counting on it.
The ISO on Wednesday officially announced that Open XML received enough votes to become a standard, reversing a previous attempt in September that failed.
Those complaints could lead to a formal appeal of the votes which, under ISO rules, need to be lodged by those countries in the next two months.
Microsoft's director of corporate standards, Jason Matusow, wrote in a blog on Tuesday that challenges to the overall process will likely come. The source? IBM.
"We now see IBM/et al driving an orchestrated process attack in the hopes of overturning the ratification of Open XML, or at least to discredit what has come out of this long, global process," Matusow wrote.
IBM representatives heavily lobbied national standards bodies against approval in the run-up to the vote. But the company itself cannot lodge a formal complaint, a company spokesman said Wednesday.
"As always, the sentiment has to be organic. It will be up to people and organizations in individual countries to decide whether they want to try to appeal this," he said.
Instead, IBM is calling for reform of the standards process and "harmonization" between Open XML and ODF, the OpenDocument Format (ODF), another standardized format.
"While fully cognizant of these current results, I'm energized to take the bigger fight for openness to the next level with the thousands of individuals who are now convinced that the standards system needs fixing, and soon. I hope you'll take part," wrote Bob Sutor, IBM's vice president of open source and standards, who has been a vocal opponent of Open XML standardization.
The case of Norway
On Tuesday, the head of the committee in charge of forming Norway's position on Open XML, Steve Pepper, sent a letter to the ISO complaining that Norway's Yes position did not reflect the views of most participants in that committee.
Standards Norway responded to those criticisms, explaining why Norway changed its vote to Yes even though not all of its issues with the specification were addressed.
The letter from Standards Norway appears to indicate that the country's position will not be changed or suspended during an appeal. An ISO representative on Tuesday said that the ISO had not received a formal protest from its Norwegian delegation, indicating that Pepper's complaint did not represent the country's overall position.
In his blog, Microsoft's Matusow reproduced an English translation of Standards Norway's response to Pepper's complaint as well as letter from Germany's national standards organization.
In Germany, too, there were accusations of improprieties in what was a close vote, but Germany's standards organization said it will not change its Yes position to No or Abstain.
"The steering committee has accepted the process as compliant with the rules with a majority of 7 to 6 and therefore it has seen no reason to lift the decision of the working group. If the majority of the working group would have been convinced that the process of dealing with and voting were noncompliant to the rules then the German vote would have been changed to abstain," according to a translated statement.
The voting record shows that 75 percent of countries voted to approve and 14 percent voted against. To pass, it needed a two-thirds majority and not more than a quarter opposed.
As such, a change in one country's vote would not affect the overall result.
Meanwhile, one of the participants in Standards Norway's Open XML vote, Geir Isene, speculated that the European Union will investigate what happened in that country.
In February, the Wall Street Journal reported that European antitrust regulators were investigating earlier steps in the ISO voting process.
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.
Here is why:
"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"
So, Party Like It Is 1998.
Now, "All Your (XML) Base Are Belong To Us"
"Ever Onward IBM"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9oh3gqOEKU
"To Boldly Go Where None Has Gone Before"
Live Long And Prosper!
Commander_Spock and Crew.
This is a dirty fight all around.
As such, a change in one country's vote would not affect the overall result". How about raising the the percentage required for approval to 80 instead of "75 percent". Now, this would/should tell us something. :-)
The comment about a dirty fight is correct, this is not at all about what is best for the consumer, its how one company can attack another or hold onto what they have. Bottom line is, I want to be able read, write, and pubish a document regarless of the vendor. With Microsoft and Adobe I have that. Like those companies or not, attempting to make their format a standard that can be regulated is a good step in the right direction.
As I see it, the ?Yes? decision was based on the standards body?s own authority and rules, balanced by several other factors, which included: 1. An impasse occurred in the technical committee, stranding the further development of the Ecma / OOXML standard; 2. There was overwhelming support for passage of the OOXML standard at the formal hearings, conflicting with, and further isolating, the technical committee and its impasse; 3. ISO remains the best place to ensure that the important Ecma standard can be maintained and improved, and that work must go forward; and 4. International cooperation / comity between ISO / IEC demand that Standards Norway best ensure that the proposals they work on can be approved at ISO ? that is, there is a strong institutional disposition toward approval.
If this is irregular, then I hope all are this clean.
Now let's look at September's "No" vote from Kenya - which was written by a Malaysian Delegate and an ICT industry representative (hint - not from Redmond, but the other side of the US). Let's take a look at South Africa. India. Brazil. Venezuela. China. If the EC is gonna' look, they might do well to look at Armonk and others, too.
Putting performance aside, it works. Is it the *best* way? Are there potential issues? As a customer, why do I care? I just expect Microsoft to make its products work correctly. I would expect all vendors to come to agreement on solutions to "issues" that are found. I do not see any reason to go back and forth for a very long time in an effort to create a "pure" standard that one believes has no issues.
I can assure you: there will be issues, even after studying the problem for 10 years. I do not believe it is in anybody's interest to delay this work for 10 years or even 2 more years.
Would it help Microsoft? No, they're shipping products now. Would it help IBM? Who uses their word processor? What would help IBM is if they adopted OOXML and shipped a product!
Paul
In fact, I doubt there is a 100% complaint implementation anywhere.
Re: "I do not believe it is in anybody's interest to delay this work for 10 years or even 2 more years. Would it help Microsoft? No, they're shipping products now. Would it help IBM? Who uses their word processor? What would help IBM is if they adopted OOXML and shipped a product"!
Yep, "Microsoft? (No,) they're shipping products now. And, "The CONCORDE" is again flying commercially. What are we missing out on?
I do NOT support any efforts of M$ simply because of the ethical considerations they give to their decisions. Who is really benefiting from the approval of OOXML as a intl. std.? The consumer? No. The IT field? No. The government of any nation? No. Microsoft? Yes. All they have to do now is sue everyone who tries to employ OOXML in their products for royalties (don't be surprised if this happens).
The world may never know why M$ could not have started using ODF because it was already an international standard.
Great, coz the EU doesn't take Microsoft crap like the US and others. If there were dodgy going ons, then they should find them.
It's not like ISO sells a product in the EU; they charge a price for copies of their standards, but they're a non-profit. I don't think the EU can fine them; there's no money to get. And the EU could find itself in a very sticky situation, as ISO could start cancelling standards-related relationships with EU-based organizations like ECMA.
There isn't a chance in hell the EU can do anything here. If they start an investigation, this simply proclaims to the worlds that IBM also controls the EU enforcement arm; not that anyone looking at the way the EU has gone after Microsoft would cause anyone to think otherwise.
Scared? Hardly. Astounded that anyone is buying IBM's bs? A little.
MS Office (and by extension, Windows) is pretty much the only real income Microsoft has these days, and they can't afford to have that diminish until/unless something else starts making them money.
/P
prostituted itself on a filthy street corner. It's a sad day indeed,
ISO certification used to mean more than "we gots to get paid!"
This bastardization known as OOXML is nothing more than a
patent trap that uses 6,000 pages of legalese to hide the fact
that's it's really a proprietary standard. There is NOTHING open
about this, except possibly the realization that M$ will once
again try to use their $$$ to kill off any competition so they can
keep their suckers - I mean "customers" - locked into a
proprietary standard.
Everyone can see this, only some people got paid to lie about it.
Read the subject line!
"Government and Business Leaders to attend IDB Group Annual Meeting in Miami, April 4?8"
"Microsoft's Bill Gates and IDB President Moreno will hold special session"
"Finance ministers, business leaders, civil society representatives and top artists from Latin America and the Caribbean will participate in the annual meeting of the Inter-American Development Bank, which this year is taking place in Miami, Florida, April 4?8".
"The IDB is the world?s largest regional development bank and the leading source of multilateral financing for Latin America and the Caribbean. In 2007 the IDB Group approved new operations totaling more than $9.6 billion".
http://www.iadb.org/NEWS/articledetail.cfm?artid=4477&language=En
At last, at last.... (and, a long time in coming)(huff... puff....) now we see some "sitting down" and "talking" with people (the bankers) that really matters. "Growing up/getting wiser" you say. ;-)
- Outing IBM, others, from former Ecma head
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by Thom101
April 4, 2008 9:23 AM PDT
- The former head of standards body Ecma International (Jan van den Beld) has been blogging about the standards process and the Open XML vote from an insider's point of view. He lists some pretty outrageous examples of shenanigans from those opposed to Open XML standardization. For instance, Google joined several national standards bodies at the last minute (March 26, 27) just to vote no. In Italy, where one company should have one vote, IBM voted once and then its subsidiary voted as well. Anyway, check it out: http://janvandenbeld.blogspot.com/ and
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