Bonum Certa Men Certa

ISO Totally Loses Its Credibility, Microsoft Partly Blamed

Is there an ECMA-ISO-Microsoft axis yet?

ISO is not what it used to be. It was transformed and reformed by Microsoft, which simply had to tame it to behave more 'properly'. We covered all of this before and showed how people in ISO are likely to have been pressured out of their job. We last mentioned smear campaigns only yesterday. Ad hominem is the tactic used against anyone who opposes or legitimately questions OOXML. In this case, however, the escape was probably motivated by need to flee liability.

“Ad hominem is the tactic used against anyone who opposes or legitimately questions OOXML.”Unsurprisingly, the BRM in Geneva had received chaotic responses, which Microsoft, ECMA and ISO (all with vested interest in this case) try to extinguish. It's means of rewriting history. A reader sent us a report with some of the badly fixed and non-fixed OOXML problems [PDF]. These were raised during the BRM in relation to the OOXML format. We now have a local copy of this report.

Getting back to the latest failures of ISO, where does one even begin? We have 3 new complaints.

The first one speaks about the degree of manipulation.

Honestly, how on earth can the US NB, for example, have just announced their decision to vote yes to OOXML unless they have been thoroughly corrupted - as have so many other of the ISO National bodies and sub-committees involved in this whole sorry saga.

To my mind there will be two losers if OOXML becomes IS-29500:
  • Us - That’s all of us as consumers and users of electronic documents
  • ISO - They have already lost a great deal of respect and credibility. If OOXML passes they will have none left. They will become an irrelevance in technology standards at least.


I can see the IETF (The body responsible for much of what has made the Internet work) becoming a far more important standards setter going forward…


Groklaw covers the sudden change of rules at ISO.

New Rules for Changing Your Vote on OOXML



[...]

It's so sad that no one knows in advance precisely how things are supposed to go. It leaves you having to try every possible thing you can think of to make sure you get it right. Did NBs get notices of this change, I wonder?


Even Bob Sutor expresses his slight frustration over this.

Personally I’ve had enough with on-the-fly rule and process changes with this whole thing, but if the increase in recipients is just to ensure that all changes get counted, I’m fine with that.


A professional body that is responsible for important formal decisions does not pull rules out of its sleeves. That's just something you find in the bazaar, in the flea market where bargains are made and prices are named 'on the spot'. ISO isn't helping its reputation at the moment.

This is not the first time by the way. We wrote about this before. Brown decided to change rules, apparently.

Related short articles:

Recent Techrights' Posts

Microsoft, Very Deep in Debt, Trying to Take Over Other Companies Without Paying to Buy Them
the CEO strengthened his loyalty to Microsoft
A Code of Conduct Can Lead to Deterioration of Quality Control in Linux (Nobody Reprimanded for Technical Issues, Instead Critics at Times of Crisis Get Reprimanded)
Quality control demands opinionated people, even blunt opinions at times
Online Media as a Lying Machine of Microsoft and Bill Gates (and, As Usual, Follow the Money)
The lies go a lot further than greenwashing
Links 11/12/2023: Buzzword Rules in the EU and Misinformation/Disinformation on the Rise
Links for the day
Today in Techrights
Some of the latest articles
Misogynists Versus Techrights
the "imams" of the tech world
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, December 10, 2023
IRC logs for Sunday, December 10, 2023
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news
Links 11/12/2023: Climate News and Chatbots as Plagiarism
Links for the day
Links 10/12/2023: Second Belmarsh Tribunal For Assange, EU Legislates for Buzzwords
Links for the day
Links 10/12/2023: Inflation Woes, Tensions With China
Links for the day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, December 09, 2023
IRC logs for Saturday, December 09, 2023
Links 09/12/2023: Dictator's Nomination in Russia
Links for the day
[Video] To Combat Efforts to Cancel or Kill the Career (and Reputation) of the People Who Made GNU/Linux We Must Rally the Community
nobody speaks better for projects and for licences than their own founders
Electronic Frontier Foundation Incorporated is Run by/for Corporations Now (Members' Money is Less Than a Quarter of the Money EFF Receives)
Facebook bribes
The EFF Should Know Better, But It Is Promoting Mass Surveillance by Facebook (an Endorsement of Lies)
What is going on at the EFF?
Feedback Desired
Feedback can be sent by E-mail
A Message in Support of Richard Stallman, Condemning Those Who Misportray Him
message about Richard Stallman (RMS)
Links 09/12/2023: Many 'Open'AI Employees Strongly Dislike Microsoft, Many Impending Strikes
Links for the day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, December 08, 2023
IRC logs for Friday, December 08, 2023
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news