BRM Narrative
,----[ Quote ]
| Now that the BRM is over, I feel I can write about it a bit more; there are
| some restrictions, but I’ll lay them out. Summary: A lot of good work was
| done, but the process is irretrievably broken.
|
| [...]
|
| What Was Bad · The process was complete, utter, unadulterated bullshit. I’m
| not an ISO expert, but whatever their “Fast Track” process was designed for,
| it sure wasn’t this. You just can’t revise six thousand pages of deeply
| complex specification-ware in the time that was provided for the process.
| That’s true whether you’re talking about the months between the vote and when
| the Responses were available, the weeks between the Responses’ arrival and
| the BRM, or the hours in the BRM room.
`----
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2008/02/29/BRM-narrative
Related and recent:
European regulator fines Microsoft $1.35 billion
,----[ Quote ]
| In addition, Microsoft recently acknowledged that the commission is also
| looking into lobbying efforts for its Open XML file format, which has been
| derided by critics as insufficiently accessible. Microsoft unsuccessfully
| sought last year to receive approval from the International Organization for
| Standardization, or ISO, to have Open XML declared an international standard.
`----
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/european-regulator-fines-microsoft-135/story.aspx?guid=%7B4421D497-DECC-41BF-9C86-E4C815C25241%7D
Robbery at the BRM?
,----[ Quote ]
| LinuxWorld mentions that the BRM organisors are making a paper ballot on all
| the 900 comments. It seems that the BRM organisors are "robbing national
| delegations of the opportunity to propose their own modifications".
|
| [...]
|
| The purpose of this robbery might be to avoid any fix to the standard.
| MS-ECMA have not proposed any changes, and this robbery is designed to get
| the message that the BRM have fixed some issues.
`----
http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-43897/robbery-at-the-brm
Danish Unix User Group Files Complaint With EU Commission Against Denmark For
Mandating MSOOXML
,----[ Quote ]
| The Danish Unix User Group, DKUUG, has filed a formal complaint with the EU
| Commission regarding Denmark's mandating ECMA 376, better known by us as
| MSOOXML, for certain procurements.
|
| The complaint [PDF] is grounded in breach of the EC Treaty article 81 on
| unfair competition. The press release says that the regulation "can be seen
| as an attempt to continue the de facto monopoly of Microsoft in the Danish
| state on office software, as the various public agencies and institutions
| need to buy the products of Microsoft to comply to the regulation."
`----
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20080226164131724
Ivory Coast represented by Microsoft Sénégal at the BRM
,----[ Quote ]
| The representative of Ivory Coast (Côte d'Ivoire) here in Geneva is Wemba
| Opota, a senegalese citizen,, who is responsible for Microsoft West Africa.
| Now the cacao has definetely a bitter Microsoft smell.
`----
http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-43510/ivory-coast-represented-by-microsoft-senegal-at-the-brm
Microsoft's Wikipedia editor goes to the BRM to represent Australia
,----[ Quote ]
| Re: In Denmark, Microsoft has 2 out of 4 votes
|
| InzpektorInzpektor 18 Feb 2008, 15:20 BST
|
| The Danish delegation for the BRM will consist of:
|
| * IBM
| * Dansk Standard (the national standards body)
| * Microsoft - Themselves!
| * Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Ciber A/S
|
| So, I guess that means that the Danish votes are a tie. (Ofcourse with the
| national standards body being the joker here :-) )
|
| Reference:
| http://www.ds.dk/3537 (In Danish)
`----
http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-41947/microsoft-s-wikipedia-editor-goes-to-the-brm-to-represent-australia
The BSI Has Been Corrupted by Microsoft — Another Chink in ISO’s armor
,----[ Quote ]
| Britain will be essentially represented by a Microsoft Gold Certified
| Partner, having rejected OOXML several months ago. This apparently comes
| after a reappointment.
`----
http://boycottnovell.com/2008/02/15/bsi-sends-microsoft-partner/
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/
Portugal will send Microsoft to the BRM
,----[ Quote ]
| Microsoft, as president of the Portuguese Technical Committee, is already
| controlling who will be at the BRM for Portugal. The Head of Delegation will
| be... Microsoft!
`----
http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-27501/portugal-will-send-microsoft-to-the-brm
Microsoft's Stephen McGibbon to represent Ireland at the BRM?
,----[ Quote ]
| There are rumors circulating in Ireland that Microsoft's Stephen McGibbon
| might be part of the Irish delegation to attend the BRM in Geneva. Microsoft
| is already controlling the Portuguese delegation, you can expect that they
| will control half of the table at Geneva. O'MyGod!
`----
http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-29606/microsoft-s-stephen-mcgibbon-to-represent-ireland-at-the-brm
Tracking the Man with the Gavel: Alex Brown on the BRM
,----[ Quote ]
| I found Alex's last comment particularly interesting from a strategic point
| of view. As I've repeatedly noted in a variety of prior blog entries over
| the past two years, Microsoft has adopted a high risk strategy by pushing
| OOXML so aggressively through the Ecma, and then the ISO/IEC JTC1 process.
| Already, it's received one set back, in that its failure to gain approval in
| the first voting period has resulted in much bad press, and a seven month
| delay (through the expiration of the second consideration period, which will
| end on March 30).
`----
http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20080130062110266
OOXML Questions Microsoft Cannot Answer in Geneva
,----[ Quote ]
| At Left: Highly respected Martin Bryan. As outgoing Conveyor of ISO/IEC
| JTC1/SC34 WG1 he accused MS of stacking his group and said, “The days of open
| standards development are fast disappearing. Instead we are
| getting ’standardization by corporation,’ something I have been fighting
| against for the 20 years I have served on ISO committees.”
|
| The trend is that Microsoft is opening up the boring legacy bits of OOXML, in
| stupefying detail, while neglecting to document the pieces actually needed
| for interoperability at a competitive level, like macros, scripting,
| encryption, etc. In essence, Microsoft is opening up and releasing the file
| format information that competitors like OpenOffice.org have already figured
| out on their own, while still at the same time restricting access to the
| information needed to compete. And the more MS realizes it has to open up the
| specification, deprecate and modernize OOXML, what do you get? You get XML.
| XML is XML. Strip out the non-XML garbage from OOXML and you will have the
| OpenDocument Format.
|
| [...]
|
| We need for MICROSOFT TO ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS. Rather than hiding all the
| information we need and trying to cloak OOXML as ODF, we ask Microsoft to
| please get off the sinking ship, collaborate with the global community (which
| will welcome Microsoft) and help develop one universal file format for all.
| Long term, Microsoft can only benefit from cooperating with the market!
`----
http://www.fanaticattack.com/2008/ooxml-questions-microsoft-cannot-answer-in-geneva.html
What Will and Won't Be Discussed at February's BRM on MSOOXML
,----[ Quote ]
| So if you had concerns about Microsoft's patent policy, forgeddaboudit.
| It's been magically erased, and any comments are out of order.
|
| [...]
|
| They have chosen a room that can seat only 120 people for reasons unknown, so
| there may not be room for all the delegates. Let me guess. The head of the
| delegation is a Microsoft guy, and the ones who can't fit in the room are the
| ones who have issues with the proposed format? You think? Hey, some of us
| remember the games that were played already over rooms too small for IBM and
| Sun.
|
| This is starting to look really, really bad. At a minimum, you have to say
| this is the very opposite of an open process. I can't help but notice too
| that Brown lists Rick Jelliffe's as one of the "cool blogs" he recommends on
| Brown's blog. I think that is what novelists would call foreshadowing.
`----
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071211055139790
Opinion: Einstein's definition of insanity...
,----[ Quote ]
| But ISO standards have a much more political dimension to them than Internet
| (IETF) or World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) standards. Every country can vote,
| although not all chose to do so. Over the past few weeks, some strange and
| rather irregular national positions have come to light. My favourites were
| Cuba voting "Yes" to the fast-tracking of OOXML, even though Microsoft is
| prohibited by the US Government from selling any software on the island that
| might even be able to read and write the new format, and Azerbaijan's "Yes"
| vote, even though OOXML as defined isn't able to express a Web URL address in
| Azeri, their official language.
`----
http://www.linuxformat.co.uk/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=632
Whither OOXML?
,----[ Quote ]
| Strangely, however, Microsoft appears to be soft-pedaling its own standard.
| At GOSCON last week there was a panel on document formats, with reps from
| IBM, Sun, Adobe, and Microsoft present. Each of the company representatives
| got to speak for five minutes and present his company's perspective on
| document formats.
|
| In his presentation, Matusow appeared to be backing away from OOXML as a key
| technology. If you look at the slide he presented...
|
| ...you can see that the positioning now is that the tool is key, and the
| document format secondary, which, to my mind, is a bizarre assertion,
| although it's one that aligns with a positioning that, above all, must keep
| Microsoft's tools in a predominate position.
|
| It appears to me that, having realized that the force-feeding of OOXML into
| an international standards body is problematic, Microsoft is now trying to
| present a soft TCO story which emphasizes sunk costs and pre-existing product
| versions as a reason to stay on the Microsoft path, along with an
| incomprehensible assertion that two document standards would be a good thing
| (this last is the most oddball position of all; how can anyone state with a
| straight face that the world would be well-served by having two incompatible
| editable file formats?).
`----
http://advice.cio.com/bernard_golden/wither_ooxml
Corrupt countries were more likely to support the OOXML document format
,----[ Quote ]
| Is this just a random coincidence? The median of the CPI index of the above
| mentioned 70 countries is 3.95. Of the most corrupted half (CPI index less
| than 3.95) 23 or 77% voted for approval (approval or approval with comments)
| and 7 or 23% for disapproval; 5 abstained. Of the least corrupted half (CPI
| index more than 3.95) 13 or 54% voted for approval and 11 or 46% voted for
| disapproval; 11 abstained - see the table below.
`----
http://www.effi.org/blog/kai-2007-09-05.en.html
Microsoft accused of more OOXML standards fiddling
,----[ Quote ]
| However the 11 new countries are refusing to say how they will vote. These
| include Cote d'Ivoire, Cyprus, Ecuador, Jamaica, Lebanon, Malta, Pakistan,
| Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, Uruguay and Venezuela. Most people seem to think
| that these have been put there by Vole to make sure the standard gets pushed
| through.
`----
http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=42106
Dissing OOXML
,----[ Quote ]
| Rather remarkably for a 6000-page specification, OOXML is on a fast track,
| but it has come into collision with over 3000 comments on that specification,
| many of them negative. The question is, how on earth can the national bodies
| (NB) who do the prodding, poking and voting, work their way through those
| comments to pick out the really key ones, and make sure that they get sorted
| before approval is contemplated?
`----
http://www.computerworlduk.com/toolbox/open-source/blogs/index.cfm?entryid=464
More Irregularities in the OOXML ISO Process Surface
,----[ Quote ]
| If you read about what happened there in that article, "OOXML in Norway: The
| haywire process," your jaw will simply drop. I do think there is something
| the matter with the ISO process if this is how it works.
`----
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070827111019189
OOXML in Norway: The haywire process
,----[ Quote ]
| I believe that anything that sanctions unfair competition is bad. I believe
| in a world where the threshold for competition is low and where everyone are
| free to easily innovate.
`----
http://blogs.freecode.no/isene/?p=3
|
|
