ESR may tell Microsoft to shove its license, after OOXML scandal
Eric S Raymond, co-founder of the OSI, author of many influential writings on Open Source and Technology (Including the now famous “The Cathedral and the Bazaar“) has just spoken out here against Microsoft’s trampling over the ISO standards institute in it’s aim to get their OOXML standardised along-side ODF.
…If Microsoft succeeds (which is beginning to look likely) they will have not merely damaged the prospects of open-source software, they will have ruined the good name of ISO by corrupting its people and processes. Because if OOXML, with all its huge flaws, really does pass, no one who has been conscious while this was going on is going to believe the process it passed through wasn’t a charade bought and paid for by Microsoft marketing.
…This is not behaviour that we, as a community, can live with. Despite my previous determination, I find I’m almost ready to recommend that OSI tell Microsoft to ram its licenses up one of its own orifices, even if they are technically OSD compliant. Because what good is it to conform to the letter of OSD if you’re raping its spirit?
Strong words from a very influential voice.
This whole sordid and smelly process has done nothing to improve the world’s opinion of Microsoft (I think it has made them look even more like a scared rat trapped in a corner). And it has also shown the ISO standards process to be very fatally flawed in that it is now clear that it’s “within [the very lose] rules” for a single organisation to buy, bully and cheat to get their standard approved. Irrespective of its technical merit.
ISO – you know what you have to do come February 2008… This Ecma specification can not be approved. If it does, you and your standards will come to be seen as completely inconsequential, irrelevant and pointless.
Is it starting to go “Pete Tong” for Microsoft?
With only a couple of days to go before the international standards bodies have to declare their votes in the Ecma-376 standardisation process, the blogosphere is really hotting up with all sorts of news and scandal:
- According to this, Sweden has declared it’s vote illegal and will now abstain due to “voting irregularities”. (Yeah, right…)
- New Zealand and India have both said “NO”,
- France should be saying “non” (but it might end up abstaining) after a bit of a fracas,
- In Hungary, the Standards Institution is to reconsider its vote,
- The Brazillians have said no,
- The Swedish debarcle may impact the Danish vote too,
- Hot off the blog – Norway says NO,
It is all getting quite exciting really – better than an episode of “Heros”, but I suspect that Microsoft my well end up with enough votes to scrape through by the rather unusual changes occurring to the status of many small and normally benign countries’ standards bodies…
I’d love to know what the BSi are going to do???
More later I’m sure 😉
Update 01/09/07 – I just found this short analysis of the OOXML v ODF debate from The Brain Wrecked Tech and thought it to be very clear, concise, lucid and worth linking too.
Trashing OOXML (Again)
I have just been catching up after a few days holiday and came across this article “OOXML is defective by design” by Stéphane Rodriguez as referenced by Rob Weir’s blog.
Astounding! It really is quite scary just how bad Ecma-376 is.
- You can’t even do simple edits to the xml without causing massive damage to the file’s readability.
- You have to understand how and why Excel rounds, or doesn’t round, particular numbers – not explained the 6000+ specification.
- Everything is stored in US English in the xml file. As a developer, you would need to deal with all locale related issues independently. Do you know the Brazilian name for every formula in Excel? Care to have to deal with translating them into any (or all) others? How about separators? (OOXML uses a period; Full Stop)
- Multiple mark-up schemes. Yes, Word, Excel and Powerpoint use different mark-up languages to format text! (And each application has multiple schemes too!)
- Document security that can be circumvented by simply removing the password hashes that are embedded in the xml file.
Take some time to read his analysis – it is quite beyond me how the standards bodies are even considering that Ecma-376 should become a standard.
Could YOU implement it?
Alex Brown – Convenor of the Ballot Resolution Meeting on OOXML
Microsoft continues to do its level best to drag the ISO process for the OOXML ‘standard’ through the dirt. Their latest astonishing move was to drag 20 partners into the Swedish voting process at the last minute. These Microsoft partners didn’t contribute or take part in the debate about approval of the spec, they just turned up and paid to vote for Microsoft. I am amazed they found this many people who didn’t have the ethical standards to know that what they were doing was wrong.
With a variety of votes from the national bodies it seems there will be no consensus so the next step is a Ballot Resolution Meeting. This will happen in Geneva and will be chaired by Alex Brown of the UK, who happens to have a blog. He is on the blogroll now, and I predict we will be hearing a lot more about him and from him in the next few months. So far he seems to dislike the NoOOXML campaigning but I think he would also dislike the way Microsoft are gaming the system. The process is important and I am sure he will see it is followed in spirit and letter, his writing is balanced and neutral (so I don’t like everything) and I think he will do a great job for ISO in this important role.
Somebody in the ISO must care?
You will be familiar by now about the ongoing saga of Ecma-376. No? Read some of my earlier posts and google for blogs about OOXML or Ecma-376 or ODF and such like.
Ecma-376 is a legitimised published specification of Microsoft’s OOXML (Office Open XML) document format that was introduced with their Office 2007 application suite. They have requested (paid?) Ecma to represent the specification through the national and international standards’ bodies for fast track approval, despite it being over 6000 pages in length!) as an International Standard.
There have been many hundreds of technical criticisms made, and flaws with the specification identified that make it hard to see how it could ever become such a standard. In mine and others’ blogging about this, there have been many questions raised about the way in which national standards bodies are being “manouvered” into voting in a positive, or just benign, manner when the technical issues raised would have usually caused the vote to be a resounding no.
Tonight I found this excellent summary of the rather suspicious and unusual voting patterns that have taken place and been recorded so far. It really stinks…..
The other place of regularly updated record on this subject is at noooxml.org.
As I have said before, please don’t buy any more M$ products. Don’t even pirate their stuff. You will lose control of YOUR data, unless you sign an irrevocable, never-ending exclusive license – a bit like doing a deal with the devil…. Don’t say you haven’t been warned.
So who really wants M$’ dodgy standard anyway?
Wow! I just came across this interesting statistical site today: www.odf-eag.eu/odf-metrics and there are some real corkers:
Developers & Interested Parties at Aug 07 working with:
MSOOXML: 600
XML/IEC:26300: 2.4 MILLION
Current Developer Projects at Aug 07:
MSOOXML: Not Disclosed
XML/IEC:26300: 254,000 Annually
And take a look at the last table – it shows how many files of particular types have been found on the web: there are scant few in the new MSOOXML (Office 2007) native file format. Seems like it isn’t exactly ~~~taking off~~~ now does it?
