04.01.10
Posted in ISO, Microsoft, Office Suites, Open XML, OpenDocument, Standard at 6:24 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Microsoft back into its walled gardens after bribing, cheating, stuffing ballots, and lying to everyone for the sake of hurting document standards (ODF)
What a lovely Easter present. Even one of the people who are responsible for the OOXML fiasco [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21] admits the obvious and concedes that Microsoft was bluffing.
Alex Brown writes:
Microsoft Fails the Standards Test
[...]
Microsoft has many enemies who will no doubt see the current state of affairs as proof that Microsoft never even intended to be good standards citizens. Indeed standards and XML veteran Tim Bray, writing shortly after the standard’s approval, made a prediction which could now seem impressively prophetic:
“It’s Kind of Sad • The coverage suggests that future enhancements to 29500, as worked through by a subcommittee of a subcommittee of a standards committee, are actually going to have some influence on Microsoft. Um, maybe there’s an alternate universe in which Redmond-based program managers and developers are interested in the opinions of a subgroup of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34, but this isn’t it.
I suppose they’ll probably show up to the meetings and try to act interested, but it’s going to be a sideline and nobody important will be there. What Microsoft really wanted was that ISO stamp of approval to use as a marketing tool. And just like your mother told you, when they get what they want and have their way with you, they’re probably not gonna call you in the morning.”
So Alex, how does it feel to have helped corrupt the integrity of ISO, which you purport to be a part of? Note the comment at the end, which says: “Alex, I am surprised, after all the allegations of stuffing, bribing and coercion of NB’s that were, until DIS29500, uninterested in XML document standards, that you seem surprised at the outcome thus far.” This doesn’t even mention the personal role of Alex in all that malarkey. █
“The ISO process, brutal and corrupt as it was, has been covered to death by everyone.”
–Tim Bray
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02.12.10
Posted in Formats, Free/Libre Software, GNOME, GNU/Linux, ISO, Microsoft, Novell, Office Suites, Open XML, OpenDocument at 11:29 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: More of the usual gameplay from people who have made a career out of helping Microsoft expand its circles of influence/dominance
MICROSOFT’S “Insider Friend, ‘the Fox’” Alex Brown [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21] is “Looking at the pubic review text of #ODF 1.2 pt 1″ and saying that “some bits still very ropey”
What an unsurprising statement coming from the man who essentially conspired to help Microsoft corrupt ISO’s integrity while he marketed OOXML around the UK.
“ISO is dead for software standards. Do you need an official funeral?”
–Benjamin Henrion, FFII
Moreover, just very recently Alex Brown was seen defending Microsoft’s deviation from ODF [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7] — a deviation which is only fragmenting and complicating everything.
Brown is joined by Microsoft MVP Miguel de Icaza. They are acting like Microsoft reps, to whom Simon Phipps (Oracle) replies with: “My view is that ODF should now just transclude the OOXML formula spec, but that’s probably controversial”
“To an outsider, it would probably seem clear that de Icaza is a Microsoft employee or partner who wishes that ODF just went away.”De Icaza seems very eager to keep smearing ODF, which is a threat to the top cash cow of the company whose board he serves (CodePlex Foundation board). A little conflict of interests there, no? Anyway, he is linking to his colleague Morten Welinder, who is dissing ODF and closing comments, possibly in order to prevent rebuttals from being posted. Rob Weir responded to de Icaza by saying: “The spec that vendors are implementing is linked to from the ODF TC’s homepage. Novell is on the TC. You know this.”
Maybe he’s playing dumb. After all, he also has loyalties to Microsoft, not just Novell. And guess who else is linking to de Icaza and his colleague (the ODF smear)? That’s right, it’s more noise which feeds those at Microsoft who participated in the corruption of ISO and various standards bodies around the world. They quote de Icaza as though he’s their special buddy (which he is, as he even helped bug resolution in OOXML). To an outsider, it would probably seem clear that de Icaza is a Microsoft employee or partner who wishes that ODF just went away. Why are other Microsoft agents like Microsoft MVP Miguel de Icaza linking to that same post, which is damaging to ODF and not even factual? It’s stuff like this, which makes the question rhetorical.
Miguel de Icaza writes in response to the call-out: “Another Rob Weir swing from Bombastic troll when discussing OOXML to nuanced and apologetic when it comes to ODF”
He’s starting to sound just like another one of those Microsoft employees who are smearing Weir (sometimes by creating smear blogs or calling for resignation).
Weir responds with: “ISO approval is not my success metric for ODF, but rather adopters, users and implementors. By those measure I’m pleased.”
“[I]t seems that Morten isn’t following the ODF development at all.”
–Jomar SilvaAddressing the actual source of the FUD, Morten Welinder criticises formula handling in ODF even though a lot of office suites (excluding Microsoft Office) successfully implemented ODF support for formulas that are also interoperable. Weir showed this using a table and several sample files about a year ago.
It is worth adding that the ODF smear comes from the same group (Gnumeric) that was helping OOXML get past ISO. We wrote about this at the time [1, 2], specifically when there were complaints about GNOME engaging or in general terms helping Microsoft in that regard (Jody Goldberg from Novell got actively involved for example).
Jomar Silva, who is a key person in ODF, says that “it seems that Morten isn’t following the ODF development at all. Simply pathetic !”
Let’s remember what these people are pushing for at ODF’s expense. OOXML is utterly flawed and it annoys so many users of Microsoft Office, based on this new analysis at INC.com: [via Bob Sutor]
For those using older versions of Microsoft Word, or other non-Microsoft word processing software, the new .docx format can be a real pain. It has caused dissension in some workplaces. How to cope with conflicting Microsoft Office formats.
It’s a funny article to read. Microsoft’s own customers loathe OOXML.
ODF is also important because it offers “equal opportunities”, as advogato.org put it:
It is possible to get people to listen if you want to instil Free Software principles, but they have to have a “handle” against which they are forced to act, within the organisation that they work. Or, if they agree with you in principle, but are otherwise hog-tied, they need that “handle” with which to justify their actions to their superiors.
Using the words “Discrimination” and “Equal Opportunities” in the same sentence seems to do the trick.
Jan Wildeboer says that “The ODF TC peeps should really read this gem,” which accurately dissects some of the deception from Microsoft and its promoters. Here is Miguel de Icaza hugging Jeff Atwood from Microsoft. The photo below (from Marcus Griep) is a very recent one and the description of de Icaza’s talk at this event (filled with Microsoft employees and content) goes as follows:
Miguel also showcased MonoTouch, building a simple program in MonoDevelop on Mac OSX, and demonstrating it in the iPhone simulator. Including lots of pro-Linux banter and some pokes at Richard Stallman, Miguel kept the audience interested and amused, which is exactly what the last presentation in an 8-hour day needs.
Yes, it’s the same guy we have come to know ever since he compared Stallman to George Bush. What does that make it his darling Microsoft? Either way, it’s nice of him to ridicule Stallman in front of an apparently Microsoft-dominated audience. It must be a new and entertaining pastime for them. █
From Marcus Griep
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12.27.09
Posted in Deception, ISO, Microsoft, Open XML, OpenDocument, Patents, Standard at 9:09 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: With the ending of the i4i case OOXML should be removed from ISO and cease to be used
THIS is a subject that we wrote about before, right after it turned out that Microsoft had deliberately lied by saying that OOXML had no patent issues. Microsoft was already struggling against i4i in court [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11], knowing damn well the implications it would probably have when it comes to OOXML. Microsoft lied with pride. Microsoft also corrupted ISO with the help of insiders — “accomplices” as one might label them.
Sun’s Tim Bray has just said what many came to witness a few months back.
At the time of the huge OOXML dogfight, one of the reasons Microsoft claimed that the world needed OOXML, even though there was already a perfectly-good ISO-standard XML office-document format, was that it enabled this wonderful customization feature.
What Bray calls the “OOXML dogfight” was a phenomenal display of disregard for the law (see the OOXML Abuse Index), in which the BRM convenor, Alex Brown, personally participated [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6]. Over at Groklaw, Pamela Jones writes: “I wonder how Alex Brown and the gang will handle OOXML now that Microsoft has been found guilty of willful patent infringement in the i4i case and so must remove functionality from XML in its Word products? Does it mean that the standard is no longer “in use”? That it must be withdrawn due to a patent having been asserted against it?”
ISO is probably too corrupt and vain to withdraw OOXML, but that’s what it ought to be doing at this stage. Microsoft rammed something ridiculous under false pretenses, not just with bribery.
Speaking of patents, here is interesting news:
A recent Microsoft patent application applies a similar approach to defining navigational queries. The inventors of the patent filing tell us that queries can be generally classified as falling into a couple of broad categories: discovery queries and navigational queries.
More here:
He compares the Microsoft filing to a recent Yahoo patent filing that details what the Sunnyvale, Calif., company might look for when deciding whether a query was navigational or not. Slawski bases some of his analysis on Microsoft’s “best match” feature.
We previously wrote about the possibility that Microsoft would use patents against Google. █
“The ISO process, brutal and corrupt as it was, has been covered to death by everyone.”
–Tim Bray
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12.16.09
Posted in America, Europe, Free/Libre Software, ISO, Microsoft, Office Suites, Open XML, OpenDocument, OpenOffice, Standard at 2:08 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Also see: Judge Likens Microsoft’s Effect on Java to a Bang on the Knee
Summary: The ups and downs of ODF, the latter being largely the result of Microsoft’s gentle blows
ODF (OpenDocument Format) is still doing pretty well, especially in developing countries like Brazil (also here) and nations where corruption rates are low (notably Scandinavia).
According to this report from IDG, Holland is prepared to help Denmark with ODF, resisting the infinite cronyism of Helge Sander.
The Dutch government has provided Denmark with information regarding the Dutch national plan Heemskerk for open government IT.
In Denmark, there is heated debate about the approach for open IT usage by the government. One of the obstacles is the open file format for mandatory use by the government and government organizations. ODF (Open Document Format) and OOXML (Open Office XML), originally developed by Microsoft, are the candidates for use.
The Dutch Ministry of Finance shared with Denmark the experience and knowledge it has gained from the national plan Heemskerk and the resulting action plan “Nederland Open in Verbinding” (NOiV). Finance spokesman Edwin van Scherrenburg confirmed to Dutch IDG news site Webwereld that the two governments are in contact. “We have shared all information regarding NOiV,” he said.
Further up in Norway, one person writes: “New task: write report for Norwegian government on whether to recommend/require ODF and/or OOXML in Norwegian public sector” (a response to which is: “I did the same for the Danish goverment about 2 years ago, “comparing” ODF, OOXML and PDF. Did I make a difference? I’d like to know”).
“On the menu: one of the smallest cities in Belgium – Nieuwerkerken – needs some new and fancy automatically generated documents in #odf,” says this gentleman from Belgium and ODF is also mentioned in German news sites.
Europe is clearly warming up to ODF and so do developers (new examples here and here).
Bart Hanssens writes from Belgium (a meeting was held in France): “uploaded proposal for #odf 1.1 Interoperability Profile http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/document.php?document_id=35565″
“ODF TC done,” writes Cherie Ekholm, “starting PDF/UA.” Dennis Hamilton announced: “ODF TC e-ballot on #ODF 1.2 Part 1 CD04 as Public Review draft ends tonight, expected to pass easily based on current votes.”
In addition he wrote: “ODF TC discussed whether to align OSI/IEC IS 26300 and #ODF 1.1 or would ODF 1.2 overtake the effort and time to accomplish. Unresolved.”
Later came: “#ODF TC Approves ODF 1.2 Part 1 Committee Draft CD04 to submit for first-ever Public Review. OASIS to announce after docs all set.”
Bart Hanssens took note and so did Pim Bliek. Mary McRae (the key person for ODF at OASIS) has also responded.
An important subject which was brought up by several people has also been shared by an OpenOffice.org guy, who wrote:
Locked out by design
[...]
Software vendors have tried on and off to lock these documents so users needed the original software to use them. This can go horribly wrong, as some users of Microsoft Office 2003 have just found out to their cost, when the software refused to let them get at their documents – their own intellectual property. This is a design feature of Microsoft Office software which happened to misfire.
What it highlights is that no-one outside Microsoft has a clue what is hidden inside their secretive software. It also highlights the importance of not using a secret format to store valuable office documents. The safe way to store valuable documents is in OpenDocument Format (ODF) – an ISO approved open standard which isn’t owned by any one company. It’s the best guarantee against being held to ransom one day by a software supplier.
We wrote about this a few days ago and so did Microsoft. Wolf Corcoran-Mathe writes: “[Microsoft Fixes Office 2003 Document Lockout] Great. Now if they could only stop breaking ODF.” He is referring to Microsoft’s inability (or unwillingness) to obey interoperability needs [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7].
“Brown’s private firm benefits from Microsoft as we showed many times before, so he never relents.”Now we get to the ugly parts where Microsoft is attacking ODF, as usual. Alex Brown [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22] is sticking his nose again, trolling/heckling John with some poison against ODF (see the comments in the blog above). Brown’s private firm benefits from Microsoft as we showed many times before, so he never relents. Microsoft’s very unethical Doug Mahugh is also pushing the same Microsoft line, which gets passed around by others who are associated with Microsoft. It's like a cult of money and power. Corruption is a key ritual, which the heavily-spammed ANSI pretends never happened. But to quote Brown’s predecessor: “This year WG1 have had another major development that has made it almost impossible to continue with our work within ISO. The influx of P members whose only interest is the fast-tracking of ECMA 376 as ISO 29500 has led to the failure of a number of key ballots. Though P members are required to vote, 50% of our current members, and some 66% of our new members, blatantly ignore this rule despite weekly email reminders and reminders on our website. As ISO require at least 50% of P members to vote before they start to count the votes we have had to reballot standards that should have been passed and completed their publication stages at Kyoto. This delay will mean that these standards will appear on the list of WG1 standards that have not been produced within the time limits set by ISO, despite our best efforts.
“The disparity of rules for PAS, Fast-Track and ISO committee generated standards is fast making ISO a laughing stock in IT circles. The days of open standards development are fast disappearing. Instead we are getting “standardization by corporation”, something I have been fighting against for the 20 years I have served on ISO committees. I am glad to be retiring before the situation becomes impossible.”
It indeed became impossible and ISO is now corrupt [1, 2, 3, 4].
So, Microsoft got away with misconduct, who cares? Many people said the same thing when George Bush stole the elections. Whatever.
A post that we cited the other day comes from Rob Weir and Glyn Moody calls it a “good summary of where we are, and why Microsoft’s moves are fishy…”
Microsoft’s obligations are by definition unethical and very much against ODF. That’s just how the company operates, for its shareholders. “[T]hat’s super screwy because “O”OXML is Microsoft’s format. ODF is the REAL open format,” says this one person to a peer/friend, later adding that the nature of this situation is “making ODF far more resilient against bugs, because they can easily be patched.” █
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12.12.09
Posted in Africa, America, Fraud, Free/Libre Software, IBM, ISO, Microsoft, Office Suites, Open XML, OpenDocument, OpenOffice, Standard, SUN at 4:52 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
Summary: Several more advancements for ODF and another eye-opening reminder that poorer countries are discriminated against by the Microsoft-faithful crowd
LAST week we wrote about Slovakia and ODF. Supporters of open standards should be pleased to know that the international standard, ODF, is gaining ground very rapidly. Here is a small update from Slovakia: “SK committee for e-standards if the government agreed to change ODF 1.0 to ODF any version up to 1.2 (1.0,1.1,1.2)…“
And it’s not just Slovaks who are likely to enjoy the ability to access and share documents from almost any office suite. In Japan too there is great progress, as Murata says that the Japanese standard for ODF is finally released: “The ODF JIS has been approved finally. We trust in better maintenace by SC34/WG6 and the ODF TC…”
“The ODF JIS has been approved finally. We trust in better maintenace by SC34/WG6 and the ODF TC…”
–Dr. MurataFellow countrymen spread the word even further, but SC34/WG6 cannot be trusted for maintenance. We’ll come to this in a moment. One person from elsewhere says: “Good to see some practical changes — more colleagues will be using ODF format for docs, so much better for cross platform”
Another person argues that “we need to specific data format (e.g., ODF) not software suite”
This brings us to some ugly stuff involving Microsoft’s “Insider Friend, ‘the Fox’”, whose name in this case is Alex Brown. He has done a lot to deserve people’s disdain [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21] because he seems more interested in Microsoft’s interests than in standards.
Several months ago Microsoft tried to kick IBM/Weir out of the ODF TC (technical committee). Jomar Silva, who helped expose the mischiefs of Alex Brown and his beloved Microsoft, is now being pressured out (along with his country) by Alex Brown. [same article in Portuguese]
Alex Brown wants Brazil out of the ISO !
As if the dirty things he did with Brazil during the OpenXML BRM in ISO wasn’t sufficient, now Alex Brown suggests in his blog that Brazil shouldn’t be a SC34 member at JTC1. Reason: Brazil did not send delegates to the SC34 WG’s meeting in Paris last week!
Brazilian people are rightly furious [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. Microsoft and its minions would love to push resistance out of the table, leaving just the corrupt and the rich (some of the former funded by the latter) to discuss matters, all at the exclusion of the developing nations that dared to file formal complaints to ISO. In turn, ISO, which is also run by the rich and the corrupt, rudely threw away all these complaints.
Speaking of this Microsoft-stuffed [1, 2, 3, 4] SC34 meeting in Paris, Mary McRae from OASIS writes to Alex Brown that he “went to Paris and ate too many croissants. Washed down with brandy.”
Brown was baffled by it because he does not get British humour [1, 2, 3] (yes, it’s rather ironic) and Aslam from South Africa (which filed the first complaint to ISO) said that he “would watch the BRM re-run RT @fiberartisan: @BartHanssens #oasis I think some of them would make better reality TV shows…”
Boycott Novell has good record of the corruption that occurred at the BRM, e.g. [1, 2, 3, 4]. Speaking of which, one reader sent us these thoughts a few days ago, in reference to Microsoft crime and inability to serve the industry:
Dumped in a landfill is even less ceremonious than dumping in a mass grave.
Where there are Microsoft partners and distributors, there are Microsoft products and the One Microsoft Way of thinking:
How much can be attributed to Sharepoint? LSE didn’t have much luck with Sharepoint. It’d be hard to imagine that a smaller budget would have better luck specially if they’re so ideologically driven as to ignore the established, faster, cheaper, better, easier FOSS solutions.
Another reader wishes to remind people of the real history of Microsoft Office, which Microsoft sympathisers try to rewrite:
Here’s a subtle piece of Microsoft Revisionism.
Ah, now I see, it’s Joe Wilcox. This kind of thing is typical of his flamebait that I’d rather not draw attention to, but I thought I’d share my analysis.
While pretending to analyze a Microsoft failure, he creates a false impression of their products excellence as a means of success:
“Microsoft Office achieved two important goals by the mid 1990s. Established format standards that resolved problems sharing documents created by disparate products. Ensured that Microsoft file formats would become the adopted desktop productivity standards.”
Office did not work then and it does not work now. The success of Microsoft Office was the end result of hardware economics and targeted dumping. In the late 80s and early 90s, IBM hardware was all most people could afford and Microsoft made sure it came with nothing but Microsoft DOS. Microsoft did a good job of getting Office to people who would be in a position to ram it down other people’s throat. Those who actually did the work preferred Word Perfect and other superior products. I saw this every place I worked at the time. They used the same kind of panel stuffing that they would later brag about in their training documents and that was so obvious in the OOXML ISO process.
Wilcox should know better than this and actually includes the information he needs in the same article,
“‘Browsing the Web, you find almost no Microsoft file formats,’ Gates wrote. He observed not seeing a single Microsoft file format ‘after 10 hours of browsing…’”
Yes, in 1995 people with a clue were using other things. They still are today and, thanks to the Internet, we can derail Microsoft corruption. In all that time, despite great effort, Microsoft has yet to destroy Adobe’s document formats that actually work. It’s not from lack of trying, it’s from lack of product that works. Wilson ignores the rise of in house Wikis as a replacement for the usual, tedious Microsoft network and emailed revision train wreck.
Wilcox goes on to cover up Microsoft’s failure at “Consumer” as some kind of ordered retreat. In the last ten years Microsoft has wasted tens of billions of dollars trying to dominate media distribution. Windows Media Center, Zune, Xbox, various forms of Microsoft TV have all been colossal technical failures. In the competitive consumer market, where stacked panels don’t work, Microsoft was unable to win despite some key hardware format victories. Every cheap music player in the world works with Windows media formats but very few will do ogg vorbis, flac and other superior and royalty free formats. Microsoft blew that tremendous advantage with obnoxious digital restrictions and software that everyone hated. They failed there for the same reason they are failing elsewhere, Microsoft is just not competitive.
Watch what Microsoft is doing right now to people who try to do their job and cover events:
Microsoft PR outlaws iPhone talk
A Microsoft manager created a bit of a fuss by advising a journalist not to mention the iPhone at a Microsoft event in Germany, betraying frayed nerves in the MS camp.
The journalist was apparently guilty of expressing his opinion that no mobile phone was easier to use than an iPhone. We might disagree with that opinion*, but we wouldn’t demand he stop mentioning Apple products, as one Microsoft manager did.
This would not be the first time that Microsoft behaves in this way.
We wish not to end with a negative tone, so here is some good OpenOffice.org news, which ought to reflect positively on ODF too.
There are some nice (and rather major) changes coming to OpenOffice.org and KOffice too is supporting ODF with Nokia’s help and in collaboration with OpenOffice.org. The replies in posts like this one bode well for ODF and one person has published the article which is titled “ODF – The Future of Literate Programming?”
Which brings me to the ‘what if’ question. What if we leveraged the fact that there is now a non-proprietary standard XML representation for richly formatted office documents called ODF[2]. What if we used ODF compatible tools like OpenOffice[3] to write our programs? How would we extract the lines of code to feed to our compilers? We could just use paragraph styles that indicate Èfeed this to the compilerÉ.
For documentation, an embarrassment of riches would then be instantly available. We could use level heading to split up the code/documentation into hierarchical chunks. We could generate tables of contents from these level headings. We could insert pictures wherever we need them along with tables, cross references, index entries and so on. Heck we could even embed spreadsheets, photographs taken of white-boards at planning meetings, the whole shebang.
WYSIWYG literate programming with ODF? I do not see why not.
OpenOffice.org plans to reach a broader market under the slogan “open for business”:
Open for Business logo couple of years ago we came up with a slogan for OpenOffice.org – Open for Business – to get across a couple of messages:
* OpenOffice.org software may be used by commercial businesses completely free of any licence fees
* OpenOffice.org software is also a great platform to build businesses around – training providers, systems integrators, PC manufacturers to name but a few
With OpenOffice.org 3.1.1 already out there, the Sun engineers are testing version 3.2 and publishing their results.
Automated tests on milestone OO320m7 are finished. Automated testing team reported a ‘green state’ for all automated tests. Just a small problem in w_updt.bas bother the consistent picture of all platforms marked green in QUASTe. This issue wasn’t easy to find but at the end we solved the problem in showstopper CWS ‘jl146′ with issue 107038. Depending on desktop respectively OpenOffice.org window size the document is middle or left aligned with automatic view layout (which is default). This lead to the problem sometimes the objects in writer document were drawn outside of the documents area by autotest. Finally we found and fixed it by correcting view layout before testcases run. Some additional minor fixes for more stability were also done in this CWS. Punctually with release of RC1 next week the autotests are expected to deliver a ‘green state’ on initial testrun.
IBM has published this new article about ODF and lpOD (first mentioned here) has a new release, in addition to this new release of odsPhpGenerator.
odsPhpGenerator is a small and easy library to generate OpenDocument Spreadsheets. It requires only PHP 5.0, DOM, and zip support.
Projects that support ODF just carry on coming. So, all in all, the real standard is winning. █
“ISO is dead for software standards. Do you need an official funeral?”
–Benjamin Henrion, FFII
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11.27.09
Posted in Europe, Fraud, ISO, Microsoft, Office Suites, Open XML, OpenDocument at 8:57 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“[Nicolas] Sarkozy and his family have been vacationing at a lakefront estate in Wolfeboro owned by former Microsoft Corp. executive Michael Appe.”
–MSNBC, 2007
Summary: More analysis of Microsoft’s OOXML shenanigans in France and some updates on the uptake of ODF
AFTER what Microsoft had done in France (with Sarkozy's help), it was perhaps inevitable that France allowed OOXML [1, 2]. As somebody from France now puts it in English:
Politicians, lobbyists and scapegoats: When choosing not to choose should make you vote the next time
[...]
This is how we come to the present RGI. The document by itself has been totally rewritten, choosing to leave aside the policy aspect in favor of an exhaustive referencing and classifying of existing technology and standards. This document itself integrates well with the upper echelons of European interoperability framework and does not attempt to dictate what the public sector stakeholders should do. On the crucial question of the office file formats, it is obvious that the authors spent some time carefully choosing their words. While the use of xml-based file format is clearly recommended, ODF is being put under observation (the reason for this is unclear) and so is OOXML, but at least we know the reason for this: OOXML has no known implementation (and won’t have any until a long time, they might have added) and therefore cannot be used.
Guess who’s going to France very soon? To quote: “#odf TC scratching its head what actions we have with regard to maintenance and the ISO/IEC JTC1 SC34 WG6 meeting in Paris 12/4.”
“The disparity of rules for PAS, Fast-Track and ISO committee generated standards is fast making ISO a laughing stock in IT circles. The days of open standards development are fast disappearing. Instead we are getting “standardization by corporation”, something I have been fighting against for the 20 years I have served on ISO committees. I am glad to be retiring before the situation becomes impossible. I wish my colleagues every success for their future efforts, which I sincerely hope will not prove to be as wasted as I fear they could be.”
–Martin Bryan, Former Convenor of ISO/IEC JTC1/SC34 [OOXML] WG1
The above blog also refers to the role of Alex Brown (Martin Bryan’s successor), as recently exposed by someone who was close to the incidents.
* If that weren’t enough, Jomar Silva from the ODF Alliance Brazil has posted its latest revelations about the infamous Ballot Resolution Meeting (BRM) on OOXML in Geneva and how Alex Brown, its dubious convener, did everything to stop some delegations asking some interesting questions. It is amazing to see how international processes can be bent towards one and the same goal.
Microsoft’s corruption of the process has fortunately enough been documented. It reminds people that Microsoft never changed.
In better news, people’s support of ODF is evident thanks to new tweets, such as: “Please change it to OpenDocument Format. #ODF #deathtoDOCX”
With more ODF coverage and releases of products that support ODF (KOffice 2.1 in this case), it is clear that Microsoft failed to destroy ODF. That’s what it tried to do. In fact, increasingly we find products that support ODF but do not support OOXML. To give one new example (“Black Friday Special for Tables”):
Tables can import and export spreadsheets in Excel, OpenDocument and CSV format as well as export a spreadsheet or single sheets as PDF.
Here is another new example, the 1.0 release of OpenYABS.
It writes PDF or ODF (OpenOffice format) documents, and is a multiuser system. It is the successor of MP Invoicing. It can use any JDBC compliant database as a backend, and works in heterogenous networks, allowing fine grained security settings. It can also be extended with modules.
ODF and PDF only. █
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11.16.09
Posted in America, Antitrust, Europe, Fraud, Hardware, ISO, Law, Microsoft, Open XML, OpenDocument at 5:53 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“Behind every great fortune there is a crime.”
–Honor de Balzac
Summary: Analysis of a culture where those who believe in the law are being discouraged and daemonised
AT Boycott Novell we often get flak for merely pointing out the truth, such as the truth that Intel and Microsoft are criminal companies. That’s a factual statement, it’s nothing to be embarrassed about. There is even action in the United States now, which would seem more rare than similar actions in Korea and Europe, for example. Microsoft was found guilty twice in Korea this year [1, 2] and Intel just once (one time is enough). In Europe, Intel was found guilty this year and Microsoft is still under multiple antitrust investigations.
“Somehow the criminal receives sympathy and the justice seeker eventually daemonised…”Our reader Yuhong Bao has shown us this article where NVIDIA is described as though it decided to “Harass Intel”. Spot the irony. The victim of the criminal activity is now described as an “harasser”, but it is no more an “harasser” than the police harasses a murderer. Somehow the criminal receives sympathy and the justice seeker eventually daemonised (NVIDIA has its share of crimes too). That’s the society we live in — one where those who challenge authority are targeted by people who are kept separate, isolated, and hostile towards peers who merely stand up for their neighbours’ rights (including protesters).
This serves as timely indication that criticising someone for crime is a bad thing to do. Here are some of Intel’s crimes as NVIDIA might put them:
NVIDIA Uses Cartoons to Harass Intel
[...]
The site is especially critical of CEO Paul Otellini. A recent post features a cartoon with a cross-eyed Otellini denying using “bribery, coercion and kickback relations” to try to corner the market. The site has a rather humorous disclaimer informing readers that it “is not provided, sponsored or endorsed by Intel Corporation.”
Intel has meanwhile chosen to settle with AMD, but the case should be between Intel and the people, whom Intel robbed by overcharging, limiting choice, etc. In general, Intel should be embargoed for illegal activities and several executives put in prison. Such a thing rarely happens in the society we live in, which means that those who pillage and plunder may simply be forced to give away part of their loot. Eventually, this leaves the criminal better off, sending out the message that crime pays off. It’s sad, but it’s still true. Are penitentiaries only for crimes whose cost to society is low, such as shoplifting?
More recently we encountered Microsoft’s OOXML corruptions, for which the company was not held accountable. Microsoft showed that you can be a criminal in society and walk away freely as long you wear a suit. Here is Norbert Bollow’s latest response to what happens in ISO.
Since the results of the DCOR1 (draft corrigendum 1) ballots for ISO/IEC 29500 have been distributed to the ISO/IEC member bodies last week, it has become clear that there is much confusion about what the relevant ISO/IEC rules (in this case, the JTC1 Directives) say about this kind of situation.
Microsoft — by coercing ISO — corrupted both ISO and itself. This is just a major loss to the IT industry as a whole and no justice was ever sought. Those who point this out will usually be described as “negative” characters, simply because they stand up for the law. What an amazing reversal. Laws were established to protect the majority from the minority of the opulent, but nowadays it feels like the opposite. █
“Microsoft corrupted many members of ISO in order to win approval for its phony ‘open’ document format, OOXML. This was so governments that keep their documents in a Microsoft-only format can pretend that they are using ‘open standards.’ The government of South Africa has filed an appeal against the decision, citing the irregularities in the process.”
–Richard Stallman, June 2008
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10.30.09
Posted in ISO, Microsoft, Open XML, OpenDocument, Standard at 5:04 am by Dr. Roy Schestowitz
“It’s a Simple Matter of [Microsoft’s] Commercial Interests!”
–Microsoft’s Doug Mahugh about OOXML in Malaysia
Summary: OOXML/ISO corruptions tied not only to Microsoft employees but also their seemingly-independent accomplices
OOXML corruptions are a well-documented fact and the phrase “insider friend, ‘the fox’” comes from Microsoft itself (an internal presentation that also encourages bribery).
Evidence surrounding Alex Brown’s role (and conflict of interests) is a subject we have already covered in many posts that include [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21].
More recently, Alex Brown got extremely busy with OOXML, removing criticisms from the article in Wikipedia. There is no surprise there. Now we find this story from Brazil about Brown’s role in violating any rule of reason in order to push through OOXML.
Why Alex Brown, even knowing the importance of the issue, shamelessly manipulated the meeting to prevent the proposal presentation by Brazil ?
I think many of these questions will stay unanswered, but I’d really like to understand what motivated the Alex Brown to change in such an outrageous way the course (and outcome) of OpenXML in ISO.
Since this meeting ended in Geneva, I haven’t spent even one day of my life without wondering: What would have happened if we had presented our proposal, and what motivated Alex Brown to manipulate in such a way that meeting?
Now that everyone knows the “backstage” of Alex Brown’s decision, preventing Brazil to present the binary mapping proposal of the last BRM day, a few comments are pertinent.
Reviewing everything that happened during the BRM, the manipulation of the meeting progress by Alex Brown is getting more and more evident, and it’s also clear that he was responsible for enforcing the hidden agenda of the meeting. A quick search on his blog, his “contributions” to OpenXML in ISO and his relationship with ECMA (and ECMA members), will show the close relationship he has with OpenXML (and this is the minimum I can write about it).
An example of such manipulation of the agenda is clear and obvious: The ECMA delegation (as far as I remember ECMA isn’t a ISO National Body) had 30 minutes in each of the first two days of the BRM to make a speeches about “legacy compatibility”. In summary, the Brazilian delegation (which is an ISO National Body), couldn’t speak for lack of time, but the ECMA had 30 minutes in each of the first two days of the meeting to make their speech. This stupidity didn’t happened on the other days of the BRM because on the second day of the BRM, during a meeting between Alex Brown and the HoDs, Deivi (head of the Brazilian delegation) filed a protest against these ECMA’s speeches.
Talking about ECMA’s speeches, one of those was given by a representative of the British Library, and I mention this fact because I have the impression that the triad British Library, Alex Brown and Microsoft may turn on some lights for my U.K. friends ( and I would love to know what they have to say about it).
When does shilling become a punishable crime? And what does ISO have to say about it? █
“ISO is dead for software standards. Do you need an official funeral?”
–Benjamin Henrion, FFII
Photo from the public domain
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