Microsoft mourns loss of ISO votes (and math jokes)

Welcome to Wednesday's IT Blogwatch: in which Microsoft loses the standards vote on its "Open Office XML" spec. Not to mention Eric's favorite math jokes...

Peter Sayer says:

Microsoft Corp. has failed in its attempt to have its Office Open XML document format fast-tracked straight to the status of an ISO standard. The proposal must now be revised to take into account the negative comments made during the voting process, which was completed by the Geneva-based ISO standards body on Sunday.
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A proposal must pass two voting hurdles to be approved as an ISO standard: It must win the support of two-thirds of voting national standards bodies that participated in work on the proposal, known as "P" members, and also of three quarters of all voting members. Open XML failed on both counts.
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Many of the national standard bodies voting against the proposal accompanied their votes with comments on what must be changed before they will vote in favor. ISO's Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC-1), which is in charge of the Open XML submission, now must reconcile those objections with the text of the proposal and find a compromise that can win enough votes to get through. That could be difficult. For example, the French Association for Standardization, known as Afnor, wants to tear the proposal into two pieces. [more]

Eric Bangeman adds:

All 41 of the of the countries that had worked on the proposal participated in the vote. There were 17 "yes" votes, 15 "no" votes, and 9 abstentions. Without counting the abstentions, that works out to 53.12 percent approval, far short of the two-thirds majority needed. Of the 87 national standards bodies voting, 18 voted against OOXML, leaving OOXML just shy of the 75 percent threshold for that vote
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The run up to the vote had been long and contentious, with allegations that Microsoft had tried to stack the vote in its favor aired last week ... There have also been arguments against OOXML based on the format's technical merits ... With the vote going against Microsoft, the proposed standard for OOXML will have to revised in order to take into account the "with comments" votes. This could entail changes to the file format itself, which would then require updates to Office 2007 in order to make it fully compliant with any revisions to the OOXML format
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Microsoft is putting a positive spin on the results, noting that 74 percent of the member countries supported OOXML's ratification. [more]

Indeed it is -- here's Microsoft's Brian Jones:

74% ... is actually quite a bit higher than I was expecting (I thought we'd be closer to 60% at this point) ... This large scale support should set us up really nicely going into stage 3 of the fast track process. The Ecma TC 45 editor (with the help of TC 45) is now going to sort through all the comments coming in and work towards a more improved specification based on those comments. At that point we'll see a number of the countries who voted "no with comments" switch their vote over to "yes" and we should see Open XML approved after the ballot resolution meeting next year.

Between now and then though there is going to be a ton of work. There will be thousands and thousands of comments to work through. I'm confident that we'll be able to get some solid solutions in place that make it easier to sort and address the comments, but it's going to be pretty intense. I think we have some great momentum right now though which should make it easier for everyone to work together on reaching consensus. [more]

At which, Andy Updegrove scoffs:

Microsoft issued a press release early this morning, seeking to put the best face on the OOXML in advance of the official announcement ... [it] focuses on the degree of participation (51 National Bodies), and level of "support" (74% of all qualified votes, without differentiating between P and O [observer] countries). It also refers to this level of support at "this preliminary stage of the process," and compares it "favorably" to the number of countries participating in the votes to consider ODF and PDF, but without mentioning percentage levels of support:  the OpenDocument Format received a total of 31 votes - all to approve.  Moreover, there were so few comments offered along with those votes that no Ballot Resolution Meeting was required.
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Rather incredibly, some early articles in the press are buying the Microsoft press release at face value.
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I have consistently predicted that the vast majority of the O members that upgraded to P membership would vote in favor of approval, presumably inspired to do so at the urging of Microsoft ...  of the 11 upgrades, 9 voted to approve, or approve with comments, and only one voted against approval (Ecuador; Trinidad and Tobago abstained). [more]

Pamela Jones has more:

Microsoft is telling it in their press release that 74% of all qualified votes approved ... That is downright silly. If that were true, it would have been approved, not disapproved. All you need for approval is any number greater than 66.6% and not too many no votes. This press release is a masterpiece, no doubt about it ... [The] UK disapproved, as did Ireland. So did Canada. So did the Czech Republic and Korea. Malaysia abstained (which is unexplained, since it was reported the technical committee voted No with Comments). Oddly, I don't see Hungary on the list ... What about the O members? Almost to a man, they voted to approve. What an amazing coincidence.
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So. There you are. Microsoft's truthiness. A loss is a win in their PR universe. By the way, despite what they say about ODF, there were no negative votes when ODF was voted on and approved as a standard. So what does it mean? Money can't buy you love, despite my fears shared by some. Not tech love, anyway. If you try to fast track an unbaked format, tech folks will notice it's not done yet. [more]

John Murrell cuts to the core:

Nobody knows better than Microsoft the benefits of having your product established as a standard, de facto or otherwise, so Redmond had to be a bit disappointed today that its, shall we say, aggressive lobbying efforts had failed to get its Open Office XML document format on the fast track for approval. [more]

But BadAnalogyGuy just yawns:

Regardless of what the ISO approves or disapproves, Microsoft will continue to go the way they want to go and the 90% of the Office customer base will follow them, just as will the pre-install bundled customers. Other office suites are advised to ignore the upcoming de facto standard at their own peril. [more]

So MightyMartian reminds us how we got to where we are:

Where it may ... affect their business is when governments and organizations began demanding things be stored in open formats. If OOXML isn't recognized by bodies like the ISO as an open format, it could be the first very big chink in Microsoft's armor. [more]

Here's btarval with thoughts about lessons learned:

All the people involved in shutting down this attempt at extending a monopoly by hacking the voting system through bribery deserve a hearty congratulations in stopping this for now.

I submit though, that the job isn't over, but incomplete. The ISO seriously needs to look at fixing how Microsoft attempted to hijack the process to suit their own gain, and ignore the real purpose of International Standards. Until this fixed, we'll see more of the same, on a greater scale. And not just by Microsoft. The end result would be the weakening of the usefulness of real standards, if the current system is left as it is. [more]

And azrider has some suggestions for ISO:

1. You have to be a dues paying member prior to the submission for consideration in order to vote on that submission. That stops countries from being induced to jump in simply to influence the voting on that one issue.
2. You have to participate in a majority of the discussions (say 75 percent) in order to vote (no last minute O->P upgrades of NBs which had not been involved in any of the discussions).
3. Representatives of the organization requesting the submission are disqualified from voting in any National Body (ECMA in this case).
4. Representatives of any company or organization involved in creating the specification of the proposed standard are disqualified from voting in any National Body (ECMA and Microsoft in this case).
5. Any National Body which is found to have irregularities in their process would be disqualified from participation in all votes for a period of time (say 1 year for the first offense, 5 years for the second). [more]

Buffer overflow:

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Previously in IT Blogwatch

• Please look at our ads: they pay the bills (et les cowboys)
• Muni-Wi-Fi crashes and burns (and old-ad 'shopping)
• Vista SP1: coming soon...ish (and burning meme)
• Is the gPhone coming in 2007? (and 2001)
• Microsoft bashed in OOXML shens (and comparing loos)
• Older posts

And finally... Eric's Favorite Math Jokes [hat tip: Puramu]

Richi Jennings is an independent analyst/adviser/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, and spam. A 20 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. You too can pretend to be Richi's friend on Facebook, or just use boring old email: blogwatch@richi.co.uk.