[A2k] Linux Journal: Microsoft's Great Besmirching

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/microsofts-great-besmirching


Microsoft's Great Besmirching
March 31st, 2008 by Glyn Moody

I have been covering Microsoft for over 25 years - I've even written a
few books about Windows. During that time, I've developed a certain
respect for a company that just doesn't give up, and whose ability to
spin surpasses even that of politicians. To be sure, Microsoft has
crossed the line several times, but it has always worked within the
system, however much it has attempted to use it for its own ends. No
more: in the course of trying to force OOXML through the ISO fast-
track process, it has finally gone further and attacked the system
itself; in the process it has destroyed the credibility of the ISO,
with serious knock-on consequences for the whole concept of open
standards.

Of course, all companies try to bend the rules in the their favour,
and it would be unfair to pick on Microsoft for doing the same. But
what has happened over the last year and a half goes so far beyond the
accepted rough and tumble of the standards game that cumulatively it
can only be considered as an all-out attack on the machinery of
standards-making. Consider the evidence.

Things got off to a bad start back in 2007, just before the original
vote on whether OOXML should become an ISO standard, when the
following emerged:

Microsoft Corp. admitted Wednesday that an employee at its Swedish
subsidiary offered monetary compensation to partners for voting in
favor of the Office Open XML document format's approval as an ISO
standard.

Shortly after OOXML failed the first time to obtain enough votes to
become an ISO standard, Rob Weir pointed out something rather strange
had happened. Now, Weir works for IBM, an ODF supporter, and might
therefore be considered biased against OOXML, but what he presented
were facts, not opinions. Examining the composition over time of the
JTC1 committee that voted on OOXML, he saw that the so-called "P"
members - the ones with the greatest clout - had grown very suddenly
just a few weeks before the first vote:

We can look at this graphically as well, showing the P-member
composition of JTC1 over time and how they ultimately voted. As you
see, JTC1 was overwhelmingly against OOXML until the blip at the very
end, when Kazakhstan, etc. joined.

This sudden influx of "P" members with little interest in the general
business of refining and approving standards has already had a
negative impact on the running of the ISO. Here's what Martin Bryan,
the convenor of the ISO JTC1 workgroup had to say soon afterwards:

The influx of P members whose only interest is the fast-tracking of
ECMA 376 [OOXML] as ISO 29500 has led to the failure of a number of
key ballots. Though P members are required to vote, 50% of our current
members, and some 66% of our new members, blatantly ignore this rule
despite weekly email reminders and reminders on our website. As ISO
require at least 50% of P members to vote before they start to count
the votes we have had to reballot standards that should have been
passed and completed their publication stages at Kyoto. This delay
will mean that these standards will appear on the list of WG1
standards that have not been produced within the time limits set by
ISO, despite our best efforts.

He concluded by warning:

The days of open standards development are fast disappearing. Instead
we are getting =93standardization by corporation=94, something I have been
fighting against for the 20 years I have served on ISO committees. I
am glad to be retiring before the situation becomes impossible. I wish
my colleagues every success for their future efforts, which I
sincerely hope will not prove to be as wasted as I fear they could be.

The problems of trying to fast-track a specification of 6000 pages
became clear at the February 2008 Ballot Resolution Meeting (BRM),
which was intended to resolve outstanding problems with the proposed
standard so that it could be approved. As noted standards expert Andy
Updegrove explained:

A rather incredible week in Geneva has just ended, bringing to a close
the Herculean task assumed by the over 100 delegates from 32 countries
that attended the BRM. That challenge, of course, was how to
productively resolve the more than 1,100 comments (after elimination
of duplicates) registered by the 87 National Bodies that voted last
summer with respect to a specification that itself exceeded 6,000 pages.

His summary was as follows:

Only a very small percentage of the proposed dispositions were
discussed in detail, amended and approved by the delegations in
attendance at the BRM, indicating the inability of OOXML to be
adequately addressed within the "Fast Track" process

One reason why OOXML was not "adequately addressed" was the following:

Acknowledging the impossibility of achieving the stated goal of a BRM
(e.g, to carefully review each proposed disposition and reach
consensus on an appropriate resolution), a proposal was made on
Wednesday to approve all proposed resolutions in a single vote before
the end of the BRM, thus nominally "resolving" each remaining proposed
disposition without any discussion at all.

That is, around 900 proposed resolutions were nominally dealt with in
a completely summary fashion - hardly appropriate for something
aspiring to the condition of an international standard. Despite this
glaring omission, the final vote on whether OOXML should be given fast-
track approval went ahead, and it was at this point that Microsoft
went into overdrive, using every means possible to get enough "yes"
votes from the "P" members. Here's a selection of some of the more
extraordinary goings-on around the world.

In New Zealand, Microsoft tried to cast aspersions on someone who had
the temerity to oppose it, leading to this complaint from Standards
New Zealand:

We have been forwarded your email of 12 March to [national computer
society] relating to Matthew Holloway communications with the
[national computer society].

Your email suggests that Matthew is =93far from objective=94 that his goal
=93has always been to de-rail OOXML rather than making it a better
specification=94 and that this =93has clouded a lot of his thinking=94.

Whilst you are entitled to your opinions, we do not share them. We are
most concerned about your statement that =93while his efforts have been
appreciated by the Standards NZ people on the OOXML advisory group his
attitude and disingenuous approach (especially with regard to reaching
outside NZ to stir things up) have not gone down well=94

Your statements imply that you are relaying the views of Standards New
Zealand and we ask you rectify this misrepresentation immediately. We
have found Matthew to be an extremely valuable member of our advisory
group and believe that he has acted with integrity as an advisory
group member.

It took a similar tack in India:

At the meeting held on 20th March 2008, we were informed that
Microsoft has complained to the Ministry of Consumer Affairs and to
the apex office of the country about the constitution of the committee
and also cast aspersions on the impartiality of the chairperson of
LITD15, Mrs. Neeta Verma. The chairperson was furious and offered to
step down from her post. She pointed out that the committee has met
numerous times and Microsoft never brought this issue up in front of
the committee nor did they check the facts with her or her
organization before complaining to the apex office.

Elsewhere, it was more inventive. Doug Mahugh, a "Senior Product
Manager at Microsoft specializing in Office client interoperability
and the Open XML file formats", turned up at a meeting of one of
Malaysia's technical committees brandishing a business card that
proclaimed him a vice-president of the Malaysian arm of an
international body called the IASA, and tried to use it to claim a
place in the meeting. As one of the Malaysian members of that
committee put it:

to pass off a foreigner as a Malaysian organisation's representative?
That's really stretching it, dudes.

Other countries also saw the introduction of some remarkable
procedural contortions to push through approval of OOXML in the face
of opposition. In Germany, for example, the voting process was made so
complicated that it was almost impossible to change from its original
"yes" to "no"; here's just a small sample:

Since the vote of the working group was "yes", the steering committee
could only vote on the question whether the report of the chairman of
that group "is acknowledged with agreement" - a biased report which
did not tell about the obvious problems at the BRM. This question had
the sole purpose of requiring people to offend the chairman of the
working group if they voted against OOXML (i.e. to vote "abstain" at
ISO). Only IF you voted not to agree on that report (i.e. were willing
to offend the chairman) were you eligible to vote "yes" to the next
question, which asked whether there were severe deficiencies in the
procedures. Even then, beause of the way the vote had been set up,
severe deficiencies in procedure would still not be an adequate reason
to change the vote of the working group from YES to NO, but only to a
German ABSTAIN. This and strong pressure forced several people to
change their vote after having cast their vote.

But my overall favourite has to be this:

Here's an article from Norway, and the translation of the title of the
article is, "Scandal in Standards Norway. I didn't write that
headline. They did. And here's why. The article says there should be
an investigation of the irregularities there, because while there were
only two votes to approve, from Microsoft and a business partner,
Statoilhydro, and all the others voted no, 21 votes, they approved
anyway.

So what have we got as a result of all these machinations? Well,
assuming it's passed (it's still not clear, as I write), a standard
that is so broken that even if anyone else tried to implement its 6000
pages, they couldn't. Which is precisely what Microsoft wants: OOXML
will be an ISO standard that only one company is able to implement
fully. But it's better than that. Microsoft doesn't even have to stick
with its new "standard": it can simply change OOXML as it wishes, and
submit it again to the ISO for approval as an updated "standard";
meanwhile, it can sell its "new and improved " OOXML that isn't
exactly a standard, but soon will be, so why worry about the details?

In a sense, that's what Microsoft has been doing for the last decade
anyway, with a de facto rather than de jure standard. So it won't
change much, even if ODF's progress will be set back somewhat as
momentum keeps Microsoft Office in use. But along the way, something
terrible has happened: Microsoft has managed to besmirch the entire
ISO process, which is now effectively worthless. Microsoft has shown
that it knows how to get what it wants there, and will doubtless be
applying that knowledge to further "standards" in the future. ISO has
turned from being a kind of gold standard, into a worthless rubber
stamp wielded at the behest of the rich and ruthless.

But is not only the ISO that Microsoft has sullied. It has also
sullied itself, at a time when the perceived value of its brand is
already plummeting. It may have been successful in somehow persuading
various National Bodies to see its point of view, but it seems not to
have noticed that something has changed from the good old days of
meetings behind closed doors. In the age of the blog it is simply
impossible to keep this stuff locked up. As the days and months go by,
I predict that more and more and more details will emerge about what
really happened. And then the real battle begins.

Leaving aside the intriguing idea that approving two, rival document
standards may fall foul of the World Trade Organisation, there is also
the interesting prospect of the EU getting interested. Some in Denmark
have have already already complained to the EU about OOXML, and a
posting from Poland claims that "the European Commission is currently
investingating the Polish OOXML standarization process." And this is
on top of an earlier statement from the European Commission that it
would be examining "whether Microsoft's new file format Office Open
XML, as implemented in Office, is sufficiently interoperable with
competitors' products." Microsoft may have won the ISO battle, but it
could well end up losing the rather more important war with the
European Commission, which has already shown itself deeply unimpressed
with Microsoft's approach to business.

Writing to MEPs (if you're European) or to Neelie Kroes, the European
Commissioner for Competition, (if you're not) is one obvious action we
can all take to press for an independent, transparent inquiry into
possible irregularities during the OOXML voting process in Europe. But
I think there's something just as important that we need to start
doing immediately.

It is striking that some parts of Microsoft have been making soothing
noises to the open source world, speaking of their desire to work
alongside free software projects and to ensure "interoperability" - a
favourite concept at the moment - between the open and closed worlds.
Those voices have become increasingly seductive to some, especially in
the open source business world, who would rather work with than
against the Seattle behemoth, and who seem to believe that Microsoft
is genuine in its offers. But if the whole sorry OOXML saga shows
anything, it is Microsoft's deep and utter contempt for the whole idea
of an open, collaborative process based on mutual respect and
consensus. Henceforth, members of the open source community must view
with deep cynicism all - not just some - offers by Microsoft to work
more closely with the free software world. If they don't, they could
find themselves used and abused just like the once famous, and now
former, International Standards Organisation.

Glyn Moody writes about open source at opendotdotdot.

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Thiru Balasubramaniam
Geneva Representative
Knowledge Ecology International (KEI)
thiru@keionline.org


Tel: +41 22 791 6727
Mobile: +41 76 508 0997