10.02.08
Quick Mention: Microsoft is Hijacking ODF
So we were right all along. Details in Groklaw:
Guess what the SC 34 committee, the ISO/IEC committee responsible for OOXML, is up to now? I call it a takeover attempt of ODF, according to my reading of the published notes of the most recent meeting held yesterday, October 1st, and starring a document titled “Request to JTC 1 for alignment of OASIS and JTC 1 Maintenance Procedures.” Uh oh. That sounds polite, but it is what it is. An attempted coup. They have already sent a “Liaison Statement” to OASIS. Surrender or else, what? SC 34 asks JTC 1 “to establish with OASIS a synchronised mechanism for maintenance of ISO/IEC 26300 and to inform SC 34 of the outcome.” I gather they think they can do a better job of maintaining ODF than OASIS. What will JTC 1 do, do you think? You doubt they will hop on to this wonderful plan?
I gather the hope is, if the takeover were to succeed, that SC 34 would get to maintain ODF as well as Microsoft’s competing parody “standard,” OOXML. How totally smooth and shark-like. Under the guise of “synchronised maintenance”, without which they claim SC 34 can’t fulfill its responsibilities, they get control of everything. So utterly Microsoft. Microsoft yearns for interoperability, it seems. More like yearning for ODF’s air supply to be … well, you know.
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Why do I say Microsoft, when this is SC 34? Look at this, will you? It has a list of participants in the July meeting in Japan of the SC 34 committee. The committee membership is so tilted by Microsoft employees and such, if it were a boat, it would capsize. In fact, I’d say it already has. Of the 19 attendees, 8 are outright Microsoft employees or consultants, and 2 of them are Ecma TC45 members. So 10 out of 19 are directly controlled by Microsoft/Ecma.
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Mr. Durusau, Mr. Brown, and all you guys, listen up, please. That isn’t the goal. Microsoft being “more open” isn’t the appropriate end goal. If it’s your goal, you have utterly failed. The goal is a standard that anyone can use equally, a truly open standard, available to both proprietary folks and FOSS. Microsoft being “more open” but not really fully interoperable and always a little bit ahead of everyone else in its ability to use a “standard” is by no means enough. We’ve lived in that kind of Microsoft world a long time now. We don’t need “standards” that replicate it.
