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Re: Microsoft buys the Swedish vote on OOXML?

• From: Jonathan Robie <jonathan.robie@r...>
• To: Len Bullard <len.bullard@u...>
• Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2007 15:29:44 -0400

Len Bullard wrote:
> Of course MS partners vote for MS
> submissions.  That's practical business.  Did MS gather them up?  I can't
> say and neither can you nor can the author of that article.  They probably
> did.  Are Google, Sun and IBM not doing that as well?  If not, they are not
> being very smart. 
>   

You seem to be arguing against the idea of one vote per company, saying 
that whoever is best able to create large lobbies should win in the 
standardization process.

> No.  I think it rather weird that everyone else shows up late in smaller
> numbers.   Do Sun, Red Hat, IBM and Google have so few partners they can't
> afford to join?
>   

I honestly don't know whether Red Hat has been voting on this standard 
at all - I haven't been involved in ODF, OOXML, or ISO standards, but 
you seem to be implying that the proper remedy is for every other 
company to try to stuff the ballot box by enlisting their own partners, 
and whoever does this best should win.

>> 4. There is not widespread adoption of OOXML outside of Microsoft. Most 
>> of the OOXML implementations are from partners of Microsoft who have 
>> contractual agreements to implement OOXML software.
>>     
>
> So the partners of Microsoft are inside Microsoft and the partners of Red
> Hat are outside Red Hat?  Are you the Red Queen?  That's really bogus.
>   

This is one of the traditional ways to measure whether a standard is 
implementable - compatibility among multiple independent 
implementations. That's the approach we take in the W3C, where I've been 
on standards groups for 10 years. I think Google is implying that there 
are not multiple independent implementations for OOXML.

I have no idea what a Red Queen is, but I'm certainly not speaking for 
Red Hat in anything I say, I don't know what our position is on OOXML, 
and the quote above comes from Google's position paper, not from me.

>> I guess I should express my own views too. I think OOXML is a good 
>> thing, and I'm very glad Microsoft produced it. I don't think it should 
>> be a standard, because it is designed precisely to represent one 
>> vendor's office documents, not as a general purpose office document 
>> format created by a group of vendors.
>>     
>
> That is a MUCH better deal than if it isn't a standard.  Because of
> political gerrymandering, if it isn't a standard, the legal conditions are
> such that very large customers have to switch and thee me and the rest of
> the taxpayers foot the bill.  Where will that money go?  Well... to Red Hat,
> Sun, IBM, and indirectly, to Google.    
>
> So the bottom line is their customers pay you to free them from Microsoft by
> taking the same information and making it less informative?  Huh?
>   

So should there be a standard for each vendor's proprietary formats, or 
just for Microsoft's? In an ideal world, there would be one standard 
format, and all vendors would support it, eliminating the cost of 
proprietary conversions.

Jonathan

• Follow-Ups:
  • RE: Microsoft buys the Swedish vote on OOXML?
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• References:
  • RE: Microsoft buys the Swedish vote on OOXML?
    • From: Len Bullard <len.bullard@u...>