http://practical-tech.com/business/iso-approves-open-xml/

This is news to me...



http://practical-tech.com/business/microsoft-cant-support-open-xml/

THIS is a joke, surely?

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Invisible wrote:
> http://practical-tech.com/business/iso-approves-open-xml/
> 
> This is news to me...
> 

have you been hiding under a rock - er organ?.?.?.?

> 
> 
> http://practical-tech.com/business/microsoft-cant-support-open-xml/
> 
> THIS is a joke, surely?

No, it's MS.

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>> http://practical-tech.com/business/iso-approves-open-xml/
>>
>> This is news to me...
> 
> have you been hiding under a rock - er organ?.?.?.?

The last I heard, loads of people were rejecting the draft. (Indeed, 
signing up with ISO *just* to reject this one draft.) Not quite sure how 
it managed to pass...

>> THIS is a joke, surely?
> 
> No, it's MS.

PWN3D!

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> -----Original Message-----
> From: Invisible [mailto:voi### [at] devnull]
> The last I heard, loads of people were rejecting the draft. (Indeed,
> signing up with ISO *just* to reject this one draft.) Not quite sure
> how
> it managed to pass...

It passed because MS paid a bunch of countries that previously had no
interest in the ISO to sign up just so they could vote for it.

IIRC, it caused some problems as those countries immediately stopped
participating after said vote.  Unfortunately for the ISO, sometimes
they require a majority vote to do things, and NOT a majority of voters
present, but a majority of all votes (in other words, an absentee or
abstaining vote counts as a "no" for those votes).  The ISO literally
ground to a halt until they decided what to do about non-participating
members.

...Ben Chambers
www.pacificwebguy.com

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>>> THIS is a joke, surely?
>>
>> No, it's MS.
>
> PWN3D!

AIUI, weren't MS kinda "forced" to rush through this "open" document format 
for some reason?  Something to do with official institutions only being 
allowed to use open formats or something?  MS probably think it's just as 
stupid as the rest of us and only did the absolute minimum amount of work to 
get it through (I guess it was better than just changing the file extension 
from .doc to .oxml or whatever, but only just).

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Chambers wrote:
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Invisible [mailto:voi### [at] devnull]
>> The last I heard, loads of people were rejecting the draft. (Indeed,
>> signing up with ISO *just* to reject this one draft.) Not quite sure
>> how
>> it managed to pass...
> 
> It passed because MS paid a bunch of countries that previously had no
> interest in the ISO to sign up just so they could vote for it.

Wow.

OK, that's pretty special. I thought websites that offer to write your 
assignments for you for a fee were bad. But a "reputable" commercial 
entity bribing entire countries to buy an ISO standard? Jesus Christ...

> IIRC, it caused some problems as those countries immediately stopped
> participating after said vote.

Yes - so I heard...

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scott wrote:

> AIUI, weren't MS kinda "forced" to rush through this "open" document 
> format for some reason?  Something to do with official institutions only 
> being allowed to use open formats or something?

They weren't "forced" to do anything. They could have just let ODF kill 
one of their flagship products, gone bankrupt, and left they way for 
superior competetors to take their place. :-D

> MS probably think it's 
> just as stupid as the rest of us and only did the absolute minimum 
> amount of work to get it through (I guess it was better than just 
> changing the file extension from .doc to .oxml or whatever, but only just).

So now we have an ISO standard that nobody can actually implement?

Genius.

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> http://practical-tech.com/business/iso-approves-open-xml/

  Did they even fix the completely standard-breaking wording of that
"standard", along the lines of "render this paragraph in the same way
as Word95 does it" (without specifying *how* exactly Word95 does it)?

  If they didn't, I really can't understand how the standardization
committee can approve of a standard which doesn't actually specify
exactly what it is standardizing.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:

>   Did they even fix the completely standard-breaking wording of that
> "standard", along the lines of "render this paragraph in the same way
> as Word95 does it" (without specifying *how* exactly Word95 does it)?
> 
>   If they didn't, I really can't understand how the standardization
> committee can approve of a standard which doesn't actually specify
> exactly what it is standardizing.

Presumably the same way my company manages to approve procedure 
documents that say "there will exist a procedure, and it will be known 
to the people who carry it out". ;-)

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> But a "reputable" commercial entity bribing entire countries to buy an ISO 
> standard? Jesus Christ...

I don't think it was *quite* like that.  ISO is just a collection of people 
from different companies that happen to be grouped by country, it's nothing 
to do with the actual country or government or anything.  AIUI the companies 
that helped get MS through were suppliers and "friends" with MS.  This sort 
of thing happens the whole time in other industries and nobody raises an 
eyebrow, eg in the automotive industry the big ones like Ford and (in 
Europe) the collaboration between BMW, Mercedes, Audi etc often "politely 
requests" suppliers to help them get standards through.  Ditto in the 
telecoms industry, in the past Nokia practically wrote all the standards 
documents because everyone had to agree with them or risk being chucked out 
as a Nokia supplier (and hence losing a huge amount of business).  Seems 
like finally the same has happened in the software industry.

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