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."

I hope MS gets rebuffed harshly

[gweihir]

Standards are a major pillar of a modern technological society. Attempting (whether successfully or not) to sabotage the standardization process of a well-respected source of standards, amounts to attempting to destabilize society. This is clearly utterly unethical. The potential damage is inconceivable.

MS did this evil thing either because they do not care at all about anything except their short-term profits, or because they are scared out of their wits. In either case they need to be contained fast, before the world is without a credible (read: of high integrity and producing high quality syandards) standardization organisation.

Re:The new EU economic plan

[psysjal]

Wasn't Linus Torvalds from Finland? Doesn't that mean Europe can at least claim some responsibility for the Linux kernel?

Re:I hope MS gets rebuffed harshly

[seeker_1us]

As several have commented on Slashdot before, MS also benefits from the discrediting of the ISO process in general. Then there are no "standards" just what MS makes, what MS wants, and no pesky people complaining about them not being standards compliant.

Re:Appeal?

[oliderid]

The risk here is that the EU is going to look at this from a protectionist point of view. They have an opportunity to establish some non-tarrif trade barriers here and there is little opportunity for the US to complain.

European anti-competitive laws are mainly aimed at European countries/companies.

There are still strong protectionnist tendencies amongst european countries against each other.

For example, last week, the Italian state can't refund the nearly bankrupted Air Italia because of these laws. They are almost "forced" to sell it to Air France/KLM (privately held)

Anti-trust laws are also mainly aimed at European companies.

So basically the European union is the only body in Europe promoting/reinforcing free/fair trades. Its main mission is to guarantee fair play amongst its members. American companies having European acitivites experience it from time to time. Here on slashdot microsoft makes headlines.

I noticed few months ago that Novell (I think, anyway It was an American company with open source based services) won a mid sized European Commission contract against european companies. Adobe is well established in the European commissions and it is making a lot (really a lot) of money.

If you play fair, you are welcome. If you don't you get fines.That's quite simple really.

Re:Appeal?

[ozmanjusri]

Yes, but who has standing to file an appeal here? TFA says ISO national bodies.

Norway, Germany, Poland Romania and many others are reporting irregularities and stacking in their committees. The memo from Comes v Microsoft [groklaw.net] [pdf warning] describes pretty excatly what happened in those meetings.

A stacked panel, on the other hand, is like a stacked deck: it is packed with people who, on the face of things, should be neutral, but who are in fact strong supporters of our technology. The key to stacking a panel is being able to choose the moderator. Most conference organizers allow the moderator to select the panel, so if you can pick the moderator, you win. Since you can't expect representatives of our competitors to speak on your behalf, you have to get the moderator to agree to having only "independent ISVs" on the panel. No one from Microsoft or any other formal backer of the competing technologies would be allowed â" just ISVs who have to use this stuff in the "real world." Sounds marvelously independent doesn't it? In fact, it allows us to stack the panel with ISVs that back our cause.

Considerable poltiical influence was brought to bear too. Bill Gates campaigned in Denmark, where he is a friend of the Prime Minister. Sarkozy himself intervened [noooxml.org] on Microsoft's behalf in France.

This topic has started to expose just how much influence Microsoft has with governments, and shows they're willing to meddle with national sovereignty.

It's not going to take too much to turn it into a cause celebre.

Re:Interesting quote from groklaw link

[Shados]

Because a monoculture is never a good thing, and because ODF and OOXML have a different featureset. Microsoft should implement both, and so should Open Office (assuming OOXML gets ISO cert).

Then companies can standardise on whatever suits their internal need bests, while still being able to interroperate with everyone else, and the tools everyone will have will be able to convert from one to the other while only losing features that are unique to their format.

I think this is the ideal world. Though thats a big "should". I don't think the world will go that way, especially not on microsoft's side, but it would be ideal.

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[account_deleted]

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Re:I hope MS gets rebuffed harshly

[gwait]

Exactly. Microsoft have won this hands down.
Notice how the mainstream press are reporting Microsoft's OOXML ISO approval, without mentioning the dirty tricks (illegal or not) that they used to get it "approved".
So for Government programs that state that documents MUST be based on an open standard, Microsoft have won, and for anyone who mentions ODF is also an ISO standard, they can say "Who cares? ISO is a disorganized and easily corrupted organization, nothing they rubber stamp means anything!".

It's not at all surprising that Microsoft went after this whole hog, handcuffing customers to MS Office is the source of their income and power. All else (windows monopoly, etc) follows.

Is this guy serious?

[Zero__Kelvin]

Microsoft's general manager of "standards" and "interoperability" [quotes added for accuracy] Tom Robertson says in the article:

"I think it's ironic IBM is complaining about new members in national standards bodies when they have been working around the clock to get people to join."

I guess if someone starts shooting at me, I don't have any right to pick up a gun and shoot back without being guilty of wrongdoing then, eh Mr. Robertson?

Re:ISO is now irrelevant

[zsau]

I know! It's awful! All of my pieces of A4 paper now have unreliable edges: In fact, I have a page which is not even a known shape, having angles which do not add up. Possibly US letter paper is immune to this? I don't know; I have none around. I tried to get money out of the ATM this morning, but my card stopped fitting after OOXML was passed. It measures the same dimensions as it did previously, but without a reputable standards organisation behind it, the sizes cease to be the same when they are near. I am similarly concerned about the dimensions of my bike tyres. In fact, the ISO has included the BIPM's weights and measures in it, and time too; how can I be sure today's millimetres are as relevant as yesterdays? Even feet and inches are defined in terms of the ISO's metres; perhaps I shall have to revert to Newton's Parisian foot.

The characters on my computer screen, which I previously had encoded in ISO-8859-1 or ISO-10646, now correspond only randomly to the byte sequences they are represented as — how do you who reads this know it is what I have written? The various programming languages I work in no longer operate correctly (except for, ironically, C#); my computer and I cannot agree on the meaning of words or the syntax. I am sure I am using the same semantics and syntax this week as last, and the compilers show no indication of having changed, yet they fail.

No, the ISO no longer has any reputation. All these things and others besides have ceased to work because of it. One mistake — one inability to hold their own against the worst onslaught they have seen — and they are dead, and all they have done is for nought. Before the experiences this last week, I thought the rest of the world would not notice any problems and would force us geeks along with them. How wrong I was!

Re:Appeal?

[LingNoi]

The reason for this campaign was from start to finish to attempt to force governments to use ODF in place of OOXML and thus force the use of Open Office.

No, I completely disagree with this. There is no reason that Microsoft Office can not support ODF, infact it already does with a plugin so why would this block or change governments from using Microsoft Office if they want to use it?

OOXML was really crap when it was first submitted and we all don't really know if that has changed much as the fixes haven't really been looked at in any detail. Hence why use a subpar format which is heavily based on Microsoft Office simply because Microsoft feels that it's a competition between Closed vs Open Source?

It's not a competition, this has nothing to do with Open Source, it's about a file format being implementable or not and about being realistic. The OOXML format ISO is never going to be used, even by Microsoft, that's just realistic expectation based on their past. What's going to happen is this... How Microsoft Office renders your exported files is going to determine the ISO format and thus nothing will actually be changed from today, where Microsoft gets to make the standard that everyone follows.

So, why is it such a bad thing to use ODF which isn't going to be heavily influenced like OOXML is by a single vendor? Although ODF was originally in Open Office implementations of ODF are so widespread in other office suites and Open Office's popularity is so small that there is no chance that Open Office could ever control the ODF spec like Microsoft could with OOXML.