OOXML Denied INCITS V1 Approval

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."

Re:wha?

[Anonymous Coward]

aww, c'mon that wasn't a troll.
Someone please explain what those 500 Acronyms are for please, there's probably +1-3 informative in it for you.

Re:Cash is King

[jkrise]

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.

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.

Re:Cash is King

[lgw]

Sometimes I wonder whether Microsoft can implement the standard either. I suspect that the reason they say "like Word 95 does" is that they have a functional code base that works that way, and they couldn't possibly tell you the details of *how* it works (if you've worked at large enough software company this will sound familiar). This of course isn't particularly useful when writing a standard, and if MS wants acceptance they should damn well reverse engineer Word 95 themselves and publish the results.

What can I do?

[Qubit]

I give money to various FOSS projects that I use at home and work, and I have my FSF card and my EFF decoder ring, and I feel pretty good about all that, but what can I do to help promote the use and standardization of ODF over OOXML?

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:

• OOXML is controlled by one company, not a standards body.
  
• Microsoft likes proprietary formats and has only gone the open format route because the market/industry forced them to do so.
  
• Microsoft was invited several times to join the ODF standards committee and refused all invitations.
  
• The OOXML format is not actually open for anyone to implement: part of the specification references proprietary file formats (older ms-office formats) and proprietary, microsoft-only code.
  

So what can I do to promote ODF? Write to my congresscritters? Spend some time proofing drafts of the spec?

Re:wha?

[CastrTroy]

Does anybody else find it really confusing that MS calls it OOXML. To me, OOXML would mean OpenOffice XML, but then I have to remember that it's ODF, which is the Open Document Format, because it's not specific to OpenOffice. Does anybody think that Microsoft gave it this name specifically to confuse people who would see the acronym and think of OpenOffice?

The process is manipulated worldwide by MSFT

[Anonymous Coward]

As an example of how Microsoft is manipulating the whole process everywhere, take Portugal IPQ standards body (the national ISO body there): The chairman of the technical committee to study the granting of the ISO standard to MSOOXML happens to be a Microsoft employee, first they tried to fill as many seats as possible at the committee with Micrososft partners, including Microsoft employees, one of them at the presidency, such as "Primavera", "Jurinfor" and "ASSOFT", then they denied Sun and IBM the possibility of participating in the process with the lame excuse that there were not enough chairs on the meeting room!!!! (Was Ballmer visiting the premises before the meeting?)

Join the www.noooxml.info campaign and also the www.openxml.info sister campaign for latin america!

Sources:
In English:
http://www.groklaw.net/comment.php?mode=display&si d=20070716141225333&title=More+Portugese+OOXML+blo gs&type=article&order=&hideanonymous=0&pid=595143# c595183 [groklaw.net]
http://joaobarros.bsdtech.org/2007/07/17/not-enoug h-seats-for-sun-and-ibm-to-discuss-ooxml/ [bsdtech.org]
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F %2Fabretesw.blogspot.com%2F2007%2F07%2Fsun-microsy stems-sem-espao-na.html&langpair=pt%7Cen&hl=en&ie= UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&prev=%2Flanguage_tools [google.com]

In Portuguese:
http://www.openxml.info/index.php?option=com_conte nt&task=category&sectionid=5&id=7&Itemid=13 [openxml.info]
http://mv.asterisco.pt/2007/Jun/cat.cgi?MS%20OOXML [asterisco.pt]
http://abretesw.blogspot.com/2007/07/sun-microsyst ems-sem-espao-na.html [blogspot.com]

As Joao Barros report:
Not enough seats for Sun and IBM to discuss OOXML

Just read Paulo Vilela's post about how a request by Sun and IBM to become part of the Portuguese Technical Committee established to discuss document standards in Portugal was denied. Why? There are no seats. And I do mean CHAIRS!!!

I'm ashamed of my country, again.

Note: Paulo Vilela is a Sun employe in Portugal and his post is in Portuguese, so here is the page translated to English, via Google.

ISO Member bodies' OWN web sites non-standard

[eturro]

How can anyone take ISO seriously when hardly a single one of the member bodies' [iso.org] web sites validate [w3.org] with W3. Hell, the Greek Member web site [www.elot.gr] even uses some shitty Flash "intro"!

What a disgrace.