Wired: Microsoft Allegedly Bullies and Bribes to Make Office an International Standard

September 2 2007

The OOXML debate has been covered in the press frequently, but when it gets outside of the industry weeklies, you know that something smells pretty rotten.  Even the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times had articles last week.  With today being the deadline for countries to submit their votes, Wired has just published a very solid overall analysis of what's gone on in the shoddy underbelly of this process:

The final decision won't be made until February 2008, but in the meantime, Microsoft's lobbying of the ISO has prompted one of the most contentious arguments about open standards in recent memory.

Both those for and against OOXML's approval have resorted to name-calling, finger pointing and muckraking of the highest order, setting off a debate about current standards approval procedures and the ease with which they can be bent by corporate influence.
Given all that has gone on, do you know what surprised me most about this article?
Microsoft did not respond to several calls requesting comment.
One of Microsoft's main OpenXML voices zinged IBM for a "no comment" on the Wall Street Journal OOXML story -- which, when you think about it, really shouldn't have phased them.  It seems MS is so paranoid at this point that they just assume the conspiracy against them always has something to say.  

One thing that I do think is funny is that almost all the main voices in the OOXML spectrum moderate comments on their blogs.  I've even seen one MS blog where it's like a "slow count" -- oh, you said something that proved me wrong?  Maybe it'll appear in 16 hours or so.  If they're (going to claim they are) doing it for comment spam prevention, I suggest a number of different anti-comment-spam solutions.  The built-in anti-spam capabilities in the Lotus Domino blogging template seem to beat all other solutions I've ever seen... thousands of comment spams a day here but <1% get through.  How hard is it to allow a real-time discussion to be real-time?

Link: Wired: Microsoft Allegedly Bullies and Bribes to Make Office an International Standard >

Ed Brill | Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Microsoft  Add/View Comments [14]

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  1. 1  Wild Bill http://www.billbuchan.com | 9/2/2007 12:17:03 PM

    > "How hard is it to allow a real-time discussion to be real-time? "

    I think the mistake is in assuming they want to discuss anything..

    --* Bill

  1. 2  Doug Mahugh http://blogs.msdn.com/dmahugh | 9/2/2007 1:35:09 PM

    Ed, I agree that you personally have been fair and reasonable in how you've handled comments on your blog, but your colleagues don't hold themselves to the same standard. They moderate comments manually, and many people have told me that their comments on those blogs have been deleted. You might want to evangelize the benefits of Notes to others at IBM, since they seem to be unaware of it, or unwilling to use it.

    Yes, I moderate comments on my blog, and I do indeed get too much spam to stop doing so. But I often allow comments through even when I don't have time to respond to them. Real life intrudes on my schedule occasionally, as it does for everyone, but comments posted on my blog during regular business hours or when I'm online are usually approved within minutes.

  1. 3  Charles Robinson http://cubert-codepoet.blogspot.com | 9/2/2007 4:28:03 PM

    Ed, every MS blog I have ever commented on has used moderated comments. I don't know if this is a corporate policy or not, but I have also had issues with comments getting put into spam on nearly every MS blog I have ever commented on (Doug's is the sole exception). I don't think I'm a big enough blip on the radar to be of interest, so I can only presume that their spam filter really is that bad.

  1. 4  Paul Robichaux http://www.robichaux.net/blog | 9/2/2007 4:56:12 PM

    @3: I don't know if the moderation is a corporate policy or not. However, AIUI all of the "official" MS blogs are hosted using Community Server, and its spam filtering toolkit is, shall we say, not great.

    Hey, speaking of anti-spam, how's that advanced antispam engine for Domino 9 coming along :)

  1. 5  Mike Brown  | 9/2/2007 5:05:15 PM

    @2 Doug

    Now, if IBM wanted to spin this:

    "I need a Domino Blog, says top Microsoft blogger!

    "Microsoft enthuses over Domino blogging. Microsoft Technical Evangelist, Doug Mahugh, gets "too much spam", which his Microsoft Blog cannot filter for him. 'I moderate comments on my blog, and I do indeed get too much spam to stop doing so' said Mahugh, before going on to discuss the "benefits of Notes" blogging. IBM's Lotus Notes(R) Blog, which is supplied free of charge with the product, is able to filter out spam automatically.

    "The Head of MSDN's blog site was unavailable for comment yesterday."

    Cheers,

    - Mike

  1. 6  John Head http://www.psclistens.com | 9/2/2007 11:35:53 PM

    @2 I think Ed's point was that you should not have to moderate comments. The IBM Blog template for Lotus Domino, which was Domino Blog by Steve Castledine originally, allows Ed to not moderate his comments at all. Since 7/30/2007, this site alone has gotten over 21,000 spam comments. I have only seen 1 of those make it on the blog. That is an amazing statistic. It does that with no comment moderation or approval, no captia, nothing. Just very good code. Steve has done an amazing job and IBM continues to carry it forward.

    Now Ed, you were blogging today why? ;)

  1. 7  Mike Brown  | 9/3/2007 6:07:09 AM

    Eric Raymond loses patience with Microsoft:

    "This is not behavior that we, as a community, can live with. Despite my previous determination [that that OSI will treat any licenses submitted to Microsoft strictly on their merits], I find I'm almost ready to recommend that OSI tell Microsoft to ram its licenses up one of its own orifices, even if they are technically OSD compliant. Because what good is it to conform to the letter of OSD if you're raping its spirit?"

    Cheers,

    - Mike

  1. 8  Mike Brown  | 9/3/2007 6:08:18 AM

    Forgot the URL for previous:

    { Link }

    Cheers,

    - Mike

  1. 9  Doug Mahugh http://blogs.msdn.com/dmahugh | 9/3/2007 4:36:35 PM

    Nice "quote" from me, Mike. You should be in politics. :-)

  1. 10  Paul Robichaux http://www.robichaux.net/blog | 9/4/2007 10:02:52 AM

    @6: on MovableType, I sometimes got 21K comment spams *per hour*. Spammers don't bother much with the DominoBlog template because, compared to Community Server, Wordpress, Movable Type, and other blog platforms, it's not worth the effort.

  1. 11  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 9/4/2007 10:14:46 AM

    @10 are you suggesting that the spammers actually pay attention to what kind of software is running the various blogs?

  1. 12  Vitor Pereira http://www.vitor-pereira.com | 9/4/2007 10:40:54 AM

    @11 Ed, I guess they know which platforms to target.

  1. 13  Paul Robichaux http://www.robichaux.net/blog | 9/4/2007 12:31:37 PM

    @10: indirectly, yes. For example, my blog runs on Movable Type. I replaced the MT commenting system with HaloScan to get the benefit of its spam filtering. My logs still show thousands of daily HTTP POST attempts to "mt-comment.cgi", the well-known name of the MT commenting code. I wouldn't be surprised to see that you have some similar entries in your own logs. So, no, spammers don't target (or fail to target) individual blogs based on what software they're running. However, spammers *do* run software that attacks specific platforms, and Notes is apparently not among them.

  1. 14  Ben Poole http://benpoole.com | 9/4/2007 3:10:49 PM

    @13 no that's nonsense. Spammers soon get the hang of pretty much any software.

    Case in point: I get hundreds of failed attempts a day on my site, which is a hand-rolled Domino-based template (i.e. not one of the standards like Dominoblog or Blogsphere) . I also get spam in DominoWiki—again, a hand-rolled template. So yes, people do make the effort. It's just that some sites *handle* the spam attempts better than others.