OOXML Questions Microsoft Cannot Answer in Geneva
Here is a great summary of the stuff that Microsoft cannot or will not deal with for Geneva’s BRM.
OOXML Questions Microsoft Cannot Answer in Geneva
Written by Charles H Schultz, Russell Ossendryver and Lars Nooden. Spread the word and let your NB’s take a look before they go to Geneva.
“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 corporationâ€, 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.
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.
- OASIS ODF TC mailing list archives are public for anyone to read
- OASIS ODF TC public comment list archives are public for anyone to read
- OASIS ODC meeting minutes, for every one of our weekly teleconferences going back to 2002, are all public for anyone to read.
- The results of ODF’s ballot in ISO are public, including all of the NB comments
- The comments on ODF from SC34 members are also public
- 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????
Remember OOXML? There’s a Law Suit Coming. Croatian Style.
Remember all the débâcle about vote rigging, committee stuffing and other ever-so scandalous ongoings during Microsoft’s failed attempt to get their appallingly bad 6000+ page document specification passed through the ISO in September? No? Click here and start at the bottom…
Amongst many other national standards bodies, there were dubious voting patterns in Croatia. And Radoslav Dejanović
is still trying to enforce HZN (Croatian national standards body, or CSI) to disclose the information on members of their TC that voted unconditional yes for Microsoft OOXML. (more about that on Croatian blog Fuzzy on www.linux.hr)
It’s no more about OOXML. It’s about transparency, about my right to know who are the people that declare standards, and about my right to hold them responsible for their actions.
But without much success it seems. So far at least…
They’re stubborn. So am I. I have reached the point where the only sensible thing to do is to – sue them. Which is what I’m set up to. I have a law on my side, they have the bureaucracy on their. And a powerful ally that wouldn’t really want to have it’s proposed standard rejected.
Who’s going to win? I’m not sure. What I am about to do is to put up a good fight. Even if I lose, I might set the path for someone with more luck/persistence to carry on for the noble cause of government transparency.
Good luck Radoslav, may the community be with you…
Please send him a message of support. After all he only wants to find out the truth, what’s wrong with that? WHO could possibly be worried about the truth?
Help for the DIS29500 (OOXML) Ballot Resolution Meeting (BRM)
My business partner Alan Bell, came up with a neat idea over the weekend (whilst I was really busy; playing golf and partying with the kids)…
Microsoft has developed an XML based file format designed to replace the binary formats used by old versions of Microsoft Office. This new file format is called Office Open XML or OOXML and is currently going through a process to ratify it as an international standard backed by ISO. The designation for the standard is Draft International Standard 29500, or DIS29500. The fast track process the standard has followed has been very controversial, in the initial round of votes a large number of comments were raised. These comments will be brought to a Ballot Resolution Meeting in Geneva at the end of February 2008. Currently there is an overwhelming number of comments to resolve at a large meeting in a short time. Many comments are duplicates raised several times by different countries, many are quite trivial and could be addressed easily. Some are really interesting and worthy of discussion.
Our company, The Open Learning Centre, is supporting and maintaining this new site on the net at www.dis29500.org where:
The purpose of this website is to help the countries and the facilitators of the BRM to prepare by sorting and categorising and de-duplicating the comments so that they can focus on the issues of substance.
Currently 2978 comments are listed by country and interested parties are encouraged to review and “de-dupe” the list. And to categorise the comments so issues of substance can be given the attention they rightly deserve.
Oh yes, it’s running and supported on open source software.
