Moved by Freedom – Powered by Standards

It is now certain that OOXML has been approved by the national standards organizations. France finally abstained after an interesting last minute intervention by Microsoft. Odd things happened and the final announcement by the Afnor today would have been a farce if it had not been official.

It is always easy to claim you could not do this or that because the other guy was better, or that you ran out of luck. But this time, clear evidence has shown that not only any meaningful standardization work was simply impossible, but any attempt to restore sanity or coherence in the process was matched with unequaled pressure by Microsoft.

If you thought you had seen everything about OOXML with the likes of Rick Jelliffe, committees that have been stuffed by Microsoft and its minions to the point where no other choice than approval would be possible, think again. And do open your eyes to one of the greatest scams of computing history. Below are a few examples of what I’m talking about today. But they are meaningful enough.

Germany

In a steering committee of 20 people a vote was taken to answer this question:

“did the process run according to the rules and without irregularities?” 6 answered no and 7 abstained!

http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-49525/limited-choice-at-german-din

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2008032913190768

Norway

21 members of the committee voted NO to fast-track this DIS but it was decided to vote yes anyway:

http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-50031/oil-fire-in-norway-microsoft-buys-another-standards-body

Denmark

The technical committee didn’t agree to change the disapproval vote but it was “decided” to vote yes anyway. The committee S-142/U-34 under Danish Standards could not agree to change their vote from No to Yes.

A couple of hours later:

http://www.version2.dk/artikel/6718 says that the announcement from Danish Standards will not be made until Friday and that the Chair of the committee has been barred from speaking about the result of yesterday’s meeting.

After some Microsoft political intervention to revert this ( the Prime Minister of Denmark is a Microsoft friend ), we have this:

http://www.en.ds.dk/4227

Another political decision, influenced by Microsoft lobbyists.

Malaysia

The Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation decided on Malaysia’s final position on OOXML (“abstain” ), overturning the 81% ”Disapprove” position by ISC-G and TC4.

http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/2008/03/the-minister-of.html

Poland

On March 20, 2008, Technical Committee (KT 182) of PKN was supposed to either accept the recommendation (which was to vote YES for the proposed standard) or not accept it, and thus recommend PKN to vote NO or abstain from voting. Of 45 members, 24 appeared on the meeting. And the votes looked like this:

   * 12 votes supporting the recommandation,

   * 10 votes rejecting it,

   * 2 abstaining to vote.

No consensus has been achieved concerning the recommendation. Thus, the chairman of KT 182, Elzbieta Andrukiewicz, decided to allow the missing members to vote by e-mail during the next 10 days (till the end of March).

The email vote was taken, counting a “no mail sended” as an “approval” !!! Clearly, there was no technical consensus in Poland, but the chairman forced the rules to favour an approval.

http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-49455/polish-chairwoman-distributes-microsoft-propaganda

http://polishlinux.org/poland/possible-manipulation-around-ooxml-process-in-poland/

http://polishlinux.org/poland/poland-confirms-its-approval-for-ooxml-in-iso/

Croatia

Out of 35 members of TO Z1, 17 sent a vote, and there were three votes for, and fourteen against fast-tracking OOXML, which is relative rejection rate of 82%. Members who voted were individual experts, IBM, CLUG and HrOpen. However, since there were less than 51% of votes, the voting process was declared invalid, and the previous vote holds (“approve” ) !

Microsoft Croatia heavily influenced the voting, arguing that there’s no need for a second round and accusing commitee conveners of incompetence.

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=2008032913190768

http://www.oddparity.org/index2.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=44&pop=1&page=0&Itemid=1

USA

The technical committee Incits/V1 was heavily stacked by Microsoft partners.

http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-46044/committee-stuffing-also-in-the-united-states:11-microsoft-business-partners

Switzerland

The chairman Hans-Rudolf Thomann systematically blocked the technical opposition to the DIS, virtually deciding Switzerland position himself.

New infamous JTC 1 P-members:

Accepted a few days before DIS 29500 ballot closing, who joined ISO

JTC1 just to cast a “yes vote”:

Jamaica island

Cyprus island

Malta island

Kazakhstan

Lebanon

Azerbaijan

Cote-d’Ivore

Pakistan

http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-43510/ivory-coast-represented-by-microsoft-senegal-at-the-brm

I do not think that the victory of Microsoft will hinder ODF anymore; because I think that the approval of OOXML as an ISO standard has been gained through pressure, tricks, and countless irregularities. And this will be heard by the whole world. Congratulations, Microsoft. You have cured the deafness of many today.  

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OOXML, OOo Postings, Open Standards, OpenDocument Format

Today is Document Freedom Day: Roughly 200 teams from more than 60
countries worldwide are organising local activities to raise awareness
for Document Freedom and Open Standards. To support the initiatives
surrounding the first day to celebrate document liberation, DFD
starter packs containing a DFD flag, t-shirts and leaflets have been
sent to the first 100 registered teams over the past weeks.

In a world where records are increasingly kept in electronic form,
Open Standards are crucial for valuable information to outlive the
application in which it was initially generated. The question of
Document Freedom has severe repercussions for freedom of choice,
competition, markets and the sovereignty of countries and their
governments.

“We are very happy about the response and activities that teams around
the world have scheduled,” says Ivan Jelic, DFD Coordinator. “Activities
we have heard about range from local speeches and information events
through to prizes being given to governmental bodies that adopted good
policies in the field of Document Freedom and Open Standards. It will
be a challenge to document everything that is taking place today.”

The DFD team will do its best to gather all the media reports,
pictures and stories around this first DFD and collect them on the DFD
web page for reference and future editions of the event. If you have
material about local document liberation activities, please send mail to:

coordination@documentfreedom.org

How you can get active

The Document Freedom Day is a collaborative effort.

You can make a difference by linking to http://documentfreedom.org,
generate your own artworks or use the ones available at

http://documentfreedom.org/Artwork or generate your own.

You could also print out some of the DFD leaflets at

http://www.documentfreedom.org/2008/DFD_Starter_Pack#Leaflet

and give them to your co-workers, family or friends. And if you feel
creative, consider taking pictures or small video testimonials that
show the world what Document Freedom means to you!

About the Document Freedom Day

The Document Freedom Day (DFD) is a global day for Document
Liberation with roughly 200 active teams worldwide. It is a day of
grassroots effort around the world to promote and build awareness for
the relevance of Free Document Formats in particular and Open
Standards in general.

Document Freedom Day is supported by a large group of organisations
and individuals, including, but not limited to Ars Aperta, COSS,
Esoma, Free Software Foundations Europe and Latin America, IBM,
NLnet, ODF Alliance, OpenForum Europe, OSL, iMatix, Red Hat, Sun
Microsystems, Inc., The Open Learning Centre, Opentia, Estandares
Abiertos.

The list of DFD supporting groups can be found
http://documentfreedom.org/Who

The list of DFD Teams is available at
http://documentfreedom.org/Category:Teams

(Local contact for France: Ars Aperta / contact at arsaperta dot com)

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Ars Aperta, OOo Postings, Open Standards, OpenDocument Format

Today the Easter Bunny (that means me on this blog), who’s very early because it’s Good Friday but also the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad and the first day of Spring, is bringing you some links for you to read this week-end.

- Rick Jelliffe gets a cold shower by the SQL standard guru. Boy, that must have frozen you up down there. And besides, it’s now Fall season for you. Too bad, huh?

- “Dear Microsoft Office“, a great blog by Julie Watson. That girl has many tricks up her sleeves when it comes to Office suite issues and file format troubles. Way to go, Julie!

- The incredible adventure of the Malaysian who turned out to be an U.S citizen. That happens sometimes with Microsoft employees…

- A shape is a shape is a shape? It’s not a typo, it’s just the Sun OpenOffice.org team who has some problems with OOXML. I’m sure it’s because they’re biased. Anybody who stands against OOXML (also known as the “Everlasting Truth”) should be sentenced to jail! I’m writing this to deliberately confuse the Microsofties I will meet Tuesday at the Afnor. I know they’re reading my blog. It’s part of my secret plan. Mwuhahahaha..

- Talking about OpenOffice.org, here’s a couple of interesting news about the free and standards-compliant office suite. Take a look here and there.

- The invincible John McCreesh strikes again and has now created a Native-Language Confederation Planet for our reading pleasure. Thank you a lot, and happy Easter, John!

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OOXML, OOo Postings, Open Standards, OpenDocument Format, OpenOffice.org

In the course of the last two days, two major aspects of the OOXML standardization efforts have been revisited by renowned experts. Unfortunately, what sounded like gestures of goodwill by Microsoft is being seriously challenged on a legal and technical point of view.

The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC), the legal arm of the FSF, has published an in-depth analysis of the Open Specification Premise (OSP), the licence or covenant covering both OOXML and the now famous documentation on the binary formats used by the different flavours of Microsoft Office. The result is apalling. Basically, they found out that the OSP was vague, unclear, very limited in its coverage (both in the scope of coverage and the covered extent) and above all, was going against the letter and the spirit of Free Software.

Going against the « letter » of Free Software, meaning going against the four freedoms is being shown by the assertion found inside the OSP that it only applies to the specification. What this ends up meaning is that you’re not being covered for the code you write; this not only leaves room for a highway of legal interpretations, this also strongly dictates how you should use your code, and that goes strictly against the terms of the GPL. The OSP is also found to be vague enough to cast some serious doubts about the possibility to write GPL code against it; to be fair, that’s even ackowledged by Microsoft in its FAQ. It should be remembered here that Microsoft leaves the choice between the OSP and a RAND (Reasonnable And Non Discriminatory) licence, which, despite its name, is fully incompatible with GPL and other Free Software licenses. I’m sure Novell will have a cunning answer to that, but what this means, as I had written before, is that the OSP is legally unsafe and is a weapon against Free Software , without even mentionning Open Standards.

Another interesting note is that the OSP only applies to OOXML in the present version. Nothing prohibits Microsoft to withdraw it when a « OOXML 1.3 or 2.0 » would be published. And by the way, we don’t even know what’s the actual version of OOXML, since there is no definite specification coming out of the BRM yet.

On a more technical level, Stephane Rodriguez has posted a blog showing how much the whole buzz about Microsoft « opening up » and releasing its former binary formats’ specifications doesn’t sustain a careful examination. His blog post is quite long, so I will spare my readers all the details, except perhaps Stephane’s own words found inside his text, and I will quote them in guise of a conclusion:

«  What is meant by that is that, from Microsoft point of view, those documents may be “reference” documents in the sense that if you are taking a look at the corresponding source code, those documents are handy. But only they can do that. For everybody else, those documents are hints , not actual references . It is fire and motion, and it’s been going on for the best part of two decades.  »

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OOXML

I don’t write that much about the overhyped “web 2.0″ name, but this article from TechCrunch got me thinking. Could there be a new and an old Microsoft? Could there be the Microsoft we all know (Windows, MS Office, OOXML, monopoly) and another Microsoft (young, web 2.0-ish, cloud-oriented) and blissfully unaware of the methods of the past? I think there is some limited truth in that. It is not the first time that I hear such things, but unfortunately, this “new” Microsoft has not seized the power yet. In fact, I could even point out that it has to take an active role to shape the destiny of the company, otherwise Microsoft will die in the long run.

 I don’t think there is such a clear division between these two “generations”. Surely there are differences between people who think of Windows as the platform for everything else, and the ones who are releasing web services such as Sky Drive and products such as Popfly thinking of the Web as the platform.Now the problem I see is that these two are a bit too integrated within each other than it first looks.

Take the whole buzz about Silverlight 2.0. Silverlight is anything but an open technology, will probably be standardized by the Ecma, and has deep ties within other Microsoft technologies, such as WP/F, WC/F (the core technologies of Vista and .Net). If Silverlight’s use grows significantly, we will be at risk of having a non-interoperable Internet. In other words, the Internet as we know it will cease to exist and people will face the problems they had when Netscape was dead and Internet Explorer 5.5 was ruling the web sites. You will notice that the .Net platform has become yet another tool for maintaining Microsoft’s monopoly through the well-established practice of the “embrace and extend”, unclear legal terms, and the refusal to interoperate at the core of its design. Silverlight has been selectively developed for the Windows and Mac platform; Novell is desesperately trying to do something with their Moonlight project and calling that interoperability.

But let’s take a look deeper in the .Net platform. At its core, the main and probably the most ambitious layer of .Net is the CLR (Common Language Runtime). Touted as a revolution when it surfaced around the release of Windows XP, this CLR theoretically allows for pretty much any language, even those outside of Microsoft realm, to work on the .Net platform. To the best of my knowledge, this stuff actually works most of the time. The problem is, CLR lies deep down the .Net architecture so you pretty much have to trust Microsoft on what they plan to do with their products and platforms and hope they will keep CLR able to churn your own code. It is a major strategic issue and once again, this is not an interoperable technology, and it works at such a fundamental level of the infrastructure (be it the Internet or a traditional applicative stack) that you find yourself locked in with it very quickly. Needless to say, CLR is not open source. You can have some detailed documentation on .Net, even get it to compile in debugging mode, but you cannot modify it.

So here we have SilverLight resting on a WP/F (Windows Presentation Foundation, aka XAML, aka Avallon) and WC/F (Windows Communications Foundation, aka Indigo) and being positionned as the competitor to Adobe’s Flash and the contender for the whole multimedia/interactive layer of websites. That’s where I have some trouble believing about the two Microsofts. To be sure, there is some innovative initiatives at the level of Live services. Technologies such as FeedSync are very impressive and do bring value.

 However, there are still some big issues with the search engine performance, and services such as Office Live are simply not compelling enough until you bind them with SharePoint, another great example of customer’s lock-in and control of data by one vendor.

Last but not least, I’d like to mention here what I see as the paradox of Cloud Computing for Microsoft. I think there should not be one player out there who could ideally be better suited to offer Cloud Computing services (massive storage, grid computing, data ubiquity and web apps) than Microsoft. Its installed base and its control over the productivity market would be their greatest assets in this endeavour.

But I don’t think Microsoft can stop thinking outside of the customer’s lock-in mode, and Cloud Computing is just the opposite. If you want to offer compelling “cloud” solutions, then it’s all about easiness, data control by the customer, data portability, and estimating the value of applications at the level of mere commodities. That is, unfortunately, not what Microsoft’s business model is about. So if there are two Microsofts in the same company, I’m afraid they are just like their formats: not compatible.

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The Cloud, Web 2.0