Cyrus_the_virus
28-06-2008, 04:03 PM
Regular readers will notice that I've been woefully silent the last few weeks, at first due to having too many irons in the fire, and for the last ten days due to being on a family vacation abroad, returning not till July 2. As a result, I've been not only behind on blogging, but also on keeping up with the news while limited primarily to Blackberry access since I left. But I thought that it might be useful to take a break and share the "Huh?!?" I experienced when I stumbled across this article (http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39437722,00.htm) by Andrew Donoghue at ZDNet while briefly enjoying an island of laptop connectivity in a hotel lobby in Florence. The article is titled, "Microsoft admits to standards ignorance pre-OOMXL" and is based on remarks byMicrosoft national technology officer Stuart McKee. Even more incredibly, it bears the following subtitle:
Microsoft has admitted that, despite being one of the dominant names in IT for over 30 years, it had little or no experience or expertise around software standards until the company was mid-way through the process of getting Office Open XML approved by the International Organization for Standardization.
Why "Huh?" Because Microsoft has been playing the standards game, butting heads over prior technologies such as ActiveX, Java and much, much more with the best of them for decades as a member of hundreds of standards organizations. Moreover, it has held many board seats along the way, and has had a staff of attorneys for some time dedicated to standards matters. That staff includes the former General Counsel of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI).
Still, while McKee has over-spun the point by a few hundred RPMs, there is an important point to be made on the subject of Microsoft's standards-related capabilities, as I'll explain in greater detail below.
McKee's comments were made during a panel debate I regrettably declined to be part of, due to current travel, at a Red Hat conference in Boston last week entitled 'The OOXML battle: Who really won?' According to McKee,
We found ourselves so far down the path of the standardisation process with no knowledge. We don't have a standards office. We didn't have a standards department in the company. I think the one thing that we would acknowledge and that we were frustrated with is that, by the time we realised what was going on and the competitive environment that was underway, we were late and there was a lot of catch-up.Given the history as I know it, you'll have to forgive me for coughing a bit into my hand over that one, although there is a grain of truth in McKee's statement.
That grain comes from the fact that Microsoft, in truth, does not have the kind of global standards infrastructure in place that IBM maintains. IBM's position is, I believe, unique among US multinational IT companies in this regard, with no other peer company having the first hand experience, presence and participation in standards bodies around the globe that IBM has created over the last fifty years.
Read the rest at the author's blog (http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20080626092009868)
Microsoft has admitted that, despite being one of the dominant names in IT for over 30 years, it had little or no experience or expertise around software standards until the company was mid-way through the process of getting Office Open XML approved by the International Organization for Standardization.
Why "Huh?" Because Microsoft has been playing the standards game, butting heads over prior technologies such as ActiveX, Java and much, much more with the best of them for decades as a member of hundreds of standards organizations. Moreover, it has held many board seats along the way, and has had a staff of attorneys for some time dedicated to standards matters. That staff includes the former General Counsel of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI).
Still, while McKee has over-spun the point by a few hundred RPMs, there is an important point to be made on the subject of Microsoft's standards-related capabilities, as I'll explain in greater detail below.
McKee's comments were made during a panel debate I regrettably declined to be part of, due to current travel, at a Red Hat conference in Boston last week entitled 'The OOXML battle: Who really won?' According to McKee,
We found ourselves so far down the path of the standardisation process with no knowledge. We don't have a standards office. We didn't have a standards department in the company. I think the one thing that we would acknowledge and that we were frustrated with is that, by the time we realised what was going on and the competitive environment that was underway, we were late and there was a lot of catch-up.Given the history as I know it, you'll have to forgive me for coughing a bit into my hand over that one, although there is a grain of truth in McKee's statement.
That grain comes from the fact that Microsoft, in truth, does not have the kind of global standards infrastructure in place that IBM maintains. IBM's position is, I believe, unique among US multinational IT companies in this regard, with no other peer company having the first hand experience, presence and participation in standards bodies around the globe that IBM has created over the last fifty years.
Read the rest at the author's blog (http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20080626092009868)