Bonum Certa Men Certa

Alex Brown Again Attacks the 'Standard of the People' (Updated)

"I think ISO/IEC 26300 (ODF 1.0) can be compared to a neat house built on good foundations which is not finished; 29500 (OOXML) is a baroque cliffside castle replete with toppling towers, secret passages and ghosts: it is all too finished."

--Alex Brown



Peter Judge, over at ZDNet UK, continues to publish articles about Alex Brown's stubborn battle against ODF, which even Alex himself considers to be analogous to "a neat house built on good foundations". Rob Weir continues to rebut as he last did yesterday while Bob Sutor highlights the fact that a few wealthy stakeholders get to vote 'on behalf' of the population as a whole, which is absurd.

Not everyone can participate or support every standards effort they believe has value. There are thousands of efforts but only so many people, hours, and money that can be applied.

Let’s say that you had some fixed number that you applied to your standards participation. I’m not saying you don’t, but humor me in this experiment. Suppose very simply that you could only participate in X standards organizations, Y technical committees, or spend Z dollars on membership fees, travel, salary, etc., for how you participate.


Remember what happened in Norway?

ISO standards for saleHow about the French president, who insisted on changing his nation's votes because errrrr... not because he's friends with Microsoft's former executives but because he tested OOXML for validation on his portable computer, then checked the 8,000+ pages describing OOXML (including comments and changes) and was immediately bemused. [sarcasm /].

Alex Brown seems to be a similar example because he's promoting OOXML (e.g. for the British Library) while at the same time getting to make decisions about it in the BSI and ISO. The BSI, by the way, has just been sued. Are standards being decided on? Or are merely being sold, regardless of how poor, discriminatory, proprietary and inadequate the candidate is? After Microsoft's malicious intervention, ISO deserves no less than a scrape-and-replace treatment.

flickr:2401273308



"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, ISO
Former Convenor of ISO/IEC JTC1/SC34 (OOXML) WG1



Update: Watch Jelliffe [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9], Stokcolm's [1, 2, 3, 4] blog, Alex Brown [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14], and Shill hAl [1, 2] all coming together in Rick's blog (mind the comments). Talk about 'groupies'. And they refer to us, OOXML critics, very dismissively as just "vocal blogs". It sure looks like some people have joined a certain club. The dirty dance perhaps, truly an orgy of money and influence. What a sick world we live in.

"I think it's worse. When people do bad things, they usually try to perfume it, even to themselves. And when they plan to do worse things, they spray and spray and spray to try to get everyone to agree that it isn't as bad as it is."

--Pamela Joned, a couple of days ago

Recent Techrights' Posts

Jamie Zawinski Complained About Wayland, Then Decided to Give It a Go, Now Complains Again About Wayland
Ask IBM (Red Hat) why it's worth throwing so much away just for Wayland fanaticism
Russia Set to Ban Facebook?
If WhatsApp is made to "leave", that means Facebook or "Meta".
Taking Stock of a Good and Productive Week
We shall now be taking a break, unpacking the new hard drive (8 TB), and making backups of everything
Ageism in Tech
Your protocol is "old"...
 
Links 20/07/2025: Fending Off BRICS and US Government Attacks Its Own Media (Like China and Russia)
Links for the day
Framed by social control media: Alex Belfield, Voice of Reason
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 20/07/2025: Summertime and OCC25 Wrap-up
Links for the day
Slopwatch: Planet Ubuntu, LinuxSecurity, and More
former "Linux" blogs which basically became slopfarms
Links 20/07/2025: More GAFAM Lawsuits, Layoffs, and SLAPPs
Links for the day
Nice Recovery (From Actual Fire) by PCLinuxOS, New Version of PCLinuxOS Released, Now Top of DistoWatch
PCLinuxOS is a community-driven distro
More Microsoft Shutdowns That Mostly Slipped Under the Radar
Remember what happened to books 'sold' by Microsoft?
Microsoft Lunduke Still Fighting Cancel Culture With... Cancel Culture
There will be no "winners" in such 'debates'
The History of Daily Links and Politics
"I support Wayland, but I also support abortion..."
Microsoft is at 0% "Market Share" in Most Areas
Depending on the taxonomy chosen, there may be dozens of categories other than desktops and laptops
"The moment MSFT stock fails to start tumbling, that’s the beginning of another corporate giant going under."
There are far more layoffs at Microsoft than at Intel, but you would not get this impression based on Wall Street media
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, July 19, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, July 19, 2025
Gemini Links 19/07/2025: Git For Authors and Filtered Antenna
Links for the day
UEFI 'Secure' Boot Abuses by Microsoft to be Brought Up in the UK High Court in 3 Months
we'll seek compensation
Next Year It'll Be Half a Decade Since the Fall of Freenode (and IRC is Still Doing OK)
Our IRC network is still accessible using the exact same software that ran in Windows 3.x
Lupa Will Soon Know of 3,100+ Active Gemini Capsules
And some people in the "Small Web" try to tell us that Gemini is dying?
The Slopfarms Are Taking Real News Articles and Replacing Them With Lies Generated by Machines
Bluntly speaking, Fagioli is nothing short of an online scammer
Links 19/07/2025: Techtarget to Cull 10% of Staff, New Threats to Free Press in the US (Home of Dangerous and Violent Stranglers From Microsoft)
Links for the day
Gemini Links 19/07/2025: "Climate Justice” and Forking Programs
Links for the day
What Wayland and Microsoft/IBM systemd Have in Common
focus on what IBM (Red Hat) is pushing while running over critics.
Linux Already Has About 60% of the "Market"
"When mentioning the client side," opines an associate, "it is essential to recite the list of other markets where Microsoft is negligible or a no-show. It is repetitive to do so, but it needs saying -- often."
In Norway, Android/Linux Has Just Hit All-Time High (First Time Since 2020), GNU/Linux Already Very Prevalent
Despite its small population size, Norway gave us Qt and many other things
Finland (and NATO) Must Move to GNU/Linux and Dump Microsoft Even Faster
"Microsoft is not a technology problem, it is a staffing problem."
Microsoft's Mass Layoffs Very Wide-Ranging, Media Focused on Gaming Though Microsoft Mass-Firing Lawyers and "AI" Staff (Contradicting Its Supposed "Investment" in "AI")
Microsoft plans to fire almost half a thousand people in legal roles
2012 Article About the Free Software Foundation Blasting Canonical/Ubuntu Over Adoption of "Secure" Boot (Microsoft's Remote Control Over GNU/Linux Since PCs' Power-on)
By Katherine Noyes (article has since then became 404, not found)
The Microsofters We Sued Helped Microsoft Make GNU/Linux 'Expire' This Year
"Linux and Secure Boot certificate expiration"
linuxconfig.org Joins linuxtechlab.com and Others, Becomes a Slopfarm With Fake Linux 'Articles' (LLM Slop)
They contain "linux" in their domain names, but they are just slopfarms
Links 19/07/2025: Microsoft Cuts in China and Wall Street Journal Sued for Reporting on Jeffrey Epstein
Links for the day
Debian Can Dump Blind Users Because I am Not Blind
the sort of mentality we're up against
Fascistic Policies Got 'Normalised' in 'Public Office'. Let's Not Let the Same Happen in 'Tech'.
Political discourse typically guides what's "normal" and what "good citizens" should believe/feel
The European Patent Office Cannot Attract Proficient Patent Examiners Who Master Their Domain
They are enablers and facilitators of corruption
Yes, Your Mastodon Instance Will Also Shut Down
Few people run a one-person instance in the Fediverse
The Demise of GAFAM Necessitates Greater and Broader Awareness
Morale at Microsoft is really bad
Free Software Foundation Reaches 75% of Funding Goal
Not bad for this "Fosschild"
Slopwatch: 7 New Examples of Fake 'Linux' Slop Pieces (Plagiarism With Misinformation)
Serial Sloppers need to be shunned
Links 19/07/2025: Kapo-berg Settles, Software Patents Challenged
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, July 18, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, July 18, 2025
Links 18/07/2025: Peace With PKK and Connie Francis Dies
Links for the day
Gemini Links 18/07/2025: Alhena 5.1.8 and Bornhack 2025
Links for the day
How to Top Up a "Limited Liability" With Even More Limitations (Dodging Accountability in the UK)
Some people call it a "shell game". Sometimes it's done for tax evasion purposes.
Free Software Foundation, Inc. (FSF) Inches Towards 75% of Fund-Raising Target
Will the cutoff date be extended again?
Gemini Space (or Geminispace) Grows, But Usage of Certificate Authority Let's Encrypt Drops Further
Ideally, all Gemini capsules should use self-signed certificates
Links 18/07/2025: More Microsoft Layoffs in Activision, The New Stack (Sponsored by Microsoft) Complains About Openwashing
Links for the day
Gemini Links 18/07/2025: OCC25 Gnus for Reading Usenet and RSS Feeds, Small Web Updates
Links for the day
[Meme] 9AM Meeting at Brett Wilson LLP
Brett Wilson LLP in space
Listing as Staff People Who Left the Company More Than Six Years Earlier
There are apparently no laws against that
Brian Fagioli Shovels Up LLM Slop (Plagiarism) Onto Slashdot, Then Uses Slashdot for Affirmation or as Badge of Honour
Notice how some of his latest slop is presented ("as featured on Slashdot")
Social Control Media Productivity
Snapping photos of the bone
The Law Firm SLAPPing Us For the Microsofters Lost 72% of Its Tangible Assets in the Past Year, According to Its Own Reports
That might help explain why they're willing to tolerate serial stranglers from Microsoft as clients
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity.com Slopfarm and Slopfarms Propped Up by Google News
"As LLM slop is foisted onto the WWW in place of knowledge and real content, it now gets ingested and processed by other LLMs, creating a sort of ouroboros of crap."
Links 18/07/2025: Weather Events and Health Hazards
Links for the day
Microsoft's All-Time Low in Finland
Microsoft is in a freefall
Security: Shane Wegner & Debian statement of incompetence
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, July 17, 2025
IRC logs for Thursday, July 17, 2025