Evidence of Microsoft Influencing OOXML Votes in Nordic States
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As the date draws near for the first round of discussions before the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) on the topic of adopting Microsoft's Office Open XML format, allegations have arisen that Microsoft may have used influential tactics to sway the outcomes of recommendation votes in Sweden, Denmark, and Norway.
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Siblings are the first ever to be convicted for sending boatloads of junk e-mail pushing bogus products. Also: Microsoft takes MSN music download on a Euro trip....  Nokia begins legal battle against European counterparts.... and more.
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Bills seeking to mandate the use of open document formats were introduced in various states this year. But heavy lobbying by Microsoft has helped to squelch or water down all of the proposals.
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Microsoft Corp.'s Office Open XML file format won approval from the Ecma International standards body. The vote could make it easier for users and vendors to justify supporting both Open XML and the rival OpenDocument format.
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Text of report by Estonian newspaper Postimees website on 5 September  [Commentary by Rein Veidemann: "Media Circus"]  Elections make for fatty raw material to the free media. The supply of news and opinions is far greater than the demand.
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PC Magazine - A Microsoft official says IBM was the only company that voted against approving its OpenXML specification as a standard.
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(InfoWorld) - With ISO's Sept. 2 voting deadline looming, the recently retired secretary general of ECMA International defended Microsoft's Office Open XML document format against fierce technical criticism. "Give me any standard, and I bet you I can find an error," said Jan Van Den Beld, who retired in April after 16 years running Geneva-based ECMA, in a telephone interview on Monday with Computerworld. ECMA is shepherding Open XML, the default format used by Office 2007 documents, through ISO's traditionally difficult approval process. The international standards group has set a Sept. 2 deadline for the 20 nations that are members of the ISO Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC-1) to vote on whether to approve Open XML. Van Den Beld, who oversaw ECMA's approval of 229 technical standards, many of which were later approved by ISO, also predicts that Open XML will be approved next spring after a follow-up ISO meeting. "Ultimately, I think it will get through," he said. Friends and foes line up That's no sure thing, however. The document format faces strong opposition from grassroots advocates who want to see free productivity software such as that of OpenOffice.org gain a foothold, as well as from vendors such as IBM. Opponents argue that Open XML is redundant in light of the technically similar Open Document Format for Office Applications (known as ODF) which is native to OpenOffice.org and was approved as a standard more than a year ago by ISO. They also argue the Open XML proposal is too long (6,500-plus pages) to evaluate during this abbreviated fast-track process, that it's riddled with inconsistencies and technical errors, and that it covertly continues to effectively grant Microsoft control of the standard. So far, organizations representing Brazil and China (original news report in Mandarin, with translation available) have said publicly that they plan to vote against Open XML. India is close to finalizing the same position. On the other side, Germany, the United States, and according to Van Den Beld, Switzerland are all moving to vote in favor of Open XML. Dueling standards wouldn't be a first A Netherlands native who served as an executive with Philips Electronics before joining ECMA in the mid-1980s, Van Den Beld said that if Open XML is approved, it would not be the first time that two technically similar formats have become standards. As an example, he pointed to the multiple DVD recording formats -- including DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD-RAM, and DVD+RW -- that were all approved first by ECMA and then ISO. "People believe a standards body has complete control over this. That is completely exaggerated," Van Den Beld said. "You cannot take a position such as 'Sony, I like you better than Toshiba.' As soon as you do that, you are no longer neutral." Multiple, similar standards, while "not a good result, are, because of patent wars, often an inevitable result," he said. Merging Open XML and ODF is also not the solution, Van Den Beld said. "The structure of Open XML is so different from ODF, I don't see how we can bring them together into one standard," he said. Regarding objections to the Open XML application because of its length, Van Den Beld said that when Sun Microsystems submitted the Java programming language to ECMA in 1999, the application -- which was eventually withdrawn -- was more than 8,000 pages long. While acknowledging that an Open XML standard may not arm Microsoft rivals and partners with all of the information to successfully build ancillary or even competing products, Van Den Beld says that is not the point. "A standard is not a product description. It tells you what to do, not how to do it," he said. ECMA and the standards ecosystem Created in 1961, ECMA International, which was known as the European Computer Manufacturers Association until 1994, was the first to certify hundreds of technical standards, including the aforementioned DVD formats as well as standards for local-area networks. He called ECMA's relationship with the more prestigious ISO a "perfect symbiosis," with ECMA helping ISO filter out unworthy standards applications and quickly ratifying the ones that were most urgently needed. "ISO is necessarily rather cumbersome because, let's face it, there are many, many players worldwide," he said. "At ECMA, our philosophy is, 'Let's write down all of the technical details of the darn thing and then give it to ISO.'" Far from being rivals, ECMA "is very good friends" with other lesser standards bodies such as OASIS, which gave ODF its first approval, and World-Wide Web Consortium, Van Den Beld claimed. Informal talks about the possibility of merging the groups have even occurred, he said. As for accusations that ECMA -- and he -- are too cozy with Microsoft, Van Den Beld said he has never consulted with or worked at Microsoft. And he pointed out that ECMA has occasionally antagonized Microsoft -- most famously in 1996, when it led the successful charge to force Microsoft to make the application programming interface to Windows 3.1 a public standard. ECMA has already agreed to help ISO address the official "comments," or objections, to Open XML, Van Den Beld said. He acknowledged that while there are many objections, he believes, based on past experience, that if all parties "work like mad in the next four months," a sufficiently refined Open XML specification can be created by ISO's ballot resolution meeting in February, during which JTC-1 members can change the votes they cast in September. A final result would likely be known within one or two months after that, he said.
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft will participate in a meeting later this month with vendors and organizations that are backing several different identity management systems, an indication thatÂ cooperation between the software giant and its peersÂ is improving. The meeting, part of an initiative called the Concordia Project, strives to improve interoperability between Microsoft's CardSpace and OpenID, two identity management systems, and protocols for identity management supported by an industry trade group, the Liberty Alliance, said Roger Sullivan, president of its management board. Vendors will hear from companies such as General Motors, Boeing, and AOL about how they're trying to integrate various identity management systems into their operations, Sullivan said. "Many of these protocols today are very geek-centric," said Sullivan, who is also vice president of Oracle's identity management section. "They're not very people-friendy." A major issue is how vendors can use different authentication mechanisms in their operations. For example, a financial planning Web site could allow users to forecast how much their retirement fund may be worth in 30 years. Eventually, the user may want to buy a service from the financial planner and migrate that same data to an environment that uses stronger authentication, Sullivan said. This means there would need to be more interoperability between the protocols used by OpenID, CardSpace, and Liberty-enabled applications. "I would more expect that we will have nuanced changes or extensions to existing protocols to enable the interoperability," Sullivan said. The Concordia Project, set up by the Liberty Alliance, hopes to release its first set of open standards by the end of the year, Sullivan said Microsoft said in February at the RSA Conference it wouldÂ integrate CardSpace and OpenID, an open-source standard for logging into Web sites. The work would help mitigate potential security risks, such as so-called "man-in-the-middle" attacks, where a hacker can intercept identity information as it's in transit to a Web site, officials said. NovellÂ is also working with Microsoft on InfoCard Selector, a so-called "digital wallet" for handling identity information. Microsoft's commitment to the Concordia project shows it has realized the importance of interoperability, said Graham Titterington, principal analyst at Ovum. "Microsoft has already come a long way in terms of 12 months ago," Titterington said. "It's not a surprising development as a year ago I think it would have been." The meeting will take place on June 26 at Catalyst 2007, an enterprise IT conference in San Francisco. Â
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Microsoft chalked up a couple of government contract wins in the UK this week. But while Redmond touts total cost of ownership studies (TCO), an open source consultant says the numbers don&#39;t add up.
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(InfoWorld) - It may be Valentine's Day but there are no love letters being exchanged between duelling electronic document formats, ODF (OpenDocument Format) and Open XML. Instead, Microsoft, the backer of Open XML, took a public swing at ODF supporter IBM. Microsoft posted an open letter on its Web site Wednesday titled "Interoperability, Choice, and Open XML," signed by two of its general managers -- Tom Robertson, who handles interoperability and standards, and Jean Paoli, responsible for interoperability and XML architecture. In the letter, Microsoft claimed that IBM is attempting to slow down the approval process by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) to recognize Open XML as an international standard. IBM declined to comment publicly on the letter, but a spokesman said the company had previously addressed many of the issues raised by Microsoft. In May, ISO approved ODF as an international standard and is currently considering whether to award the same recognition to Open XML. ODF has the backing of such companiesÂ as IBM, Google, Novell, Sun, and open-source players. Open XML is the default file format for Microsoft's Office 2007 desktop applications suite. What has yet to become clear is which document format users will favor -- ODF or Open XML -- or whether they'd adopt a mix of the two. Some vendors, such as Corel, have already announced they're adopting a neutral approach and will support both formats in their software. IT users and governments around the world are expressing interest in open-standard document formats to help ensure continued access to archived information and also free them from having to use Microsoft's Office software. In December, standards body ECMA International voted 20 to 1 to approve Open XML as a global standard and submitted the format to ISO for its approval. The dissenting vote came from IBM, according to Microsoft. "IBM has declared victory in blocking Open XML," the Microsoft letter alleges, claiming that IBM is holding up the standards process in a "blatant attempt" to limit choice in the marketplace designed to favor the vendor's Lotus Notes groupware, which doesn't support Open XML. Microsoft and IBM are the two leading desktop collaboration software vendors with IBM's Notes pitted against Microsoft's Outlook and Exchange software. Microsoft is fearful that ODF may become the de facto electronic document format by default simply because it was first to achieve ISO recognition as an international standard, the letter stated. "In XML-based file formats, which can easily interoperate through translators and be implemented side by side in productivity software, this exclusivity makes no sense -- except to those who lack confidence in their ability to compete in the marketplace on the technical merits of their alternative standard," the letter continued. "This campaign to limit choice and force their single standard on consumers should be resisted." The timing of the release of Microsoft's letter is interesting given that it comes a day after the Oasis standards body announced its approval of a new version of the ODF standard, OpenDocument 1.1. The changes in ODF 1.1 are designed to address concerns voiced by advocacy groups that the previous release didn't meet the needs of people with disabilities. The level of accessibility support provided in ODF 1.1 is now on a par or exceeds that available in other file formats. Â
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Also: E-voting a 'threat' to UK democracy. Read these stories and more from around the Web on News.com Extra.
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Despite an impassioned speech by a group member criticizing its technical merit, Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) document format will receive the United States' "yes" vote before the ISO standards body this weekend.
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New .mobi and .jobs, a shift in the ownership of .net
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(InfoWorld) - Microsoft Corp. has won approval for its Offfice Open XML document format from international standards body ECMA International. ECMA's General Assembly voted by 20-1 in favor of the standard at a meeting in Zurich on Thursday afternoon, and will now submit the format to the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) for its approval. The vote against came from a representative of IBM Corp. A standardized document format will make it easier for competing software companies to develop products that can interoperate with one another and to edit the same documents. Products meeting the standard could find favor with governments, or other organizations concerned about interoperability. Interoperability is vital for the preservation of archive information, according to Adam Farquhar, head of e-architecture at the British Library and a member of the committee that worked on the standard at ECMA. The British Library archives electronic documents, but must deal with whatever format they arrive in. The development of interoperable software tools will make that work easier. "The level of precision in this standard is unprecedented," Farquhar said. The standard runs to several thousand pages. To help developers digest the standard, the committee has published a 14-page white paper explaining it. "The committee put a lot of effort into making the document accessible," Farquhar said. That accessibility is important if Microsoft is to win developers over to its document format, as the company faces competition in the standards industry just as it does in the software market. A rival document format,Â OpenDocument Format (ODF), has already won approval from ISO, and was published as an ISO standard last month. ODF is used by office productivity suites such as OpenOffice.org or Sun Microsystems Inc.'s StarOffice, and has gained the support of other companies, including IBM. Government officials in France and the U.S. commonwealth of Massachusetts have recommended adoption of ODF as a government standard. ISO approval "is a critical factor for governments," said Marino Marcich, Managing Director of the ODF Alliance, a body that promotes the OpenDocument Format. Microsoft's general manager for interoperability and XML (Extensible Markup Language) architecture, Jean Paoli, agrees that "some public institutions prefer standards that are ISO-certified." There are still several hurdles to overcome before Microsoft can obtain ISO approval. ECMA has asked that the standard be fast-tracked, a process to which national standards bodies now have about 30 days to object. If no one objects, then ISO Subcommittee 34 will spend five or six months examining comments on the standard received from the national standards bodies, and only then will the ISO's Joint Technical Committee 1 vote on the standard.
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BRUSSELS, Belgium  -- European Union regulators said Monday they were investigating whether software giant Microsoft Corp. used its market dominance to squeeze out office software and Internet browser rivals.
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InfoWorld - Microsoft&#160;has achieved a small victory in its&#160;effort to make Open XML an open technology standard. Massachusetts, the U.S. state that has mandated the use of open technology formats in its government agencies, has put the specification on its list of possible standards that can be used for documents, according to a document on its Web site.
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Like many, I was pretty shocked by the recent Microsoft-EU deal to settle the long-running investigation into interoperability issues.  This was not so much because of the way Microsoft has used every kind of delaying tactic it could before eventually agreeing (for the nth time) to try harder in the future.  My real dismay was provoked by the gap between appearance and reality â a chasm that I think bodes ill for the future of open source. read more