Bonum Certa Men Certa

Is a Vote for OOXML (Office Open XML) as an ISO illegitimate?

The European Commission has just published the following document in a very timely fashion.

Egyedi, a researcher of technical standards, at the Technical University in Delft, the Netherlands, doubts whether ISO should have a taken into consideration a second standard for electronic documents at all. ISO approved the Open Document Format ODF in 2006, says Egyedi: "What are we to do with a second standard, which is overlapping the first? This conflicts with rules of the World Trade Organisation."

The standards specialist refers to the WTO Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade, which states that duplication or overlap should be avoided.


I could not help but recalling a discussion that I had a couple of months ago. The evidence that had been gathered by a friend (preferably unnamed until permission is granted) showed the very same thing, which we shall present here. It was never published anywhere. (Update: the evidence had been gathered by Russell Ossendryver of Fanaticattack, who sent me the following a few weeks ago and has just allowed me to reveal his identity)




There should be an immediate freeze on a vote put forth by the JTC 1



Microsoft's proposal that its Office Open XML specification become an International Standard is ineligible for further preparation as a standard on grounds that it would create an unnecessary obstacle to international trade.

“...OOXML as an ISO has become illegitimate and any vote on it should be placed on hold until all anti-trust litigations are resolved.”Microsoft wants this process to be "left to the experts" and that the discussion should be only technical in nature. But the whole point of the ISO status is economic in nature: ISO is first and foremost about lowering obstacles to trade. Microsoft's OOXML would RAISE obstacles to trade by giving ISO status to only one vendor: Microsoft.

In light of the compliant filed by the ECIS, BECTA filing a anti-trust complaint with the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) in the UK, the calling of Microsoft to release information on the legacy formats into the public domain by NLnet, a Dutch foundation for an open information society because as it is, it hampers third-party development, OOXML as an ISO has become illegitimate and any vote on it should be placed on hold until all anti-trust litigations are resolved.

In the complaint by ECIS (European Committee for Interoperable Systems), Microsoft is alleged to have illegally refused to disclose interoperability information across a broad range of products, including information related to its Office suite, a number of its server products, and also in relation to the so called .NET Framework. The Commission’s examination will therefore focus on all these areas, including the question whether Microsoft’s new file format Office Open XML, as implemented in Office, is sufficiently interoperable with competitors’ products.”


WTO and ISO and the technical barriers of trade



The World Trade Organization (WTO) is the international organization dealing with the global rules of trade between nations. Its main function is to ensure that trade flows as smoothly, predictably and freely as possible.

ISO -- together with IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission) and ITU (International Telecommunication Union) -- has built a strategic partnership with WTO. The political agreements reached within the framework of WTO require underpinning by technical agreements. ISO, IEC and ITU, as the three principal organizations in international standardization, have the complementary scopes, the framework, the expertise and the experience to provide this technical support for the growth of the global market.

THE AGREEMENT ON TECHNICAL BARRIERS TO TRADE (TBT)



The Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (TBT) [PDF] -- sometimes referred to as the Standards Code -- is one of the legal texts of the WTO Agreement which obliges WTO Members to ensure that technical regulations, voluntary standards and conformity assessment procedures do not create unnecessary obstacles to trade.

THE CONTRIBUTION OF INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS AND CONFORMITY ASSESSMENT



The TBT Agreement recognizes the important contribution that international standards and conformity assessment systems can make to improving efficiency of production and facilitating international trade. Where international standards exist or their completion is imminent, therefore, the Code of Good Practice says that standardizing bodies should use them, or the relevant parts of them, as a basis for standards they develop.

STANDARDIZING BODIES HAVING ACCEPTED THE WTO TBT CODE OF GOOD PRACTICE



The WTO TBT Standards Code Directory 2007 lists all standardizing bodies that have notified acceptance of the WTO TBT Code of Good Practice for the Preparation, Adoption and Application of Standards. The Directory, which is published annually, also contains the addresses of these standardizing bodies and information related to the availability of their work programmes.

OFFICE OPEN XML is not interoperatible


JTC 1 has the authority and responsibility to clarify whether interoperability is intended to be facilitated by each JTC 1 standard and ISP, to what or whom the interoperability applies, how conformity is related to the provision of interoperability, and how to verify that interoperability is provided between relevant IT systems.

Conclusion



There is enormous overlapping jurisdiction between national standardization body responsibilities and those of antitrust regulators. There is a pretty fair argument that JTC 1 should put DIS-29500 on ice until the antitrust proceeding is concluded, in order to avoid the possibility of inconsistent decisions. The NBs are actually required by the TBT to consider the potential anticompetitive effects of draft standards. Further, mostly based on the implementable and interoperatible factors of OOXML, it is clearly evident that only one company benefits, Microsoft. No ISO standard should benefit just one company. The JTC 1 has the responsibility to intervene.

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Microsoft's "Linux" Foundation Pays Writers to Publish Propaganda and Then LLM Slop Sites (Slopfarms) Repeat the Propaganda, Using Microsoft LLMs
consider the latest LLM slop
Alleged Layoffs at IBM Consulting in Australia
IBM loses many government contracts these days
The Rumours Were Likely True: Sixth Wave of Microsoft Mass Layoffs in 2025 (Days After "50" Anniversary and About 5,000 Layoffs)
5 hours ago, by Ashley Stewart
IBM and MCC: Layoffs Coming Again to Metro Connect Company Limited (MCC) as Tariffs Bite and IBM's Shares Fall
Blacklists applicable to Chinese suppliers also mean that IBM can no longer cooperate with key partners in Asia
Go Static
Please don't Go(lang) or JavaScript or PHP or...
 
Links 10/04/2025: Fentanylware (TikTok) Perils and Internet Shutdown
Links for the day
Once You Slop You Can't Stop and If You're a Serial Slopper Nobody Will Believe You Really Wrote an Article (Even If You Did)
It's a lot like, "if you're a serial liar people won't believe you even when you say some truth" (or "once a cheater, always a cheater")
Pressing Against SLAPPs (From Americans Who Strangle Women While Microsoft Pays Their Salaries) is a High Priority for Us
We also need to ensure that greedy firms/people that facilitate the SLAPPs get "disbarred" or "struck off"
Mozilla Firefox Already Down to 1% in Brazil
Don't people crave the surveillance and the slop?
Links 10/04/2025: Hardware, Politics, and Internet
Links for the day
Gemini Links 10/04/2025: Creativity and Agitation, Life in the USA, CSS Naked Day 2025
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, April 09, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, April 09, 2025
Malware in Proprietary Software - Latest Additions
Original by Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Links 09/04/2025: More Trade Wars and Wars, Chinese Army Troops Found Fighting in Ukraine
Links for the day
Linux Clickbait by Slop
Give it up for Brian Fagioli, the Serial Slopper
Microsoft's Entire Premise for Its Future Existence Goes Up in Flames
32 minutes ago
GNU/Linux on a High in Colombia
Stereotypes much?
Techrights Be Like...
K.I.S.S.
Gemini Links 09/04/2025: Autism, Cybersecurity, and LLMs Attacking Services Online
Links for the day
GNU/Linux Would be Measured at Over 5% Globally (by statCounter) Had the Data in India Not Been Changed
GNU/Linux grew a lot in many countries and has expanded since then
Keeping Track of Microsoft Layoffs in 2025
So here's a quick roundup of 2025
The Sixth Anniversary of the Lightweight Alternative to the Web (Gemini Protocol)
Now 11 short of 3,000 active capsules. 65 short of 4,500 total.
Links 09/04/2025: Quartz Fires All Writers (Shutdown, LLM Slop or Slopfarm Instead), "Bitcoin Is Crashing Hard"
Links for the day
People Are Sick of LLM Slop. Offer Them Alternatives.
We never used LLM slop for anything and we never will
Web Surveyor statCounter Sees Apple's macOS Falling From 5.6% to 3.6% in Two Months, It Might Soon be Smaller Than GNU/Linux
Apple's "value" (faked, exaggerated) is back to "pandemic times"
UK House of Lords Recognises the SLAPP Issue in the UK and EFF Pursues "Bill (That) Could Put A Stop To Censorship By Lawsuit" in the US
"A House of Lords inquiry into how the news industry can survive into the future has accused the government of “failing to prioritise” action on strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPPs)."
Open Source Initiative (OSI) Privacy Fiasco in Detail: Seeking Class Action Against the OSI
"LETTER SEEKING CLASS ACTION REPRESENTATION"
The Value of Slop, by Alexandre Oliva
Original by Alexandre Oliva
Gemini Links 09/04/2025: Neocities, Tinylogs, and Inter-community Protocols
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, April 08, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, April 08, 2025
You Can Be an A--hole to Women (Even Strangle Women) as Long as You Work for Microsoft
Recalling the Mark Shuttleworth origin story
Canonical is a Proprietary Software Reseller With a 'Debian Base'
"Canonical Ubuntu" is just Debian with some proprietary things sold on top of it
statCounter Sees Microsoft Bing at Lowest Level Since Last Summer
Since 2023 Bing has repeatedly had layoffs
Nearly 5,000 Microsoft Layoffs Disclosed on Week of Microsoft 'Anniversary' (Media Noise), The HR Digest Says More Layoffs Coming
more "Microsoft layoffs on the horizon"
Windows "Market Share" Down to 1% in Sudan, Based on statCounter
Among those 1% who use Windows to access the Web fewer than 30% are on Vista 11
People Who Facilitate Truth Will Always Win at the End
"Just always stick to the truth"
Slopwatch: LinuxTechLab, linuxsecurity.com, "Cyber Security News" and More LLM Slopfarms
So the Web has this bunch of slopfarms pretending to "cover" GNU/Linux
Links 08/04/2025: More Mass Layoffs Expected at Microsoft (Gaming), Fentanylware (TikTok) Unsold
Links for the day
Gemini Links 08/04/2025: "Shared Ownership" and Rant About Scrapers
Links for the day
Links 08/04/2025: Microsoft Shrinking, Oracle's Clown Computing Cracked
Links for the day
Walmart Vizio TVs Scream At Immigrants to Leave America
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Stolen Credit Card and LinkedIn. DHS Spies on Immigrant Social Media.
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
How Corporations Such as Microsoft Try to Crush Critics and Dissolve Activism
Stay focused
Wikipedia Can Lower Its Hosting Bill by Going More Static, Not Just by Caching, But It Would Not Solve Its Biggest Problems (Bribes and AstroTurfing)
For about 15 years we had a Wiki in this site
At 50, Microsoft Has Over 100 Billion Dollars in Debt and Less Than 25% "Market Share" (Windows)
statCounter basically sees less than a quarter of Web requests coming from Windows
linuxhint.com Died 12 Months Ago (After Adopting Image Slop)
Zombie sites
LLM Slop Will Eventually Stop Due to High Costs, Worse Training Sets (Polluted Models Ingesting Their Own Junk), and No Real Returns
This too shall pass
Urgent Need for SLAPP Litigation Transparency
Microsofters really want to shut us up
Courage is Contagious
I became a witness to acts of great courage from EPO examiners
On Shutdowns and 2,000 More Layoffs at Microsoft (10,000 Microsoft Staff May Have Already Been Laid Off in 2025)
Microsoft tries to hide and belittle mass layoffs; its data centre business also flounders, so it issues puff pieces about some anniversary over and over again
Gemini Links 08/04/2025: Gabbro 0.1.4 and Disillusioned With Social Control Media
Links for the day
Microsoft Windows in Jordan: From 99% Down to 10%
This is becoming more "normal"
Open Source Initiative (OSI) Privacy Fiasco in Detail: A "Deep Dive" Into the Complaint at the California Privacy Protection Agency
There are many facets to it and it may be the first complaint of several
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, April 07, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, April 07, 2025