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OOXML Denied INCITS V1 Approval
Posted by
kdawson
on Mon Jul 16, 2007 07:52 PM
from the stacking-it dept.
from the stacking-it dept.
Xenographic writes "INCITS V1, the US group responsible for the US vote over whether or not ANSI will grant fast-track approval to Microsoft's OOXML format, failed to reach the 2/3 consensus required to recommend OOXML to ANSI. What makes this vote interesting is the graph in the article, showing all the new Microsoft business partners who joined INCITS just this year to vote for OOXML. The INCITS Executive Board will now deliberate further, until they can come to some agreement on what to recommend to ANSI, but it's pretty clear that Microsoft is pushing OOXML as hard as it can."
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Open Standards Initiative Fails in Massachusetts 236 comments
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[+]
OOXML Won't Get Fast-Track ISO Standardization 165 comments
realdodgeman writes "The International Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS) recently held an internal poll to determine the position that the United States should take on Microsoft's request for Office Open XML (OOXML) approval. With eight votes in favor, seven against, and one abstention, the group was one vote short of the nine votes required for approving OOXLM ISO standardization. This will mean a huge slowdown to the standardization to the OOXML format. 'Given the controversial nature, relative complexity, and significant importance of the standard, the results of INCIT's vote is unsurprising. An INCITS technical committee also voted against fast-track OOXML approval last month prior to the executive board's vote. Further deliberation is clearly needed as well as further refinement of the format. It seems as though many of the organizations participating in the approval process are generally supportive of the standard itself, but are unwilling to voice unconditional support until their concerns are resolved. OOXML may be down, but it's certainly not out.'"
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wha? (Score:4, Funny)
Re:wha? (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:wha? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Cash is King (Score:5, Insightful)
We'd all love to see the proprietary and over-complex OOXML file format die on the vine. It's sickening how they've purposefully obfuscated the issue, how they've picked a name that's confusingly similar (think Florida's 2000 election all over again!) and have lied and misrepresented what it is.
But just look at that graph! The lengths that Microsoft will go to in order to prevent people from being free of the vendor lock-in... Cash is king, and Microsoft has more available cash than many countries's GNP. How far can they corrupt the process? Probably far enough, with enough time and money, and the only holdback is the time.
What we need to do is simple: continue building world-class software. Continue to push for open standards. Make quality, useful, non-locked software and eventually, the marketplace will correct itself. That we've come this far is a testament to the power of the marketplace.
Re:Cash is King (Score:4, Insightful)
It's more a testament to the power of the word "free".
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Re:Cash is King (Score:5, Interesting)
I was with you until this last bit of advice for future action. Building world-class software is not the solution - think Kerberos, think Netscape, think Samba. Nor is the conitnuing push for open standards... we have just seen how standards bodies are geting polluted by cash-rich firms. The market-place is not being allowed to correct itself, by shills and so-called business partners... besides share-holders who can only think on quarterly basis, and forget the larger issues involved.
We've come this far because of the GPL, and because in a panic, Linus chose to use the GPL. And now so-called 'commercial users' (there is no commerical user of Free Softwar - only commercial exploiters like Tivo, Apple, Novell and Microsoft) are cashing in on the Free Software movement. GPL3 is a well thought out move, and IBM has now promised not to use their patents against developers.
Now that there is enough critical mass behind the open source movement, I think we need to cash in and become more vocal about abuse of standards, patents and monopolies. The blog by Rob Weir is a step in the right direction. I for one, wouldn't mind a year of dupes on Slashdot, that highlights continuous abuse by commercial firms, of the standards processes.
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Re:Cash is King (Score:5, Informative)
No, it's not! Even with infinite allowance for ugliness, the sewage that Microsoft is trying to foist upon everyone isn't even sufficiently complete enough to write an independent implementation with! You can't have a standard that says "do it the way $foo did it;" you have to at least actually describe how $foo did do it. Microsoft has failed to do even that!
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Re:Cash is King (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not complaining about it being hard to read, I'm talking about it literally saying things like "format the text the way Word 95 does it," which would require somebody wanting to implement the standard to reverse-engineer Word 95! The reason Microsoft is the only entity that can possibly implement the standard is because the standard is just (incomplete) documentation of how Office already works, hacks to provide a semblence of version compatibility and all.
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Re:Cash is King (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:So take them out. (Score:4, Informative)
Legacy document support in Microsoft OOXML is based on patent encumbered proprietary format tags. The "standard" only preserves legacy documents by keeping them in the proprietary format they were made in. And it took Microsoft 6000 pages to say, "if you want to open a Word 95 document, buy a copy of Word 95," and then in fine print, "just because there is a reference to Word 95 in our patent unencumbered, pledge protected standard doesn't mean that you can use the patent encumbered and highly proprietary Microsoft Word 95 format in any implementation other than one purchased from Microsoft, now or at any time in the future."
ODF has not ignored the issue of legacy formats, and neither has Microsoft. Microsoft wants to keep legacy formats closed and preserve the lock in mechanism you blamed on ODF. ODF objects to referencing closed, proprietary formats in standards that are supposed to be open.
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Re:So take them out. (Score:4, Insightful)
You're talking about a semantic issue. Your argument is basically the same as saying "Why do we need a bold tag in HTML, why can't we just specify a style that uses a heavier weight?" There are cases where there are semantic differences between small caps and merely using a smaller font style. Word processing documents are not just words with formatting (though many people treat them that way), they have tables of contents, links, indexes, styles, etc... semantic markup.
The whole point is to preserve the original semantic information, not do nasty (and lossy) conversions that destroy the original semantic content, which always has to make assumptions as to the meaning of those semantics. That's a process that will always be error prone, and in certain fields (legal, medical, etc..) that's simply not acceptable.
Let's take an example. Suppose you have 10,000 legal documents written in Word 95, and many of them use "small caps" to indicate a specific legal meaning. Now, let's convert the documents to ODF, and those "small caps" are merely converted to a smaller font. Ok, it may look the same, but what if I want to search through my document management systems for all documents that have terms with the specific meaning that small caps were meant to represent? If the documents are converted with that semantic information intact, I need only return all documents with 'small caps'. How do you do that with the converted document? You can't really.
That's the danger of conversion. Not all data is in the data.
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Re:Cash is King (Score:4, Insightful)
Microsoft has some of the most talented and well-paid coders in the business. If some dumb hacker that got pushed into a project so that his employers' network didn't end up on blacklists can comprehend a documented standard, then I'm sure Microsoft can.
OOXML is a scam. It's meant to give Microsoft some air of respectability in an arena that it is, to say the least, deeply distrusted. The documentation is intentionally incomplete, and that's because Microsoft doesn't want anyone to implement it. This is simply part of their war on up-and-coming competitors. The whole thing is a lie, and it appears that a strong enough minority of the committee recognize this stunt for what it is. What is sad is that money may very well win the day, when Microsoft should be shown the door and told not to come back until it has a standard that any competent programmer could build an interface in an application for, even if they possess no libraries to help them along.
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maybe its just me (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Intentional? No. It's merely the result of some poor sod documenting the Office formats, which are essentially dumps of the programs' internal state. What you see is merely the consequence of the fact that Office is held together with spit, bailing wire, and the curséd blood of sacrificed Microsoft H1-b programmers.
Standards organizations are politics... (Score:5, Insightful)
They're supposed to be setting up mechanisms for cooperation. But all too often they become political battlegrounds, where each member organization tries to warp the standard to make things easier for itself and to sabotage its competition.
Now we have Microsoft going a step further, not just trying to get its own stuff approved as a standard, but packing the committee just before the vote.
And missing by one vote. Oops! B-)
Hack Back (Score:5, Informative)
But it is.
The good news is that it appears money can fix this - short money for most (the cost of a couple copies of Microsoft Office). If you have any discretionary budgetary authority and would be adversely affected by OOXML being an ANSI standard, please go here [incits.org], read about the membership process (it appears to cost $800 to be on the technical committees) and fill out the membership form [incits.org]. If you're an academic institution you can get on the technical committees and have an advisory role for $2000.
Yes, the process is broken, but it appears this can be stopped pretty quickly. They're hacking, all we can do is hack back.
It would be great if a hundred universities and a couple hundred Slashdotters' businesses were able to get on the committee by the end of the week. It would reverse the trend, by quite a margin. By all means, try to get the process fixed in parallel, but any such efforts there will likely come in too late.
Re:Hack Back (Score:4, Insightful)
Um, that's exactly their tactic.
"Son, never start a fight, but always finish one."
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
They would need 20 to get a 2/3 majority vote.
You suggest that we hack back, but that is not etical.
When somebody's clubbing you on the head, first you stop the clobbering, then you worry about what to do with them. One can prefer a happy community spirit while still not subscribing to radical pacifism [wikipedia.org].
You are applying for accreditation? Allow or Deny (Score:5, Funny)
Microsoft's OfficeOpen XML in Massachusetts (Score:5, Informative)
Massachusetts would like to recieve comments about Microsoft's OfficeOpen XML specification (now Ecma 376) being proposed as an addition to their list of usable "open standards". I'm hearing that they are reading the emails and will take them seriously.
It's a proposal, and it's not yet carved in stone. Time will tell if they mean it, but with that reassurance, I have to put my cynicism on hold, at least for now, and say that if this is an issue you care about, you need to let them know how you feel in polite and informative emails before July 20th, 2007. It never hurts to try, particularly since I've no doubt Microsoft is lobbying wherever it can. When I thought it was useless, I didn't want to pretend otherwise or have you engage in make work. But if it has a chance, it's very different.
Here's the address to write to: standards at state.ma.us. (Only use the @ symbol instead of the at.)
I suspect the most important thing right now is numbers, so even a short email is helpful. They can't know how you feel unless you tell them, and they can't understand the tech unless it's presented with proofs of statements made. And remember, it's a new crew, so some of the things we explained the first time may not have been transferred to the new brains at the helm. So please let me provide you with some resources, so that if you wish some materials at hand to compose a more thoughtful and more technical email, it will save you some time.
What can I do? (Score:5, Interesting)
We all have our prejudices, and a lot of us geeks are (not unduly) suspicious of anything "open" coming out of Redmond, but to step back and compare these two formats I see ODF as a clear winner:
So what can I do to promote ODF? Write to my congresscritters? Spend some time proofing drafts of the spec?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Ponder the roughly decade-long pageant of XML "textnologies" that were supposed to magically unfrobnicate everything, and usher in Web X.O.
From a certain aesthetic/spiritual vantage, we need another decade of unrelenting rejection of bloated obfuscations just to bring the software industry back to a contemplative, resting state.
Or has this just been dogma lifting the leg on another bad
Re:where is the list of ooxml supporters (Score:5, Informative)
http://v1.incits.org/v1mem.htm [incits.org]
Apart from a few biggies like IBM or Sun, most of them you never ever heard of.
The interesting part what is RH doing there except what MS does, but within the opposite camp? E.g. being there purely to thwart MS' doings.
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Re:Why the push? (Score:5, Informative)
Perhaps you haven't heard, but OOXML is not anywhere near an open standard. Google: autoSpaceLikeWord95 (...how exactly do you autoSpaceLikeWord95? Decompile Word 95 on Windows 95? Where do you get these programs?), VML (is that even implementable outside of Windows and Internet Explorer? oops!), WMF (ditto), and "referenced" patents. MS is even employing Linux companies to write "translators" that can never fully implement OOXML because of these intentional problems. Just read the Halloween documents where MS says they need to innovate above standards (embrace + extend) or some Comes v MS documents. Google "Microsoft on standards". http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/01/microsoft-on-
I'll have to say, so many people are falling for the Open Office, er, I mean Office Open XML "standard" that MS's PR firm must have been paid very well.
From the OOXML patent promise:
"Microsoft irrevocably promises not to assert any Microsoft Necessary Claims against you for making, using, selling, offering for sale, importing or distributing any implementation to the extent it conforms to a Covered Specification (Covered Implementation), subject to the following. This is a personal promise directly from Microsoft to you, and you acknowledge as a condition of benefiting from it that no Microsoft rights are received from suppliers, distributors, or otherwise in connection with this promise. If you file, maintain or voluntarily participate in a patent infringement lawsuit against a Microsoft implementation of such Covered Specification, then this personal promise does not apply with respect to any Covered Implementation of the same Covered Specification made or used by you. To clarify, Microsoft Necessary Claims are those claims of Microsoft-owned or Microsoft-controlled patents that are necessary to implement only the required portions of the Covered Specification that are described in detail and not merely referenced in such Specification. Covered Specifications are listed below.
This promise is not an assurance either (i) that any of Microsofts issued patent claims covers a Covered Implementation or are enforceable or (ii) that a Covered Implementation would not infringe patents or other intellectual property rights of any third party. No other rights except those expressly stated in this promise shall be deemed granted, waived or received by implication, exhaustion, estoppel, or otherwise."
Oh, you mean VML is only referenced and therefore not covered by the patent promise, at the same time MS is throwing their patents around Linux? Too bad it's inherently part of the OOXML spec....
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Re:Why is MS taking all this trouble? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes it is quite certain that if ODF was required, Microsoft word would read/write ODF. And Microsoft word would almost certainly still be the number 1 word processor, and just like
The difference is that a number-2 word processor could then at least exist.
Microsoft is not worried about Open Office, that is just another bit of FUD they throw out (they act like there is some physical impossibility of any program other than an open-source Open Office working with ODF, which is a blatently false, but unstated, premise, of all their arguments).
What they are worried about is a *commercial* number-2 word processor. Say Google-word. Or maybe a company we never heard of. But suddenly no "something is wrong with open source" arguments will work (whether these are FUD or not), and any other argument against it will sound like Microsoft is claiming that they are the only company legally allowed to write software.
Such software would cut far more into Word sales than Open Office (I think the result would be 50% Word, 40% this competitor, and 10% divided amoung Open Office, a dozen other free open-source products, and 5 or 6 other commercial attempts). Retaining their market share would also require them to compete on functionality by developing the software, further cutting profits.
More serious is that it removes a possible lock-in for server products for the office. Even if a place uses 100% Word, the pointy-haired boss may actually have a hint and question why the "microsoft document server" they are thinking of buying will not work with this possible competitor, and for the same price they can buy the IBM unit that works with both. Microsoft will be forced to make such products that work with both or they will lose all the sales. But they will then lose that lock in, and then lose the lock in of things that run on or talk to these servers, etc, etc.
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