Open Malaysia

When Patrick Durusau wrote that Microsoft had no opposition to ODF, he was indefensibly and gloriously wrong. Those of us involved in national standards bodies and on government policy panels have had the dubious honor of having to defend against Microsoft's desperate attempts to kill any possible introduction of ODF as a voluntary standard. Perhaps even worse was having to witness first hand Microsoft making loud complaints against any internal government policies of the usage of ODF and any software which uses ODF (OpenOffice.org being the most prominent). And, of course, many of us have faced the intense lobbying campaign carried out by Microsoft against open source governmental policies.

So when Yasmin Mahmood, Microsoft Malaysia Managing Director, made the famous statement that "It's not about choosing, but about having a choice" with reference to ODF and OOXML, we assumed this was a new chapter in Microsoft history.

Then came along a recent blogpost by Harisfazillah Jamel, "Apabila Membuat Pilihan Dipersoalkan / When Choices are Questioned", on the right of government agencies to make choices. It's written in Malay, but it has been translated by Yoon Kit for the benefit of our international readers. It makes for extremely interesting reading on the pressure Microsoft Malaysia is placing on a government agency because of their choice to use OpenOffice.org/ODF over Microsoft Office:

Apabila Membuat Pilihan Dipersoalkan (When Our Choices Are Questioned)

Ada yang sebuah syarikat ICT yang kononnya mempunyai satu lagi standard bagi satu perkara adalah satu pilihan kepada pengguna. Sedangkan pengguna, mana-mana pengguna juga faham, standard, mempunyai standard bermaksud kita telah membuat pilihan, membuat satu pilihan daripada pelbagai pilihan yang terbaik untuk pengguna.

There is an ICT company which has one more standard for one more application for one more choice for consumers. While consumers, many users understand standards, having standards means we have made a choice, a choice which  is the best for users from many options.

Wakil mereka di Malaysia dalam satu muka surat sebuah akhbar menyatakan, kejayaan mereka mendapatkan iktiraf standard bagi satu format adalah satu pilihan kepada pengguna. Teruskan membaca, apabila membuat pilihan bukan kehendak mereka, adalah bukan pilihan mereka.

Their Malaysian representative, in a page of a newspaper stated that their success of having the standard as a format is yet another choice for users. Read it, if we make a choice not to their liking, it is not their choice.

Lalu sebuah agensi dalam kerajaan Malaysia telah membuat pilihan. Membuat pilihan bukan dalam kehendak syarikat ICT tersebut. Pilihan setelah panjang membuat penilaian. Pilihan atas dasar untuk memberi sokongan dan pilihan kepada agensi-agensi lain. Pilihan yang dibuat atas kehendak sendiri tanpa  tekanan mana-mana pihak. Pilihan yang dipesetujui diperingkat pengurusan tertinggi hinggalah keperingkat bawahan.

An agency in the government of Malaysia had already made a choice. The choice was not the choice of the said ICT company. The choice was made after a long study. The choice was based on principles to bring support and choice to other agencies The choice was made on its own needs without any pressures from any party. The choice was agreed by the highest level of management to the lowest level.

Sekarang timbul isu, syarikat ICT itu tidak senang dengan pilihan yang dibuat oleh agensi itu. Mereka merasakan agensi ini mahu menentukan dasar yang keras terhadap pilihan yang telah dibuat. Oh ya betul, mereka tidak senang dengan pilihan yang dibuat oleh sebuah agensi kerajaan Malaysia dan mula menjalankan kerja-kerja melobi untuk memaksa agensi ini, menurunkan maksud polisi penggunaan standard yang telah dibuat oleh agensi ini.

Now this issue has surfaced. The ICT company is not happy with the choice that was made by the agency. They felt that the agency wants to set a policy which is incompatible with the choice that they prefer. Oh that is true, they are not happy with the choice that was made by an agency of the Malaysian Government and have started work lobbying to force this agency to dampen the meaning of the policy of using standards that was announced by this agency.

Polisi yang telah disusun, dibincang dengan panjang lebar dan diluluskan dalam pengurusan tertinggi agensi ini mahu diubah oleh syarikat ICT tersebut kerana ia tidak menepati pilihan yang kehendak mereka. Bahawa diingatkan polisi ini adalah khusus hanya untuk agensi ini supaya memudahkan pelaksanaan atas satu standard. Itu maksud tujuan standard, memudahkan pelaksanaan kepada satu pilihan.

The policy that was prepared, was discussed widely and in detail, was approved by the highest level management of this agency, is to be modified by the said ICT company because it is not inline with their needs. Whereas it is reminded that this policy is specifically for this agency such that it  can easily implement one standard. That is the meaning and purpose of a standard, the ease of implementing one choice.

Yang buat saya marah, adalah teknik yang saya panggil, kilas tangan dengan kasar memaksa agensi ini tukarkan polisi agensi ini. Ya memaksa, walau apa pun cara yang digunakan, bagi saya ia masih panggil ia memaksa, agensi ini tukarkan polisi dari segi pelaksanaan.

What makes me angry is  what I call their heavy handed technique of forcing the said agency to change its policies. Yes force, by any means possible. I still call it force, to get the agency to change its policies on implementation.

Bagi saya, campur tangan dalam urusan sebuah agensi kerajaan Malaysia terutama melibatkan polisi, dan nyata sekali polisi ini adalah untuk penggunaan agensi tersebut oleh sebuah syarikat luar negara merupa satu campur tangan asing... Sebuah bentuk penjajahan ...

For me, their intervention in the business of an agency of the Government of Malaysia especially when it involves policies, and especially when this policy is stated for the use of this agency, by a foreign company represents ... a form of colonisation ...

Siapa mereka untuk tentukan dasar dan pentadbiran sebuah negara.  Saya sebagai rakyat Malaysia cukup marah dengan campur tangan sebegini. Perkara ini telah lama diperhatikan sejak daripada melobi penerimaan standard yang kononnya adalah satu pilihan.

Who are they to define the policies and the running of a sovereign country. I, as a Malaysian citizen, have enough with their interference of this nature. This behaviour has long been witnessed ever since the lobbying efforts of the standards which is claimed to be yet another "choice".

Saya tidak akan duduk diam dengan bentuk penjajahan cara baru ini. Saya tidak akan berhenti menulis dan berkempen untuk mendedahkan apa jua yang dilakukan oleh syarikat ICT ini untuk terus memaksa penggunaan produk mereka.

I am not going to sit quiet with this new form of colonisation tactic. I am not going to stop writing and campaigning and resist any action by this ICT company which forces the use of their products.

Banyak sudah duit rakyat, duit rakyat mengalir keluar daripada Malaysia, hanya untuk pembayaran lesen. Pembayaran hanya atas kertas, tiada hasil kepada kita rakyat Malaysia, hanya menjadikan syarikat luar negara atau individu luar negara lagi kaya.

Too much of our citizens money, money of the people has flowed out from Malaysia, only to purchase licenses. The payment is only for paper, without any value to us Malaysian citizens, only to make a foreign company or individual foreigners rich.

Sedangkan duit yang berjuta-juta itu boleh dialirkan kepada industri ICT negara kita dalam bentuk pelaksanaan sistem sokongan, penyelidikan dan pelaksanaan kepada aplikasi sumber terbuka atau Open Source Software.

If only the multi-millions of riggit could flow to our ICT industry in the form of system support, research and implementations in Open Source Software.

Mengapa perlu kayakan orang lain sedangkan rakyat ini yang membayar cukai tersebut perlu lihat sahaja duit itu keluarkan. Sedang sudah ada pilihan, pilihan yang setelah dikaji, boleh mendatangkan faedah yang banyak kepada rakyat Malaysia.

Why must we make other people wealthy while citizens have to pay the tax. Just see the expenditure. While there is already a choice, a choice that has been evaluated which can bring much benefits to the citizens of Malaysia.

Polisi dan dasar sudah ada. Mengapa tidak sokong? Soalan yang hendak tanya kepada ahli-ahli politik negara kita ...

The Policies are already defined. Why is there no support? These are the questions which need only be asked to the politicians of our country ...

Apa yang saya tulis ini adalah pendapat peribadi, akan tetapi saya mahu ia dipandang  serius oleh banyak pihak. Lama mana kita mahu dijajah ... ???

What I have written is just my personal opinion, but I want this viewed seriously by many. How long do we ever want to be colonised ... ???

I really must commend Patrick Durusau's innate capability of writing the most inflammatory and outrageous publications, publications that are so divorced from reality that one cannot help but think that the dude must be hoarding some seriously good weed to be able to live so completely within his own defined existence. His latest publication, "Not With a Bang, but With a Whimper", has been receiving flak from the collective open standards community for exactly that reason and rightly so.

Patrick writes that:

Signs the document standards war was entirely fictitious have been around for quite some time. Where was the Microsoft opposition to OpenDocument in standards bodies such as OASIS and ISO? Perhaps they forgot? Didn't get the memo?

Given that we at OpenMalaysiaBlog, as open standards supporters, have been at the forefront of receiving the brunt of their vicious (and often personal) attacks on ODF, I find Patrick's assertions as ridiculous and cockeyed at best, and deliberately offensive at worst.

Microsoft has been running an anti-ODF campaign in favour of OOXML for a long long time now. In Malaysia, their campaign started with opposition to Malaysia's proposed adoption of ODF ISO26300:2006 as a voluntary standard by invoking Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt on the ODF standard. The campaign continued on by personally attacking members of the technical committee who were in favour of ODF, by casting undue aspersions on their characters, in particular, insinuating that we were subversive agents of IBM intent on the destruction of Microsoft (apparently, anybody who supports truly open standards is a biased IBM agent).

In fact, during a technical standards meeting on ODF, senior management of Microsoft Malaysia printed out an unrelated and personal blog post from Yoon Kit (in which he was slightly critical of a Malaysian government agency whose representative was also present during the meeting), passed it around to all members present in the meeting and demanded for proper ethical conduct from members. That's right, folks - he printed out a non-technical blog post and attempted to cast a false and misleading charge on the character of a member of the technical meeting.

To the credit of the representative of the government agency in question and the chairman of the meeting, the meeting was quickly brought to order. The representative of the government agency did not have a problem with Yoon Kit's blog post but Microsoft Malaysia did. Note that this is not hearsay, I witnessed this first hand and was thoroughly shocked at the extent Microsoft would go to destroy any perceived threat to their Microsoft Office cash cow. The Microsoft Malaysia representative in question also distributed printed blog posts from OpenMalaysia and circled the name of a member of this blog who also happens to be an IBM employee, insinuating to all that members of OpenMalaysia are influenced by IBM in pushing for a pro-ODF stand. This happened during a meeting to discuss the technical aspects on ODF!

That particular meeting was followed by an anonymous smear campaign against one of the TC members. A letter was faxed to the organization of the TC member in question, accusing the TC member in question of helping politicize the issue (which is, of course, untrue). I too had the dubious pleasure of hearing first hand how Microsoft attempted to remove me from the TC (they did not succeed, thanks to integrity and cojones of the organization I am affiliated with).

If this unethical behaviour by Microsoft was not sufficiently despicable, they did the unthinkable by involving politics in what should have been a technical evaluation of the standard by writing to the head of the Malaysian standards organization and getting its business partners to engage in a negative letter writing campaign to indicate lack of support of ODF in the Malaysian market. Every single negative letter on ODF received by the Malaysian standards organization was written either by Microsoft, or a Microsoft business partner or a Microsoft affiliated organization (Initiative for Software Choice and IASA).

That's right, Patrick, every single negative letter on ODF can be traced back to Microsoft. And you ask where was Microsoft's opposition to ODF? Here is a letter by Yasmin Mahmood, Microsoft Malaysia Managing Director to the head of the Malaysian standards organization, opposing ODF as a voluntary standard (note that I have digital copies of all the letters in questions, if you wish to read them):

Patrick, you write that:

Need more? Watch the reaction to this announcement by Microsoft. Remember the cry has been that Microsoft should adopt OpenDocument. Microsoft has now adopted OpenDocument and it will be devoting resources to its development. For those unfamiliar with the concept, that means Microsoft will be making a positive contribution to the ODF development effort.

My recommendation is that everyone put up their noise makers and welcome Microsoft to the OpenDocument community and prepare to work with them to advance its development

Patrick, you make the assumption that those who are opposing OOXML are doing it solely because we oppose Microsoft. You couldn't be more wrong and I think it's high time you recognize the most excellent effort by many parties in helping improve the OOXML specification.

Yoon Kit and myself have spent countless weekends and many, many, many man hours finding ways of improving the proposed standard. My report to the TC, based on the reading made of the proposed standard, have always been on a solely technical basis, and Patrick, you of all people, should accede to the fact that there are/were severe technical deficiencies in the proposed standard and that input from members of National Bodies helped improve the specification.

The campaign against Open XML was at its start, in the middle and at the end an anti-Microsoft campaign. The merits or demerits of Open XML were simply a convenient launching point for criticisms of Microsoft.

Making the dangerous argument that "the merits or demerits of OOXML were simply a convenient launching point for criticisms of Microsoft" works to undermine the important constructive value of  criticism, which is to improve the proposed standard in question. The logic you have employed, that any attempt to criticize the technical deficiencies in OOXML is equated to criticism of Microsoft, is superfluous. By any measure, our criticism and feedback has helped improve the proposed standard immeasurably and you simply must recognize that, if intellectual honesty carries still carries weight with you.

Patrick, to further claim that we are solely "noise makers" does irreparable damage to value of the work we have put into improving the proposed standard. In fact, some of the decent folk at Microsoft (yes, they actually exist) helped arrange a conference call to Brian Jones, whose input helped clarify some the issues I was attempting to understand. I subsequently revised my technical contribution to the TC based on the clarification by Brian Jones. Your assertion that we are doing this so as to criticize Microsoft is an unfair charge and only serves to undermine your already dwindling reputation among the open standards community.

Now, when I was first told about Microsoft Office support for ODF by a Microsoft employee, my reaction was: "Awesome!". Then I puzzled for a minute over why they didn't do this two years ago and avoid opposing the passage of ODF as a Malaysian standard. In any case, the following day, I relayed this message to Yasmin Mahmood, the Microsoft Malaysia Managing Director, with an invitation for OpenMalaysia Blog to interview her on this positive and constructive development. I've not heard back from Yasmin on my invitation, but let me publicly assure the lady that the invitation is still open and we are committed to publishing the interview verbatim (word for word). Yoon Kit and I also offered to publicize the good work Microsoft is doing on ODF by running an interview with them. Brian and Doug, that invitation is still open if you choose to accept it by answering the questions we sent to you 11 days ago.

So all in all, Patrick, you owe us an apology for your thoughtless remarks, your unfair insinuations and biased connotations on our character.

Note: We have been featured in the news. w00t!

Taking a break from the entire OOXML saga, some of us decided to execute an elaborate April Fool's plan on Dinesh Arnold Nair, our collective QubeConnect boss and a (self proclaimed) Sith Lord. The plan ("Operation Coverup") involved wrapping up all items in the Sith Lord's office with aluminum foil. It's one those things that is actually a lot harder then it sounds (who knew wrapping cables in aluminum foil would be such a bitching effort, eh?).

I brought up the idea initially several months to some of the Sith Lord minions. It was initially a simple effort to wrap up all belongings of the Sith Lord. Over teh tarik (Malay sugared tea) and many beers, the idea expanded to wrapping his furniture in aluminum foil, plastering his walls with brown wrapping paper, covering his car with even more brown paper, adapting the Star Wars intro crawl text video for the finishing touch and dressing up in Ku-Klux-Klan style robes. At one point, we discussed involving his wife into a more elaborate scam involving wrapping up stuff in his apartment, but decided against it when we realized his wife is truly Sith and we may end up getting skewered in the process.

Anyway, as  the plan grew and grew, before I realized, there were more volunteers then there was room in his office. No problem, we could always parallelize the wrapping tasks, right? I thought we could have been done in a couple hours with seven of us. Hah, that turned out to be woefully over-optimistic.

31st March 2008 arrived and three minions marched over to the nearest hypermart to buy the supplies. We ran into our first hurdle - who knew that there were so many grades of aluminum foil? We decided on the smartest engineering decision that made sense to us then and bought six rolls of the cheapest foil available. It later turned out to be not such a bright idea as the cheapest foil also was the thinnest which made wrapping a tad bit difficult. Oh well. We also bought a roll of brown wrapping paper which came with 10 pieces of 1x1 meter sized paper.

So, evening came and SMS's were flying wildly, planning this and organizing that, but mostly we were jumping with excitement. We waited for everybody to leave, and waited a bit more, and waited some more and everybody left except for the Sith Lord. Oh all days, he decided to spend this day running load tests on the QubeTalk (our IP-PBX). Grrrr. No matter, we left for an early dinner hoping that he would have left by the time we got back.

At 8pm approximat-ish, we get back (all seven of us!) and apparently he had left for the day, so we start in all earnestness. Fuck, it was tiring work. We wrapped, and wrapped, and wrapped, and wrapped. We wrapped his ashray, his loose change, his lighter, his papers, his laptop, his picture frame (hey Sith Lord, there's a surprise waiting for you underneath that foil), his wastepaper basket, his awards and god knows what else. And while we were wrapping, one of us was working on creating the Star Wars intro crawl text video (I had adapted the original Star Wars text earlier in the day).

.

Side Note: The Last Lap post containing OOXML results can be viewed here.

The ISO standards development process insist on the principle of consensus, industry satisfaction and voluntary adoption. Consensus is defined as:

"The views of all interests are taken into account: manufacturers, vendors and users, consumer groups, testing laboratories, governments, engineering professions and research organizations."

Microsoft has been strongly lobbying members of National Bodies to vote "Approve" on OOXML (DIS 29500) without due recognition and consideration of the technical issues that needed to be discussed and fixed in OOXML. Never mind that there is a substantial oppostion to the introduction of this draft standard (as it stands today), Microsoft has been spending countless millions of dollars and the time of many of its employees to lobby and get OOXML through the venerable gates of ISO by hook or crook.

Microsoft Singapore (led by Mr. Barney Lau) has been running an intensive lobbying campaign to the members of the Information Technology Standards Committee (ITSC) to vote "Approve" on OOXML and disregard the "Disapprove" recommendation of Singapore's Information Exchange Technical Committee. Sure enough, in September 2007, ITSC voted "Approve" despite its technical committee voting a strong "Disapprove". The members of ITSC include members of the academia and industry as follows:

1. Chairman, Mr Robert Chew representing the Standards Council
2. Mr V S Kumar representing the Association of the Small and Medium Enterprises
3. Mr Raymond Lee representing the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore
4. Mr Alvin Ong representing the Information Technology Management Association
5. Dr Susanto Rahardja representing the Institute for Infocomm Research
6. Dr Derek Kiong representing the Institute of Systems Science
7. Mr Tam Kok Yan representing the Ministry of Defence
8. Mr Daniel Wee representing Nanyang Polytechnic
9. Assoc Prof Chia Liang-Tien, Clement representing Nanyang Technological University
10. Assoc Prof Pung Hung Keng representing National University of Singapore
11. Mr Lim Sah Soon representing the Singapore Chinese Chamber of Commerce & Industry
12. Mr Alphonsus Pang, Singapore Computer Society
13. Mr Foo Jong Tong representing Singapore infocomm Technology Federation
14. Ms Susan Chong representing SPRING Singapore
15. Mr Harish Pillay individual capacity
16. Mr Wilson Tan, individual capacity

Apparently, Microsoft Singapore allegedly promised funding and discounts to the academia. There is no documentation to back this up, so I cannot substantiate this rumour (and neither should you consider it to be true). However, it is true that Microsoft Singapore got all its business partners to write in standard template letters of support to ITSC to get ITSC vote "Approve".

In particular, the Information Technology Management Association (ITMA) and the Singapore Infocomm Technology Federation (SITF) (highlighted in red above), specifically wrote in to ITSC supporting OOXML as an ISO standard. Amazingly, both letters were CC-ed to Mr. Barney Lau (Microsoft Singapore Managing Director). I honestly did not know that ITMA and SITF were answerable to Mr. Barney Lau of Microsoft Singapore. Oh wait, he is a member of the SITF council.

That may be the most cogent explanation yet of Singapore's "Approve" vote I've seen to date.

Here are the letters sent by ITMA and SITF (as provided by a source in Microsoft who was not happy with the approach the regional Microsoft office took to railroad OOXML through Singapore's standards body).

Updated: 1st April 2008, 06:13 PM Malaysian Time (GMT 8)

 The Final Results are IN! Here are the final results of the countries voting for DIS 29500 (more popularly known as Microsoft OOXML). Countries without links are verified from the ISO results.

Participating Countries:

Observing and Other Countries:

Final Vote:

• Criteria 1: 24/32 = 75.00% (PASS)
• Criteria 2: 10/71 = 14.08% (PASS)
• Overall Result: PASS 

Legend:

• Countries in BLACK are listed as per their September 2007 vote.
• Countries in BLUE have decided their final vote and their final vote does not represent a change in voting from September 2007 (click the links, where available, for the press release).
• Countries in RED have decided their final vote and their final vote represents a change in voting from September 2007 (click the links, where available, for the press release).
• Countries in BROWN are close to deciding their final votes but thanks to intense lobbying, things may change. Note that countries listed in BROWN are SPECULATIVE!
• Countries in stricken-out BROWN have changed their vote from their original September 2007 vote (as noted for each country) and are listed for reference purposes only. Note that this change may not be their final vote.
• Countries in stricken-out GREY have changed their final vote from their original September 2007 vote (as noted for each country) and are listed for reference purposes only.
• Changes list only enumerates countries which change their vote.
• Count is the number of countries in the list.
• Changes = "Number of countries added to a column" "Number of countries subtracted from a column"
• Net Change = "Number of countries added to a column" - "Number of countries subtracted from a column"

Voting Criteria (JTC1 Directives, page 49):

• At least two-thirds of the P-members voting shall have approved;
• Not more than one-quarter of the total number of votes cast are negative.
• A P-member which has given appropriate notification that it will abstain from participation in specific work items (see 3.1.2) shall not be counted as a P-member when counting votes for drafts relating to such items.

ChangeLog:

Ditesh, 1st April 2008:

• Updated the final results (from ISO)
• Updated France's status (thanks Luc Bollen, Jean-Marie Gouarné)

Ditesh, 31st March 2008:

• Updated Australia's status (thanks Rob Brown)
• Updated Malaysia's status (thanks Yoon Kit)

Ditesh, 30th March 2008:

• Updated United Kingdom's status (thanks Andy Updegrove)
• Updated Ireland's status (thanks Andy Updegrove)
• Updated New Zealand's status (thanks Dio Gratio, orlando)
• Updated South Africa's status (thanks anon, Bob Joliffe)

Ditesh, 29th March 2008:

• Added another link for Kenya (thanks Luc Bollen)
• Updated Norway's status (thanks Chris Auld, Andreas Wagner, Mikael Nillson)
• Updated Venezuela's status (thanks Avi Alkalay, orlando, Dio Gratia, Matt)
• Updated France's status (thanks orlando)
• Updated Chile's status (thanks Carlos)
• Updated Denmark's status (thanks Jeffrey)
• Updated South Korea's status (thanks Frank, The Open Sourcerer)
• Updated Argentina's status (thanks Carlos)

Ditesh, 28th March 2008:

• Changes list made more comprehensible
• Updated Kenya's status (thanks Luc Bollen)
• Updated Finland's status (thanks Luc Bollen)

Ditesh, 27th March 2008:

• Updated Romania's status (thanks Apolodor for the vote link and the translation, much appreciated)
• Updated Cuba's status (thanks Dio Gratia)
• Removed Australia from "Approve" column and revert it back to "Abstain" column; resetted China's, South Africa's, New Zealand's colors.
• Added SPECULATIVE warnings. Countries listed in BROWN are NOT FINAL!

Ditesh, 26th March 2008:

• Changed definition of "Changes" statistic, added "Net Change" statistic
• Added link for Canada (thanks Anonymous)
• Added another link for Brazil (thanks Yoon Kit)
• Updated Brazil's status (thanks Anonymous)
• Updated Belgium's status (thanks Luc Bollen for the vote link and the translation, much appreciated)
• Updated Germany's status (thanks Luc Bollen)
• Updated Czech Republic's status (thanks Luc Bollen, orlando)
• Updated Criteria 1&2 after Czech Republic's flip from "Disapprove" to "Approve"
• Fixed Slovenia typo (thanks John Drinkwater)

Ditesh, 25th March 2008:

• Updated Criteria 2 calculations (removal of abstention votes from the denominator, thanks to commentators on this post)
• Updated Netherlands status (thanks Peter)
• Have not updated the status of Cuba due to possible confusion on whether the email sent by the NB is valid (thanks Anonymous)

I'm tired. Really, I'm honestly physically exhausted. Working a full time job, moonlighting on improving the DIS 29500 (Microsoft OOXML) specification, buying a house, selling a car, seeing the apartment building go up in flames[1], hosting two Couch Surfers, dealing with an engagement (don't get excited, it's not mine), taking this really hawt and intelligent woman[2] out and wanting to spend time with her but simply not having time to spend, takes its toll, you see.

So I'm going to keep my response to Doug's recent provocative spin-doctoring and fact-fudging [3] to a numeric series of objective observations and subjective argumentation. Make what you will of it, I personally think Doug needs to spend more time in constructive efforts (perhaps improving the specification?), and less time building elaborate conspiracy theories and flaming his "buddies" (his words, not mine).

Here goes:

1. Doug, you are claiming that you wanted a technical debate with YK and yours truly. You never contacted us prior to the PIKOM meeting and never told me that you would be present at TC4. How can you claim that you wanted a technical debate when you never bothered to get in touch with the people you wanted to debate with? Your logic simply does not compute[4].
2. Your blog post says "they threw me out before the meeting started". Well, no shit sherlock. If you turn up at a meeting without giving due notice of your nomination as an alternate representative of IASA, you really can't be surprised if they weren't too happy, eh? There are proper processes to follow in Malaysia's standards body and IASA flagrantly violated them.
3. Microsoft and IBM were specifically not invited. Doug, you are a high profile Microsoft employee and you circumvented this ruling by turning up as a Malaysian Vice President of IASA. It just doesn't sound to me that you attempted to participate in good faith basis, but rather tried to twist the rules to your favor. If you got in, why shouldn't Google, Oracle, RedHat, IBM, Sun etc all get in as well? The rules are there for a reason, you know. You have to accept that this is a Malaysian technical body, and we want the Malaysian agenda to be discussed, not the agenda of multinationals.
4. I arrived 10 minutes late, not 30 minutes late. Wrong turning on the Federal Highway, you see. Nothing to get worked up over. I have no idea when YK arrived.
5. Hitting out at Madam Tan is a new low, certainly not something I would have expected out of you[5]. I'm going to echo YK's comment and suggest that you stop burning your bridges.
6. Kamarul was invited specifically as an observer by SIRIM in the past. He did not turn up uninvited. Kamarul actually got his facts wrong on this point and was corrected by the secretariat immediately during the meeting. Kamarul acceded to his mistake during the meeting. You may wish to update your blog post accordingly
7. DSM wasn't making up the rules as they went along. Just so you know, I had to get MNCC to formally submit my status as an alternate before they would allow my participation. I'm not sure how you do it in the US but in Malaysia, there are proper processes to follow and IASA shouldn't be an exception.
8. You seem keen in arguing that there was no technical material discussed and presented. Au contra ire[6], I presented Malaysia's dispositions, output from the BRM and gave my technical opinion on the issues. You see, I actually write code for a living, I know what I'm talking about and am willing to defend it too[7]. Mr. Cheong (from the infamous IASA) did not raise a single issue with my interpretation of the technical deficiencies at hand and instead started discussing non-issues ("if Malaysia votes NO, Microsoft will never open anything up ever again"[8]). In fact, Mr. Cheong specifically declined to discuss the technical issues. I see hypocrisy in you blogging that there was no technical discussion when there was indeed such an opportunity present and your organization (or more correctly, Microsoft's front) chose not to engage in it.
9. I think Hasan was in SIRIM to hit on a secretary. Female, and from what I hear, quite the MILF-ish. Really, you should have stayed, if not for seconds, then for the entertainment.

There you go. I'm not going to pursue this any further (but Doug, do feel free to write another scathing post, I've got /dev/null all prepped up and ready here). I just felt folk reading Doug's blog and OpenMalaysiaBlog should be able to see this from another perspective. Specifically mine. Either that or this is just another excuse for more sandiwara (translation: drama).

You know, we Malaysians just love our sandiwara, especially since the election-fever recently ended and no new gossip seems to be making its rounds. Oh well, lets hope Doug keeps us entertained for another week or so (planning to infiltrate other National Bodies? I hear the Singaporeans are bored).

[1] Well not really, but it sure did feel that way.
[2] Mmmmph!
[3] If this a job requirement at Microsoft? That may explain why I never got called in for an interview.
[4] Which is really not a bad thing. It busts the myth that Vulcans inhabit Redmond. I, for one, am f*&#ing glad. I must admit you guys scare me at times with the paranoia but as long as it's not backed up by sheer cold and calculating logic, I guess we're cool.
[5] Well, maybe I expected the stalker to do the dirty hatchet job, but definitely not you Doug.
[6] Slpelnig may be fubared, I couldn't give a shit. Read the first line of this blog post again.
[7] This is really why chicks dig me. That and the 200 dollars I'm willing to part with.
[8] I must admit that this is my favouritest bad argument, ever. Partly because it was quite unexpected (Mr. Cheong does strike me as a fairly intelligent chap) but mostly because the argument is so mindbogglingly stupid.

The Prime Minister's Office of the Government of Iceland has released their policy on Free and Open Source Software. Reading it shows that the policy is well thought through. In the introduction itself, the policy states that:

"Free and open-source software is expanding rapidly all over the world, having already earned recognition as a realistic option when selecting information technology solutions. Such software has brought competition to a market previously dominated by a relatively small number of suppliers. Rather than hindering this trend, it is important for governmental authorities to support it and allow for its continued development, since the use of free and open-source software can reduce the ties of businesses, the authorities and the public to individual suppliers or service providers, thereby cultivating greater choice.

There are numerous factors, particularly the expense of proprietary software, which call for noting the possibilities involved in using free and open-source software. These possibilities add weight to recommendations stemming from cooperative projects and international organisations, such as the European Union and Nordic Council, that free competition be promoted in these matters. Public bodies are at the same time encouraged to utilise the power of their size to push for the use of free and open-source software. In fact, most of Iceland's neighbouring countries have already formed policies on such software."

The policy itself consists of five simple yet effective action items:

Point 1: When purchasing new software, free and open-source software and proprietary software are to be considered on an equal footing, with the object of always selecting the most favourable purchase.

Observation: The Malaysian MAMPU open source policy was similar in nature except that it was sensible in the sense  that it required preference to be given to open source software when all other considerations were of equal merit. This policy was under intense lobbying to be overturned from Microsoft Malaysia and its various fronts (such as CompTIA and IASA) in the interest of technology neutrality, which was a silly argument considering that technology neutrality benefited the proprietary Microsoft stack status quo and did not benefit the entire industry as a whole.

Point 2: Every endeavour shall be made to choose software based on open standards, regardless of whether the software in question is standard or bespoke (custom-designed). Generally, software which is free for anyone to use is also typified by open standards.

Observation: The focus on open standards is timely and wise. Open standards increase choice for users and vendors alike so it works to the benefit of all. However, a reference to a definition of open standards would prove useful as certain vendors have been known to fudge the definition of open standards and confuse the debate.

Point 3: Public bodies shall endeavour to avoid any undue dependence on particular software manufacturers or service providers. The utilisation of free and open-source software is one means of this.

Point 4: One goal for bespoke (custom-designed) software financed by public bodies, including software for research and development projects, should be its reusability. Keeping the software free and open-source is one way to achieve reusability. Strategies shall be devised at the outset of such projects for ensuring reuse of the software.

Point 5: Students in Icelandic educational institutions shall be given the opportunity of learning about and using free and open-source software on a par with proprietary software.

Observation: I love point no 5. Day in and day out, I encounter fresh university graduates who have been trained on proprietary software platforms and know very little about the fundamentals of computer science. They are really point-and-click developers (think Visual Basic) who are just denied from learning about the fundamentals thanks to the opaque interface provided by the proprietary platforms. By comparison, every single graduate with an open source background shines primarily because he/she has been able to grok and plumb the software stack to their hearts content. Being able to learn through open source software is a big big win and will reap benefits for the Iceland ICT industry for years to come.

All in all, good stuff from the Icelandic government. Let's hope more European governments follow suit!

The Malaysian Administrative Modernization and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU) has announced that the agency will be migrating to OpenOffice.org office suite as well as adopt the OpenDocument Format (ODF). In addition, Microsoft Office is to be phased out by end of 2008. The press release follows:

Putrajaya, 19th March 2008 - The Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU), today officially adopts a policy to migrate to the OpenOffice.org open source productivity suite. This is in line with the Malaysian Public Sector Open Source Master Plan, which calls for government agencies to reduce costs, increase freedom of choice and interoperability.

From April 1st, MAMPU will start adopting the OpenDocument Format (ODF), standard for all new documents created. ODF the ISO open standard for electronic documents is also the default format for OpenOffice.org. The agency will also uninstall all copies of Microsoft Office by the end of 2008.

To ensure a smooth migration, presently over 80 agency staff have been trained by the Open Source Competency Centre (OSCC). Additional staff will then be trained internally by the IT department, which will also provide support for OpenOffice.org.

[Update by Hasan, 1:32 PM, 19 March 2008: Below are my translations of the MAMPU 2-page policy statements on the move to OpenOffice.org and ODF]

--- Page 1, originally Polisi Penggunaan OpenOffice.org MAMPU (in Malay) ---

The case for open source software has been made with general acceptance of its promise of better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility and lower cost. Now is the time to hasten execution.

Y.Bhg. Tan Sri Sidek Hassan
Chief Secretary to the Government of Malaysia
December 2007

OPENOFFICE.ORG USAGE POLICY

1. Document distribution

a) Internal within MAMPU, in the basic OpenOffice.org format

b) Going outside of MAMPU, in PDF format if not necessary to be edited and in OpenOffice.org or MS Office if to be edited

2. All preparation of documents need to use standard fonts that have been stipulated.

3. Mandatory for every PC or Notebook to have OpenOffice.org that has been stipulated.

4. Every MAMPU citizen need to own OpenOffice.org to support prevalent usage of OpenOffice.org.

5. Before 1 April 2008, every user need to complete back-up of MS Office documents.

6. From 1 April 2008, new documents need to be produced using OpenOffice.org and templates that have been stipulated.

7. From 1 July 2008, MS Office software will be uninstalled from every PC and notebook.

Released on 19 March 2008

--- End of Page 1 ---

--- Page 2, originally Mengapa Bertukar Kepada OpenOffice.org (in Malay) ---

Increased Interoperability, reduced costs and vendor lock-in, and increased growth of knowledge-based society are among the compelling reasons for moving in this direction.

Dato' Normah Binti Md yusuof
Director General MAMPU
Prime Minister's Department
December 2007

WHY CHANGE TO
OPEN OFFICE.ORG?

1. Saves software licensing cost

2. Prevents supplier lock-in situations

2. Increases compatibility and interoperability

4. Stimulates growth of local ICT industry

5. Aligned with Malaysian Public Sector OSS Master Plan

--- End of Page 2 ---

There was a press release about Netherlands adopting ODF. Here is the English translation of the press release:

Obligatory use of open standards by the government

17/09/2007 Press release subject: ICT policy

The government has to use open standards software from April 2008. This will increase the openness and accessibility of the government for the public, decrease the dependency from ICT-suppliers and it will give innovation more chance to take place.

This is a plan posed by the Deputy Minister of Economics, Heemskerk, which he sent to the parliament on Monday 17^th of September 2007. The Deputy Minister of Domestic Affairs, Bijleveld, also supports this plan. On the very same day he gave a speech on the conference ‘Grenzeloos samenwerken’ (cooperation without borders) to further outline his plans.

Through open standards and the use of open source software, the dependency from ICT-suppliers will be decreased. Furthermore, more opportunities will be created for designers of this type of software. In addition, the exchange of information between citizens and the governments will become easier.

From April 2008 on, government entities have to consider software with open standards if they purchase or modernise their software. Only in exceptional cases, for example when operations are endangered, proprietary software can be considered.

From the 1^st of January 2009, all government departments need to have a strategy for the use and purchasing of open source software. According to the deputy minister it is good that politicians are looking into the ICT policy since it is not only a technological tool but also an important part of modern Dutch society.

Open source software is software of which the source code is freely accessible. A well-known example is the operating system Linux. The main features of open standards is that everybody can use it without paying for a license.

My only comment on this would be for those in Netherlands championing this initiative to look out for Comptia and other allegedly neutral vendor organizations who would probably have already started lobbying against such initiatives in the dubious interest of maintaining technology neutrality (in layman's terms, "technology neutrality" would basically mean to  "maintain the status quo of using proprietary software from a software vendor found guilty in the US and the EU of abusing its market monopoly").

This is a long delayed post on Doug Mahugh's (Technical Evangelist, Microsoft US)  talk on OOXML at TechEd SEA 2007. Yoon Kit has already written a post on it, this post covers my perspectives on Doug's talk.

Well, to start off, we were almost late for his talk. Not because of tardiness of our part, but rather because I insisted we go collect Yoon Kit's bag from the Handout counter. But no matter, it seemed that we didn't miss anything because as we sat down, Doug had just started.

Doug spoke about XML being a 10 year evolution and observed that with 6,000 pages, everybody agrees that OOXML is a big topic. He then gave a 20,000 feet birds-eye visual overview of the entire spec and explained the individual sections in the specification. The meat, according to Doug, is in Part 4 (Language Reference) which in itself is 5,000 pages according to Doug. He quipped that "Nobody would sit down and read it, a statement that raised a number of eyebrows in the room. The remark did seem to be a non-sequitur. After all, how does one implement a specification without reading exactly how the specification is to be implemented?

Doug went on to describe the WordML and SpreadsheetML architectures. He is a most excellent presentator and I truly enjoyed his description of the OOXML specification. The examples he gave were fairly instructive but I must say that a few people did get lost (I saw one guy give his colleague a bewildered look) because Doug's talk required some basic understanding of the structure of document formats.

On one point, he mentioned that independent implementations of OOXML would differ from Microsoft Office 2007's implementation of OOXML because of "arbitrary details of (Microsoft) Word's implementation". He showed an example document from Microsoft Word which had a "Word" folder and he indicated that the folder contains data that Word always writes. Given there is no independent reference implementation of OOXML to date and that Microsoft Office 2007 would be used by most people as a reference implementation, one wonders if this would lead to a splurge of OOXML documents requiring the use of the "Word" folder as an unfortunate necessary dependency.

Doug went to speak about SpreadsheetML and outlined four optimization goals of OOXML's spreadsheet approach:

• small tag size
• shared strings
• shared formulas
• sparse markup

He mentioned that each of these bullet points represents a specific method of speeding up loading spreadsheet documents. While the focus in speed is clearly necessary, I would only be convinced if Doug would provide publically available code that actually demonstrates speedups in non-trivial spreadsheets.

Doug also spoke on PresentationML and gave some examples. He noted that VML and DrawingML were two methods of representating shapes but gave no good reason for the reason VML was in the specification when DrawingML would clearly get the job done. Well, he did say it's "very simple to use VML" in passing, but given the feedback technical observers have made on this apparently unnecessary duality, one would have imagined he would have spoken on it.

Doug then showed an interoperability demo (running on Tomcat/Linux in the backend) where some OOXML documents were manipulated by a backend engine. This wasn't particularly impressive, at least to me, given that I had actually written an extensive document manipulation engine for the document standard which would eventually become ODF 3 years back. As one can imagine, trivial document manipulation is easy - real interoperability, however, requires extensive tests running on nontrivial real world documents and use cases.

Doug also presented the MindManager Map interoperatibility demo, which actually did not work the first time around. I was particularly concerned when Doug showed DOCM and indicated that macros are not necessary for interoperability. Sorry Doug but given the extensive use of macros in today's documents, I really beg to differ on this point.

Doug outlined some developer tools for OOXML on various platforms:

• Available .NET libraries
• Microsoft OOXML SDK is provided. The SDK, unfortunately, is .NET based which means that developers are forced to use C#. I wrote previously on this blog that Microsoft's focus on building interoperable tools seems to only focus on the Microsoft stack. Guess I wasn't wrong on that one.
• Package Explorer (only on Microsoft Windows)
• Altova XMLSPy (only on Microsoft Windows)
• File convertors (only on Microsoft Windows) to convert OOXML backwards to binary formats
• and several other generic XML processing tools for Linux and the Mac

In response to a query by an audience member, he mentioned that OOXML allows for document software to use custom defined encryption algorithm as OOXML "does not specify encryption algorithms". Does that mean document readers need to implement all known encyrption algorithms, no matter how flawed the algorithms may be, to be able to correctly read OOXML documents? Does that mean document creation software can use patented encryption algorithms? How does that pass for an open standard? In this day and age where encryption algorithms are vetted and standardized by expert bodies, it seems a backwards move to not explicitly specify acceptable encryption algorithms. Not to mention that this design choice would raise implementation costs and efforts by third party vendors.

Well, time was running short and the session had to be wrapped up. We later had the opportunity to ask him some questions directly:

• On ODF vs OOXML: Doug mentioned that ODF was an "elegant" document format.

• On what happened at ISO: Doug was frank and said that the current ISO processes are not really suitable when the proposed standard is contentious and when there are substantial commercial incentives behind OOXML and ODF.

• On what will happen after the ISO Ballot Resolution Meeting: Doug has no idea. But he mentioned Microsoft will continue extending the OOXML specification. Oh, wait a minute. Isn't OOXML an Ecma standard and no longer in the control of Microsoft?

• On whether OOXML is in the control of Microsoft: Doug looked like deer caught in headlights of an oncoming truck. Then he grinned and said "Freudian slip".

That's as good an ending as we could have expected :)

For the last two years, I have been working almost exclusively with Free Software. The last time I decided to have a looksee at the proprietary software, it was a MIND event which focused solely on Microsoft software. I was distinctly underwhelmed during the event because the speakers seemed to carry a strong anti Open Source agenda (which was an unfortunate irony as we later saw a speaker using Python extensively in his application). In any case, I thought it was high time to see the technology Microsoft has been developing recently. So, when I saw Jeff Ooi writing about a blogger's meet showcasing Microsoft software, I thought I'd register and see what the software giant was up to.

Sembang Tech Ed 2007 was held yesterday (Sunday) at Bangkok Jazz Bar in Chulan Square. I arrived on time but apparently there was a lack of parking, so a further 20 minutes was spent hunting for parking. No matter, I arrived slightly late with high expectations and discovered that the event was starting late anyway.

Oliver Scheer (Microsoft Developer Evangelist Germany) started off by speaking about Microsoft Silverlight. Well, actually he started off by saying "I can code, I can develop" in an Arnold Schwarzenegger voice to emphasize his developer skillz. It was bizarre enough that I had a good chuckle over that. Anyway, he went on to give a demo of a Silverlight application which can be used to book airline tickets. This demo has been online for quite some time to highlight Silverlight purty-ness, so I wasn't really impressed (on a sidenote, this very same demo was again used in the TechEd 2007 keynote today morning). Is there any other impressive application of Silverlight that Microsoft can demo besides this one?

Oliver spoke about building a media player using Microsoft Expression. Essentially, he built a "self-contained" player for a specific video by using existing controls available in Microsoft Expressions. He mentioned that this player works on FireFox but gave no details as to the licensing of the plugin. I later spoke to him and he mentioned that this plugin only works on Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X, so those on other platforms (including open source platforms)- you guys are out of luck at this point in time. Well, you can dance under some Moonlight and make sacrifices to a Novell demi-god to officially support other platforms, but at this point in time at least, you're (fortunately or otherwise) out of luck.

Oliver made a specific reference to the fact that Silverlight only supports the Windows Media Video (WMV) and Windows Media Audio (WMA) codecs. This seemed to be awfully restrictive to me, particularly when one takes into account that WMV and WMA codecs are not officially licensed for use on an Open Source platform and more shockingly, the WMV codec has software patent issues which deny independent implementation by a third party. Microsoft has actually sent a cease-and-decease letter to an open source implementation of WMV, so you can imagine how restrictive the decision is to only support WMV and WMA. Oliver later told me that Silverlight also supports MP3 (which is also patent encumbered) and WAV files (which went out of style with bell bottom pants).

What about other codecs, I inquired? Oliver seemed to be flabbergasted at the thought of somebody using non-officially-sanctioned codecs and flatly stated that "in the interest of keeping the size of the runtime small, only these few codecs are installed". I decided to push my luck and ask him about streaming new codecs to the end user. Oliver told me that this is apparently impossible.

Hmmm. Woop-tee-doo.

Oliver mentioned that 40 languages are supported in Silverlight, mentioning Python and Ruby (presumably through the IronPython and IronRuby execution environments). However, despite interest from the floor on Python/Ruby support, there was no focus on using languages other then Microsoft XAML and Microsoft C#.

Color me cynical, but I've heard more marketing speak from technology vendors then I care too comment on. A classic problem that we have traditionally seen with the Microsoft stack is simply that components and frameworks tend to only officially support other parts of the Microsoft stack and those wishing to use it on other platforms have to figure out an implementation strategy on their own. In other words, true interoperatibility works only within the Microsoft stack: a definition that is oxymoronic in itself.

My impression of Silverlight is that it seems to be a souped up Flash player with a focus on building web applications. That in itself is fine, but as an observer from the floor noted, Flash is signficantly more mature at this point in time and is increasingly being used in the area of rich Internet applications. From that perspective, there is little new groundbreaking technology that Silverlight contributes at this point in time.

Next up, Rohan Thomas, a developer evangelist from Microsoft Malaysia, spoke on Microsoft Popfly. I had difficulty following his presentation because I had no idea what Microsoft Popfly was and only realized towards the end of Rohan's presentation that it is a hosted service by Microsoft to create mashups using Microsoft Silverlight. He showed how Microsoft Popfly supports drag and drop mashup creation and cooly informed us bloggers that the difference between Flash and Silverlight is that Silverlight renders on the client side. Whaaaaat ???

Ok, maybe the free flowing alcohol was getting to presenters too (quite understandable, if I may say so myself). Despite this gaffe, Rohan went on to show how webpages could be created through Popfly, which didn't work out too well because the Save button was hidden lower down in the page and the website didn't have scrollbar. Maybe the developers of Popfly were also enjoying free flowing alcohol in Redmond when designing this application? I didn't see anything particularly special about the webpage creator other then fancy look and feel.

In any case, I was getting mighty bored at this point in time and was contemplating leaving. I mean, mashups are cool and all but it's not exactly the next iPod, is it? Somebody in the audience had the same thought and pointed out that Yahoo Tubes and Google Mashups provide similar tools and asked why Microsoft's version was better. It was a fair comment, in my opinion. I mean, why use Popfly when there are great tools out there already, right? What separates Popfly from the rest?

Rohan answered that Popfly has Team Foundation Server running ("ooooooh"), that it's updated every two weeks ("aaaahhhhhh") and that Team Foundation Server is still in alpha and Popfly users are effectively alpha-testing it ("WTF?!!"). In other words, Rohan is saying that we should be using Popfly over Y! Tubes and Google Mashup only because Microsoft needs to be provided with free feedback on their alpha software? If this was an open source project, I'd have more sympathy to Rohan's answer but considering Popfly is as proprietary and closed as a pyloric sphincter is, I failed to see the reasoning behind Rohan's answer.

Chewy "Chewbacca" Chong (Microsoft Developer Evangelist Singapore) jumped in later and said that Popfly helped fuel much of the development in Y! Tubes and Google Mashups. Whether this is true or not is completely irrelevant. In an open industry, competition drives innovation. Just as Yahoo and Google's mashup tools forced Microsoft to enter this area, Microsoft's subsequent involvement certainly would have helped improve the general state of the mashups. That it inself is an indication of an innovative economy, not a sign of any benevolence on Microsoft's part. More directly to the point, however, is that this is certainly no reason for end users to use Popfly over Y! Tubes. Nobody from Microsoft really did satisfactorily provide an answer to why users should use Popfly over Yahoo's and Google's existing tools.

The second last presentation was by Chewy on Microsoft Home Server. His presentation focused on how easy it was to use Microsoft Home Server to control and backup machines within a home LAN. The technology itself, as Chewy admits, is not new. What Microsoft has done is to put a GUI front end to manage all the systems within the LAN. I think for those who are solely on a Microsoft Windows platform, the technology can possibly prove itself useful (if it works as advertised).

But what about the rest of us? Pffft. There is nonexistent support for non-Microsoft platforms so those on a Mac or Linux or even FreeBSD are out of luck (in my case, that counts as a triple whammy). The second problem I saw was that Chewy kept pimping the software as easy enough for his Mom to use. I'm not sure if his Mom works as a system administrator but from what I say, it's definitely not easy enough for the layperson. A closet geek maybe, but definitely not a layperson. To a real technologist, there was little being offered that could be appreciated because most of the functionality already exist in other forms. So, thanks Chewy, but I'll stick to my shell scripts and Samba mounts for now.

The final presentation was by Zeddy Iskandar (Academic Developer Evangelist, Microsoft Indonesia). Zeddy certainly had something impressive to demo: Microsoft Robotics Studio. Well, it was impressive to me anyways since I'm a true-blue geek with an electronics engineering background. I enjoyed the idea that one could program and build a robot and have it run within a virtual environment with true physics. Very cool, but unfortunately fully proprietary, which means one cannot contribute to its development and have the freedom to extend it where needed. It's strange the Robotics Studio would be proprietary when one would assume that the freedom to adapt the code to one's need would be a killer feature for the product. Hmm, I wonder if Open Source equivalents exist. Btw, Zeddy, if you're reading this - your sample code did not work in stopping the robot because you failed to explicitly include zeroing out movement in your final output.

That was that with the presentations. During the Q&A, a member from the floor asked about possible free tickets to TechEd 2007. A representative from Microsoft Malaysia (whose name I failed to capture) curtly informed those present that Microsoft, as a principle, does not offer complementary tickets to its business partners. Now, this is fair enough, except that its completely untrue. I know for a fact that several complementary tickets were offered for TechEd2007 to some companies. This answer (and the curt tone itself) turned me off quite a bit.

Anyway, there you go. That's what I saw and experienced. Microsoft certainly makes for a great host (food and free flowing beer!) but I had seriously expected more from the technology presented and from the quality of presentations. Perhaps I've been spoiled by Open Source events, where one listens to the actual developers and it is easily possible to get into the thick of things, ie to become a participant instead of a customer.

This is the stark difference I noticed between Open Source events and Microsoft events. The former is almost always informal, acceptive and has substantial technical details presented for all and sundry to learn from (and contribute). The latter seems to be "Hey, this is the latest version of a Microsoft product which has X,Y,Z features and sells at RM $$$". In other words, Microsoft events are geared towards making its audience Microsoft customers (as Chewy starkly admitted: "I've got a convert!") and Open Source events are geared towards making everybody a participant in improving the software for the common good of all. The long and short is, if what I saw was the best Microsoft had to offer today, one could certainly be forgiven for thinking that the greatest innovations are now coming from outside the land of Redmond.

My second observation is: where are the Microsoft hackers? You know ... the Raymond Chen's of the world. Where are they? I'm quite sure they exist but I've not met a single one, not even at today's at TechED conference.

When I was in FOSDEM this year, we had presentations directly from folk like HD Moore (security), Miguel de Icaza (GNOME, .NET etc), Andrew Morton (Linux kernel hacking), Jeremy Allison (Samba), Keith Packard (X.org) and many more. At AsiaOSS in Kuala Lumpur last year, we had Yukihiro Matsumoto of Ruby fame presenting. At FOSS.in last year, we had Malaysia's very own JayaKumar (who has contributed drivers to the Linux kernel), Rasmus Lerdorf (PHP founder) and many others presenting. I distinctly remember my first international Open Source conference, LinuxConf Australia 2005 where Tridge (of Samba fame) presented. Tridge delved deep into the CIFS technology itself and it was  an incredible rush listening to him explain the design decisions made in Samba 4.

So, why are the equivalent Microsoft hackers sequestered away? All we have been meeting are developer evangelists who end up giving the same tired demos we have seen online. Hearing from the real developers  themselves really makes all the difference in the world.

Anyway, I'm tired. The night is nigh, and it's a good time to end this extremely long blog post. Upon spending some time grokking the reflection of the glass of amber liquid sitting in front of me now, I believe this blog post probably wins the most number of times the word "mashups" has been written ever in the history of OpenMalaysiaBlog.  Urgh., I am indeed feeling sick now.

ps: A note to Chewy: Prime numbers actually start from 2, not 1 :)

Stephane Rodriguez, an independent software vendor and file format excerpt, has authored a pretty damning document titled "Microsoft Office Open XML: Defective by Design". We at OpenMalaysiaBlog have been noting the technical problems with OOXML for some time now. Here are some excerpts from an external independent party:

[On Text Markup]

The extensiveness of the ECMA 376 documentation, over 6000 pages, is telling how much legacy Microsoft is willing to bring into the future. Taking an example of such legacy clarifies what it takes to implement even a portion of the documentation. The example is text formatting. Any of the 3 applications, Word, Excel and Powerpoint uses its own text formatting markup. Worse, the shared libraries themselves (VML, DrawingML, MathML, ...) also use separate text formattings, each different. Even worse, if that's possible, Word has many own ways to do text formatting. Excel has many own ways to do text formatting. Powerpoint has many own ways to do text formatting.
...
To read a document, you cannot assume what's in that document, therefore you've got to implement all possible combinations of objects that may be part of the document. In particular, you've got to implement all ways to get text formatting markup models because that may well be the XML you face. This is a horrible scenario. To support this scenario, either you are Microsoft, or you have a number of years of work ahead on the subject with plenty of implementation done already. There is no way around, the barrier to entry to this scenario is sky high.

[On Storing Data in Spreadsheets]

We all take for granted that when we type a value such as 1234.1234 in a cell of a spreadsheet, that's what actually gets stored ... Is this storage neutrality true with the new formats? ... Excel 2007 does not store what we entered. If we read the XML, we are going to grab numbers that have rounding errors compared to the actual numbers we typed. The spreadsheet does not reflect the proper values ... Imagine non-Microsoft applications used in healthcare and critical systems relying on the spreadsheet data. Not only the rounding error seems arbitrary (one would have to go back and study the artefacts of IEEE floating-point values, several decades of work), but it changes.

...

It's important to understand that if we open the spreadsheet in Excel 2007, we see the proper values. No loss (based on the values entered) seem to have occured, the problem is that the data in XML just cannot be used as is.

As an aside, the stored value does not use the locale (it always uses the dot as decimal separator), therefore we have to assume this is all US English. If we wrote software in Excel VBA that grabs the value in cells, then processes it, there is no way we could migrate our VBA code to work with this XML part without substantial rework. We are left with Excel's own international implementation artefacts, undocumented.

[On the Alleged Deprecated VML]

Contrary to what the ECMA 376 documentation says in many places, VML drawing parts are not deprecated at all. VML is in fact very pervasive in Word, Excel and Powerpoint documents, so it's even more a blatant problem.

Here is a way to create a VML part :

• start Excel 2007 and create a new spreadsheet
• right-click and choose Insert Comment
• enter a comment
• save the spreadsheet (xlsx file)
• close it, unzip it

[On Bad Packaging]

The underlying architecture of how zip entries relate together is called by Microsoft "open packaging conventions". What it means is that zip entries are not independent, or even related by way of a single master zip entry which would work as a directory of all zip entries of relevance. There is a logical tree of entries which uses separate zip entries to define relations between zip entries. The logical tree has nothing to do with the physical tree of zip entries in a package, despite Microsoft continuously using screenshots of Windows XP's built-in ZIP folders to mimic a folder hierarchy.

The problem with such an architecture is that a part may or may not relate to another and there is no standard way to know. Often, there is a r:id attribute right in the content of some XML part that tells the application that there is a relation, but this is not standard. By the way, Microsoft's PDF fixed format competitor called XPS is also based on the same underlying architecture, except that the team who developed XPS did not quite want to play by the same rules than the Office team. For instance the XPS main zip document entry related to one or more XPS pages with an attribute such as : Source="Pages/1.fpage". In other words, they are not using the r:id attribute, instead relying on their own mechanism. This makes it impossible for a generic library to know which part relates to which part, and it has an unfortunate consequence.

The unfortunate consequence is being unable to know whether a part relates or not to another part makes it impossible to know, when you delete a part, if you are going to corrupt the document or not. The document becomes corrupt if it points or relates (implicitely or explicitely) to a missing part. It's unclear why Microsoft chose this way of doing things, obviously leading to an internal chaos, instead of just copying the research from the OpenOffice project, where a central directory is used (OpenOffice ZIP initiative predates Microsoft's by at least three years, despite Microsoft stealing the thunder).

When you don't know the dependencies of a part, the consequence is obvious, you leave those parts alone. If you do this enough times, it clutters up the package, and soon enough you end up with a package containing any number of parts god only knows why they are there. Add to this you can add a part of any content type (arbitrary MIME type), and you have a recipe for disaster. Among other things, virus could proliferate.

[On The Lack of Internationalization Support]

An important ongoing tension with Office documents is the support for locales. Microsoft historically used a number of mechanisms to address this need, but they kept evolving and Microsoft aggregated all mechanisms to keep compatibility with older versions. What was hidden is being surfaced with the new XML. Anything that gets displayed, calculated, rendered or stored depends one way or another on an complex and undocumented combination of locale settings including : the Office application language, the Office application language settings (per application), the Office document language settings (per document), the system locale of the operating system.

To save them time, Microsoft chose to store XML using the US English locale regardless of all settings above.

This has an unfortunate consequence for implementers or those willing to make a manual change. Indeed, Microsoft is imposing everybody else to adapt to US English locale options (separators, date formats, formula conventions, ...) despite the fact that when using Office interactively, this fact is hidden to the user.

...

We are talking two decade worth of internationalization issues, for Office-related locale issues and Windows-related locale issues. To get an idea of how bad the situation is, suffice to say that a Microsoft employee part of the internationalization team in Windows has a blog where he posts daily horror stories.

OOXML has actually made it to the front page of Reddit, the incredibly popular Web 2.0 link aggregator. Reddit contains the most important stories collected from various corners of the World Wide Web, and in this case, the story happens to be a well articulated request by Mark Shuttleworth (geek bilionaire, entrepreneur extraordinaire) to citizens of all countries to get their respective National Standards Bodies to look into the numerous well documented technical deficiencies of OOXML ahead of the 2nd September ballot closing date and vote "NO with Comments" on OOXML.

If this message can get on the front page of Reddit, it is a clear sign that a great many people are worried that OOXML may be bulldozed through ISO despite all the technical and vendor lock in problems that have been identified by neutral parties worldwide. Hell, even the National Institute of Standards and Technology (an internationally respected standards body in the United States) has said "NO" to OOXML - that's how bad the technical quality of OOXML is!

The long and short of it is that there is 2 weeks to go before the ISO ballot submission so talk to your national ISO committee TODAY!

An excerpt from Mark's blog entry:

It’s too early to say for certain, but there are very encouraging signs that the world’s standards bodies will vote in favour of a single unified ISO (”International Standards Organisation”) document format standard. There is already one document format standard - ODF, and currently the ISO is considering a proposal to bless an alternative, Microsoft’s OpenXML, as another standard. In the latest developments, standards committees in South Africa and the United States have both said they will vote against a second standard and thereby issue a strong call for unity and a sensible, open, common standard for business documents in word processing, spreadsheets and presentations.

It’s very important that we build on those brave decisions and call on all of our national standards committees, to support the idea of a single common standard for these critical documents.

...

Here are the points I find particularly compelling, myself:

1. This is not a vote “for or against Microsoft”.
   In fact, this is a vote for or against a unified standard. Microsoft is a member of the body that defines ODF (the existing ISO standard) but is hoping to avoid participating in that, in favor of getting their own work blessed as a standard. A vote of “no OpenXML” is vote against multiple incompatible standards, and hence a vote in favour of unity.If the ISO vote is “no”, then there is every reason to expect that Microsoft will adopt ODF, and help to make that a better standard for everybody including themselves. If we send a firm message to Microsoft that the world wants a single, unified standard, and that ODF is the appropriate place for that standard to be set, then we will get a unified global standard that includes Microsoft.The reason this point is important is because many government officials recognise the essential position Microsoft holds in their operations and countries, and they will be afraid to vote in a way that could cost their country money. If they perceive that a vote “no” might make it impossible for them to work with Microsoft, they will vote yes. Of course Microsoft is telling them this, but the reality is that Microsoft will embrace a unified standard if the global standards organisation clearly says that’s a requirement.
2. Open, consensus based document standards really WORK WELL - consider HTML
   We already have an extraordinary success in defining a document format openly, in the form of HTML. The W3 Consortium, which includes Microsoft and many other companies, defines HTML and CSS. While Microsoft initially resisted the idea, preferring to push Internet Explorer’s proprietary web extensions, it was ultimately forced to participate in W3C discussions.The result is a wonderfully rich document format, with many different implementations. Much of the richness of the web today comes directly from the fact that there is an open standard for web documents and web interactions. Look at a classy web page, and then look at a classy Word document, and ask yourself which is the most impressive format! Clearly, Word would be better with an open standard, not one defined by a single company.
3. A SINGLE standard with many implementations is MUCH more valuable than multiple standards
   Imagine what would happen if there were multiple incompatible web document standards? You couldn’t go to any web site and just expect it to work, you would need to know which format they used. The fact that there is one web document standard - HTML - is the key driver of the efficiency of the web as a repository of information. The web is a clear example of why ODF is the preferred structure for a public standard.ODF, the existing standard, is defined openly by multiple companies, and Microsoft can participate there along with everyone else. They know they can - and they participate in other standards discussions in the same organisation.

   ODF is already implemented by many different companies. This means that there are many different tools which people can choose to do different things with their ODF documents. Some of those tools are optimised for the web, others for storage, others for data analysis, and others for editing. In the case of OpenXML, there is not even one single complete implementation - because even Microsoft Office12 does not exactly implement OpenXML. There is also no other company with any tool to edit or manage OpenXML documents. Microsoft is trying to make it look like there is broad participation, but dig beneath the surface and it is all funded by one company. The ODF standard is a much healthier place to safeguard all of our data.

...

The USA, South Africa, China, and other countries will be voting “no”. Let’s not allow heavy lobbying to influence what should be a calm, rational, sensible and ultimately technical discussion. Standards are important, and best defined in transparent and open forums. Pick up the phone!

This is news making waves across the blogosphere: INCITS (an industry forum to recommendation US position on JTC1 ballots) could not reach a consensus to vote "APPROVE" on OOXML. This is indeed big news. There has been much fear that this far-reaching standard may be adopted at ISO despite the serious and grave technical deficiencies in the proposed standard, despite its vendor specific nature, despite troubling licensing concerns and most importantly, despite strong objections from technical bodies of 20 countries.

More troubling then the technical problems of OOXML is the extent to which the standardization process is being subverted to the favor of Microsoft. Rob Weir states in his blog post that:

An important factor in the V1 vote was the large number of members who joined very late in the process. At the start of the year, V1 had only 7 voting members. But by Friday's meeting V1 had 26 voting members. There was a clear pattern in the voting where the long-time V1 members voted for the "Disapproval, with comments" position as well as "Abstention, with comments" while the newer members voted overwhelmingly "Yes, with comments" and against "Abstention with comments." This is not surprising since the new members were largely Microsoft business partners.

We see today in a GrokLaw news pick the following item from a member of the standards committee in Portugal:

I was present on the meeting of the Technical Commission (CT) created to award the ISO standards in the area of structured documents (in Portugal)

A Technical Commission (CT) did not exist when ISO 26300 (Open Document) was submitted neither when there was a submission of OOXML (ECMA 376, potential ISO 29500) for the the fast track, and that was the reason why Portugal did not submit any opinion nor had any right to vote. We expect that now, with the pressure made and the CT created there would be right to vote.

The CT was created by the Computing Institute, in which  is delegated the responsability [sic] for the norms of the IT sector; a delegation granted by the Portuguese Institute of Quality (IPQ), the point of contact of ISO in Portugal. Its creation is motivated mainly by the pressures and availability of some people when the proposal for fast tracking of OOXML and a neccessity to avail now the OOXML as standard ISO and as a Portuguese National Standard

In the meeting they were present:

2 persons from II (Instituto de Informatica [Computing Institute])

1 person from the local government (Alentejo region)

1 person from Jurinfor [Jurinfor is a Microsoft partner]

2 persons from Microsoft

1 person from Primavera [Primavera is a Microsoft partner]

1 person from ISCTE  

2 persons from Assoft [reportedly, most members of ASSOFT are Microsoft partners]

1 person from the Inst. Informatica da Seg Social [Computing Institute of the Social Welfare Department]

1 person from the Inst. Tecn. Informacao da Justiça (eu) [Technical Institute Information of Justice (eu)]

... The 8 vocals will readily follow to the election of the president of the CT. There was 1 candidate in the place (Miguel Sales Dias, from Microsoft).

... The vote results were 7 votes in favor of Miguel Sales Dias, of Microsoft, who was designated to preside over the CT, and a (1) blank vote. It was decided to adopt consensus as the form of adoption of any proposed norm, following to majority vote in case there is no consensus in the CT and if there is a strong opposition to submit any norm.

To summarize the above, the meeting in Portugal to decide the fate of OOXML as an ISO standard and Portuguese National Standard was presided over by a presentative from Microsoft, was attended by Microsoft business partners and the decision reached in the meeting was to adopt consensus for any proposal even if there is a strong opposition!

But that's not all the news from Portugal. GrokLaw also notes (through Openxml.info and another source) that members from IBM and SUN were not allowed to vote in the technical committee deciding OOXML's fate!

None of this is new to us in the Malaysian Open Standards scene. When it was obvious that there was a strong technically oriented open standards lobby in Malaysia who may pose objections to OOXML due to its shortcomings, we suddenly saw an unprecedented influx of Microsoft allied partners in the various forums where OOXML was being discussed.

So, who's being unethical here?

Update (19th July 2007): There is another blog post detailing the standards process being subverted in Italy when OOXML was being considered (thanks yk and LinuxToday for the headsup):

The voting in Italy was scheduled to end the 13 of July, for members enrolled on or before 8th July. Strange things started to happen, not unlike other member bodies' situations abroad.  Up and until mid-may the members of the relevant Uninfo committee (JTC1) were five: IBM, Microsoft, CEDEO (Leonardo Chiariglione), the PLIO organization (Openoffice.org in Italy) and HP. Then new members started flocking. At the last count, voters were 83 [0].

Wow! a great number, indeed! If one considers that admission to JTC1 costs in excess of EUR 2000 (more than 2700 USD), it shows a great deal of interest in the standardization process (is the irony sufficiently evident?).

... Actually it is quite impressing seeing how the voting panel was formed. Particularly noteworthy is the fact that among those favouring the adoption of the standard without  reservation a large majority is made of business partners of the proposing entity, a law firm retained by the latter, the official certified business partners association of the proposing entity ... "Money can't buy me love" Beatles used to sing: perhaps neither a standard.

On a day where Bill Hilf, Microsoft's platform strategy director, announces that the Free Software movement is dead, the news is out that the Japanese government intends to go the open source route by making Linux and open source software a priority for all its procurements. There are big bucks at stake - an estimated USD$10.4 billion will be spent on IT next year and the Japanese governtment has explicitly stated that it wishes to decrease its reliance from a single vendor (in this case Microsoft). The move by the Japanese government follows the policies of many other governments worldwide in adopting a positive open source policy.

The core reason to adopt open source policies is simple: the public sector must uphold vendor and technology neutrality in the interest of its citizens. The concept that technology neutrality boils down at some point to forcing all citizens to use a particular platform is just plain wrong, especially in this day and age where many choices exist and open standards allow for clean interoperatibility. A positive open source policy in the public sector ensures that the playing field is levelled and that the much maligned vendor lock-in problem is a problem of the past. More importantly, it allows for technology developers in the country to build their own intellectual rights portfolio by extending open source technology, and thus drive the country towards a strong and vibrant ICT economy where technology is created and monetized in areas where foreign software vendor dominance would have impeded their ability to do so in the past.

To give credit where its due, the Malaysian public sector has been rather good in ensuring that government web applications follow international open standards. Based on our interactions, we have met policy makers and technology professionals in the Malaysian public sector who understand that true citizen interaction and involvement on the Internet has to include all citizens, not just those who can afford paying RM1461 for a copy of Microsoft Windows Vista in a country where fresh university graduates can have a starting gross salary of RM1500.

There are, however, the occasional shortcomings. To illustrate a particular potent example, the Malaysian e-Filing tax system mandates the use of the Microsoft Windows platform. It also mandates the use of Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0, the version that has been infamously plagued by a slew of security problems for a number of years, causing a large scale grassroots migration to alternative browsers ("Friends don't let friends use Internet Explorer"). Looking at the architecture of the e-Filing system, there is nothing that really requires the use of proprietary Microsoft technology. By using open standards, the e-Filing system will enjoy significantly larger usage among users of alternative browsers and operating system platforms.

In conclusion, with the world going open source and cherishing its technology freedoms, public sectors worldwide should strongly consider re-assessing their current applications to ensure that open standards are stringently followed.

Oh, and Bill Hilf should seriously consider attending any of the large grassroot FOSS conferences and understand that geeks worldwide working on Free Software really do believe in their efforts of allowing the world to have the choice of using free software on their systems. Hilf would also be well served to grok that Linux, PHP, Apache and all the other Free Software out there started off without any financial backing . The fact that companies monetize off it today only serve to indicate that Free Software works well with our existing free market economy. The logic does not follow that the current state of being indicates the reverse, as Hilf is claiming.

VietnamNet Bridge reports that:

"The government has approved the software industry development programme to 2010, in which priority will be given to the use of open source software in state-funded IT projects.

The state will encourage and assist organisations and businesses in providing services supporting the use of open source software.

According to this plan, the country aims to become one of the top 15 countries providing software outsourcing services in the world by 2010. Development of human resources in terms of quality and quantity is the key to the success of the software industry."

In the context of the many open source national initiatives worldwide along with the pilot OLPC deployments, it should be noted that Microsoft has announced a development initiative for the "billions" of people in developing countries to get exposed to ICT:

"Bringing the benefits of technology to the next five billion people will require new products that meet the needs of underserved communities; creative, new business approaches that make technology more relevant, accessible and affordable; and close collaboration between local governments, educational institutions and community organizations."

I'll leave it to the readers to draw their own conclusions on this latest turn of events.

Headsup!

Bob Sutor, the IBM Vice President for Open Source and  Standards, will be speaking in Malaysia on open source and open standards. He will be speaking in two places, first at the Federation of Malaysian Manufacturers on the 19th April 2007 on "Opening Up Your Business Software: Why and When". This talk would be of interest to CEOs in the non-technical industries, or in other words, business owners. Do note that registration is mandatory. Click here for more information and to register. The abstract of the talk is as follows:

Businesses today will be using both forms of software to deploy the most cost-effective and flexible solutions to serve their customers and to maintain their competitive edge and more importantly, to differentiate. The only way to get true interoperability and these potential cost savings inside your company and with your partners and customers is to use true open standards. Your new office applications will depend on them. Your businesses will depend on them. So will your competitors.

Bob will also be speaking at a talk organized by the "Malaysian Free and Open Source Society" on Friday, 20th April 2007 at the Open University Malaysia Campus in Angkasa Raya building (beside KLCC -- Kuala Lumpur City Centre) on "The Shift to 'Open': Boost or Brakes for Innovation and Business". This talk would be of interest to those involved in the ICT industries (CEO, CTO's, software developers, technical managers and technology entrepreneurs should attend the talk). A panel discussion will follow after this talk. There is no registration required for this talk and more information is available here.

Leading ICT companies worldwide are moving towards open standards and open source. Open source is making significant headway into areas that were once the stronghold of proprietary software. Is this a fad or a genuine change in the IT industry? How will this affect your development practices and the skills that you need to acquire? Will we see more or less innovation as a result of greater cross-company and cross-border sharing of information formats and software source code? This talk will discuss the background motivating these questions and provide options as to their answers, as well as how things will shake out over the next five years.

Both talks are free so come early and enjoy yourself!

Yoon Kit wrote an article on ODF for the well regarded weekly business newspaper The Edge which was published 19th March 2007. Titled "Why OpenDocument Format matters", the article explores the importance of open standards in the realm of electronic documents. The article can be viewed by clicking on the thumbnail below (excuse my poor Gimp kungfu):

Disclaimer: We declare our independence of opinions from our employers, institutions, associations and clients, past and present. Thoughts and expressions in the Open Malaysia blog are rightly each blogger's own and each of us stand by what we individually write. Views by readers who post comments and others whose writings we link to in this blog are theirs.

Peter Korn reports that the OpenDocument Format has been balloted at OASIS and it is now an OASIS standard with no dissenting votes! ODF 1.1 has had substantial input from the disability community, such as the Royal National Institute for the Blind and the Institute for Community Inclusion.

Those that have been involved in National Bodies worldwide in the latest standardization exercise involving  Microsoft OOXML may have been puzzled at first, then later amused, that Microsoft representatives have chosen to rewrite not only well accepted definition of contradiction but also portions of technological history.

We will debunk Microsoft's latest assertions in this blog post.

To start off, let us accept that by virtue of accepted historical evidence, this new definition on the term 'contradiction' has only been suggested by Microsoft and Microsoft only. We will also note that this new definition has not been approved by JTC 1.

In light of the many contradictions submitted by concerned members at various National Bodies worldwide, Microsoft representatives have, in an act worthy of a team of scheming lawyers, decided to change the playing field by changing the definition of contradiction so as to invalidate the contradictions submitted by concerned members.

Let us look at their definition of contradiction:

"Does not disrupt nor prevent the coexistence with any existing ISO standard"

"[Contradictions] are really technical issues that should be raised in the next phase of the process"

To illustrate this point, Microsoft picks on two sets of areas of standardisation: "Programming Languages" and "Document Formats" to "prove" that this strange definition is consistent. The following sections will explain why their examples of "contradictory" ISO standards are fallacious.

C, C and COBOL as examples of contradicting standards in ISO

The examples Microsoft has used for the evidence of coexistence of yet "competing" standards are the ISO standards for Programming Languages:

• ISO 9899 for C
• ISO 14882 for C
• ISO 1989 for COBOL

This is their "proof" that their version of "contradiction" means that:

• Coexistence of competing multiple standards are allowed
• Overlap of standards are allowed
• First standards to the door does not win

This form of argumentation is completely fallacious as it draws a similarity of purpose between these programming languages. It was not noted in Microsoft's presentations that all three of these languages were designed for completely different purposes and that they are used in completely different markets.

The C programming language is a general-purpose, procedural, imperative computer programming language. The C language is widely used for systems programming. By comparison, C is sufficiently different as it was designed around the concepts of object-oriented and generics programming with static typing. C is most popularly used in building graphical applications. Finally, COBOL was designed from the start for the business domain and shares little with either C or C in its structure.

As such, these standards do not overlap in the substance of their specifications.

Given the many allusions by Microsoft that ODF supporters are undermining MS OOXML, the Microsoft team was clearly told that the reasons for standardising C and C and COBOL were NOT because of an ISO battle between programming languages in the ISO level, but rather due to the original intent of standards which is to standardise the programming language to prevent fragmentation in the market.

There were originally many implementations of C and C as each vendor provided different features. Every single one of these vendors provide different compilers that worked differently enough to make a software developer aiming at portability to tear his or her hair out. To promote better use and interoperability, the need for standardisation of these languages was created.

In addition, contrary to what was purported by Microsoft representatives, the purpose for standardization was not because the C team wanted to do a one upmanship on the C team. The only purpose for standardisation was to retain consistency between the different implementations by different competing vendors.

Finally, C, C and COBOL programs are typically are not exchanged between end users in the sense office documents are exchanged. Given the increased degree of cross-user interactions with electronic documents, there is a clear need for a single clear standard in this area. Careful observers will notice that MS OOXML is geared towards fragmenting the current ISO standard on Office Documents. We cannot afford fragmentation in document standards simply because a document format today facilitates a large degree of interaction between users on many different systems. A single document format will facilitate interoperatibility across many systems, much in the way that TCP/IP provided for the foundation for the Internet. Thus, the comparison to C, C and COBOL is misleading, false and unsubstantiated.

PDF, HTML and ODF as examples of contradicting standards in ISO

In addition, Microsoft argued that given the existence of PDF, HTML and OpenDocument Files within ISO "proves" that competing formats of documents are acceptable:

• ISO 19005-1:2005 PDF
• ISO/IEC 15445:2000 HTML
• ISO/IEC 26300:2006 ODF

They argue that these three ISO standards show that there are already a history of multiple standards in the area of document standards. While no unreasonable person would be against the possibility of multiple standards if the standards in question are sufficiently different, it must be noted that PDF, HTML and ODF address sufficiently different needs in electronic documents.

PDF files are most appropriately used to preserve the exact look of a document in a device-independent way. HTML, on the other hand, is a lightweight markup used in web pages to describe content. Neither is used for describing and facilitating the editing of documents, spreadsheets and presentations! Nobody in their right mind would use PDF or HTML for office documents. That is the sole domain of ISO/IEC 26300:2006 (ie, the OpenDocument Format - ODF).

To claim that PDF and HTML are examples of "multiple standards in the same area" is a gross miscommunication of ideas and an insubstantial red herring. This deliberate misunderstanding is similar to the C/C "justification" and is being used to convince the National Body to believe that ISO allows contradictory standards which "do the same thing"

Direct Contradiction to ISO 26300

Finally, ISO/IEC 26300:2006 already exists as an ISO standard and MS OOXML is a significant contradiction to ISO's motto of

"one standard, one test, and one conformity assessment procedure accepted everywhere.”

Both ISO 26300 and MS OOXML standard have identical aims to provide the functionality of

"text documents, spreadsheets, drawings and presentations for office applications."

Microsoft has never explained nor bothered to convince "Why Ecma 376 does not contradict ISO 26300", even when pressed multiple times. Instead they resorted to adjusting the meaning of the term "contradiction".

Microsoft has also never explained satisfactorily why MS OOXML is superior nor the different requirements it facilitates for over ISO 26300.

First through the door wins?

Finally, Microsoft argues that there should not be competition between standards such that the first standard through the door wins. For once, we agree with Microsoft. The first standard through the door does not and should not "always win". If the first standard is proven insufficient, it will be discarded. However if it is extensible, then new incoming standards should look towards harmonizing with existing standards.

In this case, the first standard is ISO/IEC 26300:2006. Fortunately for future applications, it is extensible so "new" standards such as MS OOXML should work towards harmonizing with this existing standard to prevent proliferation and confusion in the Document landscape.

There is certainly precedence in this area. China's Uniform Office Format (UOF) standard for document format is already in the process of harmonizing with ODF within OASIS.

In Conclusion

National Bodies worldwide, and JTC1 themselves, should focus on the technical substance of the contradictions submitted. We should be discussing the contradictions, and not Microsoft's definition of contradictions. This is a red herring, a means of diverting attention from the actual technical issues with the proposed standard. We should not be waylaid by the latest attempt from Redmond. We have the responsibility to ensure that the due process is followed strictly in the interests of all parties concerned, not just Microsoft.