How "Ignorant of Standards" was Microsoft Really?

2008-06-26T09:20:09-07:00

Regular readers will notice that I've been woefully silent the last few weeks, at first due to having too many irons in the fire, and for the last ten days due to being on a family vacation abroad, returning not till July 2. As a result, I've been not only behind on blogging, but also on keeping up with the news while limited primarily to Blackberry access since I left. But I thought that it might be useful to take a break and share the "Huh?!?" I experienced when I stumbled across this article by Andrew Donoghue at ZDNet while briefly enjoying an island of laptop connectivity in a hotel lobby in Florence. The article is titled, "Microsoft admits to standards ignorance pre-OOMXL" and is based on remarks by

The Open Collaboration Revolution

2008-06-06T05:44:53-07:00

Last week I sent out the latest issue of Standards Today, my bi-monthly eJournal of "News, Ideas and Analysis." This time around, my topic is what I call "The Open Collaboration Revolution," by which I mean the unprecedented ways in which the Internet and the Web are allowing communities to form around projects of all types. The benefits that can be enjoyed as a result of such collaboration are leading those involved to reevaluate the traditional rights of creators and content owners. What they are realizing is that they have more to gain by sharing than hoarding. The result is a new focus on "openness" of all kinds - not just open standards and open source, but open development, open content, open data and more. The promise held out by these...

Make that Three [now Four]: India [and Venezuela] Appeal Adoption of OOXML

2008-05-30T05:56:33-07:00

Update: This is an overdue update to this blog entry, noting that a late appeal from Venezuela was received and accepted after the deadline recognized by ISO/IEC. I had thought I would write a separate entry on it, but as it is now old news, I am updating this entry so as not to leave a misleading impression that the final count was only three.

Last night was the deadline for filing appeals to the adoption of OOXML by ISO/IEC JTC 1. This morning, a spokesman for the IEC acknowledged the receipt of a total of three appeals by the deadline, with the third and final appeal being filed by India, ...

Now There are Two: Brazil Appeals OOXML Adoption

2008-05-29T15:02:27-07:00

Associação Brasileira de Normas Técnicas (ABNT), the National Body representing Brazil, today filed an appeal to the approval of OOXML by ISO/IEC, bringing the current total of appeals to two, with as many as two additional appeals to come, based upon what I have heard from private sources. The text of the Brazilian appeal appears in full at the end of this blog entry, supplied by a trusted source in Brazil.

While this latest appeal overlaps the South African objections in part, it also raises new concerns, some of which are particular to the interests of Brazil, rather than applying to the process as a whole. As a result, it raises not only additional issues, but also ones that present a categori...

South Africa Appeals OOXML Adoption

2008-05-23T05:24:58-07:00

SABS, the National Body member of ISO/IEC JTC1 for South Africa, has filed a formal appeal with both ISO and IEC, challenging the Fast Track adoption of OOXML. With the filing of this formal appeal, DIS 29500 is now formally in limbo (i.e., cannot become an approved standard) until the appeal has been addressed.

The cited basis for South Africa's appeal is found in the following text of Clause 11.1.2 of the applicable Directives:

A P Member of JTC1 or an SC may appeal against any action or inaction, on the part of JTC 1 or an SC when the P member considers that in such action or inaction:

- questions of principle are involved;
- the contents of a draft ...

Microsoft Office 2007 to Support ODF - and not OOXML

2008-05-21T09:29:30-07:00

Microsoft today announced that it would update Office 2007 to natively support ODF 1.1, but not to implement its own OOXML format. Moreover, it would also join both the OASIS ODF working group as well as the ISO/IEC JTC1 working group that has control of the ISO/IEC version of ODF. Implementation of DIS 29500, the ISO/IEC JTC 1 version of OOXML that has still not been publicly released will await the release of Office 14, the ship date of which remains unannounced.

The same announcement reveals that Office 2007 will also support PDF 1.1, PDF/A and Microsoft's competing fixed-text format, called XML Paper Specification. XML Paper Specification is currently being prepared by Ecma for submission to ISO/IEC under the same "Fast-Track" process by which OOXML had been submitted for consideration and approval.

Ye...

Please Welcome Digistan

2008-05-16T01:07:00-07:00

On Wednesday, I introduced The Hague Declaration to those that visit this blog, promising to write again shortly to introduce the new organization that created the Declaration. That organization is called the Digital Standards Organization (Digistan, for short), and I'm pleased to say that I am one of its founders. In this entry, I'll give you my perceptions of what Digistan is all about, and what I hope it will accomplish.

You'll notice that I just used the words "my perceptions." This is for a number of reasons, the first being that this is still a very young organization that has taken shape, primarily via a listserv. I was welcomed onto the founders listserv on November 12, bringing the total number of participants to 13. Since then, that list has grown. As of today, there are ...

China Slams Nokia for Standards Based "Pride and Prejudice"

2008-05-14T05:48:10-07:00

I'm hardly a veteran "China Watcher" in the State Department sense of these words, but I have had a Google alert in place for three or four years to snag standards-related news emerging from this most powerful of emerging economies. This has led me to read a great many articles from the Xinhua state news service over that period of time. I've also read the English version of the Peoples Daily in paper form from front to back during five visits to speak at conferences in Beijing. As a result, I've had a fair opportunity to get a feel for how the state press likes to present its news to the West, and how it makes its points, not only generally, but over the course of ongoing stories as they develop. Every now and then I see an article that really wants to make a point, and today was one of those days. ...

Introducing The Hague Declaration

2008-05-13T01:18:00-07:00

When one thinks of international human rights, one thinks of The Hague - home of the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court, and the situs of an increasing number of Tribunals chartered to redress the assaults on human dignity that inexcusably continue to plague this planet. It is therefore appropriate that The Hague has been chosen to witness yet another pronouncement in defense of human rights. That pronouncement has been titled The Hague Declaration by the new international group, called the Digital Standards Organization ("Digistan," for short), that crafted it. In this blog entry, I'll talk about what the Declaration is all a...

Rambus Ruling Overturned: A Legal Dispute of Dickensian Proportions Lurches On

2008-04-24T07:07:34-07:00

The one great principle of the English law is, to make business for itself. There is no other principle distinctly, certainly, and consistently maintained through all its narrow turnings. Charles Dickens, Bleak House

According to John the Apostle, the poor will be always with us. So too, it seems, will the never-ending skein of cases enmeshing Rambus, Inc., the brash memory design company that famously participated in a JEDEC standard setting process in the early 1990s, and later asserted various patent claims against implementers of the very standards created by the working group in which it participated. And while the lawyers may not be to blame in this case (or more properly, these many cases), the flood of litigation involving more than a half a dozen d...

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