EU's Anti-Trust Investigation of OOXML Continues

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Since January, the EU has been investigating whether Microsoft broke anti-trust laws while advocating OOXML. That investigation continues following its passage as a standard. Meanwhile, the ISO approval of OOXML is being appealed, so Microsoft hasn't won just yet."

Appeal?

[BACPro]

After having RTFA (sorry), I don't see where anybody is appealing the decision, yet.

IBM issued a broad support statement so as to leave all doors open.

FSFE said this must not happen again...

Nobody issued a statement indicating an appeal had been filed.

Re:Appeal?

[Ngarrang]

Give it some time. The Groklaw article did state that there is a 2-month period for appeals to be filed.

Re:The new EU economic plan

[calebt3]

It is developed internationally and he lives in California now. And it is not owned and licenced by a corporation.

OT: Yeah, WTF's up with Slashdot today?

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one who is experiencing cramped comments? About 1/5 of the page is just a margin.

It's even fuglier in Classic Mode [slashdot.org]. It's fugly in classic-threaded-mode, and utterly baffling [slashdot.org] in classic-flat-mode.

Whatever the Gods did, could they please undo it? The only bars I want to see are the single bars to the left of the blockquoted comments.

On a high-contrast color scheme (or even just turning document-specified colors off), it's even worse - the 3/4-box is thick and black around some comments, and absent on others, resulting in something extremely distracting.

It seems that all the complaints about the differences in style on idle.slashdot.org are going to have to be rehashed again.

Difficulty of Appealing

[Adaptux]

After having RTFA (sorry), I don't see where anybody is appealing the decision, yet.

The main problem with appealing is that at the ISO/IEC JTC1 level you cannot really file an appeal about the decision-making processes in the national standardization bodies. The reason for this is that the national standardization organizations are not branches of ISO. The power structure is the other way round: ISO is an international cartel of national standardization bodies.

You could try to appeal at the ISO/IEC JTC1 level based on the differences between what the ISO/IEC JTC1 directives [iso.org] say and how things were actually done. [jtc1sc34.org] I have written up an analysis in which I come to the conclusion that an appeal which is based only on this kind of discrepancies will not be successful. [adaptux.com]

What I suppose could be done with some chance of success is to file an antitrust lawsuit as well as an appeal and demand in the appeal that ISO/IEC shall defer to the result of the antitrust lawsuit. (Trying to get the standardization organization officials to decide the antitrust concerns themselves would not be a good idea IMO, since standardization organizations are really not equipped for resolving legal conflicts).

Re:Appeal?

[UnknowingFool]

Technically, all appeals have to wait until all the votes are officially announced for each country. That way people aren't filing appeals based on rumors. Also, the appeals process might require formal procedures like paperwork, affidavits, blood sacrifices, etc.

Re:Does it even matter if it's a standard?

[R2.0]

It matters because it is a long held practice of governments to specify a "standard" product so that they cannot be accused of choosing proprietary products. If OOXML had not become a standard, governments may not have been ALLOWED to use it according to their own internal rules. Of course, this process is often abused - specifications are often written so that only one product or company qualifies, even though they are not named. So now all governments need to is say "File formats shall comply with standard XYZ and - lo and behold - only MS office qualifies.

Re:Interesting quote from groklaw link

[katz]

Why should MS "go back to the drawing board" in the first place, instead of just implementing ODF? (though I grant you that's a rhetorical question, since ODF serves to discourage the kinds of lock-in that Microsoft's business model appears to depend on)

- Roey

Re:ISO is now irrelevant

[Akaihiryuu]

Indeed...ISO is completely irrelevant now. They are not a reputable organization, and no longer have any say in standards, at least computer-related ones. Noone is going to seek out ISO "approval" for standards anymore, at least noone reputable. FSFE is pretty much saying the exact same thing in TFA. There is even a replacement for ISO springing up. http://www.certifiedopen.com/ [certifiedopen.com]

Re:Interesting quote from groklaw link

[tokul]

Fins also fired board chairman that opposed to MS-OOXML.

Re:ISO is now irrelevant

[BlueParrot]

A) The standard hasn't passed just yet

B) The ISO followed procedure, it was the member organisations. Or rather, members of the boards of some of the member organizations.

C)Anybody who wants open standards ought to care about the ISO as we are currently in a "Fix ISO or Microsoft wins" situation. When something is broken attempting to fix it is usually worth trying before giving up and throwing it away.

Re:Does it even matter if it's a standard?

[mysticgoat]

It matters because it is a long held practice of governments to specify a product that measures up well against a standard so that they cannot be accused of choosing proprietary products...

There, I fixed that thought for you. BTW, this also applies to a lot of big corporations and other entities... not just governments.

Procurement at government agencies and big businesses can usually be simplified to a three step process, that is driven by the need of the individuals involved to protect their careers from the fallout of a bad decision:

1. Arguing over what criteria to evaluate: use an ISO standard, or some national standard or some industry specific standard? What failure rate will be acceptable? Everybody signs off on this: no single person can be held responsible for a mistake.
2. Testing the performance of vendor samples against the chosen standard. Done with enough rigorous objectivity to assure that the testers are protected against backlash if the whole thing blows up into a mess later on.
3. Report on test results, with recommendation to purchase based on the results. Final decision again by a committee so no individual can become a scapegoat for any costly mistakes.

Microsoft products and OOXML cannot reach acceptable scores in this process today, nor in the near future. From what I have read, it seems unlikely that they will ever achieve good scores. And now that Microsoft itself has opened the door for using this bog standard process on software procurement, it will be easier for big business and government to switch from the OOXML standard to the ODF standard than to go back to earlier modes of justifying procurement decisions.