IT and politics

The SiS working group received vast amounts of comments on OOXML, from several parties that had paid the required fee of 600 SEK / 65 EUR (yep…). All of them but one also submitted a recommendation for a resolution to OOXML; 27 companies suggested a YES vote, but did not write even one sentence to justify it. 2 companies that said YES made very brief statements – just as meaningless.

9 companies said NO and (in most cases) presented conditions for approval in appropriate detail (most were at least an A4). In mid-August, we finally concluded a list of 173 suggestions, not counting some general argumentation or the fact that some comments were collapsed into one.

Now, somehow the idea was presented on Monday that this “clear majority” in favour of OOXML as-is should help us in our decision, and that it’s important to look at who submitted these comments; I get the feeling that they didn’t buy my foolish thought of considering the comments as such (which, as it happens, were basically non-existent on the YES-side). It was also hinted that this approach would be justified (statistically or otherwise), in comparison with e.g. the Eurovision where anyone can call in… (Lordi, anyone?)

Anyway, then there were the thoughts of “diversity” as a reason for many standards, and that “we’re not ready for a single language (Esperanto)”, wherefore “we aren’t ready for a single standard”…

I especially liked one of the companies’ presentation:

• ECMA is good (so there)
• The interests of the customers is important (I hinted that maybe, possibly, it’s Sweden’s interest that’s relevant (at the very least), please forgive me)
• There’s no time to deal with technical deficiencies (so we just ignore them? Convenient!)
• There will always be problems, no standard is perfect (this is a good thing, right?)
• The fast-track procedure has to be safe (therefore it is, Q.E.D.?)
• It’s about taking control from Microsoft (no matter such details as Office 2007 doing something else entirely, or the patent problems, or the un-implementability of OOXML for anyone)
• We say yes to ODF too (therefore there is no problem with adding another standard)

I think that about concludes it; most YES voters didn’t bother to justify their stance or to at least suggest that even one of the 170+ proposals need to be sent to ISO.

The only interesting speech at the meeting was given by Georg Greve of Google, who held a very thorough presentation of various problems. Their position is also available as a PDF document.

Summary from an NyT article: (roughly)

Microsoft admits that it’s behind the SiS voting coup that resulted in proposing the OOXML document format as a standard.- Mistakes have been done at our end, says Klas Hammar, Microsoft.

Klas goes on to say that this action was done by a “individual employee” and that the action “was not authorized” by Microsoft.

I think this speaks for itself…

Update 17:25: the following people from Microsoft were present at the SiS meeting on Monday:

• Jonas Persson, technical director
• Klas Hammar, business area director
  
• Peter Centellini

I’m sure they were all “individual employees” and had no clue what happened at the meeting…

IDG just published an update on the Microsoft scandal.

Quick and dirty translation of the summary:

Microsoft offered extra ‘market subsidies’ to partners that participated in the Monday vote about the Open XML format. This appears from internal communication that CS has seen. ‘It was badly formulated and would never have gone out’ says the business area chief of the company, Klas Hammar.

Update: a partial English story is available at OS2 World.
Update 14:18: Groklaw also has a story.

On Monday, 27 August, the Swedish Standards Institute (SiS) declared its coming vote for the “Office Open XML” (OOXML) standard proposal initiated by Microsoft. All such ISO participants in this matter must vote no later than 2 September.

The working group that recommended this decision to SiS originally had 12 members, where a NO vote was very likely. However, on the meeting appeared 23 new members, most of them Microsoft partners. (Many of those became members even when the meeting was about to start.) As a result, a YES vote was enforced.

This is just a brief update to existing information available from e.g. the FFII Sweden press release and countless blogs and articles.

I was present at this meeting and just received confirmation from SiS of the voting results: (please see the FFII PR for some more details)

Vote results: 25 YES, 6 NO, 4 members absent.

New YES votes: (19 members since 23 Aug. 2007 or later)

• Camako Data AB
• Connecta AB
• Cornerstone
• Emric AB
• Exor AB
• Fishbone Systems AB
• Formpipe Software
• FS System AB
• HP
• iBizkit AB
• IDE
• IT-Vision AB
• KnowIT
• Modul1
• Nordic Station AB
• Sogeti
• Solid Park AB
• SourceTech
• TietoEnator

New NO vote: (entered 23 Aug. 2007)

• Google

Old YES votes: (6 members)

• Diamo AB
• EPiServer
• HumanData
• IAMCP Sweden Chapter
• Microsoft
• WM-Data Sverige AB

Old NO votes: (latest member was registered on 9 Aug. 2007)

• Illuminet
• Kungliga biblioteket
• Riksarkivet (chair)
• Sun
• Verva

Members leaving the meeting before the vote: (all but IBM (old member) filed applications after 23 Aug. 2007)

• Cybernetics (Microsoft Gold Partner)
• IBM (NO)
• Readsoft AB (Microsoft Certified Partner)
• Strand Interconnect AB (Microsoft Gold Partner)

I have some more info on the meeting etc., I will try to publish this shortly.