Norway ISO members walk out over OOXML
Loss of professional credibility
NORWEGIAN MEMBERS of the Technical Committee of that country's International Standards Organisation (ISO) body Standard Norge have resigned their posts to protest the approval of Microsoft's OOXML document formats proposal in defiance of the majority recommendation.
In all, 13 of the committee's 23 members have resigned, a majority of the membership.
In Standard Norge deliberations regarding OOXML earlier this year, only two members – Microsoft and Statoil – voted for approval, while the remaining 21 voted against it. Defying the overwhelming vote, the officials of Standard Norge went ahead and approved OOXML anyway, and transmitted that "decision" to ISO.
As a public service, we reproduce the rough Google translation of the 13 former Norway Standard Technical Committee members' letter of resignation below:
Oslo, Monday 29 September 2008
We, the undersigned, are ending our work within Standard Norway.
It is sad when organisations that work for our common interest fail the task. Through the OOXML work, Standard Norway has shown, with a clear margin, that they are not fit to represent Norway in the ISO.
"Standardization of formats for content on the Web is more important than ever. A large part of mankind's communication is done digitally, and all - ALL - must have the ability to read and write these formats," said Håkon Wium Lie.
Standard Norway chose to defy their own technical committee and vote yes to a specification that is immature, useless, and unworthy of being called an ISO standard.
Standard Norway has lost its credibility in the IT area from the way it has administered the process. Standard Norway has set its own commercial interests ahead of what is best for society, most feasible technologically, and what is professionally advisable.
"By participating in a further work in Standard Norway will we lose our professional credibility," said Arne S. Nielsen.
Therefore, we have chosen to leave the committee.
We end our work with Standard Norway because:
* The administration of Standard Norway trust 37 identical letters from Microsoft partners more than their own technical committee.
* The process within Standard Norway has been unpredictable and the administration has changed the rules along the way.
* Standard Norway and ISO have committed a series of violations of their own rules and other irregularities in the OOXML process.
"Standard Norway has overruled hundreds of thousands of users in the public and private sectors", says Martin Bekkelund.
The mass-copied Microsoft-letter did not contain a single professional argument. Standard Norway first said that these kinds of statements would not be given any weight. However, at the end of the process they changed their mind and emphasized the Microsoft letters. Thereby, Standard Norway misled the committee members.
The process in Standard Norway is unpredictable, subjective and is continuously changed behind the scenes. "There is no way to appeal a decision, neither inside nor outside Standard Norway — the administrative staff who makes the decisions is the same who 'reviews' (i.e., lingers, ignores and shelves) appeals and complaints", says Trond Heier.
Each and every one of us will continue our [work] for better standards within organizations other than Standard Norway.
The undersigned:
1. Haakon Wium Lie
2. Martin Bekkelund (NUUG)
3. Petter Reinholdtsen (NUUG)
4. Linpro AS v/ Trond Heier Linpro AS v / Trond Heier
5. Bjørn Venn
6. Steve Pepper
7. Arne Sigurd Rognan Nielsen
8. Henning Kulander
9. Axel Bojer
10. Geir Isene
11. Thomas Malt
12. Anthony Lardahl (NUUG)
13. Knut Olav Bøhmer Knut
Maybe they'll want to work on IT standards with IBM, if and when it tells ISO to sod off. µ
L'Inq
No
OOXML
Comments
Says it all really
"We end our work with Standard Norway because:* The administration of Standard Norway trust 37 identical letters from Microsoft partners more than their own technical committee."
Even when you have to use 'doze for stuff and can't avoid it, count your fingers after shaking hands with MS. The way they behave scares me even more than the deficiencies with their platform- if you're going to get locked-in, would you want to get locked-in with them?
Sounds like Democrats
The ISO committee seems to operate like our idiot Democrats in the US. On bribes and stupidity. I guess there are bipartisan idiots and crooks everywhere. I hope Hussein gets in and when they country truly goes to hell and they can't blame Bush the idiot voters in the USA will wake up. Our school children will be brainwashed to sing the Obama song in the United Socialist of America, all hail the messiah our closet Muslim. But I guess we will have hope, LOLchange any thing?
I wonder if this will change anything?Still, much respect to "the undersigned"
Standard Norway blows dead dogs
Why are the effin' bureaucrats allowed to ignore the voting results? Is everyone in Standard Norway a crottin' idiot?Democrats on bribes and stupidity?
Two words: Jack AbramoffMANY MANY more Republiclowns were in his pocket than were Dems. And stop blaming a two-year Democrat controlled congress for the previous six years of Republican't control.
Surely not Democrats?
Regulas is stretching things a bit by trying to tie OOXML to "the Democrats". This whole OOXML thing is Corporatism -- government of business, by business and for business with no notion of common good. We all know who the chief puerps are for that in the US and its nothing to do with our favorite non-Muslim (and definitely nothing to do with socialism).You may have noticed that we're getting crap pushed on us because corporations have Market Power. Vista's a stinking PoS? No its not, your nose just needs an upgrade (reasonable credit terms available). We are constantly haranged to sign up for stuff that doesn't work as described, costs a lot more than the adverts say and generally is just sub-standard tat. We customers don't have Market Power -- we're just lambs to the slaughter.
Meanwhile..
Down here in Brazil, ABNT (Brazilian technical norms association) officialized the ODF format as a mandatory governament standard as "ABNT NBR ISO/IEC 26300".At least the IT section of the governament isn't corrupt ^^
Good luck dealing with Microsoft's OfficeBloatware for the rest of your lives.
This article is wrong!
This article is basically bullshit.What's happened here is that lots of people joined the committee to oppose the standard, and while in the committee that's all they've done. Now that OOXML has been approved, they no longer have any reason to be in the committee, so they are leaving. That's hardly the committee imploding.
So let me say this again: not one of these people have done anything in this committee other than oppose OOXML being taken up as a standard. These people are not key people in the committee. They did try to get other people in the committee to join them, but nobody else wanted to leave in protest over this.
What they are, however, is media-savvy. They've worked on all kinds of IT-related advocacy (anti-DRM, pro-open source, etc etc), so they send out a press release stating that this is a big protest, and the committee is imploding etc etc. This article is basically that press release translated to English and prettied up to look like an article.
I guess at this point people will be wondering how I know this. I've been a member of this committee since 2001, and I know many of the people on that list personally. I voted against OOXML, because I thought it wasn't ready to become a standard. The trouble is: however much you may hate Microsoft, this article remains a piece of useless propaganda.
@This article is wrong!
Do not tell lies, Steve Pepper for example has been the Chairman of the Norwegian ISO committee since 1995 and OOXML didn't exist.Most of the article is right
Lars Marius Garshol are critical to persons who joined the OOXML comity just to wrote no. Unfortunately Lars omit that all the original comity members voted no to OOXML. He omit that Microsoft paid an external advisor to help that company to get a yes, teaming up with Microsoft partners. Many Microsoft partners showed up at the first meeting, not showing up at later meetings. I guess Lars didn't know this. He was not tending this meetings where Microsoft partners did not show.Standard Norway wrote that our comment had to be purely technical. Political view point in the 37 letters organised by Microsoft, did not have any merit in ISO they said. Unfortunately the administration in Standard Norway put more weight on the letters than all the technical comments which were submitted. Comments which was not resolved.
The ISO process with other document standards was almost halted. Number of new members from different nation increased with more than 400 percent. Countries which newer before has showed interest in document standardisation. Unfortunately maney new members did not show interest for other document standards than the OOXML vote. A huge majority of those new national bodies voted yes to OOXML.
I was a new member in the Standard Norway comity. I'm still a member and will continues my work, keeping ISO responsible for they actions when not living by their own rules. Huge improvements concerning the standardisation process is needed.
The question now is how the ongoing EU investigation of the ISO OOXML-process will skale. Neelie Kroes from European Commissioner for Competition Policy says:
"standardisation agreements should be based on the merits of the technologies involved. Allowing companies to sit around a table and agree technical developments for their industry is not something that the competition rules would usually allow. So when it is allowed we have to look carefully at how it is done."
Disclaimer: I write this on my own behalf. I'm still a member of Standard Norway comity for document standards, and I was present at the meetings. I'm glad that Lars are re-joining the comity after a period of absence.
Press release or not, it's a mess
Lars,You call this a "press release" but don't actually claim anything said was wrong. Even assuming everything you say is true, you still don't contend the facts the the process was politicized, corrupted and completely botched, and that is the real issue that anyone who cares about standards in Norway should be worried about.
Releasing a public statement is not a problem and everyone involved is doing it. A government committee serving a commercial company against the public's interest is a big problem.
To Lars
If you've been a member since 2001, I'm sure you can highlight how long each of the undersigned has been involved in Standard Norge. Such as Steve Pepper's 13 years, for example.Perhaps you should note what work they've done there, as well as a note on what other standardisation work they've done outside of Standard Norge. Like Håkon Wium Lie, and his work with HTML 5 and CSS, just to mention one.
I'll let you continue the rest of the list, so that you can show us all how it's only irrelevant troublemakers who were only interested in blocking OOXML that resigned...
Thanks
Thanks to Lars Marius Garshol for clarifying this article with an alternative point of view. Although I do feel that the article in itself does raise a few questions, It is good to hear from both sides, and especially from an insider on the committee with a non-bias approach. Go raibh maith agat Lars.@Lars Marius Garshol
Your statements doesn't seem to be true. Steve Pepper for example has been working at ISO since 1995 and Haakon Wium Lie works at Opera so he can hardly be pro-open source..Let's not lose the message here
Lars, appreciate the opposing viewpoint. The truth is that Microsoft is reaping the whirlwind, and if these people feel strongly enough to join a committee in order to oppose a single proposition, and the committee approves entry then the committee needs to accept the recommendations given.The real danger here is actually the breakdown of the standardization process which would benefit Microsoft enormously. Is that the real goal of Microsoft? To undermine national standards bodies and not have to pay attention to them anymore?
This also indicates that a large proportion of the Norwegian standards recommendation body were unaware of their responsibilities. I'd say that this announcement was very generous of them, indicating a level of selflessness which would be desirable in the public service :-)
Keep up the good work Lars.
Now we know why...
Now we know why Microsoft got away with it:http://www.aftenposten.no/english/business/article2683800.ece
Marcel
what a joke
"Microsoft earlier this year acquired Oslo-based Fast Search & Transfer ASA, calling it a "leading provider" of enterprise search solutions at the time. The acquisition was aimed at bolstering Microsoft’s enterprise search efforts and increasing its research and development presence in Europe."I wonder what kind of threats ballmer made regarding this company - i.e. we have to bring the operations back to america and lay off all those people in oslo.
I hope the truth comes out and these backroom business stop.
I wonder how balmer sleeps at nite - oh I know they have the gates foundation and that makes everything right.
I also wonder how many people have ties to this company microsoft bought that have a say in the standard process.
this is the world trade organization at work - it is the global legal mafia that strong arms country into doing things the wrong way.