The Open Sourcerer

Vista beaten by both Apple’s Mac OS X and Linux.

Oh dear, it just keeps getting worse for our friends in Redmond according to Silicon.com…

Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system is failing to win over silicon.com readers, with two-thirds (65 per cent) saying their organisation will never move onto XP’s successor.

“Never move…” That’s quite a big statement.

Just two per cent of more than 800 respondents to the poll said their company has already made the move to Vista.

So that’s 16 companies out of 800 have moved already.

But despite these concerns, Microsoft says the business uptake of Vista has met expectations and is following the same pattern as previous major OS releases.

Gosh – that’s pretty low expectations for their biggest ever product release. If their shareholders were told this a few years ago ["Yeah, this is going to be our biggest ever OS release. It will cost billions of dollars to build, take us years and years, be a couple late probably and we think - oh at least a few hundred companies will buy it - especially if we give it away - and oh yes, it will have a really pretty interface"] I reckon plenty would have walked away in disgust.

But the bit I liked the best was this:

In another recent silicon.com poll, XP was named by 42 per cent of respondents as their most preferred OS. Vista gained 14 per cent of the vote but was beaten by both Apple’s Mac OS X and Linux.

Goody…

Microsoft now owns the ISO JTC 1

Rob Weir replied to a couple of comments to an article he wrote about the plans for maintenance of OOXML should it become an ISO standard. His comment is very insightful, quite scary but ultimately pretty accurate I think…

It is a scary proposition. I don’t think people understand how much Microsoft now owns JTC1 in a very real and tangible way. Absolutely owns.

Consider that it requires 2/3 approval of JTC1 P members to approve a standard. Microsoft, by various means, has managed to achieve very close to that number. They are only 5 short. If they achieve that 2/3 then they can ram through whatever standards they want.

But that scary part is that with even 1/3 of P-members, a number they clearly outright own, they can block anyone else’s standard. It probably hasn’t sunk into your realization yet,but Microsoft can essentially already erected toll bridge in ISO and demand payment or other concessions from anyone who wants to work with International Standards. If ISO rules get in the way, Microsoft can change them. If ISO administrators get in the way — no worry. With this number of NB’s Microsoft can control directives, staffing, paychecks, etc.

They’ve raised an army. You don’t think they will use it?

Is this the sort of company you want to trust your IT too? It isn’t mine.

SC34 Tastes Danger in Japan

Alex Brown, the chap who has the unenviable task of convening the forthcoming BRM in February for Microsoft/ECMA’s OOXML document specification, has posted a few first snippets from the initial meeting of the body called the ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC34 – Document Description and Processing Languages. This is the ISO body that must try and either create a workable standard from ECMA-376 (DIS29500) or throw it out.

In his most recent blog post, covering the opening meetings in Kyoto Japan of the SC34, there are some interesting titbits. I was struck by the list of individuals resigning their posts or stepping down. It’s quite a few people. I don’t know if it is common to lose so many in one go, or how many they represent as a percentage of the total. But still, I found it odd that 4 senior figures all decided to go at the same time. The last one he mentioned is the now famous Martin Bryan:

Finally, my own working group convenor Martin Bryan is stepping down in anticipation of his retirement next year. Martin has been something of a mentor to me, guiding me along some of the more Byzantine passages of the ISO/IEC process. At the plenary Martin spoke to his paper which has been the subject of some comment in the blogosphere (and which was never intended for public circulation). You could have heard a pin drop as Martin described how in 20 years of ISO involvement he had always enjoyed working with people who, although they might disagree violently, came to meetings as themselves. It would be a great shame, he said, if we got to a state where people came to meetings not as individuals with ideas, but as corporate representatives with positions.

So, Martin’s report was not intended to be public. I’m very glad it was. It has basically given credence to what many of us have been saying since this whole farce began; Microsoft has corrupted this ISO process to such an extent that many believe it is now fundamentally broken.

The other point of great interest for me was this:

… It is not Ecma’s responses themselves which are sensitive, but the National Body comments to which they are attached. These are, by ISO/IEC rules, confidential and should not be republished in public. Now, as a matter of fact these comments were published in public for several weeks anyway, but this was an aberration (the current SC 34 web site is not password protected; before the current controversies privacy through obscurity was enough to keep documents confidential). Ecma simply have to follow the rules. And they should have applied to ballot comments on ODF too.

Wow, that’s really interesting! The NB’s comments are supposed to be confidential, but before Microsoft’s attempt to brute-force this particular specification through ISO, come-what-may, it has never been an issue… I wonder why? Anyhow, you can read all the NB’s comments and perhaps help the SC34 by tagging the comments so they may concentrate on the areas of real controversy at: http://www.dis29500.org

And finally, Alex clearly has a sense of humour…

Dicing with Death

Following the opening plenary, JISC very generously treated officers of SC 34 to a delicious banquet, and one of the many course was – somewhat to my surprise – fugu. After some initial reservations (“this restaurant isn’t owned by Microsoft or IBM, is it?’) we tucked in. I must agree with the view that the taste of fugu is itself unremarkable, and I was not aware of an toxin-induced tingling sensation, but eating is does have its own special frisson …

Let’s hope that the Fugu was as well prepared as the SC34 needs to be next February.

“Commiserations to my successor” – OOXML Strikes Again!

In what is an astonishingly outspoken report, Martin Bryan, Convenor, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC34 WG1 has given us insight into the total mess that Microsoft/ECMA have caused during their scandalous, underhand and unremitting attempts to get – what is a very poorly written specification – approved as an ISO standard.

This year WG1 have had another major development that has made it almost impossible to continue with our work within ISO. The influx of P members whose only interest is the fast-tracking of ECMA 376 as ISO 29500 has led to the failure of a number of key ballots. Though P members are required to vote, 50% of our current members, and some 66% of our new members, blatantly ignore this rule despite weekly email reminders and reminders on our website. As ISO require at least 50% of P members to vote before they start to count the votes we have had to reballot standards that should have been passed and completed their publication stages at Kyoto. This delay will mean that these standards will appear on the list of WG1 standards that have not been produced within the time limits set by ISO, despite our best efforts.

These people, who do such important work in developing and specifying globally useful standards – that ultimately benefit all of us – are usually very circumspect with their choice of language in any public communication.

For Martin to write:

The second half of 2007 has been an extremely trying time for WG1. I am more than a little glad my 3 year term is up, and must commiserate with my successor on taking over an almost impossible task.

and even more:

The disparity of rules for PAS, Fast-Track and ISO committee generated standards is fast making ISO a laughing stock in IT circles. 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. I am glad to be retiring before the situation becomes impossible. I wish my colleagues every success for their future efforts, which I sincerely hope will not prove to be as wasted as I fear they could be.

is really quite amazing.

Being the sceptic I am, I did wonder about the longevity of this article at its original location. So, for historical record, here it is.

I really can’t believe that Microsoft can be allowed to get away with this any longer.

A new ISO Document Standard is born

Well, well, well.

It seems as though we will soon have a new ISO Standard for electronic documents: ISO 32000 Standard (DIS).

It went through a ballot – just like DIS29500 – but it passed. Jim King writes:

Adobe has received word that the Ballot for approval of PDF 1.7 to become the ISO 32000 Standard (DIS) has passed by a vote of 13::1.

Countries voting positive with no comments: Australia, Bulgaria, China, Japan, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Ukraine. (9)
Countries voting positive with comments: UK (13), USA (125), Germany (11), Switzerland (19). (4)
Countries voting negative with comments: France (37). (1)
Countries abstaining: Russia (1)
Italy sent comments but is not a voting (P) member.

Total votes 14.

13 Positive is 93% (must be > 66.6%) 1 Negative is 7% (must be < 25%). Clear winner!

Total comments (205).

Five countries added comments to their ballots for a total of 205 that will have to be resolved.

Isn’t it interesting how this proprietary software company has managed to ease their specification through the Standardisation process with barely a murmur? No allegations of committee stuffing, vote rigging, bribery or any other skulduggery (that’s a good word! I haven’t written that one for along time) as far as I can tell. Why?

Because, Adobe have been open and transparent. The format is also very widely used and implemented already, and by many other software products too, not just Adobe’s. It is also a “Portable” format; meaning you can create a PDF file on one machine, give it to anyone you like, not care about what computer they use, what printer they have etc etc and it will render faithfully to the original.

Adobe announced their intention to release the entire PDF specification to the ISO in January this year:

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Jan. 29, 2007 — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced that it intends to release the full Portable Document Format (PDF) 1.7 specification to AIIM, the Enterprise Content Management Association, for the purpose of publication by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

You can download the current specification document from Adobe’s web site here. And it isn’t 6000+ pages long either, the 4 files that go to make up the entire spec are just under 1400 pages.

Now Adobe also own some Patents with respect to the reading and writing of PDF documents. But on a clear and easy to understand web page they give free license to use within the terms of the specification:

Adobe desires to promote the use of PDF for information interchange among diverse products and applications. Accordingly, the following patents are licensed on a royalty-free, nonexclusive basis for the term of each patent and for the sole purpose of developing software that produces, consumes, and interprets PDF files that are compliant with the Specification…

That is quite a bit different from the convoluted legalise that Microsoft is spouting in their “Open Specification Promise”:

• The Promise does not cover any material that is referenced, but not described in detail, within the specification. Even if the referenced material is required for an implementation, no patent rights extend to the implementer. For example, numerous sections, including those sections which require replicating the behavior of proprietary Microsoft products, do not appear to be described in detail and therefore are not covered by Microsoft’s Promise. Additional necessary Microsoft proprietary technologies not described in detail include OLE, macros/scripts, encryption, and DRM. Microsoft has not stated a position on whether any patent rights associated with these technologies will be made available on terms acceptable to ISO.
• The Promise is limited to claims “..that are necessary to implement only the required portions of the Covered Specification.” [emphasis added]. The Promise does not cover optional aspects. To the extent that the implementer includes “excluded optional portions (or non-required elements of optional portions)” that are in OOXML, the implementer would be unlicensed to any Microsoft patents covering those items and vulnerable to patent infringement allegations. For example, password features for WordProcessingML may not be required but are described in the specification (2.15.1.28, page 1,158). From a practical perspective, all optional aspects of a format are necessary for a full implementation to function effectively across the wide range of possible software behaviours.

I wonder how Microsoft will feel about their ISO specification attempt of XML Paper now?

The XML Paper Specification (XPS) provides users and developers with a robust, open and trustworthy format for electronic paper. The XML Paper Specification describes electronic paper in a way that can be read by hardware, read by software, and read by people. XPS documents print better, can be shared easier, are more secure and can be archived with confidence.

This sounds very similar to what PDF, a proven, globally used and respected specification, already gives us. Once again, we have a fine standard, already approved and capable of being used by anyone. Why would we want – or need – another? For who’s benefit would this new specification be?

Let’s conclude with some more from Jim King at Adobe:

I have been nominated by the US Committee to be the technical editor so for the meeting of the International working group on ISO 32000 on January 21-23, 2008 I will come prepared with responses to all of the 205 comments. If the group can address all the comments to the satisfaction of all countries, especially the ones voting negatively, it is possible to finish at that meeting and publish the revised document. If the resolution is more complicated then we will enter a 2 month FDIS vote. The FDIS votes are not accompanied by comments so if we get no more negative votes at that time the revised document will be the one published as ISO 32000.

It may seem strange that the sponsoring country (US) is the one with the most comments (125) but I think that is a reflection of two things: the US committee contains a lot of knowledgeable people including several from Adobe, and we honestly found some mistakes that we felt must be corrected. To me this reflects the honesty with which this group has approached this whole effort. We could have held back to reduce the number but that is not the way this whole effort has been conducted and we are not about to start with any trickery.

Good words, especially the “…and we are not about to start with any trickery.” bit .

And the winner is… Vista!

LOL,

That bastion of corporate IT journalism, CIO.com has released their nominations for the best [worst] ten Technology failures for 2007.

And coming up the rear is – yes you guessed it – Vista.

One of the longest—five years!—and priciest development projects at Microsoft, the Vista OS has yet to penetrate enterprise computing in any major way. The corporate version shipped in late 2006, and 2007 was supposed to be Vista’s march into the enterprise. But many IT leaders have called it a costly resource hog that makes them love Windows XP. Even Vista’s much-touted security isn’t helping. Now, some companies who’ve been waiting for the first service pack before deploying may skip Vista altogether due to lingering performance concerns.

I have to say I whole heartedly agree with their findings

There are plenty of excellent, reliable, rock-solid, secure and free alternatives out there. Don’t waste your money any more guys and gals. Go and try some Open Source alternatives…