4 parts:
part1: 5570 pages
part2: 137 pages
part3: 46 pages
part4: 1475 pages

SUM: 7228 pages

Guess how many pages the other format ODF 1.2 would comprise. It is estimated to become even shorter than the ODF 1.1 spec. Although they are adding material, they are also rewriting it to be much more concise and precise. So, probably around 700 pages in the end.

Standards bodies do important work in difficult circumstances. But like all of us their rules need to keep pace with the changing commercial environment. If they need help in tightening up their rules to avoid being manipulated by narrow commercial interests, or to design the right ex ante rules, then they have my support. My door is always open.

Let's hope the message is reaching the ears of some ISO bureaucrats:

Bryden said criticisms that a fast-track process was abused to rush through the Microsoft standard were unfounded, and said the process was not new but had been used for 267 standards over the last 20 years, 212 of which were still current.

Still, he said there were lessons to learn. "The experience with ISO/IEC 29500, along with the results of other standards development activities, will indeed assist in determining whether further continued improvements should be made."

Let's hope other ISO members responsible for the appeal made by 4 countries are more clever then Mr Bryden when it comes to strengthen the ISO rules, and especially rewriting the Fast-Track rules that were changed probably on purpose for the OOXML process by ECMA ex-secretary general, Mr Van Den Beld.

Draft Agenda for the meeting of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34/Ad hoc 1
on ISO/IEC 29500 Maintenance
Meeting venue:
British Library Conference Centre,
96 Euston Road
NW1 2DB, London, UK.
http://www.bl.uk/leiths/conference.html

Meeting dates: 2008-07-21/22

Meeting hours: 09:00-17:00 on both days

1. Opening of the meeting (9:00 a.m.)
2. Roll Call of Participants
3. Adoption of Agenda
4. Discussion of ISO/IEC 29500 maintenance procedures
5. Any other business
6. Closure

Let's see what will happen during this meeting, as the final draft of the specification is not yet available. Some rumors says it is out inside ISO JTC1.

Patents. Microsoft has patents that may cover your implementations of the formats. Neither this notice nor Microsoft's delivery of the documentation grants any licenses under those or any other Microsoft patents. However, the formats may be covered by Microsoft's Open Specification Promise (available here: http://www.microsoft.com/interop/osp). If you would prefer a written license, or if the formats are not covered by the OSP, patent licenses are available by contacting moc.tfosorcim|glpi#moc.tfosorcim|glpi.

Let's try to see if requesting a RAND patent license at this email address works. The first one who manages to obtain a copy will receive a present from us.

I have sent a request to see the terms of the RAND license, let's see how long it takes to have a copy:

Benjamin Henrion <bhenrion at ffii.org>
to iplg at microsoft.com
date Tue, Jul 1, 2008 at 3:23 PM
subject Request for a written license for ECMA 376 implementation

Dear Microsoft Licensing,

I would be interested to receive a copy of the terms of the proposed
written patent license that you propose for the standard ECMA 376, as
mentioned by one Microsoft employee on the following page:

http://doyoulovems.com/archives/64#comment-58

"Microsoft has chosen to provide implementers with three different
options from which they can choose. Some companies prefer to rely on a
CNS or patent pledge. Some companies (sometimes that have a large
commercial operation) prefer to enter into a bi-lateral license
agreement as opposed to relying on a CNS or OSP-like promise. By
offering all three choices, Microsoft has tried to accommodate the
different preferences of different implementers that may be based in
part on differing business models."

According to several legal analyses, the OSP is not trustable and I
would prefer to see if the proposed written patent license offers
better guarantees for redistribution of implementations of the
standard.

Best regards,

—
Benjamin Henrion <bhenrion at ffii.org>
FFII Brussels - +32-484-566109 - +32-2-4148403

Second, talking about the standards fight in which Microsoft succeeded in having its OOXML format accepted as an open standard in rivalry to the ODF format favored by OpenOffice.org and other free office applications, Stallman notes that "Microsoft corrupted many members of ISO in order to win approval for its phony 'open' document format, OOXML. This was so governments that keep their documents in a Microsoft-only format can pretend that they are using 'open standards.' The government of South Africa has filed an appeal against the decision, citing the irregularities in the process."

We found ourselves so far down the path of the standardisation process with no knowledge. We don't have a standards office. We didn't have a standards department in the company," said McKee. "I think the one thing that we would acknowledge and that we were frustrated with is that, by the time we realised what was going on and the competitive environment that was underway, we were late and there was a lot of catch-up.

Microsoft do not regret the committee stuffing practice:

The comments came partly in response to a question concerning whether the company regretted actions reportedly taken to try and encourage partners and allies to join national standards bodies in the run-up to voting around OOXML.
[…]
However, McKee said Microsoft did not regret any of its actions during the voting process and claimed the company was merely trying to catch up with a process that it had very little experience of. "I think the thing is that Microsoft was really, really late to this game," he said. "It was very difficult to enter into conversations around the world where the debate had already been framed."

The Microsoft Business Partners were a typical pattern in the standardisation process:

"Membership of the Swiss body saw a surprising growth before the vote, while in Sweden a very similar thing happened; suddenly the room was overcrowded with Microsoft partners," Free Software Foundation Europe president Georg Greve told ZDNet.co.uk in August 2007. "Microsoft stuffed the ballot boxes in Sweden; the room was crammed with Microsoft 'yes' men. Special interest groups were formed in Germany to speed up the process."

"ODF has clearly won," said Stuart McKee, referring to Microsoft's recent announcement that it would begin natively supporting ODF in Office next year and join the technical committee overseeing the next version of the format.

I've checked in Internet, the Microsoft representative hold a position on the Washington Public Administration, before he was a Microsoft employee. Stuart McKee has hold an executive position on IT matters at the Government at Washington. 2003 at Washington Admin. coming from Microsoft. But at 2004 he resigned and joined back to Microsoft. This is important, because this means that he is a person with profiled
authority to speak about public administrations.

McKee said what he said as part of his initial opening remarks and did say it as part of a bigger sentence though. So it seems to be an explicit corporate message.

It is time to disseminate the idea that OOXML is dead and that ODF is still the "lingua universalis" for office documents. But the resistance of Microsoft to ODF and its OOXML campaign is also very helpful and essential for the domino project's success. If Microsoft surrenders prematurely we get difficulties to further grow the community for open standards.

Multiple standards for the same application, in my opinion, is a bad thing…. We should collaborate on developing standards and compete on their implementation.

It is just not funny to have that sudden break-through of common sense through McKee.

Something Venky Hariharan highlighted, a new notion of awareness:

"People are now seriously concerned about the governance of the standards process."

With only four national bodies submitting appeals out of a total of 87 that voted, we think the large majority of participants in this process believe it accomplished what it was supposed to do.

Says Paulo Ferreira, Platform Strategist of Microsoft South Africa¹. Of course these are only the nations where Microsoft did not fully obstruct the committee work, in Belgium for instance the Committee was unable to deliberate whether to launch an appeal. Not to mention an appeal is quite unusual in the ISO context. If Microsoft yes men would leave all the standard bodies in those nations where they claim to be at home the appeal rate would be much much worse. Appeal is a pretty unusual procedure, an extraordinary move. And here four bodies file appeals. Another point is that for appeals you need one single party with a good formal case. An appeal is a means of forced choice for ISO staff to either further bend its rules or get real.

Microsoft Office 14 is announced to be compatible with ISO OOXML. No one knows when it will be available on the market. But the software company announced earlier support for OpenDocument, the format the customers ask for:

Supporting standard formats such as ODF in Office is a way to further promote interoperability in the marketplace. Ultimately, it's what customers, partners, developers and competitors want. We recently announced support for both ODF 1.1 and PDF version 1.5 in Office 2007 service pack two, scheduled for release in the first half of 2009 - because our customers wanted it.

Conclusion: It is a longterm negotiation process to move Microsoft towards respect for genuine open standards. It is important to stage the pressure to make the domino effect happen. This is what we are working on behind the scenes now. Of course the company still finances a forceful and broad lobby movement to obstruct the open standards legislation of foreign governments.

A version dated April 30th was provided to the SC34 Secretariat, probably by the project editor and posted to the SC34 web site. However it was quickly pulled off the web site. Someone (ITTF?) seems to have told the Secretariat that the final DIS text should not be posted.

However, the Directives provide that this final DIS text is to be granted access by all members of the ISO community.¹

Appeals against an action of SC or JTC1 must be made within 2 months of the receipt by National Bodies of the report of the relevant decision. So the appeals period for the BRM ended two months after the BRM ended. But since the final DIS text has not been released, the appeals period for the final DIS text has not been started.

Which eventually enables other member states to file appeals against the text once it gets released or against other procedural irregularities. The standard as it stands is naked. It lacks a text. Where is it? The secret 30 April document is a phantom. We don't know yet if ISO can provide a consolidated version of the BRM results. We only know that member states adopted the non-existing text as a standard. Now the nations that filed complaints will be blamed for lack of delivery.

Media & Blogs

• Heise: ISO puts standard for Microsoft's OOXML document formats on hold
• Dailytech/Jason Mick: Microsoft Sees OOXML Stalled Due to International Appeals
• Leif Jodahl's blog: Still no specification of OOXML

Here's the OASIS announcement.: OASIS opens discussion list for ODF Implementation, Interoperability and Conformance
and here Groklaw's take: Eyeballs Needed for ODF

One can sign up for the discussions at oiic-formation-discuss-subscribe [at] lists.oasis-open.org

Pamela Jones calls for active involvement to make sure ODF remains an Open Standard:

I have no doubt that Microsoft wishes to use ODF for its own purposes, and I know for a fact that some kind of liaison is what some who seem to me to be happily doing whatever Microsoft wants have been hoping for, namely some mechanism for ODF to coordinate with SC34 in ISO that would operate a bit like the relationship between the Unicode Consortium and JTC 1/SC 2, who jointly maintain the Unicode standard.
Ask yourself a question: do you want Microsoft helping to maintain ODF? EEEK, you say? So do I.

Livemint Wall Street Journal reports:

On Friday, before the company issued a statement about her departure, Microsoft India managing director Neelam Dhawan said she isn’t going and that any investigation is news to her.

The Indian audio interview shows that Neelam Dhawan is puzzled about her bail out. The interview indicates that she did not leave voluntarily and she denied rumours of a fraud investigation by Microsoft.

A few days ago a member of the Standard board Deepak B. Phatak, complained bitterly with a long rant about intimidation by Microsoft India¹.

In conclusion, I will reiterate that my anguish, caused by Microsoft by slandering Individuals and organizations represented on committee LITD 15 of BIS, runs very very deep. I have requested Microsoft to immediately withdraw all such frivolous complaints and representations maligning colleagues on the committee. I have also requested Microsoft to formally apologize to my Institute for causing damage to its reputation.

In relation to the failure of Microsoft India to get a positive vote outcome Neelam Dhawan's bail out casts a negative light on the company. If standard setting gets performance based and a standard is not let through due to its technical merits but the fear of managing staff to lose its position it comes at no surprise that the management will fight with all means for the adoption of suboptimal solutions. Microsoft India even filed a complaint against the standard body No vote that caused the outrage.

One year ago the situation was totally different. Open XML evangelist Doug Mahugh wrote about an Open XML workshop:

The venue was FICCI, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce, and the inaugural address included Vivek Bharati, IT Advisor to FICCI, as well as Neelam Dhawan, Microsoft Managing Director, and Vinnie Mehta, the Executive Director of MAIT. They framed the discussion as an opportunity for various points of view to be heard in a dialog including technical experts from all sides of the issue, and also as an opportunity for India to consider how document standards relate to local priorities and concerns. It was all of that and more. We had some great discussion and debate with the attendees, including representatives from IBM and Sun, and we also had some side meetings with various people

Venezuela has joined the list of countries that have lodged appeals against the adoption of an international standard based on Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) file format. On Friday, IEC spokesman Jonathan Buck said: "By the deadline last night, we had received three appeals, from Brazil, India, and South Africa. … By Monday, though, the IEC had relaxed its interpretation of the directive: Venezuela's appeal, although filed after May 29, "was filed within the two months of the BRM [ballot resolution meeting] closing so that it is being accepted. (The BRM closed on 29 March 2008, so the interpretation is that the last calendar day of May is being applied)," Buck wrote in an e-mail.

There is a TMB meeting today in Geneva where those appeals are discussed. Unfortunately, this happens behind closed doors. Nice transparency. You can suspect that Microsoft is already lobbying the people who will decide on this appeal. Like some anonymous commenter said in Groklaw:

With the way they conducted the DIS29500 affair, ISO went too far to change the course now. They would loose their faces if they said they were mistaken. I wish there was a way to help them get out of this with only minimal loss, but I'm affraid the damage is too big. They would probably even accept total destruction of the organisation, in order to protect their personal interests. My journalist colleague told me that the loss of credibility of ISO and it's standards seems to be a non-issue both for MS and ISO itself. They just won't officially admit anything wrong could be happening.

"The Brazillian appeal was not lodged in the correct procedure — it was not send to the CEOs of the two organizations — but nonetheless it has been received," Buck said, adding that it will be treated in the same way as the Indian and South African appeals.

It is insightful that ISO gratefully announced to accept complaints sent to less than all of the predefined persons, where the "misconduct" of the standard bodies clearly demonstrates that the rules were made as chicanery. No wonder as ISO also accepts the formal delays in the publication of the OOXML specification, an infringement of its directives.

Sure there was confusion regarding the deadline for complaints again. Some sources inside the standard bodies spoke of second of June. So the bitter irony of the complaint process is that it reflects why many of the procedural issues (deadline confusion, new formality requirements) we observed with OOXML standardization are business as usual for ISO. It seems to be common that standard bodies are not fully aware of these formalities which grants ISO the power to eventually deny a request on matters of formality rather than substance. It ensures that every body is at ISO's mercy.

The amicus letter of the Brancheforening for Open Source Leverandører i Danmark hints that more national participants might be very upset about the standardisation procedure. In Germany a national procedural complaint by a participant of the Committee was already voted down by DIN. We might find more stakeholders worth to listen to.

• Brancheforening for Open Source Leverandører i Danmark letter

Dear Sirs,

The Associação Brasileira de Normas Técnicas (ABNT), as a P member of ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC34, would like to present, to ISO/IEC/JTC1 and ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC34, this appeal for reconsideration of the ISO/IEC DIS 29500 final result.

This appeal is based on two main considerations:

1. Brazil considers that the BRM was inconclusive.
2. Brazil considers that the final version of the ISO/IEC DIS 29500 text shall be released immediately.

1. About the BRM

At the BRM, the Brazilian delegation was not allowed to present an important proposal regarding the legacy binary mapping. This proposal was a complementary part of USA delegation proposal regarding the new organization of the ISO/IEC DIS 29500. It also shall complement the scope change proposal approved at the BRM.

Brazil has tried to present this proposal, during the debates, on the first day of the meeting and, attending to a request made by the convenor, Brazil has taken offline discussions with USA and other delegations and prepared its proposal to be presented on Friday, during USA proposal presentation.
On Friday, when USA ended their part of presentation and asked for Brazil to present its part of it, the convenor denied this opportunity to Brazilian delegation.

Several delegations has protested against that arbitrary decision, but those appeal was in vain and until the end of the BRM, the Brazilian delegation was not able to present its proposal. The main reason alleged by the convenor was “lack of time”.
The proposal here mentioned, is the one available on the file “Br_Multipart_Proposal.ppt” available to all BRM members the ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC34 website at least since the fourth day of the meeting.

Brazil also noticed that most of the decisions taken during the BRM were based on the “lack of time” argument, and we think that this is completely incompatible with the kind of decisions that should have be taken on that meeting.

During the BRM, some decisions were also taken based on the argument that “we need to give answers to journalists”, and we think that the media coverage of that meeting was not so important as the meeting results, to be used as a decision making criteria.
Even with the “lack of time” alleged, some members of ECMA delegation, and not members of any NB, was allowed to do half-hour speeches during the two first days of the meeting.

The voting rules of that meeting were not taken in accordance with ISO/IEC/JTC1 directives subclause 9.1.4. Brazil also notes that the ISO/IEC DIS 29500 was voted under ISO/IEC/JTC1 but the BRM was organized by ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC34. Even if the directives subclause 9.1.4 was intended to be used, Brazil cannot understand if the P member status considered, should be the ISO/IEC/JTC1 or the ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC34 one.

Brazil also considers that if most part of the issues was to be decided by vote, without any kind of discussion allowed.

About the same subject, Brazil considers that the elected “default voting criteria” was only elected because it was the “less bad” criteria that could be analyzed, and we do not consider that this voting decision represents the intent of the vast majority of BRM delegates. They went there to discuss the technical propositions.

Analyzing the document “SC 34 N 990 - EDITED NOTES OF THE MEETING”, on page 7, we have found the register of BR objection to the multi-part split decision but analyzing the document “SC 34 N 989 - RESOLUTIONS OF THE MEETING” we do not find that objection registered.

During the BRM, the delegations were asked to vote in block for the rejection of a set of responses that was considered by the convenor as “responses without any editing instructions”. Those responses are listed on the file “dis29500-nochange.txt”, available at the SC34 website during the BRM and, as far as Brazilian delegates remember, this set of responses was “rejected in block” as requested.

When we analyze the documents N989 and N990 we do not see any reference to that decision and also at the ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC34 document with title “Result of Proposed disposition of comments (SC 34 N 980)”, that presents a table with the status of each response, some of the “block rejected responses” appears as accepted (e.g. responses 3, 5, 10 and 11 among others).

To finalize our considerations about the BRM, analyzing the document N 989, we've found that the BRM can be summarized by:

Total of responses available for discussion: 1027 – 100 %
Total of responses addressed at the BRM: 189 – 18,4 %
Total of responses decided by “default” vote: 838 – 81,6 %

We use the term “responses addressed at the BRM” above because the majority of those responses was decided by block vote without any discussion at the BRM.

For the above-mentioned reasons, Brazil considers that the ISO/IEC DIS 29500 BRM was inconclusive.

2. About the final version of ISO/IEC DIS 29500 text

According to the directive item 13.12, the final version of the ISO/IEC DIS 29500 text shall be distributed on not more than one month after the end of the BRM.

Seen that almost three months has passed after the end of BRM, without any final version of the text distributed or published, and based on directive subclause 13.12, Brazil request the distribution of ISO/IEC DIS 29500 final text.

For all those reasons presented, Brazil kindly request that the final result of ISO/IEC DIS 29500 should be reconsidered by ISO/IEC/JTC1 and ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC34.

Best regards,

Marcia Cristina de Oliveira

ABNT – Manager Standardization Process

This is an image from the good old days. Microsoft's Jean Paoli hands over the OOXML specification to Jan van den Beld, the general secretary of ECMA. And you find Adam Farquhar from the British Library, the bearded person on the right. The British Library was instrumental to legitimizing the whole ECMA and ISO OOXML standardisation process as an 'independent' participant in the committee work. ECMA did a brilliant job to mature the specification text to get it ISO fast-tracked. Or as the ISO BRM convenor and recent consultant for the British Library Alex Brown reflects¹:

Ecma made the road very rocky though, by initially producing a text that was so lousy with faults.

As early as 2005 Adam Farquhar from the British Library spoke about the OOXML process :

Early in November, Microsoft announced a project to digitize 100,000 rare and out-of-print books from the British Library collection. …Farquhar says that that effort is not directly related to the Open XML announcement

Therefore it is also not directly related to the Open XML ISO approval that now Microsoft abandons the book scanning project .

Today we informed our partners that we are ending the Live Search Books and Live Search Academic projects and that both sites will be taken down next week. Books and scholarly publications will continue to be integrated into our Search results, but not through separate indexes.
This also means that we are winding down our digitization initiatives, including our library scanning and our in-copyright book programs. We recognize that this decision comes as disappointing news to our partners, the publishing and academic communities, and Live Search users.

In accordance with Recommendation 3 of the March 2007 SWG-Directives meeting, this version of the JTC 1 Directives is dedicated to Mr. Jan van den Beld for his many years of service to JTC 1, specifically his unwavering dedication to the development and evolution of the JTC 1 procedures.

Now, according to Alex Brown, there is a special (secret) working group inside ISO rewriting those rules again:

Currently there is some ongoing activity to revise the JTC 1 Directives (a Special Working Group).

Let's hope ECMA is not a member of this group.

The South African Standards Body SABS have lodged an appeal at ISO against the awful fast-track process of DIS29500, or Microsoft Office OpenXML. Please call your national Standards Body and ask them to support this complain. You have only 7 days because the deadline is 30 May, 2 months after the ISO vote.

Steve Pepper, being so disgused about the intervention of a Norwegian bureaucrat reverting the decision of the Norwegian Technical Committee, is pointing at the fact that this person is also member of the ISO Technical Management Board (TMB), who will decide on the future of this appeal. I hope we will have some transparency on who is deciding what inside ISO on this appeal. It is time for ISO to clean up its stables, they have not been cleaned for several years, and they are getting dirty and smelly.

Here is the letter published by Yoon Kit of Malaysian group OpenMalaysia:

Update: thanks Yoon Kit for the transcription:

SABS
Our ref: 14/2/ICT/TC71/8/29500 iso
Enquiries: GR Visser
Telephone: +27 12 4287097
Date: 2008-05-22

Secretary-General, International Organization for Standardization
Attention: Mr A Bryden
1 Chemin de la Voie-Creuse
CH-1211 Geneva 20
Switzerland

Dear Sir

Appeal from the South African national body regarding the outcome of the fast-track processing of DIS 29500 Office open XML

The national body of South Africa (SABS), as a P member of JTC 1, hereby submits an appeal against the outcome of the fast track processing of DIS 29500 Office open XML. This is based on the procedures followed before and during the ballot resolution meeting (BRM) held from 25 to 29 February 2008 to discuss the comments submitted on the fast-tracked DIS 29500 and the proposed responses from Ecma.

In addition, South Africa wishes to register its deep concern over the increasing tendency of international organizations to use the JTC 1 processes to circumvent the consensus-building process that is the cornerstone to the success and international acceptance of ISO and IEC standards. The ability of large multi-national organizations to influence many national bodies, with the resultant block-voting over-riding legitimate issues raised by other countries, is also of concern.

This appeal is made in accordance with Clause 11.1.2: "A P member of JTC 1 or an SC may appeal against any action, or inaction, on the part of JTC 1 or an SC when the P member considers that in such action or inaction:

* questions of priciple are involved;
* the contents of a draft may be detrimental to the reputation of IEC or ISO; or
* the point giving rise to objection was not known to JTC 1 or SC during earlier discussions."

We believe that there is an important question of principle involved and that the reputation of ISO/IEC is indeed at stake. There has been speculation about the need to revise the directives around fast track processing. While such revision might indeed be necessary, we cannot accept the outcome of a process in which the existing directives have not, in our opinion, been applied.

Reasons for appeal

We are of the opinion that in the following instances the ISO/IEC JTC 1 Directoves, Edition 5 have not been followed.

1. Clause 13.4, second paragraph states "During the 30-day review period, a NB may identify to the JTC 1 Secretariat any perceived contradiction with other standards or approved projects of JTC 1, ISO or IEC.

If such a contradiction is alleged, the matter shall be addressed by the ITTF and JTC 1 Secretariat in accordance with Section 13.2 before ballot voting can commence. If no contradiction is alleged, the 5 month fast-track ballot voting commences immediately following the 30-day period. If a contradiction is alleged, the JTC 1 Secretariat and ITTF shall make the best effort to resolve the matter in no more than a three month period, consulting with the proposer of the fast-track document, the NB(s) raising the claim of contradiction and others, as they deem necessary. A meeting of these parties, open to all NBs, may be convened by the JTC 1 Secretariat, if required"

Whereas various NBs raised contradictions in this period, there is no evidence that "A meeting of these parties, open to all NBs" was held and that the result were made available to the other participating NBs. We understand that after Ecma was afforded a chance to address the NB comments submitted regarding contradictions, the JTC 1 Chairman, Secretariat and ITT F staff decided that convening a meeting to discuss contradictions would not be productive and that the best way to proceed would be to issue the draft for ballot without delay. The other NBs were not informed about the alleged contradictions but only informed, in the HOD meeting immediately prior to the BRM, that any issues of contradictions raised during the BRM would be ruled out of order by the BRM Chairman. Given this instruction, and given the fact that despite such instruction, a number of NBs continued to raise contradictions both in their written comments and during the BRM, it is clear that the JTC 1 Chairman, Secretariat and ITTF should have seen that a meeting of parties, as envisaged in the Directives, was indeed a necessity.

2. Clause 13.8 states that "At the ballot resolution group meeting, decisions should be reached prefably by consensus. If a vote is unavoidable the vote of the NBs will be taken according to normal JTC 1 procedures."

Since only 67 of the 1027 responses by Ecma were discussed, the process used to 'approve' the remaining responses by voting were questionable and did nothing to promote consensus, but simple 'approved' Ecma's attempt to improve the quality of the standard. This was especially disconcerting to the large number of experts from various countries who spent many hours in ad hoc meetings during the period of the BRM to develop consensus on some of the Ecma responses that contained errors or other issues of contention. The decision to ignore such important proposals for improving the standard and to resort to blanket voting on all issues not resolved during the discussions (more than three quarters of the responses were never tabled during the BRM) was procedurally flawed. Effectively, this required the national bodies to write a blank cheque approving the proposals of the authors of the proposed standard, which is inappropriate for any standard, never mind one that has generated considerable controversy.

There has been some dispute over what "normal" procedures should be in such a case. The general directive for meetings is as follows:

Clause 9.14 "In a meeting, excet as otherwise specified in these directives, questions are decided by a majority of the votes cast at the meeting by P members expressing either approval or disapproval." However, since many of the countries represented were not P members of JTC 1, the actual voting during the BRM was conducting according to clause 9.5 Combined Boting Procedure that states "The voting procedure which uses simultaneous voting (one vote per country) by the P-members for JTC 1 and by all ISO member bodies and IEC national committees on a letter ballot is called the combined voting procedure. This procedure shall be used on FDISs, DISs, FDAMs, DAMs and FDISPs." The decision to use this interpretation was incorrect since the voting during the BRM was not a letter ballot. While we are aware that the Convenor, in consultation with representative from ITTF and the IEC representative decided otherwise, we challenge this interpretation and therefore the result of the voting that was based upon that interpretation.

3. Clause 13.12, last bullet point: "In not more than one month after the ballot resolution group meeting the SC Secretariat shall distribute the final report of the meeting and final DIS text in case of acceptance." Up to date of writing, neither the final report of the BRM meeting or the revised FDIS text has been circulated by the SC Secretariat. The only communication to NBs (other than press releases) has been 34N1015, which was the result of the revised voting during the 30-day period subsequent to the BRM. There is no indication when the final DIS text might be expected, but it has not been distributed within the one month period prescribed.

Given the magnitude of the specification and the number of identified edits required it was clear that this directive could not have been met. This is the clearest possible indication that DIS 29500 as submitted by Ecma and as modified by the BRM is not ready for fast track processing. It was not incumbent on the participants of the BRM to modify this clearly stated requirement.

Conclusion

In conclusion, South Africa challenges the validity of the final vote that we contend was based upon inadequate information resulting from poorly conducted BRM. Moreover, we challenge the validity of a process that, from beginning to end, required all parties involved to analyze far too much information in far too little time, involved a BRM that did not remotely provide enough time to perform the appointed purpose of that procedure, and for which an arbitrary time limitation was imposed to discuss and resolve a significant number of substantial responses, despite the Directives for not requiring any such limitation as to duration.

It is our opinion that the process followed during all stages of this fast track has harmed the reputations of both ISO and the IEC and brought the processes enshrined in the Direcives into disrepute, and that this negative publicity has, in turn, also harmed the reputations of all member bodies of ISO and the IEC.

Yours faithfully

*signed*

Mr M Kuscus
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
South African Bureau of Standards (SABS)

cc

ISO TMB Secretary (Mr Mike Smith)
ISO SMB Secretary (Mr Jack Sheldon)
ISO/IEC JTC 1 Chairperson (Mr Scott Jameson moc.ph|nosemaj.ttocs#moc.ph|nosemaj.ttocs)
ISO/IEC JTC 1 Secretariat (Ms Lisa Rajchel gro.isna|lehcjarl#gro.isna|lehcjarl)

Of course, only time will tell if they will deliver on this promise, but the tone has changed dramatically, and this might actually be a good time to celebrate. We wish to welcome Microsoft to the party, even though they are very late and managed to make a fool of themselves in the process of trying to fight this outcome in every way possible.

Had they only made this move a year ago, they would have saved many people a lot of trouble, including themselves. It is probably safe to assume that it was the strong opposition that forced them to the ODF table.

Groklaw further examines the information contained in the report and provides background on its inception.

Download the report here.

Dennis Byron made our day as he took notice of the Digistan project and its Hague Declaration for open digital standards. The Digital Standards Organization (short:Digistan) is mostly set up to carry out open standards projects like Domino in cooperation with regional chapters.

Unbelievably it calls itself Digistan, apparently to identify with the fascist terrorists based in countries and regions using the Farsi-based suffix stan. … If it wasn’t for the implied association with terrorism it would be funny.

So, Farsi is the language of Persia, today called Iran. The suffix "stan" is an ancient Indo-European root word meaning place. There are many words in English that use the 'sta' root, many nations in the world that end with "stan" e.g. Kazakhstan. No educated person associates the suffix "stan" with terrorism or fascism. So, what's next… a nuclear assault on The Hague by enraged legacy bloggers?

Human rights case

Another anti-Microsoft (MSFT) front group has emerged in favor of free and open standards, hyping what it calls the Hague Declaration and making some absurd connection to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Read it yourself and please sign. You may also want to contribute a translation, for instance to Farsi.

Digistan alleged sponsors that 'waste your money'

The vast left-wing conspiracy of George Soros works around the edges of their mostly web-site-only organizations.

Digistan was launched thanks to a grant from the Information Program of Open Society Institute (the George Soros connection) and matching grants from OpenForum Europe and the European Software Market Association. The latter does not list its sponsors but the former is the front group behind other front groups like NOOOXML and Document Freedom Day (that’s right it’s all the same bizarre cast of characters back again to waste your money).