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Web 2.0

As the deadline of the 2 ^nd of May is drawing near, I thought it useful to clarify some of the actual concerns surrounding the standardization of OOXML. Perhaps this piece will help dispelling some myths.

So what is going on , and what is left to be done before OOXML gets its now more than ever dubious ISO stamp? First, it is important to understand that we still have to see and to read the final draft of OOXML.

The deadline for the Ecma to publish this final version is on the 2 ^nd of May. There should be no doubt about wether this document will be produced in time. Of course, wondering about its quality will be another matter and a legitimate one at that. Where it becomes interesting is that as far as I was able to gather, the process does not stop at that stage. Once we will have that document (once again, it is dubbed « final draft) we will have a period of time to review it and if necessary, to appeal to it if the quality of the document is not satisfactory.

Before anybody from Microsoft starts to call me disingenuous, let me just get this straight: Despite what I may think of the whole OOXML standardization process, despite how critical I am of the existing ISO processes, I have no problem with the simple reality of what we went through because of OOXML. To be very factual, OOXML has received the appropriate number of votes in order to become an ISO standard. What remains to be done might sound incredible: OOXML has to be published first, then definitely approved. I am pretty sure that it will very likely become an ISO standard, but that’s ultimately up to the ISO, after the document’s publication and the necessary review period that will stamp it as an ISO standard (or not).

I wanted to point that out because I increasingly get the feeling that some want us to forget this process and to switch to some other topic (XPS for instance?). I know that there are more interesting topics to work on; after all, ODF 1.2 is not that far out in distance, and I expect all the love and kisses to be sent by our friends in Redmond. But I am still sticking to it not clinging, but sticking, not because of a perverse and pathetic hope I would appear to have against OOXML, but because I believe that the bells and whistles have been taken out a bit too fast.

We want the spec. We want it as bad as we wanted the answers from the Ecma in December, as bad as we want the whole OOXML and as bad as we want to have the specification of the format called OOXML and actually used inside MS Office 2007. Groklaw has an interesting article about it, but allow me to disagree with Groklaw for this time: This is hardly a scoop, just read my blog, Rob Weir’s, GullFOSS or Stephane Rodriguez. It was a known fact for several months now. Okay, I hear you say, it never hurts to trumpet out the truth. What this implies is that Microsoft will not only have to harmonize its several specifications, it may want to do something with the format used by MS Office 2007, 2008, and soon 2009.

Unless of course, Microsoft remains idle and does anything with MS Office 2007. After all, there is no legal nor moral requirement to use an ISO standard; but you can still claim you use one in front of your customers. I’m sure it already happened in Bercy….

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OOXML

You may recall one of my previous post about the FOSSBazaar project. Following that post, I was invited by the FOSSBazaar team to join the project. I would like to seize that opportunity for having let my company and myself to join the FOSSBazaar project. You will find our announcement here . As an introductory “article”, I have blogged directly on the FOSSBazaar web site about the notion of community, in the hope it could clarify my position on the notion of community and its role inside Free and Open Source Software.Enjoy your Sunday! 

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Ars Aperta, Free Software, Open Source

Ah, I see you were expecting me to comment on the olympic catastrophy induced by the race for the flame around the world. No. Today I am going to tell you about a protest that has taken place in Norway at the occasion of the ISO SC34 meeting, where odd decisions about standards were taken. While the SC34 was having the brilliant idea to create a workgroup focused on the interoperability between ODF and OOXML (hardly an idea sponsored by Microsoft) , a protest against the standardization of OOXML at the ISO was taking place in the streets of Oslo. The initiative came from the members of the Norwegian standards committee. Remember that while 21 members of this organization had voted against the approval of OOXML, 2 members (including Microsoft) had voted in favour of it and as a result, the final decision of Norway had been to approve OOXML. (This kind of oddities seem to be reproductible on a global scale. It must certainly be because of the growing numbers of young, former top models of Italian descent in tabloids). You can learn more about this protest here but for sake of clarity, I have quoted the speech of M.Pepper, the chair of the Norwegian standards committee below. Enjoy!

“Friends, Bloggers, Free Coders, Supporters of Open Standards!
We are not here today in order to bash Microsoft.

We are here because we believe in open standards.

We are not even here today because we are opposed to OOXML.

We are here because we are opposed to OOXML as an ISO standard.

We are not here because we want to discredit the ISO.
We are here because we want to defend ISO’s integrity.

We are here because we want to draw attention to the scandalous behaviour of the people in Standard Norway whose job it is to represent Norwegian users and software vendors.

And we are here because we want to prevent the adoption of a damaging IT standard in Norway.

I will get back to this shortly. First I want to spend a few minutes explaining some background for the benefit of people who don’t understand what this issue is all about. Please bear with me.

This issue is all about documents – digital documents.

It’s about how we store documents and how we interchange documents with one another. I’m talking about the kind of documents many of you create every day: reports, letters, articles, school essays, books, theses, spreadsheets, and the like, using programs like Microsoft Word and Excel.

But let us forget documents for a moment and talk instead about hair dryers.

Let me show you an ordinary hair dryer, bought in a shop here in Norway. It has a plug. The plug has two pins. I can plug this hair dryer into any electricity socket anywhere in Norway.

The reason I can do this is because all sockets are the same. There is a standard for sockets in Norway.

The same standard is used in large parts of Europe and elsewhere: If I go to Denmark, I can take this hair dryer, plug it in, and it just works.

I can do the same in Finland, Sweden, Germany and many other countries. I just plug it in and it works.

But if I go to England, I can’t just plug it in, because the sockets there are different. They have 3 square pins instead of 2 rounds ones.

If I go to the US or Japan, I can’t just plug it in, because their sockets are different again. They have 2 flat pins instead of 2 round ones.

Documents are like hair dryers. We want to be able to plug them in to any piece of software and be able to work with them. But that’s not how it is today. If you create a document in Microsoft Word and send it to someone else, that person cannot use it unless they also have Microsoft Word.

I believe that is wrong.

People should not have to pay money to Microsoft in order to read my documents. The way things are at the moment, Microsoft effectively has control of the documents you and I create.

That’s not how it should be.

Open standards can solve this problem, and that is why I believe in them. That is why I have spent the last 13 years representing Norway as a volunteer in a committee for international standards. I have worked with many standards, including SGML, XML and Topic Maps, and I have been Chairman of the Norwegian ISO committee since 1995.

Two years ago, my committee approved an open standard for office documents called ODF. ODF was developed through an open and democratic process in an organization called OASIS.

The purpose of ODF was to provide an alternative to what we call “proprietary” formats. Instead of document formats that are owned and controlled by a single vendor and that force you to use a particular piece of software, the ODF people wanted to define an open format that would make it possible to plug your documents into any piece of software.

ODF was developed, as I said, through an open and democratic process. But one important player was absent from that process. The vendor who dominates this market, Microsoft, refused to participate, and they have refused to support ODF since it became a standard.

Instead they decided to create a competing standard called OOXML and to use Ecma as a back door into ISO.

That is why we are here today.

We are not against OOXML itself. In fact, we thank Microsoft for finally after twenty years of market dominance documenting its format in an open specification.

However, we are against ISO’s approval of OOXML. The reason for this is simple: It is not in the interests of users like you and me to have two standards for the same purpose. It would be as if Microsoft were to come here and start installing sockets with 3 pins rather than 2, and then force us to buy their hair dryers.

We are not against ISO either. What we are against is the way in which what has always been an open and democratic organization, where each country has one vote, has been subverted by a large multinational corporation.

I do not hate Microsoft. I would like to welcome Microsoft into the standards community, but only if Microsoft abides by the rules and in particular the spirit of the standardization process.

Microsoft has a bad reputation in the standards community. They are the Big Bad Wolf of standards, just like IBM was 20 years ago. But IBM has shown that it is possible to change.

I hope that Microsoft too will change. I think it is possible. But it will only happen if we, the users, force them to change.

Microsoft needs our help. We have to tell them to stop behaving like a bull in a china shop. They have to help them understand that standards work is about co-operation, not about conflict. Standards should not be created through warfare. They should be created through collaboration.

Microsoft has a lot to learn, and it will take time. It will also take time for Microsoft to earn the trust of all those whose work they have sabotaged during the last twenty years.

Microsoft now says that it now believes in open standards. They need to understand that it will take time before everyone really trusts them. They have to start showing less arrogance and more humility, and they have to prove in practice that they mean what they say.

They can take the first step by admitting that they were wrong not to support ODF.

I call on Microsoft to admit its mistake in trying to force OOXML through ISO’s fast track procedure, and I call on them to support ODF.

I call on Ecma to withdraw OOXML from ISO and keep control of it themselves. We need it for legacy documents.

I call on Standard Norway to admit that it was wrong to overrule its own committee of experts and on them to change Norway’s vote from Yes to No.

I call on the Norwegian Government to stand firm against Microsoft and not to approve OOXML as a Norwegian standard.

Finally I call on users all around the world to look to Norway and follow the example we have set. Raise a storm of protest! Uncover the irregularities that have taken place in your country! Insist that your Governments change their vote to reflect the interests of ordinary people and not the interests of monopolists and bureaucrats.

Kjære nordmenn, vi er ikke alene. Dear Norwegians, we are not alone.

Countries representing the majority of the world’s population voted No to OOXML and for good reason.

Let me quote just one example. This is from a speech given by the South African Minister for Public Service and Administration, Ms. Geraldine J Fraser-Moleketi. She was speaking at a Conference on the Digital Commons and Open Source Software in Dakar, Senegal just three weeks ago. Here is what she said:

“The adoption of open standards by governments is a critical factor in building interoperable information systems which are open, accessible, fair, and which reinforce democratic culture and good governance practices”

ODF is an open standard developed by a technical committee within the OASIS consortium South Africa is amongst a growing number of National Governments who have adopted ODF over the past year.

It is unfortunate that the leading vendor of office software, which enjoys considerable dominance in the market, chose not to participate and support ODF in its products, but rather to develop its own competing document standard…

If it is successful, it is difficult to see how consumers will benefit from these two overlapping ISO standards. I would like to appeal to vendors to listen to the demands of consumers as well as Free Software developers. Please work together to produce interoperable document standards. The proliferation of multiple standards in this space is confusing and costly.

Ms. Fraser-Moleketi: The people of Norway are with you, and we beg your forgiveness for the unacceptable behaviour of our standards bureaucracy.

We were robbed of victory in ISO by a mere 3 votes.

Without the irregularities in Norway, that would have been just 2 votes. Reports are coming in of similar irregularities in other countries, including France and Denmark. Let’s get those non-representative votes changed. Let’s throw OOXML out of ISO.

Microsoft thinks it has won this battle, but I say it’s not over yet.

It’s never over until the fat lady sings, and this fat lady only just got started. ”

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OOXML, Open Standards

I shall not complain that much about what happened with OOXML. In fact, the act of standardizing OOXML has not really brought any significant advantages to OOXML. ODF is an ISO standard and so is OOXML. That’s what I call a draw, and Microsoft has been battling hard for a bloody draw, as in the end, the word has spread and everybody now knows about the insane amount of pressures Microsoft has applied to the ISO, the IEC, the ITTF and the national standards bodies. But what will be the outcome of all this? Let me outline the following steps in Microsoft’s strategy in regard of standardization. This can be described as a pincer movement.

 First, Microsoft will try to kill ODF. They can try to do this at two levels: at the level of the OASIS ODF TC, and at the level of the next iteration of ODF, ODF 1.2 (due sometimes this Fall and later to be brought on to the ISO). You can rest assured that Microsoft will exert pressures on the OASIS ODF committees either by attempting to stuff it, or by pressuring players such as Novell, Patrick Durusau, or even Sun Microsystems. One of them is a puppet of Microsoft, bound by heavy investment of Microsoft disguised as a legal and business partnership agreement (Novell), another one made an odd trip not that far from Redmond and came back with a completely new view on OOXML and ODF (P. Durusau), while another one has a strong legal settlement with Microsoft and may not afford to lose it for obvious business reasons (Sun).

 Another way for Microsoft to attack ODF would be to oppose the standardization of ODF 1.2. They will use the same tactics they had with OOXML, but in the opposite direction. It will be funny to watch how the ISO and the national standards bodies will switch all of a sudden to a demanding stance on ODF 1.2, which will only be an iteration of an existing ISO standard. I am afraid we will witness such a shocking twist in the standardization bodies’ attitude. Romania, for instance, might completely change its happy-go-merry stance it had on OOXML (Approve without comments, twice) to an eagle-eye, unforgiving and watchdoggish scowl of ODF (Disapprove with… interesting comments). Heck, they might even use their former “laxist” attitude they had with OOXML as an excuse to block ODF, those masters of cynicism.

 But all this is just one wing of  the pincer movement I am describing here. The other part of the strategy was however clear ever since the beginning. OOXML is the first chapter into an attempt by Microsoft to shove its own technologies to the ISO. Next in line will be XPS. If you don’t know what XPS is, check it out from the source. Yes, you got that right. PDF reloaded. Now with more patents, OOXML dependencies, and legal traps. What’s the advantage you ask? None. But the respectable industry players we saw in every national standards body (understand: Microsoft’s partners) will insist that it will offer them clarity and a potential new source of revenue. This time though Microsoft got really clever: They went where Adobe had forgotten to go for ages, to the printing industry. This time we will see HP really coming out with flowers for Redmond. In France , HP never joined the works of our committee but they got really supporting of OOXML all of a sudden, around Friday night and after somebody  (obviously being married to a woman of Italian descent with a nice hat, blue eyes, brown hair, ) had been given instructions to play nice with Microsoft. What you say, “is the French government bending to the will of Microsoft? Is it weaker than corporations?” Depends whom you ask, who you can contact, and who you supported. Enough said. Back to XPS.

Well XPS is, believe or not, a standard in the making. And since it is being “developed” (ah, the game of mirrors, illusions and appearances) by the Ecma, it will be pushed through the very same Fast-Track process the Ecma has been lavishly endowed to use with OOXML.

 Would you believe me if I wrote that I knew what’s in store after XPS? Let’s bet I know it. After OOXML shall come XPS. And once Microsoft will have locked the whole industry with its document formats, they will try to do the same with multimedia formats. Expect the future Windows Media formats, their proprietary video codecs to follow the same path. Their glue shall be Silverlight, which in turn rests on Windows Presentation Foundation and the .NET framework. The license shall be the famous OSP, effectively barring GPL implementations and leaving many other issues, such as the RAND mode applied on the covered technologies, in the shadows, but always as a critical factor to consider. Novell will follow, as usual, with incomplete and patent-riddled implementations that you will only be able to safely use with Novell products. 

And then? Then,  as Shakespeare once magnificently wrote, then there shall be silence. At last, silence to win, silence to dominate, silence to influence, silence to pressure, and silence to silence them all.   

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Free Software, OOXML, OOo Postings, Open Standards, OpenDocument Format