[Chapter-delegates] ooXML

[Michiel Leenaars]

Hi Christian,

jury packing is not illegal as far as ISO is concerned; it leaves such
matters to the national bodies. ISO does not have a process that is
resilient to such mass scale operations or manipulation like we have
seen in this case - nor to the technical ingenuity with which you can
make a standard that will not do anything for consumer choice. I
remember the Microsoft X Box introduction cost 1 billion dollar in
marketing campaigns alone - so I guess there were not very many
financial barriers to protect Microsofts key office market. Blogspace
was/is literally crowded with paid bloggers and at least here in the
Netherlands the best of the best lawyers were hired to find loopholes
in the national bodies bylaws.

But there are legal ways to stuff a committee and illegal ways to stuff
a committee. You may have heard that Microsoft did very much cross the
line in Sweden and went into the red zone when the company told
partners it expected them to enter the committee and offered them ample
financial compensation (payola) for their vote - while being careful
enough to leave instructions to visit a couple of more meetings so as
not to draw the attention to this unintended behaviour. Also
allegations of blackmail have been popping up here and there (if you
don't vote i.e. change your position, we will end our partnership).  

I don't believe that ISO can do much but improve its procedures.
Perhaps more can come from Sarbanes-Oxley [1] and The Foreign Corrupt
Practices Act [2]. But I don't know who can set those machine into
motion...

Best,
Michiel

BTW the spec is well over 6000 pages and it is my estimate that there
will be more comments than pages. Many have suggested splitting up the
spec instead of accepting a 'blockbuster' deal.  

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarbanes_oxley
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Corrupt_Practices_Act

Op Tue, 4 Sep 2007 16:49:03 +0100 schreef Christian de Larrinaga
<cdelarrinaga at mac.com> :

> Does this mean that the ISO / UN found that there is no substance to  
> the allegations of jury packing? I haven't seen a comment from  
> Microsoft on this.
> 
> It looks as if it will be tough technical work to get the  
> specifications down from the 4000+ to the 2 to 4 pages which is
> about what is normal for a well designed RFC. I rather sympathise
> with the Indian delegation's comments that they have had to do a lot
> of work to try to understand ooxml discovering and documenting many
> fatal flaws but still felt they didn't understand it. If I recall
> correctly their considered judgement was to ask not to see it again
> (unless drastically improved).