Jesper Lund Stocholm wrote:
> Well, wouldn't you know - Patrick Durusau now actively supports
> approval of OOXML in ISO.
I wonder how much his loyalty cost the Vole?
> [...]
>
> As a non-attendee to the BRM on DIS 29500, I have been trying to sort
> out fact from fiction in the highly imaginative accounts of the
> meeting. I have been able to isolate only one common point of
> agreement in all the published and unpublished reports that I have
> seen.
>
> That point of agreement is that everyone at the table was heard. That
> may not seem like a lot to an Oracle or IBM, but name the last time
> Microsoft was listening to everyone in a public and international
> forum? At a table where a standard for a future product was being
> debated by non-Microsoft groups?
>
> [...]
>
> Because approval of DIS 29500 insures an effective international and
> public forum whose members will be heard by Microsoft I recommend
> approval of DIS 29500 as an ISO standard.
>
> http://www.durusau.net/publications/onbeingheard.pdf
The bit you snipped:
[quote]
Reject DIS 29500? The cost of rejection is that ordinary users,
governments, smaller interests, all lose a seat at the table where the
next version of the Office standard is being written.
Approve an admittedly rough DIS 29500? That gives all of us a seat at
the table for the next Office standard. Granting that I wince at parts
of DIS 29500, it is hard for me to argue with that rationale.
[/quote]
IOW OASIS's "proof-reader in chief" is concerned that if we don't play
ball with Microsoft's determination to poison document formats with
their blob-infested encumbered garbage, then we will be denied access to
the information necessary for cross-platform interoperability, once
Microsoft goes ahead and deploys that garbage irrespective of ISO adoption.
He seems to be adopting the same cowardly tack taken by Jody Goldberg
and his buddies at Gnome, which I don't agree with either, and neither
presumably would the OASIS co-chair Rob Weir who, as an actual attendant
at the BRM, is probably in a better position to pass judgement:
http://www.robweir.com/blog/2008/03/art-of-being-mugged.html
The mere fact of a format being adopted in a de facto manner, however
widely, should not be an endorsement of that format, particularly when
it is clearly designed to further strengthen the market stranglehold of
a convicted monopolist. That is, after all, the entire purpose of having
standards organisations. Durusau seems to be suggesting that standards
organisations should simply give up, and capitulate to corporate bullies
who force their iron will onto the unsuspecting public, in which case
there is little point in standards organisations existing at all - we
may as well just accept whatever Microsoft forces on us verbatim, and
without question.
Of course, despite their support of ODF, OASIS do not exactly have the
best track record for keeping the "Open" in Open Standards, so it's no
surprise that their TC Editor should be so ambivalent about Microsoft's
proposed "standard":
http://perens.com/Articles/OASIS.html
--
K.
http://slated.org
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