The Open Sourcerer

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????

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.

Some Fun with Microsoft and OOXML, Ecma-376 or DIS 29500

It’s been a very interesting day.

Early this morning UK time we got this from the big M:

Strong Global Support for Open XML as It Enters Final Phase of ISO Standards Process

REDMOND, Wash. — Sept. 4, 2007 — Today the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) released the results of the preliminary ballot to participating National Body members for the ISO/IEC DIS 29500 (Ecma 376 Office Open XML file formats) ratification process. The results show that 51 ISO members, representing 74 percent of all qualified votes, stated their support for ratification of Open XML. Along with their votes, the National Bodies also provided invaluable technical comments designed to improve the specification. Many of the remaining ISO members stated that they will support Open XML after their comments are addressed during the final phase of the process, which is expected to close in March 2008.

Which roughly translates as “Oh dear – we didn’t get enough votes from the “P” members of the committee to get our proprietary, customer lock-in document format standardised. Now we’ll have to go back and start bribing committees all over again…

However they have already started. The JTS-1 Sub Committee 34 (SC34) has grown in membership dramatically in the last couple of months whereas before that time – it’s membership had barely changed in 2 years. A little curious don’t you think?

Anyway – finally the ISO managed to get a press release out:

A ballot on whether to publish the draft standard ISO/IEC DIS 29500, Information technology – Office Open XML file formats, as an International Standard by ISO (International Organization for Standardization) and IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission) has not achieved the required number of votes for approval.

Approval requires at least 2/3 (i.e. 66.66 %) of the votes cast by national bodies participating in ISO/IEC JTC 1 to be positive; and no more than 1/4 (i.e. 25 %) of the total number of national body votes cast negative. Neither of these criteria were achieved, with 53 % of votes cast by national bodies participating in ISO/IEC JTC 1 being positive and 26 % of national votes cast being negative.

That doesn’t sound much like M$’s statement does it? This translates into something along the lines of “you failed on both counts despite trying to buy your way to instant success.”

As most readers will be aware, the JTC-1 committee has seen 11 member countries change their status from “O” (Observational) to “P” (Participatory) in the last few weeks and at least 15 new members have joined the SC34 subcommittee. Some quick and insightful analysis of the voting numbers was posted in the comments on the noooxml.org website.

– 32 valid votes by JTC1 P-Members : 2/3 is 21.33, and there are only 17 YES votes —> FAILED
– 69 valid votes by ISO Member Bodies. 25% is 17.25, and there are 18 NO votes —> FAILED

Amongst the 30 “original” JTC1 P-Members : 8 Yes, 14 No, 8 Abstain
Amongst the 11 “late-comers” JTC1 P-Members : 9 Yes, 1 No (Ecuador), 1 Abstain (Trinidad & Tobago)
Amongst the 15 “late-comers” SC34 P-Members : 12 Yes, 0 No, 3 Abstain (Chile, Finland, Trinidad & Tobago)

About a possible vote stuffing: I think that the figures speak for themselves.

Luc Bollen

So, without the sudden influx of new membership to the main JTC-1 committee, the vote would have been:

• Yes: 8 (36%)
• No: 14 (64%)
• Abstain: 8 (Ignored from percentages)

That kind of result would have been a definite NO and the whole process would have almost certainly stopped there. And remember that some of these “yes” votes and abstentions were cast after rather dubious goings on: for example, the USA initially votes a resounding “no” then after some reputed phone calls from Gates and Balmer, it changes to a Yes.

Just so we are clear then, the new members of JTC-1 voted Yes: 9, No: 1, Abstain: 1. Now this doesn’t look like a representative sample of the voting patterns of the existing membership does it? It looks like a bit of a whitewash to me. An almost identical voting profile happened with the Sc34 subcommittee existing vs. new membership. No coincidence there then…

Here is a very good visual indication of what the voting looked like without the new “P” members. Very telling I think…

If we now go back and read M$ press release again:

“We are extremely delighted to see that 51 ISO members, representing 74 percent of the qualified votes, have already voiced their support for ISO ratification of Open XML, and that many others have indicated they will support ratification once their comments are resolved in the next phase of the ISO process,”

Really… Pull the other one M$.

Ecma-376, DIS 29500, OOXML: Vote fails to get Majority needed

Well, it looks like this is the final tally based on a leaked doc from Finland (allegedly): 17 Yes, 15 No, 9 Abstentions.

Microsoft have failed to get the required 2/3rds majority so it is on to the BRM in February (Unless in the meantime some of the comments are un-reconcilable whereby the whole process could be thrown out!)

On the noooxml.org site they have a list of all votes cast, including the “O” members.

Acknowledgements: NoOOXML, Andy Updegrove, Groklaw, Andreas Fischer

Any further votes that come in I will try and add to this page as soon as possible. Drop me a comment if you know something more or find any inaccuracies.

Update #1: Apparently Ecuador has voted no: http://lowe.no-ip.info/rvtradio/

Update #2: Thanks for the link Andy, have removed non-members of the ISO JTC1

Update #3: The *** indicate a “new” P status member. Probably a M$ puppet.

Update #4: Andy Updegrove now believes that this voting round will result in OOXML NOT gaining the 2/3 majority needed to gain automatic approval as an ISO standard. [Be sure to read the comments on Andy’s post too – a couple of very interesting messages from Alex Brown]. The ISO should hopefully announce the official result today (04/09/07) or very soon thereafter.

Update #5: It appears that Cyprus voted yes.

Update #6: It appears as though Microsoft did not get enough of the important “P” votes. http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/09-04-2007/0004655552&EDATE=

Update #7: Most of the votes have been leaked. Table is now updated.

So – it’s on with the show… Microsoft will be desperately trying to cajole, bribe, corrupt and bully all the “no” and abstain voters before the BRM next February.

There, they will have a week, to review probably a thousand comments and try to get a majority vote by conceding on some of the issues. But there will be trouble with some of the comments which will not be implementable without sacrificing the lock-in and proprietary hooks that M$ really needs.

May we live in interesting times…