ISO - I see
Aug. 31st, 2007 10:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lordshipmayhemThere's a big scandal brewing in the world of International Standards. Normally this would be dull as dishwater, but it involves a certain convicted monopolist and accusations of bribery, coercion and ballot-stuffing.
The International Standards Organization (ISO) is the same organization that has created the ISO 9000 family of standards you see on advertising, letterhead and factories' signage up and down the highway. It is a global organization with each country having a committee type organization representing it. I won't get into their voting rules but if you go on Groklaw you can get all the gory details.
The issue at question: whether Microsoft's pet document format, Office Open Extensible Markup Language (OOXML), should be accepted as the standard for ducments by the ISO. By documents, we're talking word processing, spreadsheets and presentation. Think Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint.
For two years now, there's been just the one with the ISO's blessing., Open Document Format. It was developed over a period of years by a large number of different independent companies, and can be freely used by anyone creating documents the world over. It is the default document format on about a dozen word processing and office suite programs, including OpenOffice.org since Version 2.0. Companies like IBM (which makes SmartSuite, it still exists!) have announced the next version of their office suites will use ODF by default for their word processing files, spreadsheets, and presentation files. Russia and Thailand have already announced they will no longer accept proprietary formats like .doc but instead will insist on ISO approved format files only.
So there is quite a bit of incentive for Microsoft to get its OOXML format accepted as the new standard. There is also a huge incentive for Microsoft to keep enough proprietary "hooks" in the "standard" to prevent others from freely creating programs that will open, manipulate and save documents, forcing everyone to continue using Microsoft Office, specifically forcing everyone to buy Office 2007 (thus guaranteeing loadsadough rolling into Microsoft from per-seat licence fees).
The incentive for everyone to use an ISO standard document format? Governments around the world and at all levels are beginning to realize that a lot of their information, bought and paid for by their taxpayers, are locked up in proprietary formats. Some of their older files are locked into formats only readable by abandonware or are in obsolete formats that the current software just can't read properly (Yes, think the older versions of Word.). The promise of ODF is that fifty, a hundred or a thousand years from now all ODF documents will still be readable by some then-currently supported software package, sort of like how you can still read paper records from the Middle Ages.
Controversy #1: Standards should be brief and clear. The ODF standard was controversial, as it ran to something like 60 pages, for one thing. Microsoft's proposed standard runs 6,000 pages.
Controversy #2: Standards should be accurate and easy to interpret. OOXML is proving to have many "Do what this version of Word that ran on Windows 3.11 does" (without going into detail about what they're talking about) and includes specifications that it should includ the Windows 1900 Leap Year Error (Windows, and by extension all Microsoft's date-sensitive applications, is convinced 1900 was a leap year, which it wasn't).
Controversy #3: Where you have inaccuracies and problems in interpretations, you should slow down the process and resolve the problems. Somehow, despite many national standards organizations having many serious concerns with the proposal (like, not having enough time to read this massive document), OOXML has gotten fast-tracked - the proposal landed sometime like May, and the various national standards boards have been determining what their vote will be this month. The final, international vote will be next week.
Controversy #4: This is the BIG one - voting irregularities on the part of national standards organizations. There have been many reports of shenanigans going on with their voting - a flood of Microsoft Gold VAR's (Value Added Resellers) signing up and paying their dues to vote for the standard, IBM and Sun Microsystems being told they couldn't vote because "there's no more chairs left in the room" (Spain). Votes for approval were registered for a number of nations, including Sweden, Spain and Hungary.
Now the chickens are coming home to roost. In Sweden, the national standards board grew so disturbed by (1) reports the committee chairman was skewing the vote towards Microsoft like in Spain and Romania and (2) a leaked memo to Microsoft's Swedish VAR network urging them to join and vote in favour of OOXML as a standard and promising recompense for any expenses incurred in doing so, they've decided to abstain, there being too much time to revisit the vote, do a proper investigation and disqualify from voting all the special-interest types. In Denmark one VAR has admitted they were pressured to join their standards body and vote the Microsoft way. Norway and Hungary are also expressing concerns. Brazil has voted against OOXML-as-a-standard, and in the United States the motion failed to pass. Microsoft could still succeed, but it's looking more and more like all they're doing is drawing attention to their dirty tricks and exposing weaknesses in the ISO methodology.
It will be interesting to see how this plays before the American courts - several state governments are now before the courts advising that the deal Microsoft agreed to has not stopped their monopolistic behaviour, and this is a large addition of ammunition to their arsenal.
The International Standards Organization (ISO) is the same organization that has created the ISO 9000 family of standards you see on advertising, letterhead and factories' signage up and down the highway. It is a global organization with each country having a committee type organization representing it. I won't get into their voting rules but if you go on Groklaw you can get all the gory details.
The issue at question: whether Microsoft's pet document format, Office Open Extensible Markup Language (OOXML), should be accepted as the standard for ducments by the ISO. By documents, we're talking word processing, spreadsheets and presentation. Think Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint.
For two years now, there's been just the one with the ISO's blessing., Open Document Format. It was developed over a period of years by a large number of different independent companies, and can be freely used by anyone creating documents the world over. It is the default document format on about a dozen word processing and office suite programs, including OpenOffice.org since Version 2.0. Companies like IBM (which makes SmartSuite, it still exists!) have announced the next version of their office suites will use ODF by default for their word processing files, spreadsheets, and presentation files. Russia and Thailand have already announced they will no longer accept proprietary formats like .doc but instead will insist on ISO approved format files only.
So there is quite a bit of incentive for Microsoft to get its OOXML format accepted as the new standard. There is also a huge incentive for Microsoft to keep enough proprietary "hooks" in the "standard" to prevent others from freely creating programs that will open, manipulate and save documents, forcing everyone to continue using Microsoft Office, specifically forcing everyone to buy Office 2007 (thus guaranteeing loadsadough rolling into Microsoft from per-seat licence fees).
The incentive for everyone to use an ISO standard document format? Governments around the world and at all levels are beginning to realize that a lot of their information, bought and paid for by their taxpayers, are locked up in proprietary formats. Some of their older files are locked into formats only readable by abandonware or are in obsolete formats that the current software just can't read properly (Yes, think the older versions of Word.). The promise of ODF is that fifty, a hundred or a thousand years from now all ODF documents will still be readable by some then-currently supported software package, sort of like how you can still read paper records from the Middle Ages.
Controversy #1: Standards should be brief and clear. The ODF standard was controversial, as it ran to something like 60 pages, for one thing. Microsoft's proposed standard runs 6,000 pages.
Controversy #2: Standards should be accurate and easy to interpret. OOXML is proving to have many "Do what this version of Word that ran on Windows 3.11 does" (without going into detail about what they're talking about) and includes specifications that it should includ the Windows 1900 Leap Year Error (Windows, and by extension all Microsoft's date-sensitive applications, is convinced 1900 was a leap year, which it wasn't).
Controversy #3: Where you have inaccuracies and problems in interpretations, you should slow down the process and resolve the problems. Somehow, despite many national standards organizations having many serious concerns with the proposal (like, not having enough time to read this massive document), OOXML has gotten fast-tracked - the proposal landed sometime like May, and the various national standards boards have been determining what their vote will be this month. The final, international vote will be next week.
Controversy #4: This is the BIG one - voting irregularities on the part of national standards organizations. There have been many reports of shenanigans going on with their voting - a flood of Microsoft Gold VAR's (Value Added Resellers) signing up and paying their dues to vote for the standard, IBM and Sun Microsystems being told they couldn't vote because "there's no more chairs left in the room" (Spain). Votes for approval were registered for a number of nations, including Sweden, Spain and Hungary.
Now the chickens are coming home to roost. In Sweden, the national standards board grew so disturbed by (1) reports the committee chairman was skewing the vote towards Microsoft like in Spain and Romania and (2) a leaked memo to Microsoft's Swedish VAR network urging them to join and vote in favour of OOXML as a standard and promising recompense for any expenses incurred in doing so, they've decided to abstain, there being too much time to revisit the vote, do a proper investigation and disqualify from voting all the special-interest types. In Denmark one VAR has admitted they were pressured to join their standards body and vote the Microsoft way. Norway and Hungary are also expressing concerns. Brazil has voted against OOXML-as-a-standard, and in the United States the motion failed to pass. Microsoft could still succeed, but it's looking more and more like all they're doing is drawing attention to their dirty tricks and exposing weaknesses in the ISO methodology.
It will be interesting to see how this plays before the American courts - several state governments are now before the courts advising that the deal Microsoft agreed to has not stopped their monopolistic behaviour, and this is a large addition of ammunition to their arsenal.