[Chapter-delegates] ooXML

[Christian de Larrinaga]

To be fair many of the ISO delegations did their job albeit with  
great frustration but did it well. There is a lot to be said for  
rough consensus, running code and a minimum of two (working)  
implementations and they didn't have the benefit of that intellectual  
rigour IETF uses to help them in ISO.

The submission avoided tough standards / recommendations bodies and  
went instead for ISO via the soft underbelly of fast tracking at  
ECMA. This puts ECMA's credibility at a low point.

Are ISOC chapters in Europe still talking to the EU ICT Standards  
Board in the liaison I set up with Brian? I note that ICTSB plenary  
#41 is being held at Sophia Antipolis (FR) hosted by W3C on 29  
November 2007.

It would therefore seem to be timely to have an informal chat with  
W3C guys to get their take and the IAB to see if there is something  
they believe the ISOC community can assist at relaying during the EU  
ICT Standards Board's next meeting where ECMA is also a participant.  
I am not saying we should get political with ECMA but whether we can  
identify some technical issues in the way ooXML was fast tracked at  
ECMA that points to establishing some process where lessons learned  
can be established so we get better standards.

What are the views of those here who have been involved in this ISO  
and ECMA ooXML process? Are there some high level points that we  
would like to raise at the EU ICT Standards Board concerning the way  
ooXML proceeded?  Michiel I know you took on the liaison role for  
some time but I don't know what has happened since. What are your  
thoughts?


best regards,


Christian



On 4 Sep 2007, at 20:14, Michiel Leenaars wrote:

> 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
>
>
>> 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).
>
> _______________________________________________
> Chapter-delegates mailing list
> Chapter-delegates at elists.isoc.org
> http://elists.isoc.org/mailman/listinfo/chapter-delegates