● 07.20.07

●● Microsoft Already Plans to ‘Extend’ Its ‘Standard’; ECMA and ISO Named and Shamed

Posted in ECMA, Formats, ISO, Open XML, OpenDocument, Standard at 10:50 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

The weekend is almost here. The amount of news that is related the monopoly enabler (OOXML) is fairly large. Here is a quick summary.

Pamela wrote a long article which cites others. It also contains some very alarming piece of information. The takeaway: Miirosoft is proprietizing standards and ‘extending’ them. We have seen this before.

>

>

….when you proprietize standards, you touch me. And that is precisely what is happening with OOXML. Microsoft’s own expert at the Portugal meeting said so pointblank: Microsoft will add proprietary extensions, he said, to do things ODF can’t do.

>

Rob takes a look at some unbelievable slides from ECMA. These pretty much confirm that ECMA should be treated as nothing but a coin-in-the-slot standards organisation.

>

>

I’ve joked about the Ecma process before, but I never thought I’d see it written out officially like this. Standards are made available “on time”? Minimize the “risk” of changes? I thought the whole purpose of technical review was to find the problems and fix them? As always, the man who pays the piper calls the tune.

>

Bob has more to say about the questionable voting process.

>

>

I mention this because this general issue of stacking committees to force favorable votes is now under examination with respect to OOXML and the ISO/IEC JTC1 Fast Track process.

>

Mr. Jelliffe seems rather unhappy. He posted “Bribery Watch!”. It seems like a bizarre way of accusing people of inaccuracies or maybe even slander. These arguments needn’t get ugly, but where corruption (yes, it’s a strong word, I know) is identified and where people game the system, something simply must be said. If you say nothing, the consumer will continue to suffer whilst greedy corporation exploit loopholes. Whose side are you on?

Share in other sites/networks: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.

Permalink  Send this to a friend

----------

➮ Sharing is caring. Content is available under CC-BY-SA.