Microsoft now owns the ISO JTC 1

Rob Weir replied to a couple of comments to an article he wrote about the plans for maintenance of OOXML should it become an ISO standard. His comment is very insightful, quite scary but ultimately pretty accurate I think…

It is a scary proposition. I don’t think people understand how much Microsoft now owns JTC1 in a very real and tangible way. Absolutely owns.

Consider that it requires 2/3 approval of JTC1 P members to approve a standard. Microsoft, by various means, has managed to achieve very close to that number. They are only 5 short. If they achieve that 2/3 then they can ram through whatever standards they want.

But that scary part is that with even 1/3 of P-members, a number they clearly outright own, they can block anyone else’s standard. It probably hasn’t sunk into your realization yet,but Microsoft can essentially already erected toll bridge in ISO and demand payment or other concessions from anyone who wants to work with International Standards. If ISO rules get in the way, Microsoft can change them. If ISO administrators get in the way — no worry. With this number of NB’s Microsoft can control directives, staffing, paychecks, etc.

They’ve raised an army. You don’t think they will use it?

Is this the sort of company you want to trust your IT too? It isn’t mine.

SC34 Tastes Danger in Japan

Alex Brown, the chap who has the unenviable task of convening the forthcoming BRM in February for Microsoft/ECMA’s OOXML document specification, has posted a few first snippets from the initial meeting of the body called the ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC34 – Document Description and Processing Languages. This is the ISO body that must try and either create a workable standard from ECMA-376 (DIS29500) or throw it out.

In his most recent blog post, covering the opening meetings in Kyoto Japan of the SC34, there are some interesting titbits. I was struck by the list of individuals resigning their posts or stepping down. It’s quite a few people. I don’t know if it is common to lose so many in one go, or how many they represent as a percentage of the total. But still, I found it odd that 4 senior figures all decided to go at the same time. The last one he mentioned is the now famous Martin Bryan:

Finally, my own working group convenor Martin Bryan is stepping down in anticipation of his retirement next year. Martin has been something of a mentor to me, guiding me along some of the more Byzantine passages of the ISO/IEC process. At the plenary Martin spoke to his paper which has been the subject of some comment in the blogosphere (and which was never intended for public circulation). You could have heard a pin drop as Martin described how in 20 years of ISO involvement he had always enjoyed working with people who, although they might disagree violently, came to meetings as themselves. It would be a great shame, he said, if we got to a state where people came to meetings not as individuals with ideas, but as corporate representatives with positions.

So, Martin’s report was not intended to be public. I’m very glad it was. It has basically given credence to what many of us have been saying since this whole farce began; Microsoft has corrupted this ISO process to such an extent that many believe it is now fundamentally broken.

The other point of great interest for me was this:

… It is not Ecma’s responses themselves which are sensitive, but the National Body comments to which they are attached. These are, by ISO/IEC rules, confidential and should not be republished in public. Now, as a matter of fact these comments were published in public for several weeks anyway, but this was an aberration (the current SC 34 web site is not password protected; before the current controversies privacy through obscurity was enough to keep documents confidential). Ecma simply have to follow the rules. And they should have applied to ballot comments on ODF too.

Wow, that’s really interesting! The NB’s comments are supposed to be confidential, but before Microsoft’s attempt to brute-force this particular specification through ISO, come-what-may, it has never been an issue… I wonder why? Anyhow, you can read all the NB’s comments and perhaps help the SC34 by tagging the comments so they may concentrate on the areas of real controversy at: http://www.dis29500.org

And finally, Alex clearly has a sense of humour…

Dicing with Death

Following the opening plenary, JISC very generously treated officers of SC 34 to a delicious banquet, and one of the many course was – somewhat to my surprise – fugu. After some initial reservations (“this restaurant isn’t owned by Microsoft or IBM, is it?’) we tucked in. I must agree with the view that the taste of fugu is itself unremarkable, and I was not aware of an toxin-induced tingling sensation, but eating is does have its own special frisson …

Let’s hope that the Fugu was as well prepared as the SC34 needs to be next February.

“Commiserations to my successor” – OOXML Strikes Again!

In what is an astonishingly outspoken report, Martin Bryan, Convenor, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC34 WG1 has given us insight into the total mess that Microsoft/ECMA have caused during their scandalous, underhand and unremitting attempts to get – what is a very poorly written specification – approved as an ISO standard.

This year WG1 have had another major development that has made it almost impossible to continue with our work within ISO. The influx of P members whose only interest is the fast-tracking of ECMA 376 as ISO 29500 has led to the failure of a number of key ballots. Though P members are required to vote, 50% of our current members, and some 66% of our new members, blatantly ignore this rule despite weekly email reminders and reminders on our website. As ISO require at least 50% of P members to vote before they start to count the votes we have had to reballot standards that should have been passed and completed their publication stages at Kyoto. This delay will mean that these standards will appear on the list of WG1 standards that have not been produced within the time limits set by ISO, despite our best efforts.

These people, who do such important work in developing and specifying globally useful standards – that ultimately benefit all of us – are usually very circumspect with their choice of language in any public communication.

For Martin to write:

The second half of 2007 has been an extremely trying time for WG1. I am more than a little glad my 3 year term is up, and must commiserate with my successor on taking over an almost impossible task.

and even more:

The disparity of rules for PAS, Fast-Track and ISO committee generated standards is fast making ISO a laughing stock in IT circles. The days of open standards development are fast disappearing. Instead we are getting “standardization by corporation”, something I have been fighting against for the 20 years I have served on ISO committees. I am glad to be retiring before the situation becomes impossible. I wish my colleagues every success for their future efforts, which I sincerely hope will not prove to be as wasted as I fear they could be.

is really quite amazing.

Being the sceptic I am, I did wonder about the longevity of this article at its original location. So, for historical record, here it is.

I really can’t believe that Microsoft can be allowed to get away with this any longer.

A new ISO Document Standard is born

Well, well, well.

It seems as though we will soon have a new ISO Standard for electronic documents: ISO 32000 Standard (DIS).

It went through a ballot – just like DIS29500 – but it passed. Jim King writes:

Adobe has received word that the Ballot for approval of PDF 1.7 to become the ISO 32000 Standard (DIS) has passed by a vote of 13::1.

Countries voting positive with no comments: Australia, Bulgaria, China, Japan, Poland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Ukraine. (9)
Countries voting positive with comments: UK (13), USA (125), Germany (11), Switzerland (19). (4)
Countries voting negative with comments: France (37). (1)
Countries abstaining: Russia (1)
Italy sent comments but is not a voting (P) member.

Total votes 14.

13 Positive is 93% (must be > 66.6%) 1 Negative is 7% (must be < 25%). Clear winner!

Total comments (205).

Five countries added comments to their ballots for a total of 205 that will have to be resolved.

Isn’t it interesting how this proprietary software company has managed to ease their specification through the Standardisation process with barely a murmur? No allegations of committee stuffing, vote rigging, bribery or any other skulduggery (that’s a good word! I haven’t written that one for along time) as far as I can tell. Why?

Because, Adobe have been open and transparent. The format is also very widely used and implemented already, and by many other software products too, not just Adobe’s. It is also a “Portable” format; meaning you can create a PDF file on one machine, give it to anyone you like, not care about what computer they use, what printer they have etc etc and it will render faithfully to the original.

Adobe announced their intention to release the entire PDF specification to the ISO in January this year:

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Jan. 29, 2007 — Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) today announced that it intends to release the full Portable Document Format (PDF) 1.7 specification to AIIM, the Enterprise Content Management Association, for the purpose of publication by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).

You can download the current specification document from Adobe’s web site here. And it isn’t 6000+ pages long either, the 4 files that go to make up the entire spec are just under 1400 pages.

Now Adobe also own some Patents with respect to the reading and writing of PDF documents. But on a clear and easy to understand web page they give free license to use within the terms of the specification:

Adobe desires to promote the use of PDF for information interchange among diverse products and applications. Accordingly, the following patents are licensed on a royalty-free, nonexclusive basis for the term of each patent and for the sole purpose of developing software that produces, consumes, and interprets PDF files that are compliant with the Specification…

That is quite a bit different from the convoluted legalise that Microsoft is spouting in their “Open Specification Promise”:

  • The Promise does not cover any material that is referenced, but not described in detail, within the specification. Even if the referenced material is required for an implementation, no patent rights extend to the implementer. For example, numerous sections, including those sections which require replicating the behavior of proprietary Microsoft products, do not appear to be described in detail and therefore are not covered by Microsoft’s Promise. Additional necessary Microsoft proprietary technologies not described in detail include OLE, macros/scripts, encryption, and DRM. Microsoft has not stated a position on whether any patent rights associated with these technologies will be made available on terms acceptable to ISO.
  • The Promise is limited to claims “..that are necessary to implement only the required portions of the Covered Specification.” [emphasis added]. The Promise does not cover optional aspects. To the extent that the implementer includes “excluded optional portions (or non-required elements of optional portions)” that are in OOXML, the implementer would be unlicensed to any Microsoft patents covering those items and vulnerable to patent infringement allegations. For example, password features for WordProcessingML may not be required but are described in the specification (2.15.1.28, page 1,158). From a practical perspective, all optional aspects of a format are necessary for a full implementation to function effectively across the wide range of possible software behaviours.

I wonder how Microsoft will feel about their ISO specification attempt of XML Paper now?

The XML Paper Specification (XPS) provides users and developers with a robust, open and trustworthy format for electronic paper. The XML Paper Specification describes electronic paper in a way that can be read by hardware, read by software, and read by people. XPS documents print better, can be shared easier, are more secure and can be archived with confidence.

This sounds very similar to what PDF, a proven, globally used and respected specification, already gives us. Once again, we have a fine standard, already approved and capable of being used by anyone. Why would we want – or need – another? For who’s benefit would this new specification be?

Let’s conclude with some more from Jim King at Adobe:

I have been nominated by the US Committee to be the technical editor so for the meeting of the International working group on ISO 32000 on January 21-23, 2008 I will come prepared with responses to all of the 205 comments. If the group can address all the comments to the satisfaction of all countries, especially the ones voting negatively, it is possible to finish at that meeting and publish the revised document. If the resolution is more complicated then we will enter a 2 month FDIS vote. The FDIS votes are not accompanied by comments so if we get no more negative votes at that time the revised document will be the one published as ISO 32000.

It may seem strange that the sponsoring country (US) is the one with the most comments (125) but I think that is a reflection of two things: the US committee contains a lot of knowledgeable people including several from Adobe, and we honestly found some mistakes that we felt must be corrected. To me this reflects the honesty with which this group has approached this whole effort. We could have held back to reduce the number but that is not the way this whole effort has been conducted and we are not about to start with any trickery.

Good words, especially the “…and we are not about to start with any trickery.” bit ;-).

OOXML Comments Closed to the Public?

There appears to be a “closing of ranks” by Microsoft/ECMA in relation to the administration, reading and checking of the comments for the forthcoming Ballot Resolution Meeting. [Not at http://www.dis29500.org though.]

Rob Weir has, in his typically articulate style, explained the situation thus:

Microsoft risks a repetitive stress injury from the recent frenzy of patting themselves on the back for responding to some of the ballot comments submitted in the failed OOXML ISO ballot of Sept 2nd.

They claim to be transparent and acting so that NB’s can easily review their progress in addressing their comments.

Well, let’s take a closer look.

First, Microsoft has managed to get JTC1 to clamp down on information. What was a transparent process is now mired in multiple levels of security leading to delay, denial of information to some NB participants and total opaqueness to the public.

Let’s review how things worked with ODF.

  1. OASIS ODF TC mailing list archives are public for anyone to read
  2. OASIS ODF TC public comment list archives are public for anyone to read
  3. OASIS ODC meeting minutes, for every one of our weekly teleconferences going back to 2002, are all public for anyone to read.
  4. The results of ODF’s ballot in ISO are public, including all of the NB comments
  5. The comments on ODF from SC34 members are also public
  6. The ISO Disposition of Comments report for ODF is also public for anyone to read

Short of allowing the public to read my mind, there is not much more we can do in OASIS to make the process more transparent. (And if you read this blog regularly you already have a good idea of what I’m thinking.)

But what about the OOXML process? Every single one of the above items is unavailable to the public, and in many cases cases is not available even to the JTC1 NB’s who are deciding OOXML’s fate.

Rob’s post has been forwarded to me twice now today. And just to re-iterate and to be absolutely clear, anyone can read all ~3500 comments on http://www.dis29500.org.

We (The Open Learning Centre) are running this site for anyone who feels interested in this subject. All the NB’s comments are available and sorted by country and are tagged with a unique ID. Individuals have been hard at work clarifying, and commenting on, these comments in an effort to sort “the wood from the trees”. In fact, at the time of me writing this, there are 742 classified comments on our site. Approximately 80 more than ECMA have managed to deal with 😉

You can easily help by identifying the duplicate entries, and those which are not relevant to the BRM. You can also help by identifying the comments which should be classed as “Issues of Substance”. These are the hard ones. The things that we really want ECMA to rectify before it should become a standard. Areas such as Openness, Interoperability, Platform Independence, Accessibility, Freedom from Patent Restrictions etc etc etc.

Why not help your NB by looking for those comments and letting them know the comments they should be discussing at the BRM?

OOXML is hotting up again! This time in the Philippines.

Now the time is getting closer for the BRM, the noise level is starting to grow too! Lots of positioning, posturing, PR and lobbying is going to go on between now and next February.

This story caught my eye today:

PHILIPPINES–Microsoft and industry body Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) have teamed up to drive the adoption of Office Open XML in the Philippines.

According to Dave Walsh, Microsoft’s senior standard program manager, the Philippines was one of the countries which voted “no” on the use of OOXML.

“The country voted ‘no’ with clarifications. This means the panel voting on the standard still needs more information about Open XML,” Walsh said at the briefing last week.

Well now. Let’s have a look at this in a bit more detail… In the vote in September, the following countries (in that part of the world) voted with comments as follows:

Japan: 81, New Zealand: 54, Australia: 30, Korea: 25, Malaysia: 23, Philippines: 7, China: 1, Thailand: 1.

You can see the nature of the comments by the Philippines here, and, as a matter of fact, you can see the comments left by all of the voting members. www.dis29500.org is hosted by us as an Open endeavour to enable anyone to assist with the monumental task of identifying duplicates, comments that can be easily dealt with and comments of real substance that must be addressed.

But what about the two voting members who only made one comment? Here’s China’s

China National Body have been paid special attention to the ISO/IEC DIS 29500 ballot. Great work have been done and during the process we found it is a very complex technology which needs further more time to establish testing environment for thoroughly and deeply evaluation. We think the fast-track procedure is not suitable for this DIS.
We requested an extension to the ballot period for the DIS29500 for another 6 months in the letter to ISO/IEC JTC1 secretariat as well as ITTF. We still keep to our position that more time is necessary and essential to conduct a credible and responsible evaluation.

And here’s what Thailand though of ECMA-376

We disapprove the draft ISO/IEC 29500 for the reason that the time given by the fast-track processing is not enough for consideration of this important draft.

Ahhhh, now I can see why Microsoft are courting the Philippines. In the UK we like to call this “low hanging fruit”… But even here, their final comment is common with many others:

As well as other sub-sections within this level make references to proprietary applications whose behaviors are undefined in the standard. For example, autospaceLike Word95 specifies that implementations should autospace like Word95 but exactly how Word 95 autospaces is a Microsoft Company secret.

Precisely. How can something like “autospaceLikeWord95” be in an ISO specification? Not very “OPEN” is it?

I wonder how Microsoft are helping CompTIA? Free Training perhaps, low cost licenses, gold-partner upgrades????

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