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Standards
Netherlands helps Denmark with open IT
The Industry Standard
The Dutch government has provided Denmark with information regarding the Dutch national plan Heemskerk for open government IT.
In Denmark, there is heated debate about the approach for open IT usage by the government. One of the obstacles is the open file format for mandatory use by the government and government organizations. ODF (Open Document Format) and OOXML (Open Office XML), originally developed by Microsoft, are the candidates for use.
Open Source
IBM Sala de Prensa – 2009-12-15 IBM presenta en Madrid el Open Company Center
IBM
IBM (NYSE:IBM) ha presentado en Madrid el Open Company Center. Se trata de un centro de prueba, ubicado en el IBM Forum, donde clientes y socios comerciales de la Compañía podrán experimentar con diferentes alternativas de sistemas de escritorio independientes y de arquitectura abierta.
Open Source Group Sues Consumer Electronics Companies
InformationWeek / Antone Gonsalves
Best Buy, Samsung, Westinghouse, JVC and 10 other consumer electronics companies were named Monday in a lawsuit accusing the companies of license infringement in the use of open source software.
The Software Freedom Law Center filed the suit in federal court in New York on behalf of the Software Freedom Conservancy. The latter group claims the defendants sold products containing its BusyBox application in violation of the terms of the software’s license, the GNU General Public License version 2. The GNU GPL v2 governs the use of many open source technologies.
Jomar Silva of Brazil has published his account of what really happened at the OOXML BRM in Geneva last year. Worth a read, but comments there please.
News came out over the weekend that representatives from six countries—Brazil, South Africa, Venezuela, Ecuador, Paraguay, and Cuba—have written an open letter to the ISO and IEC criticizing the handling of the OOXML appeals.
See, for example,
Several of these, e.g., Groklaw, contain the text of the letter.
I had hoped for better from the ISO and IEC. I had hoped that they would not try to force the opinions of the executives on the boards considering the appeals. I had hoped that ISO and IEC would understand that refusing to give a fair hearing to the concerns of emerging economies would be neither logical nor sensible.
I’m usually an optimist but in situation after situation, the response has always been “we are right and—wait a minute until we find it—we have a rule which justifies our forcing OOXML through the system.”
With the actions of the ISO and IEC, and with this letter from the countries, we’re seeing a serious backlash to the role of these standards bodies in creating and approving IT standards. That is, while they’ve created thousands of standards for safety, mining, agriculture, and other areas, perhaps people are now shifting away from thinking that these groups should have anything to do with IT and interoperability standards.
With the actions of the ISO and IEC, I think people have every reason to think that way. I feel that way.
So what will fill this void? Will the new leadership that will sit at the top of the ISO in 2009 make the necessary changes to help it regain its reputation in the IT world? Or will Fortress ISO continue to maintain its infallibility in all things OOXML-wise?
Will a new organization rise up to take the place of the ISO for IT standards?
Is it just the wrong model entirely for IT standards meant for global use?
What would an ISO that “gets ‘open’” even look like?
I know about the ISO, IEC, and WTO. Reviewing the language, I didn’t notice anything about it being in place or relevant “forever and ever and ever and ever.”
So here are a few things to remember about what’s coming out of the OOXML fiasco and how ISO/IEC handled it:
- There are a lot of very angry people out there, and these people are willing to work for significant change.
- These people are not going away, and the ISO and IEC can’t just “wait them out.”
- People are in this for the long haul. Some things can be done quickly, but if others take years, then people are committed to work on them however long it takes.
- ISO and IEC have damaged their reputations and caused people to question seriously their relevance to IT interoperability standards in important emerging economies.
- Change at this point in inevitable.
Although I’ve previously published the slides for the talk I gave at LinuxWorld 2008 in San Francisco, I thought it might be useful to add some additional comments in the blog about each of the eight predictions I made. This is not the full text of what I said nor a full discussion of the slide, but just some ideas that flesh out what I meant. The full one hour video of the keynote talk is now available at the conference website.
While some people bemoan the large number of free and open source licenses, the number of distinct intellectual property licenses for standards is probably 20 or 30 times greater. Moreover, not every standards organization has a clear license by which people can understand the rules under which they can implement and otherwise use the standards. It’s a mess.
While there are some organizations that try to synchronize their IP policies, most do not. Some of these licenses are there for some historical reasons, but a very reasonable question to ask is whether we really need so many of them?
Are these organizations so unique that they need to have a special policy? In most cases, I think not.
What drove them to have different policies? For some, they were breaking new ground, but for others it was a Not-Invented-Here syndrome.
Was vanity involved? You might call it that, but it could also be “policy by committee” where everyone involved just had to have that special clause in there that was all theirs.
Really, though, how many distinct standards intellectual property policies do we really need to cover the gamut from the most liberal, open-sourcey, royalty-free-ish organization to the most classic, conservative, patent-cherishing organization?
It’s not a thousand. It’s not a hundred. My guess is that maybe 5 to 10 would do.
In my last blog posting I mentioned that 10 free and open source licenses account for over 93% of all use in open source projects.
Over at the Creative Commons, they’ve worked out six licenses that allow for several types of “free” use of creative content. The website allows you to check a few options, answer a few questions, and voila, you have a license.
I think something similar could work for standards organizations. Even though mathematically the different possible options for each element of a license could lead to a combinatorial explosion, in practice only one or two of the options are in common use.
We need to develop this small number of license templates and we need to get standards organizations to commit to using them, without change. No tweaking. No saying “Well, we’re special so we’re going to modify this area.” You’re not special.
[Note that some article I saw said that I recommended that we only have a handful of standards organizations. I actually said that we only need a handful of standards organization intellectual property policies.]
If there were fewer licenses, they would be better understood. Approval to participate in standards efforts would become simpler. We would better know how to create products and software that mixed and matched standards from different sources. We would better understand how standards licenses lined up with open source licenses. Field of use, anyone?
Finally, the whole OOXML debacle has started an examination of the processes under which standards organizations operate, including their IP policies. There is too much fuzziness in the latter and, combined with other bad if not imperious behavior, could lead to some standards groups going out of business or radically losing status in the next decade.
Just because a standard organization can get started doesn’t mean it can’t shut down. They have a life cycle, just like anything else. I suspect that some of them are nearing the end.
Next: LinuxWorld 2008 Prediction #8: Industry applications
Previous: LinuxWorld 2008 Prediction #6: FOSS licenses
Rob Weir has published an extensive blog entry detailing why the OOXML appeals process should be allowed to go on. He says, in part,
Dismissing an appeal with so many open unresolved issue is not expediency. It is merely creating more dissent, more distrust and more trouble that we’ll all need to deal with next time around. It is better, I think, to hear the appeals, get to the bottom of this, seek resolution, consensus and closure, and then to move on. Ignoring mistakes will not make them go away.
We are now down to a matter of days for the countries on the ISO TMB and IEC SMB to decide whether the appeal process should continue. From what I have seen and heard, most people are extremely pessimistic about the likelihood of this happening. That is, the sentiment is that the conservative bureaucracies that let OOXML get this far will not tolerate any challenge to their process and decision making, and therefore want this appeals business to be killed right now. This, in my opinion, would be a huge mistake.
I think that ISO and IEC are on the edge of a precipice which, if they fall off, will cause them to rapidly lose relevance to IT (ICT) developments in many parts of the world, especially emerging markets.
What they appear to be saying to India, Brazil, South Africa, and Venezuela is “Go away, our process works. We love our process. You are wrong. Live by our rules and be quiet.”
If the appeals process is cut off without detailed community examination of the charges against what happened in the OOXML experience, I think that the reputations of the ISO and IEC will continue to diminish. It does not seem to me that anyone at the senior levels of these organizations gets this. Rather than giving these four nations the cold shoulder, and doing it with what appears to this reader as having arrogant undertones, it makes far more sense for ISO and IEC to allow the process to carry on.
This would allow the various stakeholders to explain their arguments, mutually understand what did and didn’t work, and come to common conclusions. It would also lay the groundwork for whatever reforms are necessary so that the OOXML embarrassment never happens again.
If this is stopped now, we will instead be left with the sense if not knowledge that the monolithic ISO and IEC organizations are inflexible and ultimately believe themselves to be infallible. “Thanks for your opinion. You are wrong. Go away.”
To the countries that are voting on whether to continue the appeals process, I say that stopping it now is just bad foreign policy. The emerging nations are critically important to the IT future of the world. Want them to use common standards with everyone else? Want them to stop developing regional or national standards in conflict with “international standards”? Want them to believe that engaging in the international standards process is not a bureaucratic waste of time? Let the appeals process continue.
Read Rob’s blog entry to understand the reasons why the process should continue. Demonstrate that the stakeholders in the international standards process will not be stifled. Show that the ISO and IEC processes can withstand examination and evolve to support the needs of this century.
Either way, things are going to change. The OOXML debacle was a wakeup call for people around the world to see how the game was played. Many of them didn’t like it. If the ISO and IEC does not want to be pushed into the background in the future of ICT, they need to change and respond intelligently and responsibly to what we saw happen with OOXML.
For reference, here are the countries that sit on the boards:
| ISO TMB Countries |
IEC SMB Countries |
| Brazil |
Brazil |
| Canada |
Canada |
| China |
China |
| Denmark |
Denmark |
| France |
France |
| Germany |
Germany |
| Japan |
Japan |
| Netherlands |
Netherlands |
| Spain |
Spain |
| UK |
UK |
| USA |
USA |
| Australia |
Norway |
| Italy |
South Africa |
| Korea |
|
| Sweden |
|
You’ve got to love Google Alerts. This morning I got this link to a Press Release from Giffin Brown with the title “OOXML will take second place following Microsoft’s announcement to support ODF, says Dr Alex Brown”.
Alex was the convenor of the OOXML Ballot Resolution Meeting in Geneva in February. I’m guessing there was some commercial reason for making this statement in a press release vs., say, a simple blog entry, but it’s nice to have further “ODF has won” statements from the community associated with OOXML. This echoes comments by Stuart McKee, Microsoft’s US National Technology Officer.
The reason is, of course, so that we can see even more rapid adoption of this open standard office document file format. This will be through applications like Lotus Symphony, OpenOffice.org, KOffice, and real soon now, Microsoft Office 2007 in the next service package. We’ll get real interoperability and the value thereof for the worldwide community of office document users.
If ODF being proclaimed as the winner means that we now spend fewer resources dealing with the fading OOXML, I’m all for that. However, I’m also all for pushing through on the appeals process in ISO/IEC if it makes those organizations radically reform and repair the Fast Track process.
By the way, the press release above says
The recently standardised OOXML format will now take second place to Open Document Format (ODF), according to Dr Alex Brown, director of Griffin Brown, and an industry leading data quality specialist who has been closely involved in the International Standardisation of Microsoft’s format. According to Dr Brown, OOXML will now represent the “legacy” of MS Office documents that the world has accumulated to date, following Microsoft’s announcment that its Office suite will add native support for ODF.
Given that OOXML is under appeal in ISO/IEC, I don’t think it’s right to refer to OOXML as being recently standardized unless you count what happened in ECMA. Given how it happened in ECMA at a lightning fast pace that produced a gargantuan document filled with problems, I certainly don’t.
Finally, OOXML represents no great number of legacy documents for Microsoft’s applications since that “title” should correctly go to the binary formats like .doc, .xls, and .ppt. It’s not even clear what flavor of “OOXML” is supported by Microsoft applications but it is obvious to everyone, including Microsoft, that it certainly isn’t anything that came out of the ISO/IEC process.
I think what OOXML really represents is a mistake, but one that will force valuable change on the way standards are created and understood.
Groklaw and Andy Updegrove have the latest news of the appeal process for OOXML in ISO/IEC. See
I fully support Andy’s conclusions and the opinions of the process that he expresses in his article. While that process is not finished and though many, including the four appealing countries, have pointed how just how deeply flawed it is, the powers at be seem unwilling to admit that anything out the ordinary or inappropriate happened here. That’s a real shame, because it does not demonstrate to the world that these organizations are necessarily the right venues for IT (ICT) standardizations in 2008 and beyond.
That is, if what happened with OOXML is just fine as far as ISO and IEC are concerned, then maybe countries and end users will take a long, hard look at whether IT standards blessed by these organizations are of sufficient quality to warrant adoption. This hurts those organizations and ultimately devalues the time and effort put into the creation and review of standards under their aegis.
Said people who are looking for greater guarantees of quality might very well turn to other existing or new organizations in whose accreditation they have more confidence. Maintaining an insular view of their own consistency, quality, and relevance might be a very risky strategy for the ISO and IEC given the very broad worldwide scrutiny of their moves here.
As OOXML continues to move to being no more than a footnote in the history of IT standardization, I hope that ISO and IEC will ultimately stand up, admit that there were clear flaws here, fix the process quickly, and avoid fading into the background for those looking to create and use first class open IT standards in the twenty-first century.
Neelie Kroes, European Commissioner for Competition Policy, gave a major speech this morning on open standards and competition. I encourage you to read it, “Being open about standards,” in its entirety.
There is much that is quotable in her talk and I’ll resist the urge to just include all of it. Here’s the very end of it:
When open alternatives are available, no citizen or company should be forced or encouraged to use a particular company’s technology to access government information.
No citizen or company should be forced or encouraged to choose a closed technology over an open one, through a government having made that choice first.
These democratic principles are important. And an argument is particularly compelling when it is supported both by democratic principles and by sound economics.
I know a smart business decision when I see one – choosing open standards is a very smart business decision indeed.
As you read the speech, think of examples of what she is describing.
For those of you working “in the trenches” on advancing open standards and the ideas behind them, I encourage you to take this as evidence and encouragement that people are listening to you and progress is being made.
Here is some additional coverage of her talk:
Also see the discussion on Groklaw.
In case you missed it, the ISO has put out their press release about the appeals process for OOXML: “Four national standards bodies appeal against approval of ISO/IEC DIS 29500″.
Evidently this hasn’t happened before and so will be another test for their processes. A lot of eyes will be watching how this is handled.
Via Groklaw there’s word that the Open Source Leverandørforeningen in Denmark has written a letter of complaint regarding OOXML. This is not a formal appeal as it was with India, Brazil, and South Africa, but nevertheless shows some of what is still happening within countries regarding the process.
I think OOXML will cause the greatest wave of change to how national standards bodies conduct themselves that we have seen in the last decade or two. Critical questions are being raised about process, transparency, representation, and accountability. If changes and improvements are to be made, they must be done within each country. Therefore I hope you have seen what folks in Norway and now Denmark have done to question how the internal system worked (or didn’t) and push for the transformations you think are necessary.
Thanks to Russell in a comment to my previous blog entry. PCWorld is reporting that in addition to South Africa, both Brazil and India are appealing the OOXML decision to ISO and IEC.
Somehow after this last week’s news regarding OOXML and ODF, the adjective that keeps coming to my mind about OOXML is “moot.”
Both Andy Updegrove and Groklaw have the news that Brazil has sent a letter to ISO and IEC protesting the way the OOXML Ballot Resolutiuon Meeting was handled. There is some confusion regarding whether this is a formal call for appeal like what South Africa did, but in any case it adds to the strength of the arguments from South Africa. Will other countries follow?
Evidently the attempt to fast track the huge OOXML specification is not over. The national standards body of South Africa has decided to appeal the decision.
See Andy Updegrove’s and Steve Pepper’s blogs for the story and links. Both are worth a read.
Update: Groklaw also has an article about this.
Also see mention of this in Liz Montalbano’s ComputerWorld article “Microsoft’s ODF support points to OOXML challenges”.
We’ve heard from folks that the final post-Ballot Resolution Meeting version of OOXML has still not been made available to national standards bodies. This would be the updated 6000+ page document that included all the edits voted on at the BRM. With such a document one could actually, for example, check correctness of the edits and ensure that changes were actually inserted.
That is: it was supposed to be ready before the ballot change period at the end of March, but wasn’t, so those who voted were not working off a consolidated document.
The appeal period ends on May 28. Will it be available by then?
Will it ever be available? Does anyone care? Do any rules apply to this at all? What are the excuses for this? Just like almost ever other aspect of this particular process, dangerous exceptions and precedents are being set.
If any national bodies have this in hand, please let me know.
When I was in Geneva in February, I found myself saying something like the following to those who asked me how I thought the OOXML/DIS 29500 vote was going to turn out.
“If the ballot fails, we will have seen that a historic change has occurred.
If it passes, we will see that historic change is needed.”
Evidently, we’re in the latter case. In spite of having significant problems and intellectual property gaps, enough countries have changed their votes from the September ballot to allow the specification to move forward into the publication preparation phase with JTC1 (ISO/IEC).
So is that it? Of course not. The process of international standards making has been laid bare for all to examine. People now have some sense that
- Not all standards are created by a community of independent stakeholders, as some people may have previously assumed
- The lack of transparency, the ability to see who voted and why, leads to less understanding and accountability
- If intellectual property policies are not clear and comprehensive, significant questions exist over who can implement what in what way
- There are no brakes on putting the wrong standards though some existing processes
- Politics, and not just standards politics, has fully entered the process
- Equilibrium, the need for having a balance of independent people considering a standard and not a majority of business partners, is out of control
- In some countries with democratic governments, there is virtually no connection between “representation of the people” and votes on international standards
- There is very little consistency from country to country in how voting decisions are made, which is their right, but some better common guidance might be appropriate
I believe that thousands of motivated yet pragmatic people will now move on to fix the systemic issues I’ve identified, with fresh evidence of why it is necessary. There are now, as there have always been, much bigger issues than OOXML itself. For that reason, we are still in the early phases of the worldwide movement to true open standards.
Openness means that the best technology for all wins. Openness means that the process is clean and visible and incorruptible. Openness means that personal accountability means something and is known and respected by all. Openness must be earned.
I think that’s worth fighting for. There has been tremendous progress and it’s happened far faster and wider than most people ever imagined possible. While fully cognizant of these current results, I’m energized to take the bigger fight for openness to the next level with the thousands of individuals who are now convinced that the standards system needs fixing, and soon. I hope you’ll take part.
Obviously a lot has been going on with respect to OOXML in the last few days. I’ll have something to say about it at an appropriate time. In the meanwhile, I suggest you follow Groklaw for some interesting local action.
Update: Here they are.
Can you tell there is only a week to go regarding ballot changes? See Yoon Kit’s blog entry “The Elephant in the Room – with a calling card”.
I just read the article in InformationWeek called “Microsoft’s Search Share Continues To Decline”. I use Google search almost exclusively but occasionally I poke around on the other engines to see if they turn up anything interesting. While Microsoft did lose some search share, it was only 0.2%. It’s not good to lose share, but this wasn’t a big percentage. I know we’re talking about billions of hits, but this is still a relatively small number.
I use Google because the relevance is so high. The answer I’m looking for is usually in the first few search results, so I can find what I am looking for fairly quickly, if it was there to be found. For the other engines, I can never remember who outsources to whom, though it is obvious once you look at the results.
I decided to look up a few terms of recent interest, namely “ooxml,” “open xml,” and “odf”. Not surprisingly, Wikipedia is the top hit for all of these. Indeed, Wikipedia played a role in some of the early press about OOXML.
Anyway, beyond that the results vary as you can see for yourself. I’m not sure that there is anything really significant in the order of the results returned, but you may beg to differ.
For “open xml”, the result on Microsoft Live Search is pretty much all Microsoft all the time, except for Wikipedia, though you have to read the fine print at the very bottom of the sites to see that. The same is pretty much true for Google, though others manage to get some early hits.
For “ooxml”, we have less of a Redmond love-in from Live Search but it still leans toward saying neutral to good things about this product format description. Google is pretty much balanced but does feature the article “NoOOXML: It’s the document format from Hell – Microsoft Oh-Oh XML” as #2.
It’s for “odf” that things get more interesting. I find it odd that the Microsoft Live Search doesn’t manage to produce either OASIS (the standards organization that created the standard) or the ODF Alliance (the organization of 500+ members that is supporting the standard) within the top ten. It does manage to include three entries about the open source OpenXML/ODF translator that Microsoft sponsored.
Google’s search does pick up OASIS and the ODF Alliance, as well as Sun’s plugin for adding support for Microsoft Office as #9. Microsoft’s sponsored software comes in at #11. Both searches, to their credit, include the Oregon Department of Forestry. Indeed, Microsoft has this as #3. I like Oregon and I like trees. I find it hard to believe that the Oregon Department of Forestry is the third most popular or relevant search topic for “odf” in the world at the moment.
Yahoo differs from my opinion, though, as it has it as #1. However, they still manage to include OASIS and the ODF Alliance in the top ten. They also include the two plugins. Indeed, Yahoo probably has the most important sources in the top ten, followed closely by Google. Microsoft Live Search is just off the map.
I’m not sure there’s a concrete conclusion here though it is clear to me that Microsoft Live Search has the least useful and relevant set of links about ODF in the top ten beyond the Wikipedia entry. I find that odd. Perhaps they just have a really quirky relevance algorithm.
As we move into the last 10 days before the final chance for national standards bodies to change their JTC1 ballot on Microsoft’s OOXML specification expires, there are key questions that the bodies and the people who participate in them need to answer. Some are straightforward and some are controversial.
Each national body and participant must be completely sure that their vote can withstand strong scrutiny by their citizens, government, regulators, and concerned people and organizations around the world. Much as some might like to believe, this is not an anonymous process for the most part. Who voted and why will mostly become known. That is good and fine. In an open standards process that should be the norm, though virtually nothing about the OOXML process resembles that which should take place for an open standard.
In what follows, the recommendations on how to vote are my opinions, of course.
Regarding OOXML:
- Was this specification appropriate for the Fast Track process? If not, it should not be approved in such a process and you should ABSTAIN or vote NO.
- At each stage of this process, was sufficient time allowed to develop contradictions, completely review the specification in its entirety, generate all appropriate comments, review all proposed resolutions completely and explicitly, and fully review the updated document? If not, you should ABSTAIN or vote NO.
- Have all your comments been fully and correctly addressed? Are the changes reflected correctly everywhere necessary in the specification? Have you verified this? If not, you should ABSTAIN or vote NO.
- Is this high quality technology? If not, you should ABSTAIN or vote NO.
- Can you can say that you completely understand the specification that emerged from the Ballot Resolution Meeting (BRM), with all its changes, and that it is now a very high quality specification? If not, you should ABSTAIN or vote NO.
- Are you fully confident that no additional problems were introduced at the BRM that your national body would insist must be addressed? If not, you should ABSTAIN or vote NO.
- As an international standard, does this specification inappropriately favor a single vendor and its products? If so, you should ABSTAIN or vote NO.
- Are you 100% confident that there are no intellectual property problems that would prevent anyone from fully and completely implementing everything in the OOXML specification? Do you have this assurance from experts who are not from Microsoft or in their financial ecosystem? If not, you should ABSTAIN or vote NO.
- Has the process as you have seen it been without undue and inappropriate influence by the supporters of OOXML? If not, you should ABSTAIN or vote NO.
- Have the principles of balance and equilibrium in the standards setting process been violated to the benefit of OOXML? If so, you should ABSTAIN or vote NO.
- Were rules broken or changed during this process? If so, you should ABSTAIN or vote NO.
Those were the easy and straightforward ones. The following ones are more controversial, but I don’t think anyone is naive enough to think they should not be considered.
- If you voted YES on this, are you willing to stake your professional reputation on that action?
- If you voted YES on this, can you personally attest to the high quality of the OOXML technology and the standards process it went through?
- If you voted YES on this, will you publicly explain why and also detail any current or planned commercial interests you have in common with the supporters of OOXML?
- If you previously did not support OOXML but recently changed your mind, will you publicly and in detail explain why you did this?
- Do you personally feel that OOXML helps the ISO and IEC “brands” related to quality of technology and process?
None of these should make anyone feel uneasy. They’re valid questions and I’m sure you can think of more tough ones. These and more will all be asked in the days, weeks, and months to come. The answers will explain what plays out in the next week and one-half, but will also determine the scope of the rather fundamental changes that I think will sweep over the standards world in the next few years.
We’re witnessing events that will catalyze the most significant transformations I think any of us have seen in the standards world. We have a better idea than ever before what needs to be fixed. I suppose we should thank someone for that.
A colleague just pointed out that the rules have been modified for notifying SC 34 of JTC1 that you wish to change your national vote on OOXML/DIS 29500. I updated my original entry, but here is the new text from the SC 34 page. The main thing that is changed is that Keith Brannon is not to be the only recipient of the email. That SC 34 page is your final source of information on this topic.
In regard to the September 2, 2007 JTC 1 ballot on the fast track DIS 29500 based on Ecma 376, the ballot resolution meeting (BRM) was held in the week of February 25-29, 2008 at the International Conference Centre Geneva http://www.cicg.ch/en/index.php. Within 30 days after the BRM, national bodies voted in the 2 September ballot may change their vote from any of “approve”, “disapprove” or “abstain” to any of “approve”, “disapprove” or “abstain”. Any NB wishing to change its vote must inform ITTF of this intention in writing by 29th March, 2008.
————————-
- Vote change shall be communicated by email addressed to Keith Brannon (brannon@iso.org) as well as Maho Takahashi (takahashi@iso.org), Martine Gaillen (gaillen@iso.org) and yourself on copy.
- The following shall be indicated in the subject.
“Modification to the vote on DIS 29500 – Country (National Body/e.g. JISC)”
- The name of sender shall be mentioned in the email.
————————-
Personally I’ve had enough with on-the-fly rule and process changes with this whole thing, but if the increase in recipients is just to ensure that all changes get counted, I’m fine with that.
Also see: ‘An “OOXML is a bad idea” blog entry compendium’
See Rob Weir’s new post “How many defects remain in OOXML?”. He says, in part:
Not only am I finding numerous errors, these errors appear to be new ones, ones not detected by the NB 5-month review, and as such were not addressed in Geneva. Since I have not come across any error that actually was fixed at the BRM, the current estimate of the defect removal effectiveness of the Fast Track process is < 1/64 or 1.5%.
Some other tidbits:
Expect more acts of desperation from the pro-OOXML crowd. Publicize them, quickly. Make sure your national body knows you are against OOXML.
Also see: ‘An “OOXML is a bad idea” blog entry compendium’
OOXML, It’s Just a Bad Idea
Second Life
Apple Stuff
I get sent a lot of material on OOXML by people around the world, and I presume I’m not the only recipient. A lot of it is, frankly, rather funny, since it assumes that the people reading it won’t ever double check what they’re being told or compare it to methods of past disinformation campaigns. As I’ve said before, the whole OOXML story will probably make several wonderful business school case studies and maybe even one or two from law schools.
Anyway, the phrase that caught my eye last night in one of the presentations I was sent was “No IPR problems!”.
I immediately thought “That should have an asterisk.” As in:
“No IPR problems!*”
* If you don’t care about 1) everything you need to use the spec, or 2) are interested in using free software.
For the first, see “Developers Beware: OOXML – IPR: Minding the Gaps and Why They Matter” from the ODF Alliance.
For the second, see “Microsoft’s Open Specification Promise: No Assurance for GPL” from the Software Freedom Law Center and the Groklaw discussion.
We’re in the end game for OOXML as far as the JTC1 Fast Track Ballot goes. In the days to come I’ll have more to say about these last few days and then look beyond to give you an idea of what I think will come for the standards world, whether or not OOXML gets approved. Microsoft and ECMA have provoked a crisis in the standards world via OOXML and there will be significant changes and implications because of that.
In the meanwhile, if you see strange statements being made about OOXML or see bad behavior with respect to trying to get support for it in these last 11 days, I encourage you to let people know. Talk about it, blog about it, fight it. This is your time and this is your chance.
Also see: ‘An “OOXML is a bad idea” blog entry compendium’
I’m hearing rumors that certain industry trade organizations are telling people that ALL their members are in favor of Microsoft’s OOXML, aka DIS 29500.
Whether or not this is true, I want to be very clear that IBM is opposed to this specification becoming a JTC1 (ISO/IEC) standard because it was developed in a non-open manner, is ridiculously large, is technically inferior, and emerged from the Ballot Resolution Meeting with most things not explicitly resolved and more questions than ever before.
So just in case you were wondering, now you know.
Also see: ‘An “OOXML is a bad idea” blog entry compendium’
The ODF Alliance has a new page of resources for those considering Microsoft’s OOXML in the current “ballot change” period for JTC1. The page has analyses of OOXML from several different sources including FSFE, Oracle, Google, and the ODF Alliance itself.
[edited, less musical]
See Martin Lamonica’s CNet article “Free-software lawyers: Don’t trust Microsoft’s Open XML patent pledge”.
Compare with the 2006 statement from the Software Freedom Law Center’ regarding ODF, the Open Document Format, an ISO standard:
On the factual basis described, and subject to reservations, it is our opinion that ODF, as standardized and licensed by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information (OASIS), is free of legal encumbrances that would prevent its use in free and open source software, as distributed under licenses authored by Apache and the FSF.
The reservations are toward the bottom of the linked document from the SFLC. They are straightforward and are applicable to most standards, in my opinion.
Note that we are comparing Microsoft’s OSP for OOXML and OASIS’s IP policy as it relates to ODF. That’s similar to the situation in the entire OOXML/ODF saga: Microsoft vs. a community driven open standards organization, and their specifications.
Also see Groklaw’s piece “SFLC Analysis of Microsoft’s OSP: No Assurance for Developers.” That’s probably the best place for comments and discussion of this issue.
The Mac
Microsoft
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ITPro:OOXML: Standards for accepting standards
“In truth, the opposition has come from all quarters, and has been most vocal among those interested in open standards, which includes everybody from governments through to representatives of the free and open source software movement, and also includes many parties with an interest in maintaining open access and network neutrality for civil or commercial reasons, including the likes of IBM, Google and Oracle.”
(tags: microsoft office ooxml odf)
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Microsoft Watch – Server – Microsoft-Sun Embrace on Interoperability, Again
‘The day open-source developers start tooting the Microsoft interoperability horn, without any blogs or press releases from Microsoft, I’ll begin to believe there is sincerity behind the “Interoperability Principles.”‘
(tags: microsoft sun)
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They Criticized Vista. And They Should Know. – New York Times
“In the meantime, where does Microsoft go to buy back its lost credibility?”
(tags: microsoft vista windows)
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When standards ain’t standards – Perspectives – Opinion – Technology – Sydney Morning Herald
“Microsoft now seems to have been too clever by half, to its own detriment and that of consumers. Microsoft Office 2007: great software, shame about the file format.”
(tags: microsoft office ooxml odf)
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An Antic Disposition: Contra Durusau, Part 1
“Of course, Microsoft will not be so careful to distinguish Patrick’s personal opinions from his professional affiliations.”
(tags: ooxml microsoft)
In response to a comment I left on his blog, Alex Brown, the Convener of the OOXML Ballot Resolution Meeting, pointed me to an SC34 page that described in more detail how a national body can change its vote:
In regard to the September 2, 2007 JTC 1 ballot on the fast track DIS 29500 based on Ecma 376, the ballot resolution meeting (BRM) was held in the week of February 25-29, 2008 at the International Conference Centre Geneva http://www.cicg.ch/en/index.php. Within 30 days after the BRM, national bodies voted in the 2 September ballot may change their vote from any of “approve”, “disapprove” or “abstain” to any of “approve”, “disapprove” or “abstain”. Any NB wishing to change its vote must inform ITTF (brannon@iso.org) of this intention and confirm the intention in writing.
In accordance with the JTC 1 Directives, the progress of the specification will depend on the revised status of all previously-received votes after the BRM.
Please see SC 34 N 932: Frequently Asked Questions regarding DIS-29500 Ballot Resolution Meeting for more details.
Keith Brannon mentioned to me in an email that it is essential that the person letting him know of a change in vote be an official designated national body representative and not someone else.
Update: They’ve changed the process a bit, so check out the latest web site. This is the new text:
In regard to the September 2, 2007 JTC 1 ballot on the fast track DIS 29500 based on Ecma 376, the ballot resolution meeting (BRM) was held in the week of February 25-29, 2008 at the International Conference Centre Geneva http://www.cicg.ch/en/index.php. Within 30 days after the BRM, national bodies voted in the 2 September ballot may change their vote from any of “approve”, “disapprove” or “abstain” to any of “approve”, “disapprove” or “abstain”. Any NB wishing to change its vote must inform ITTF of this intention in writing by 29th March, 2008.
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- Vote change shall be communicated by email addressed to Keith Brannon (brannon@iso.org) as well as Maho Takahashi (takahashi@iso.org), Martine Gaillen (gaillen@iso.org) and yourself on copy.
- The following shall be indicated in the subject.
“Modification to the vote on DIS 29500 – Country (National Body/e.g. JISC)”
- The name of sender shall be mentioned in the email.
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