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.
How to totally ‘dis’ Ecma-376 in two pages
I have just read this paper from the Adaptive Technology Resource Centre at the University of Toronto. It is clear, articulate and concise. Unlike the 6000+ page “specification” document to which it refers.
Many of it’s findings are not new in themselves but when discussed in the arena of accessibility it makes for a very good read.
How, please, have we got into this mess? We have one of the world’s largest and richest companies, producing a totally sub-standard specification and trying to force it through our International Standards bodies.
There is only one winner if Ecma-376 gets ISO approval in its current form – and it isn’t you or me….
More M$ dirt rising to the surface?
Some more stuff is coming in on the NoOOXML site that should make you think really carefully about using any more microsoft products…
- Rumours of M$ BRIBING the New Zealand Government and their standards committee,
- Making FALSE claims on behalf of the Spanish Andalusia Government the day before their committee goes to vote
- Dodgy goings on in Azerbaijan??? (New entry added 24/07)
Really, how much more dirt do you need? Just go and download Ubuntu, Thunderbird and OpenOffice (You’ve already got Firefox haven’t you?) and break free…
Who really owns YOUR computer documents?
The further along the road the MS-OOXML standardisation initiative goes the further into the badlands M$ is taking itself. As far as I can imagine, this whole process must be a complete PR nightmare for them. For a number of reasons (not all listed here):
- The more rigorous technical inspections of their proposal have found it wanting in many, many areas (especially from the guys at the BSi),
- the more committee baiting they do, just makes them look like some kind of gangland-mob whose power and control relies purely on brute-force,
- the more weasel-words they use to try and convince us of their sincerity, the less people believe them,
- and the more pompous and self-righteous answers to sensible questions they give, just makes them look plain stupid and naive.
I really, really hope that the ISO are actually following what is going here, and will act in a responsible manner when the time comes to make their decision on Ecma-376. It really is a sham and Microsoft should be disgraced with themselves.
PJ at Groklaw did an excellent summing up in this post:
Now, I don’t care how proprietary Microsoft wishes to be itself. It can DRM itself up to its eyeballs for all I care. I don’t use the stuff, so it doesn’t affect me. And when I read about their latest patent application, the one that proposes riffling through all our personal papers on all our computers so as to report to advertisers what we are interested in, I note it with alarm for my friends and loved ones who still use Microsoft software and make a mental note not to let a company that can come up with that idea anywhere near my computer, but other than that, I just laugh.
But when you proprietize standards, you touch me. And that is precisely what is happening with OOXML. Microsoft’s own expert at the Portugal meeting said so pointblank: Microsoft will add proprietary extensions, he said, to do things ODF can’t do. Now, as someone else on the committee pointed out, proprietary extensions are not the only choice. Microsoft could open up so we can all interoperate on a level playing field. I believe that is the EU Commission’s goal. Proprietary anything isn’t appropriate in a standard, because it forces those of us who are not interested in proprietary software to use it or deal with it anyway. It compels those of us who wish to avoid that vendor to have a relationship with it against our will. And it gives the vendor control and a head start in the market, which is exactly what standards are supposed to prevent. It’s Microsoft saying, “I’ve got mine. I can open my documents fine. Too bad about you. Your solution is to limp along in Linux or buy our products or pay for our patents. One way or another, you have to pay us.” That, to me, is a subversion of the standards process.
This gargantuan proposal, and their efforts to force it through, should be a clear enough warning to everyone. If you believe in the free market, fair competition and honesty in business please do not buy, nor indeed just use any more Microsoft products (even if they’re pirated1); switch to something else…
… anything else.
1” … about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, but people don’t pay for the software. Someday they will, though. As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.”
— Bill Gates, pusher, Money Magazine 1998
OOXML can’t stand up without support.
Over the last few months I have been following Microsoft’s attempts at getting their badly flawed document specification through as an “Open Standard” using the “fast-track process”.
It appears as though the mighty M$, with their army of expert[English Sarcasm] coders and lawyers, are having to use additional methods to make their spec stand up to robust technical scrutiny.
In the US – Rob Weir reports how a recent vote of one of the bodies that make recommendations with regards to approvals has been rather swamped with new voting members recently, and most of them are M$ Business Partners. This changed the voting pattern dramatically but the attempt failed to get past the final hurdle by just one vote it seems.
In Portugal, three separate reports (here, here, and here) suggest the committee (which has a Microsoft employee as its president!) refused to let representatives from Sun and IBM into the room on voting day due to “lack of seats” – funny that in the days running up to this several new members appeared from Microsoft backed organisations…
New note (18/07/07): Today I read here, that more skulduggery has been going on it Italy too. But it also appears that M$ have failed to win there too! Well done Italy.
I’m sorry but this is getting really, really smelly.
This site has about the best consolidated record of what’s going on around the world.
I’d really like to know this: In whose interests is the approval and development of International Standards for; ours or Microsoft’s? Anyone care to give their opinion?
