I know that question has been asked by at least one person at the NB level to ISO but no-one I know has received an answer yet. I'm hoping the answer will be posted on Alex's website if it comes.

If the answer is that website is complete, my two favourite theories being suggested for the surge in SC34 membership are.

1. Microsoft got the rules wrong and stacked the wrong committee

or

2. Microsoft, once it saw all that sc34 deals with thought it might be worthwhile to paralyse the committee.

we live in interesting times….

That the resignation of the chair and the recent events are not connected was stated immediately after the comment, long before you made this last comment. No need to point it out again. The discussion then moved on to the problems in SC34 to get any input from new P-members. That is certainly an interesting note, and it implies that there is actually some truth to the suspicion that they joined only to influence the vote on DIS 29500. The fact that they joined SC34 instead of only JTC1 is strange, though.

s\groklaw\noooxml

No need to apologise - I think I was in error to assume that the two things were implied as linked. But, this being groklaw, I was assuming the most sensational reading was the correct one ;-)

- Alex.

I apologize if my post concerning the announcement of the new Secretariat seemed to link the increase in SC 34 membership to the previous Secretariat Manager's resignation. That was not my intent at all.

I intended the comment following the announcement as a separate issue, and it is one that Murata seems very concerned about. I'm sure most do not want these newly registered P-members to cause problems by ignoring all the other SC 34 work (at least in the short term).

Open XML is a JTC-1 ballot.

The ballot in reference above is SC34. Members are different and P membership in SC34 does not imply P membership in JTC-1 and vice-versa.

The countries who supposedly joined JTC-1 for Open XML didn't need to join SC34.

The connection made by Anonymous (221.39.206.161) 11 Sep 2007, 14:43 +0200 between the 2 events is therefore irrelevant.

On P-Members, yes - it's certainly true that recent SC34 ballots have had poor responses. ISO has mechanisms to deal with this, and National Bodies that persist in neglecting their responsibility to vote risk finding themselves unceremoniously demoted to O-member status.

- Alex Brown.

http://www.jtc1sc34.org/repository/0902.htm

and this:

http://www.jtc1sc34.org/repository/0907.htm

" P-members please return your vote directly to the SC 34 Secretariat by due date; this is not a default ballot and this does require a response from all P-members. Note that this a re-issue of N0870 due to a lack of sufficient response from participating members. All members have an obligation to vote (including those who voted on the earlier ballot that received an insufficient response)."

It looks like that rumour is true.

As far as I understand it, the only thing "new" about that announcement in red text was that Japan has now accepted to take over the Secretariat duties. However, by itself, the brief message on the ISO website does indeed give the impression that the resignation as such was recently announced. While this is incorrect, I can totally see why first time visitors to the site are likely to misinterpret the message. You might want to look into making the information more clear in this respect, by pointing out in the message that the resignation has been pending for quite some time. There are probably a lot more people visiting iso.org now than there has ever been before!

[Update: the wording has now been changed at the ISO website to avoid confusion.]

Could you perhaps also give us any input on the second part of the post, the one that said that the new P-members are interested mainly in the DIS 29500 issue and are less willing to participate in other SC34 issues? It would certainly be interesting to know if there is any truth in that.

- Alex.

[Edit by stegu: The resignation was announced long ago. Only Japan's agreement to take over is new.]

Announcement
The Secretariat Manager has submitted his resignation and the Standards Council of Canada has given notice for relinquishing the SC34 Secretariat. The National Body of Japan has graciously agreed to undertake the Secretariat duties after the end of the December SC34 plenary meeting.

It also seems like there are some problems with getting SC 34 votes meeting the minimum participation (at least 50%) as the new P-members don't look interested in participating in issues other than those related to OOXML.

Since ballot resolution is an extension of an existing ballot in which countries have voted with a certain status, for the purposes of the BRM P-Member and O-member ISO status is counted as at the close of the five-month ballot on 2 September i.e., any subsequent status changes are discounted for voting purposes.

That clears things up quite a lot. Even the standards professional Andy Updegrove had this wrong recently, if I remember correctly. So, now we know that the group of voting members is no longer a moving target: the set of P-members and the set of voting members is not going to change for the BRM. While national bodies may still be lobbied heavily to change their votes, at least neither side can bring new players in from the audience, or have friends already within the system apply for P-membership.