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The Shuttleworth Foundation Supports South Africa's Appeal Against OOXML |
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Wednesday, May 28 2008 @ 12:06 PM EDT
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The Shuttleworth Foundation has sent out a press release explaining what it believes is wrong with OOXML as a standard, and stating its conviction that the the South Africa Bureau of Standards has a strong case for appeal. It says SABS expects others to join them in appealing against OOXML as an ISO standard. If the appeal is successful, then OOXML would be rejected as a standard and would have to be resubmitted, the latter being something the Foundation hopes will not happen, since it believes having two standards for the same thing reduces interoperability.
It's a matter of due process not being followed, the Foundation explains, "several vital ISO procedures were bypassed". And now, by introducing complexity into standards, there is a threat to open access to information, which "impacts negatively on education and citizen access to government services". It's about being able to open any document, edit and save, without difficulties, after all.
Here's why the Shuttleworth Foundation's Intellectual Property Fellow, Andrew Rens, believes SABS has a strong case: “ISO’s policies state that contradictions must be dealt with in the process before any standard can be passed. ECMA, the body that Microsoft handed the standard over to in running the approval campaign, was afforded the opportunity to respond to international contradictions. However, it provided no response and it was merely ruled that these concerns would no longer be discussed. This is against ISO procedures,” continues Rens....
“The reason why block voting and other side-stepping of ISO processes took place is because OOXML was fast-tracked through the process,” he explains. “However, OOXML was not a suitable candidate for fast-tracking given the immaturity of the standard. Microsoft itself has said that it will not be able to fully integrate OOXML in the ISO form of the standard until 2011. It’s simply a broken standard at this stage. Fast-tracking through ISO is reserved for mature standards where no issues have been raised and where it is possible to hasten the process of rubber-stamping the standard. In OOXML’s case, however, the standard had not been fully developed and there were many concerns raised internationally. This would preclude certification of the standard via a fast-track process.”
“The fact that OOXML was fast-tracked, and certified, casts serious doubt on the integrity of ISO as an international standard’s authority,” adds Rens.
Here's the full press release:
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SABS leads appeal against OOXML ratification
The South African Bureau of Standards is leading an international appeal against the ratification of Microsoft Office Open XML as an ISO standard.
Document formats seem like a technical, unimportant subject until you can't open an important document. The role that standards play in making things work is easily overlooked. But South Africa's standards body is working to ensure that documents are usable, that software does inter-operate, and it is taking a global lead.
In April 2008 the Microsoft Office Open XML digital document format was ratified by a committee of the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO). The standard approval was fast-tracked through the ISO process but it has since been found that due process was not followed in this regard and that several vital ISO procedures were bypassed. For this reason the South African Bureau of Standards (SABS) believes that there is cause to appeal the decision by ISO and is expected to be joined in the process of doing so by other international standards’ bodies.
OOXML was introduced as a second open document format. Open Document Format (ODF) precedes OOXML by years and has the same design objective. The Shuttleworth Foundation believes that introducing complexity into the standards market is unnecessary and threatens open access to information. This impacts negatively on education and citizen access to government services.
Andrew Rens, Intellectual Property Fellow to the Shuttleworth Foundation believes that the SABS has a strong case for appeal.
“Microsoft’s OOXML was submitted to ISO as a relatively immature standard,” he explains. “As such, several international bodies expressed concerns and lodged contradictions to the standard for consideration in the ratification process.”
“ISO’s policies state that contradictions must be dealt with in the process before any standard can be passed. ECMA, the body that Microsoft handed the standard over to in running the approval campaign, was afforded the opportunity to respond to international contradictions. However, it provided no response and it was merely ruled that these concerns would no longer be discussed. This is against ISO procedures,” continues Rens.
“In total there were 1027 responses lodged with ECMA and instead of handling these individually, representatives were asked to block vote, ultimately ignoring all of the issues. This is against the ISO process which aims to resolve all issues surrounding a standard on an individual basis, allowing engineers and other developers to make the necessary changes ahead of ratification.”
Rens insists that these contraventions of ISO process stem from the fact that OOXML was submitted as an immature standard.
“The reason why block voting and other side-stepping of ISO processes took place is because OOXML was fast-tracked through the process,” he explains. “However, OOXML was not a suitable candidate for fast-tracking given the immaturity of the standard. Microsoft itself has said that it will not be able to fully integrate OOXML in the ISO form of the standard until 2011. It’s simply a broken standard at this stage. Fast-tracking through ISO is reserved for mature standards where no issues have been raised and where it is possible to hasten the process of rubber-stamping the standard. In OOXML’s case, however, the standard had not been fully developed and there were many concerns raised internationally. This would preclude certification of the standard via a fast-track process.”
“The fact that OOXML was fast-tracked, and certified, casts serious doubt on the integrity of ISO as an international standard’s authority,” adds Rens.
As such, the SABS is the first international body to seek appeal in the case and has begun a process that will lead to other international bodies joining in the appeal.
“Should the appeal be successful, OOXML will be rejected as an ISO standard and will have to be resubmitted, if there is still interest in it,” states Rens. “Hopefully if it is resubmitted ISO will follow due process in a second attempt at certification. However, from an open access perspective we would prefer not to see the standard being reintroduced at all, because that would result in two document standards instead of one with resulting loss of interoperability.”
“The Shuttleworth Foundation opposes the introduction of multiple standards for the same objective and, as such, approves of the SABS’ decision in this regard. We agree that there is a case for appeal and wish all international bodies involving themselves in the process success in this undertaking,” he concludes.
About the Shuttleworth Foundation:
The Shuttleworth Foundation is a South African organisation that invests in social, technical and policy innovation in the fields of education and technology. The Foundation works through active partnerships with local and international organisations.
The Shuttleworth Foundation is founded in an open philosophy that includes the promotion of open source, open standards and open information access with the belief that sharing stimulates change and broadens horizons. It is the further belief of the Shuttleworth Foundation that in an African context this open philosophy is key to progress and an enabler for education.
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Authored by: josmith42 on Wednesday, May 28 2008 @ 12:10 PM EDT |
For PJ.
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This comment was typed using the Dvorak keyboard layout. :-)[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: josmith42 on Wednesday, May 28 2008 @ 12:11 PM EDT |
Clickable links, if you want to, are awesome.
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This comment was typed using the Dvorak keyboard layout. :-)[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: josmith42 on Wednesday, May 28 2008 @ 12:14 PM EDT |
Including a link to the original news pick is nice, but not required.
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This comment was typed using the Dvorak keyboard layout. :-)[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Peter Baker on Wednesday, May 28 2008 @ 12:40 PM EDT |
Wow, this has suddenly become somewhat of a live hand grenade sans pin,
precisely because it follows procedure whilst drawing attention to the rule
bending. That means daylight is precisely there where it's unwanted.
Get out the popcorn while we watch people trying to spin themselves out of that
one.
And lock the chairs away..
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= P =
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, May 28 2008 @ 01:32 PM EDT |
I've been thinking about that and I'm not so sure properly open standards -
even multiple - would actually reduce interoperability.
Let's say MS
provided complete documentation as well as compatible licensing terms so that
GPL applications could fully and legally implement OOXML.... I know, a pretty
colored dream world, but let's suppose they did.
Now, let's suppose MS
Word only implemented the OOXML standard - presuming again that MS implemented
it fully to the standard, another pretty colored dream world. Let's also
suppose MS continued to refuse to implement support for ODF.
Now, let's
suppose in the FOSS fashion .... oh... Abiword - as an example - implements all
available standards. That's not an unreasonable expectation considering they
already have a good number of industry standards such as Ascii Text implemented.
We can expect in such a scenario that Abiword would have both ODF and OOXML
coded.
End result:
Anything produced on MS and saved in the OOXML
standard can be read easily by FOSS.
Anything produced in FOSS and
stored in ODF can not be read easily by people using MS Office.
Ok.... so
in such a scenario Interoperability is reduced. I stand corrected. When even
one "party to the game" refuses to implement a standard, Interoperability for
that party will be reduced.
I guess it's a good thing MS convinced all
those partners to write plugins that will read ODF documents ;)
Of
course, the reality is that we can expect MS:
- To not allow GPL products
easy access to OOXML.
- To not implement OOXML cleanly.
- To
attempt to corrupt ODF as much as they think they can get away
with.
So.... in that sense, whether or not we have a single standard
or multiple: when it comes to MS, we can expect MS to fight "tooth and nail"
against interoperability while their Marketing keeps claiming that's what they
want.
The ultimate only solution for MS customers that want
interoperability:
Move away from MS until MS starts truly providing what the
customers have been asking them for the past 15 years.
RAS[ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, May 28 2008 @ 01:47 PM EDT |
Someone in South Africa is getting a lump of coal from Redmond this Christmas... [ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, May 28 2008 @ 03:54 PM EDT |
casts serious doubt on the integrity of ISO as an international standard’s
authority,” adds Rens
He means "standards", not "standard's". [ Reply to This | # ]
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Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, May 28 2008 @ 06:51 PM EDT |
PJ: Do you think that appeals like this will make a difference?
I personally have no idea, and I'd like to know. Is there a ray of hope here or
is it likely a lost cause?[ Reply to This | # ]
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