EU's Anti-Trust Investigation of OOXML Continues 111
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."
Cramped comments (Score:3, Interesting)
not yet, but it will be. (Score:5, Interesting)
But it will be.
To not appeal as this point is tantamount to agreeing to the decision to make it a standard. It is demonstrable that a great many people, companies and organizations do not agree (in fairly strong terms) as we can assume an appeal is inevitable.
At this point, an appeal makes a stand and casts doubt on OOXML as a standard - so win or lose in the appeal, the mere fact that there is one will help our case.
Lastly, I state again - if OOXML passed the agreed consultations and tests for a standard, was approved in the conventional standard, and brought a demonstrably superior implementation to ODF then I would accept it in a heartbeat.
ISO is now irrelevant (Score:5, Interesting)
Therefore the ISO is now irrelevant; so who cares about the ISO.
Re:Appeal? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, but who has standing to file an appeal here? TFA says ISO national bodies. That would be a pretty difficult challenge to mount.
As with the Netscape use of the justice dept to go after Microsoft, I remain very unimpressed by companies that attempt to win commercial battles by involving government. Netscape did not help the anti-trust case against Microsoft, on the contrary, they caused the DoJ to abandon a strong case (on the pricing issue) into a weak one. Netscape's tactics against Spyglass were every bit as aggressive and anti-competitive as those they accused Microsoft of. Netscape was never a good player in the standards world either, they wanted absolute control of the Web. Their idea of standards participation was to fax a proposed 'standard' to W3C hours before they released the product.
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.
Does it even matter if it's a standard? (Score:4, Interesting)
It seems to me that it doesn't matter in the least if OOXML becomes a standard -- because frankly, nobody but Microsoft is going to put any significant effort into supporting it. A "standard" which is only supported by one product is about as useful as a two inch long drinking straw in a world of six inch tall soda cans... what's the point in even worrying about it?
Another example of this same problem is the Acid3 browser test. While I applaud the guys who came up with the tests for pointing out how many "standards" have been ignored by modern browsers, and I am quite impressed with the folks developing Opera and Safari/Webkit for their efforts to meet those standards... it still won't genuinely mean much until the forty foot gorilla in the room (Microsoft's Internet Explorer, of course) decides to play nice too.
In the case of Acid3, this is a regrettable fact of life that actually works to Microsoft's advantage -- which is why they aren't chomping at the bit to actually fix their browser. In the case of OOXML... Microsoft probably doesn't realize it yet, but they're pretty much screwed no matter how this thing ends.
Interesting quote from groklaw link (Score:5, Interesting)
Two wrongs do not make a right, and if IBM and other companies were wrong as he suggest, then so was Microsoft if they did the same, and it just goes to support the argument that the process was tampered with and the results discarded. By making that statement, he actually argued against his own position that everything went fine.
Note: I work for IBM, but this opinion is my own
Re:Interesting quote from groklaw link (Score:5, Interesting)
They need to trash the results and start over. As it is, even though OOXML was approved, NO ONE will trust it, because no one know if it actually deserves the spot or not. (And it goes both ways. Its not as simple as "It shouldn't be ISO!").
Re:Interesting quote from groklaw link (Score:1, Interesting)
Document format monoculture is a good thing (Web anyone?)
Measurement system monoculture is a good thing (metric ftw.)
Application monoculture is a bad thing (Microsoft Office.)
OS monoculture is a bad thing (Microsoft Windows.)
Hey, is there a pattern here?
Re:Interesting quote from groklaw link (Score:4, Interesting)
In practice, however, Microsoft has shown that they don't really care about OOXML as a standard. They've said themselves that they aren't going to implement it. If they aren't going to implement it, then how is anyone else supposed to? Besides, it's littered with awful "explanations" like AutoSpaceLikeWord95. How do you AutoSpace like Word95? OOXML doesn't explain this. You're just expected to know. OOXML is really just an attempt by Microsoft to get to claim support for open standards without actually having to support open standards.
In short, I would have no problem with someone else coming up with a format to compete with ODF, but I don't think Microsoft is willing to do it.
Re:I hope MS gets rebuffed harshly (Score:5, Interesting)
What happens? Everyone scrambles to consolidate "their" (read: Microsoft's) idea of standard. "Unfortunately" this will mean that each and every standard breakable by Microsoft will be broken in such a way that it's very convenient for... Microsoft.
Microsoft is pushing OOXML simply to sabotage ISO and not to provide a "competitor" to ODF, that's only the front.
At this point criminal prosecution of the Microsoft execs responsible for this would be very desirable (corruption, fraud and forgery of documents (yes, it might just apply here)).
The companies aiding Microsoft in the irregularities deserve to get punished severely over this.
Re:Interesting quote from groklaw link (Score:1, Interesting)
maybe if governments got smart... (Score:3, Interesting)
It would be nice if Government mandates required that multiple, compatible implementations exist for whatever standards they mandate.
That might call Microsoft's bluff. Either they'd have to implement a working OOXML to ODF translator or help others implement OOXML and verify completeness.
Hell, by defining 'standard' in terms of actual multiple implementations, Office 2000 binary would make a better standard than OOXML. OOo does a pretty good job of reading them - better than anybody but MS is likely to do for OOXML anytime soon.
So, let's lobby for governments to just standdardize on ODF, PDF and Office 2000.
Of course, Abiword, KOffice and OOo would have to get cracking on making their ODF implementations compatible for ODF to make the cut.
Any guesses which job would be easier?
Re:ISO is now irrelevant (Score:4, Interesting)
Oh, no. It didn't. ISO changed the procedure exclusively for this one draft, hours before making a decision to not kill it while the old procedures required it to be killed.
Re:ISO is now irrelevant (Score:4, Interesting)
I can't follow your logic.
The ISO standards process was corrupted while processing the OOXML "fast track" request. So the OOXML standard is corrupt, and the application of the "fast track" process is corruptible, if not corrupt itself.
That has no bearing on any of the other ISO standards. Such as
No one with any sense is going to declare the ISO process null and void. It has proven its value too many times, in too many different areas.
What is likely to happen is that people who are used to working with ISO standards are going to be saying "This is great! Now we have a way of measuring how closely different software conforms to an international standard! Look, this version of OpenOffice is in proven conformance with only eighty-something percent of the ODF Standard. But when we measure this version of MS Office against the OOXML Standard, it is in conformance with... uh... less than 10% ????"
The acceptance of OOXML as a standard to be measured against is going to make it more difficult for Microsoft to sell its products in a lot of markets in the short term. From what I've read, the OOXML standard is going to be so hard to implement that it will be difficult for Microsoft to score well against it for the long term as well. Microsoft may have put itself into a situation where they will have to work with ODF files in order to sell to the big accounts, where ISO 9000 and shipping containers that can be moved from truck to train to boat are important to the business.
Re:I hope MS gets rebuffed harshly (Score:2, Interesting)
<rant>Which just sucks golfballs. I recently installed Office 2008 for the Mac. Universal binaries and all, made me expect improvements. Silly me - what a stinking pile of dog poop! As slow as the f*cking runtime-translated powerpc-binary-2004, buggy to no end (ate several files already, while I'm on a hard deadline), the interface has been changed where it makes no sense (the templates etc drop-down section) - but unchanged where it should have been fixed (native scroll bars in most controls). ARRRGH!!
I actually tried to build OOo so that I could try to fix the handling of tables in headers/footers (which is the main show-stopper for our company for using OOo). Too bad the mac native version isn't up to snuff yet (in too many ways for someone to just quickly fix)./rant>
But one does have to hand it to Microsoft. Well played.
Re:Appeal? (Score:1, Interesting)
Cant we quit moaning... (Score:2, Interesting)
What i do want to see, is microsoft having thier asses handed to them on the technological side. With gnome office onboard there is a real chance that microsoft isnt going to have the best implimentation of thier own standard, its much harder to take a finished product and tweak it to conform to the new OOXML changes (without breaking anything), than it is to start from scratch and design a fully OOXML complient (when theres nothing to break). If the gnome team get OOXML implimented well, a small unix style aplication could easily allow convertion between OOXML and ODF ( go crazy and call it OOXML2ODF., Simply install it into the OS, and allow ODF complient programs to use OOXML programs without even relising and visa-versa, this would kill the document office suite link which is microsofts main weapon.
The problem is everybody is too busy bitching about OOXML to realise that MS have given us a chace to beat them on thier home turf.