Ubuntu's Shuttleworth blames ISO for OOXML's win
Summary: Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth said the approval of Microsoft's Office Open XML is a “sad” day for ISO and the computing public.“I think it de-values the confidence people have in the standards setting process,” Shuttleworth said in an interview just hours after the news was leaked.
Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth said the approval of Microsoft's Office Open XML is a “sad” day for ISO and the computing public.
“I think it de-values the confidence people have in the standards setting process,” Shuttleworth said in an interview just hours after the news was leaked. The International Standards Organization (ISO) did not carry out its responsibility, he claimed.
“It’s sad that the ISO was not willing to admit that its process was failing horribly,” he said, noting that Microsoft intensely lobbied many countries that traditionally have not participated in ISO and stacked technical committees with Microsoft employees, solution providers and resellers sympathetic to OOXML. “When you have a process built on trust and when that trust is abused, [ISO] should halt the process." 
“[ISO] is an engineering old boys club and these things are boring so you have to have a lot of passion … then suddenly you have an investment of a lot of money and lobbying and you get artificial results,” he said about the vote. “The process is not set up to deal with intensive corporate lobbying and so you end up with something being a standard that’s not clear.”
More than 3000 questions about the specification remain unanswered and OOXML is so enormously complex and ambiguous that it can be implemented in a variety of ways, Shuttleworth contends. That negates the very purpose of a standard, he added.
Office Open XML does not belong alongside ISO standards such as HTML, PDF and ODF, Shuttleworth maintains.
“The things that make for a very good standard are clarity and consensus, and the genuine belief that multiple organizations can implement the standard,” he added, noting that much of OOXML is a compilation of old Office “quirks and inconsistencies “ dumped into an XML format that different Microsoft developers implemented differently for different versions of Word and Excel.“They have a tasty dump of all of that declared as a standard,” Shuttleworth claimed.
Like Red Hat and Novell, Ubuntu’s Debian-based Linux desktop distribution uses the open source, OpenDocument Format compliant OpenOffice office suite that competes against Microsoft Office.
Will Ubuntu implement IS DIS 29500 now that it is a standard? “We’re not going to invest in trying to implement a standard that is poorly defined,” Shuttleworth said, maintaining that the specification can be altered and added to as Redmond wishes – regardless of its rivals’ product cycles.
“If we get close to implementing it, Microsoft would move the goal post," he projects. "Microsoft doesn’t think it’s bound by the standard.”
I wouldn’t want the job if people told me to implement it as a standard," he added
The ISO approval gives Microsoft the ability to promote its OOXML products to governments and customers but no guarantee about future changes. “It puts us into a situation where we have multiple standards for document formats and no clear guidance as to how standards will evolve," he said.
Microsoft’s argument that the standard is complex because the software is complex is hogwash, Shuttleworth also maintains, because more complex software – such as e-mail and the web– have simple and clear standards all developers can implement: IMAP and HTML. “Rendering web pagea is rich, very detailed with fonts and different layouts and support for different devices. It’s an amazingly rich content format but we have a standard to drive it that is clean and clear by comparison with Office Open XML," he added.
In the end though, the same kind of lobbying and politicking that doomed Massachusetts’ effort to establish OpenDocument Format as a standard also tanked the global effort to unite behind ODF, Shuttleworth claimed. “All the work was done behind closed doors instead of in a public forum,” Shuttleworth lamented. “All of that is very unfortunate and doesn’t actually move the technology or industry ahead. We’ve always had Microsoft with private file formats.”
Shuttleworth does not believe, however, that the ISO win will slow Linux’s advance on the desktop and maintains that OpenOffice suites and ODF applications will gain steam. “It’s always been an uphill battle to use anything that’s not Microsoft Office,” he said. “The battle will be won on the merit. “
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Talkback
But of course he does
*CLEARLY*
His philanthrophy is a very good thing
Back to the point. He has as much a vested interest (money) in having ODF as the sole standard as Microsoft does having their format considered a standard.
Is it really about the process, or the fact that the ruling did not force Microsoft out of lucrative government contracts, with millions of support dollars up for grabs?
Was Microsoft really the [i]only[/i] one playing bad in this?
Please tell me...
Please, do me a favor and provide information how his "vested interest(money)" comes about. I would really love to know.
Well, that is easy
Only if OOXML was voted down, as that would classify Microsoft Office as "non-open" document standardm which would disqualify it from consideration in governments.
That would leave the door open for Open Source products, something he supports and generates money from.
Did not another article here state that Ubuntu
is becoming the "generic" Linux?
Sounds like he has a vested interest in having Microsoft left out of any place he can
Left out?
"classify Microsoft Office as "non-open" document standard"
Name one thing Microsoft has or does that IS NOT PRESENTLY proprietary, secretive, patent protected, and well guarded by their Activation, WGA, DRM, EULA's, Spyware, and Rootkits?
Why would it be necessary to "classify" them as such?
Apples and oranges. Philanthropy <> good code
Let's leave the apples/oranges comparisons alone and confine ourselves to the technical merit of OOXML, shall we?
It all comes down to the principle of "let the buyer beware." The customer is presumed capable of reading specifications documents and choosing betweeen different standards on their technical merits.
Ok, so MS was able to get an ISO standard "blessing" their process. Big deal. This simply means now that if certain European customers bound by procurement rules limiting them to ISO-approved software choose to buy into the OOXML model, they may. No one's leveling a pistol at anyone's head and saying "Buy Microsoft or else!" It's more a matter of giving customers the option to do so.
I can see why Shuttleworth is angry - Ubuntu was the beneficiary of a limited market until OOXML got ISO standard status. Now he's not. He may have excellent technical reasons to support his stand, but at the end of the day, his ox was gored, his rice bowl was broken, he has to share a market with Gates and Ballmer. Let's not pretend his reasons are entirely altruistic.
Non-GM food a problem?
Shheeezzz!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
RE: Ubuntu's Shuttleworth blames ISO for OOXML's win
All very good points he is making. A sad day, but, not sure we have heard
There is enough room at the table for everyone.
Not about OSS v Microsoft
Standards have always been political (though not all standards are politicized), but there's no way on God's green Earth that OOXML should have been fast tracked. You can't fast track a 6000 page proposal that's never gone through the process before (and don't bring up ECMA, it's been nothing more than a rubberstamp for years). And there's REALLY no way it should have been approved with so many unresolved issues. What's happened is a travesty and Microsoft and its allies should be ashamed of the destruction they have wrought.
Personally, I don't give a rat's behind if OOXML becomes a standard - I care very much that the process for creating international standards has probably been damaged forever. The ISO has lost much credibility - perhaps that was part of Microsoft's plan all along.
Standards don't mean anything.
But, funny that 90% of the people use MS Office, but, ODF sailed through
After 100s of millions, dirty tricks and lobbying, ...
Gotta play the game
Aside from the usual
Aside from the usual "I know everyone is dishonest because they can't be any better than me" sort of reasoning, do you have more than speculation to support this?
Note that there is documentary evidence, including admissions by Microsoft themselves, of their maneuvering. The stories of Bill Gates lobbying heads of state to decide from the top down are, as far as I'm aware, unconfirmed but much of the lower-level stuff is out in the open.
Er, weren't you watching...
This time, I think some of the real-world make-it-work-today IT guys managed to get heard over the religious bellowing.
If someone comes up with a better standard, we should have that too. We need choice before we get competition.
And if Ubuntu think that web pages are such great document formats, why didn't they object to ODF because HTML etc are ALREADY international standards.
And if Apple can make OpenXML work on the iPhone, it can't be SO hard to implement enough to be useful.
You mean those votes were MS's competition.