FT article! Microsoft in trouble after endless abuses, many of which are well
documented.
Probe into votes on Microsoft standard
,----[ Quote ]
| The European Commission is investigating the process under which a key
| Microsoft document format could be adopted as an industry standard - a move
| that would carry significant commercial benefits for the software company.
|
| Officials at the European Commission's competition directorate have written
| to members of the International Organisation for Standardisation, asking how
| they prepared for votes in September and later this month on acceptance of
| Microsoft's OOXML document format as a worldwide standard. Without ISO
| acceptance, Microsoft could stand to lose business, particularly with
| government clients, some of which are becoming increasingly keen to use only
| ISO-certified software.
|
| The ISO process has been widely criticised, however, with some members of
| national standards' bodies accusing Microsoft and its rivals of attempting to
| influence the vote.
|
| Tim Bray, a member of the Canadian national standards body, called the
| procedure "complete, utter, unadulterated bullshit" in a recent blog posting.
|
| [...]
|
| In addition, in several countries, a large number of Microsoft partners
| joined the national standards organisations just ahead of a vote on the issue
| in September.
|
| [...]
|
| Microsoft said it openly encouraged its partners to participate in the ISO
| process, but was not funding any third parties doing so. The company said it
| would cooperate with the European Commission's inquiry.
`----
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/88e570a2-ea56-11dc-b3c9-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1
Watch your hat, Jesper. ;-)
ECMA is guilty also:
What does the world have to gain from rushing OOXML through ISO?
,----[ Quote ]
| So, why is it rushed? Well, let’s see.
|
| The only ones really pushing for this to happen faster rather than carefully
| are Microsoft and Ecma.
|
| In the case of Ecma it is easy to see why. Ecma is nothing more than a rubber
| stamping organization for hire with no soul, which is pushing for OOXML to go
| through as fast as possible and with as little change as possible simply
| because this is what it is paid to do. This is what their “value proposition”
| is all about: ‘timely publication of international standards […] “fast track”
| […] minimize risk of change‘.
`----
http://lehors.wordpress.com/2008/03/04/what-does-the-world-have-to-gain-from-rushing-ooxml-through-iso/
"If you flee the rules, you will be caught. And it will cost you dearly,"
-- Neelie Kroes (about Microsoft), February 27th, 2008
Related:
The Art of Being Mugged
,----[ Quote ]
| The four options presented were:
|
| * Option 1: Submitter's responses (Ecma's) are all automatically
| approved.
| * Option 2: Anything not discussed is not approved.
| * Option 3: Neutral third-party (ITTF) decides which Ecma responses are
| accepted
| * Option 4: Voting (approve + disapprove) must be at least 9 votes.
| Abstentions not counted.
|
| We were told that these options are not in the Directives and that were are
| given these choices because ITTF "needs to act in the best interests of the
| IEC". I don't quite get it, but there appears to be some concern over what
| the press would think if the BRM did not handle all of the comments. One NB
| requested to speak and asked, "I wonder what the press would think about
| arbitrarily changed procedures?". No response. I thought to myself, why
| wasn't ITTF thinking about the 'best interests" of JTC1 when they allowed a
| 6,045 page Fast Track submission, or ignored all those contradiction
| submissions, or decided to schedule a 5-day BRM to handle 3,522 NB comments.
| Isn't it a bit late to start worrying about what the press will think?
|
| We break for lunch.
|
| After lunch and after more discussion, the meeting adopted a variation of
| option 4, by removing the vote minimum. I believe in this vote the BRM and
| ITTF exceeded its authority and violated the consensus principles described
| in JTC1 Directives.
`----
http://www.robweir.com/blog/2008/03/art-of-being-mugged.html
Microsoft’s secretive standards orgs in Former Yugoslavia
,----[ Quote ]
| Croatian laws keep its national body’s votes secret, so the only way for the
| Croatian public to find out how the process went would be if a board member
| illegally leaked information out of CSI. This is, of course, unlikely to
| happen. And the Serbian national standardization body is not officially
| formed, so those two votes were easy for Microsoft, and probably not only
| ones around the globe.
`----
http://www.linuxworld.com/news/2007/092407-ooxml.html?page=1
Microsoft Tech Ed 2007: OpenXML
,----[ Quote ]
| He was asked "Why did Microsoft push OOXML through the "Fast Track" process
| instead of the standard ISO process? Wouldn't they get less resistance than
| faced now?"
|
| His response was very frank: "Office is a USD$10 billion revenue generator
| for the company. When ODF was made an ISO standard, Microsoft had to react
| quickly as certain governments have procurement policies which prefer ISO
| standards. Ecma and OASIS are 'international standards', but ISO is the
| international 'Gold Standard'. Microsoft therefore had to rush this standard
| through. Its a simple matter of commercial interests!"
`---- ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/2007/09/microsoft-tech-.html
Tim Bray: "process was complete, utter, unadulterated bullshit"
,----[ Quote ]
| The Canadian BRM delegate Tim Bray strongly criticised the ISO process while
| he doesn't blame the BRM failure on ISO but on the vendor that used the ECMA
| proxy.
`----
http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-44211/tim-bray:process-was-complete-utter-unadulterated-bullshit
Showdown in Geneva: OOXML Fails to Achieve Majority Approval at BRM
,----[ Quote ]
| Many, many, people around the world have tried very hard to make the OOXML
| adoption process work. It is very unfortunate that they were put to this
| predictably unsuccessful result through the self-interest of a single vendor
| taking advantage of a permissive process that was never intended to be abused
| in this fashion. It would be highly inappropriate to compound this error by
| approving a clearly unfinished specification in the voting period ahead. To
| paraphrase a former First Lady, it's time to "Just say No" to OOXML.
`----
http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20080229055319727
OOXML Fails to Get Majority Approval at BRM - Updated 2Xs
,----[ Quote ]
| Andy Updegrove has the results in detail here, including a breakdown of the
| votes. Basically, there were too many proposed changes to be able to cover
| them in the BRM, so they tried a workaround, but the upshot is ... it's a
| mess. Oddly, despite the rules, Alex Brown, Updegrove reports, allowed non P
| countries to vote, but OOXML still couldn't get a majority of the delegations
| to back it at the BRM. Nor is it clear that allowing non P countries to vote
| is even legitimate. Now it's the 30-day voting period, but Updegrove asks, if
| they never could discuss all the issues, which is the purpose of a BRM,
| what's the basis for a vote? And with the vast majority either voting to
| abstain or even refusing to vote as a protest, I think one may conclude this
| proposal didn't belong on the fast track, and it isn't getting the kind of
| support you would have thought it might, given all the muscle that has gone
| into the push to get OOXML approved.
`----
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080229124919217
Bureaucracy swamps ISO meeting on Microsoft format
,----[ Quote ]
| Instead, the ballot resolution meeting became bogged down in bureaucracy as
| the delegates struggled with more than a thousand points of order, as well as
| the 6,000 pages of code that define Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML)
| format.
`----
http://www.reuters.com/article/technologyNews/idUSN2923321820080229
Weak ISO support for changes to Open XML throws shadow over final approval
,----[ Quote ]
| A committee of ISO members in Geneva may have approved the proposed changes
| to Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) on Friday, but the document format's
| final approval remains far from certain.
`----
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9065958
OSIA takes issue with OOXML, lobbies Standards Australia
,----[ Quote ]
| Opposition to the endorsement of the program comes on top of the suspected
| stacking by Microsoft of a variety of standards bodies in order to get OOXML
| approved as the ISO standard. "This was not part of OSIA's submission and is
| not anything OSIA has direct knowledge of", said Scott. "However, there are a
| number of people who assert that Microsoft is doing as you suggest", he said.
`----
http://www.linuxworld.com.au/index.php?id=562760212&rid=-50
Swiss Cheese [for OOXML]
,----[ Quote ]
| The present spin doctors of Microsoft and ECMA managed to convince Mr.
| Thomann to reject every serious technical and general concern we had
| regarding OOMXL by pointing to compatibility reasons. At the end we had a
| majority against Microsoft but which (giving the unfair rules) results in a
| Swiss vote for Microsoft. Mr. Thomann was fretting and fuming at the end of
| the meeting how it can be that successful international companies (we had
| representatives from IBM, Google, ...) vote against the best interest of
| their customers and theirself!
|
| Yes, this is how the democratic system at SNV / ISO works. After the meeting
| I could not eat as much as I wanted to puke...
`----
http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-15521/swiss-cheese
Interview with Ecma’s Secretarie General
,----[ Quote ]
| The following is an interview of Jan van den Beld, the Secretarie General of
| Ecma International.
|
| [...]
|
| (ramble on multiple and proprietary 'standards')
|
| DB: But don’t you think that encourages patent wars?
|
| JvdB: I have never thought so deeply about it (how the pemission of multiple
| standards encourages patent wars). In a way yes, of course, there are hardly
| any subjects in hi-tech where no patents are involved. That is one of the big
| worries about bodies being concerned with patents So, we stay out of it. If
| you have a patent, you get an unconditional right and what you do with your
| patent is your business. You can ask "is that good?" Well that’s an
| interesting question.
`----
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?page_id=2259
No is no, to OOXML
,----[ Quote ]
| I’ve heard several reports of supporters of OOXML trying to get national
| standards bodies to change their votes from “NO with comments” to “YES with
| comments” because “it’s the same thing.” The logic, which I’ll explain in a
| later post, is that any comments will trigger a ballot resolution meeting, so
| there is no need to be so negative and vote NO.
`----
http://www.sutor.com/newsite/blog-open/?p=1762
IBM is still locked out of the Portuguese OOXML meeting
,----[ Quote ]
| In spite of various communications, we [IBM] are still locked out and will
| not be allowed to participate. Microsoft will be there, as well as a special
| Microsoft guest, as will various Microsoft business partners, and others.
`----
http://www.sutor.com/newsite/blog-open/?p=1755
OOXML does not buy its way in Italy
,----[ Quote ]
| Particularly noteworthy is the fact that among those favouring the adoption
| of the standard without reservation a large majority is made of business
| partners of the proposing entity [Microsoft], a law firm retained by the
| latter, the official certified business partners association of the proposing
| entity.
`----
http://www.piana.eu/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=52&Itemid=1#0
http://www.openxml.info/index.php?option=com_content&task=category§ionid=5&id=7&Itemid=13
,----[ Quote ]
| [PJ: OpenXML.info is reporting (in Portuguese, but a Groklaw member
| translates for us) that the person who is head of the ISO technical committee
| about to vote on Microsoft's Ecma-376 wouldn't let IBM and Sun
| representatives in, claiming there was no room! This, if true, is ridiculous.
| And here is a second source reporting the same thing, also in Portuguese. So
| in the US, we hear reports of packing the TC. Now, it's weeding out those who
| are not likely to vote a certain way desired? Is this how standards
| get "approved"? I don't recall ODF having to play such games. Here is the
| rough translation:]
|
| Portugal, and more concretely, its national organization of certification IPQ
| is a member "O" (observator) of ISO/IEC for the voting of OOXML (ISO DIS
| 29500).
|
| WARNING: the first meeting of the Technical Commission "Language for document
| definition" was on Monday 16 of July. The vote was delayed. Representatives
| of IBM and Sun were not allowed to attend because there "was no available
| space in the room"
|
| Dear G [Sun Microsystems] due of restricted number of members of the CT
| (Commissao Tecnica) that can attend the scheduled meeting room to host the
| meeting, we cannot, in this stage, accept your proposal of integration of the
| CT.
|
| With my best regards,
| D [Microsoft as president of the Technical Commission]
`----
http://mv.asterisco.pt/2007/Jun/cat.cgi?MS%20OOXML
,----[ Quote ]
| * More details are emerging from Portugal regarding the kerfuffle there
| over Ecma-376. If you read Portuguese, here you go -- just click on the
| link. I asked a Groklaw member to do a rough translation, and if you see
| ways to improve it, sing out, but it gives a bit of the history of how
| this committee that has no room for Sun or IBM (see previous News Picks
| item) was formed and how it happened to choose a Microsoft representative
| to be president of the committee that decides whether to "approve"
| Microsoft's submission as a "standard". Unless I'm missing something, it
| appears to have been set up so Microsoft can "approve" itself. Now that's
| handy. Here's the translation of the part about how Microsoft is
| represented on this committeee with no room for IBM or Sun:]
|
| I was present on the meeting of the Technical Commission (CT) created
| to award the ISO standards in the area of structured documents (in
| Portugal)
|
| A Technical Commission (CT) did not exist when ISO 26300 (Open
| Document) was submitted neither when there was a submission of OOXML
| (ECMA 376, potential ISO 29500) for the the fast track, and that was
| the reason why Portugal did not submit any opinion nor had any right to
| vote. We expect that now, with the pressure made and the CT created
| there would be right to vote.
|
| The CT was created by the Computing Institute, in which is delegated
| the responsability for the norms of the IT sector; a delegation granted
| by the Portuguese Institute of Quality (IPQ), the point of contact of
| ISO in Portugal. Its creation is motivated mainly by the pressures and
| availability of some people when the proposal for fast tracking of
| OOXML and a neccessity to avail now the OOXML as standard ISO and as a
| Portuguese National Standard
|
| In the meeting they were present:
|
| * 2 persons from II (Instituto de Informatica [Computing Institute])
| * 1 person from the local government (Alentejo region)
| * 1 person from Jurinfor [Jurinfor is a Microsoft partner]
| * 2 persons from Microsoft
| * 1 person from Primavera [Primavera is a Microsoft partner]
| * 1 person from ISCTE
| * 2 persons from Assoft [reportedly, most members of ASSOFT are Microsoft
| partners]
| * 1 person from the Inst. Informatica da Seg Social [Computing Institute
| of the Social Welfare Department]
| * 1 person from the Inst. Tecn. Informacao da Justiça (eu) [Technical
| Institute Information of Justice (eu)]
|
| The meeting dealt basically with the bureaucracy details of the creation of
| the CT. It didn't go into details of OOXML; that discussion will be held in
| the next meeting, on July 16th about 14:30 in the II [Instituto de
| Informatica, I assume]
|
| The CT, thus, was composed of 8 vocal elements, one representative for each
| of the organizations present. The II [Instituto de Informatica] is arranging
| and hosting the initiative and is a not-named representative.
|
| The 8 vocals will readily follow to the election of the president of the CT.
| There was 1 candidate in the place (Miguel Sales Dias, from Microsoft). I did
| not present my candidature but made myself available in case the rest of
| representatives deemed it neccesary -- informed not adequate since to begin
| with, as a member of the OpenDocument Alliance, I had a conflict of interest.
|
| The vote results were 7 votes in favor of Miguel Sales Dias, of Microsoft,
| who was designated to preside over the CT, and a (1) blank vote.
|
| It was decided to adopt consensus as the form of adoption of any proposed
| norm, following to majority vote in case there is no consensus in the CT and
| if there is a strong opposition to submit any norm.
`----
How the Game is Played: INCITS V1 Narrowly Votes Down OOXML
,----[ Quote ]
| As significantly, Rob reports that a very dramatic increase in the membership
| of V1 was observed in the months leading up to the vote – most of whom were
| coincidentally were representatives of Microsoft business partners, and the
| great majority of whom voted as a block in favor of advancing the
| specification in a manner that would permit, and against any vote that would
| prevent, final approval as an ISO/IEC standard.
`----
http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20070715200544734
Sock Puppets to VoteSock Puppets to Vote on Monopoly Enablement in Colombia?
,----[ Quote ]
| Microsoft sets the deck of card and ensures that (at least) 9 of out 14
| chairs in the technical committee are also in its pocket.
`----
http://boycottnovell.com/2007/08/03/colombia-ooxml/
Microsoft is Outmuscling OOXML Opposition in Spain
,----[ Quote ]
| The Andalusian Government has reported recently the manipulation of Microsoft
| in the National Technical Committee 71 of AENOR. On July 10th, just the day
| before the one and only meeting of AENOR to study DIS 29500 and vote on it,
| Microsoft announced officially (via the secretary of the Committee) that that
| Andalusian Government and several other Spanish public entities were asking
| for the approval of ISO DIS 29500 (what finally resulted all a fake!).
`----
http://boycottnovell.com/2007/07/27/ooxmll-spain/
Packing The Court At The ISO?
,----[ Quote ]
| ...P member countries ('participating member' countries) sending
| representatives, and I am interested to note the majority of
| their representatives are, as individuals, also Microsoft employees.
|
| [...]
|
| How can they not see that OOXML (ECMA 376) is unwanted by anyone outside of
| Microsoft? How about it Brian Jones? Are you really so desperate that you
| have to resort to that?
`----
http://lnxwalt.wordpress.com/2007/03/23/packing-the-court-at-the-iso/
OOXML Fails to Gain Approval in US
,----[ Quote ]
| On Friday July 13th, INCITS V1 met via teleconference for 3 hours but failed
| to reach a 2/3 consensus necessary to recommend an "Approval, with comments"
| position on Microsoft "Office Open XML" (OOXML) document specification.
`----
http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/07/ooxml-fails-to-gain-approval-in-us.html
Guest Commentary: The converter hoax
,----[ Quote ]
| Microsoft maintains that while it would have been easy to support the Open
| Document Format (ODF) natively, it had to move to MS-OOXML because this was
| the only way for them to offer the full features of its office suite. But if
| Microsoft itself is not able to represent its internal data structures in the
| Open Document Format (ODF) in its Microsoft Office suite, how could an
| external conversion program from MS-OOXML accomplish this task? The answer to
| both questions is that it is not possible because two things cannot be the
| same and different at the same time.
`----
http://www.heise.de/open/artikel/92735
|
|
