NoOOXML

Perhaps I should clarify. I am one of the independent external reviewers, not a member of the technical committee. I volunteered for this review job, and I even paid a small amount of money (60 EUR) to be considered as an external reviewer and be allowed to send in my comments. (I don't mind this, I can fully understand why the people at SIS don't want random comments from just anyone, it would be a pain to process them all.)

My comments on the proposal were mainly technical. I am not an expert on legal, copyright and patent issues, and therefore I did not make them a main point in my response. I did comment on it, though. Regardless of the legal status of OSP in Sweden it is an empty promise when read literally, as was recently pointed out by Pamela Jones at Groklaw. Her interpretation is not very specific to the US or any other particular legal system, it is a clear analysis of the OSP wording in general terms.

This is my first ever review of an ISO proposal for SIS, so I have no certain information on whether fast-track processes are always this messy, but I seriously doubt it. The ODF fast-track was made with a clean, working standard properly reviewed and prepared by OASIS. With ECMA376, the preceding standardisation process and so-called "review" by ECMA was closed, rushed and extremely badly executed.

I have no insider information on the upcoming voting proceedings, but I will hopefully receive a copy of the minutes if I ask nicely, and I will keep you informed.

As a consequence of the MS lobbying for "yes with comments", I asked a direct question of the SIS project leader for the OOXML review, and she has kindly assured me that the voting committee will be made aware of the fact that "yes with comments" in practice means an unconditional acceptance, and only "no with comments" is appropriate if there are unresolved important objections.

She also told me that two more members will be joining the technical committee before the vote. I don't know who they will be, but at least there seems to be no onslaught of new committee members in an attempt to stack the vote from Sweden.

Please see my recent post here about the "vote" in Finland. Hopefully soon in the front page too. It didn't end up well as you can see.
And of course it's also at http://boycottnovell.com/2007/08/20/ooxml-poland/#comments

Pity that all the comments are scrapped when the vote is "abstain". There should really be a possibility to say "we abstain for a lack of qualified majority either way, but these comments were raised by the following parties". As it is now, all the hard work done by people who have pointed out problems will just be thrown away. Let's hope that the ISO JTC1 is wise enough to look for technical comments through other channels. Even if they do approve a fast-track process, it will not be without comments, and I have a hard time imagining ISO actually rubber-stamping such a badly written standard straight off.

I don't know whether one should draw any conclusions from it, but ISO JTC1 TC34, the committee actually responsible for the upcoming ratification of DIS29500, has announced an "expected finalization date" for DIS29500 as late as December 2008, which is significantly later than a regular 5-month fast-track process would imply. One could imagine that they expect at least some review and revisions, not just an "OK" to the current version. But this might just be wishful thinking on my behalf.

Update: the SIS vote will take place "early next week", i.e. August 25, 26 or 27.
A press release will be published on http://www.sis.se to announce the decision.
It will probably be in Swedish only, but I will provide a translation here as soon as I can.

You need to read things better before attacking. SIS requires a 2/3 majority to decide. A failure to reach a qualified majority results in technical discussions to reach "consensus", i.e. at least a 2/3 majority on a revised, more balanced view. Such discussions were taking place and were probably almost finished. They would most probably have ended up as a "no" with a revised list of agreed-upon comments.

The stacking of the votes entrenched the positions of both sides. The final vote is not necessarily the vote which would have been cast if the group had been allowed to do its work. That aside, neither the 5-4 in the original group of 9 or the 6-6 in the group of 12 which was
supposed to be the final group (those who joined at least the week before the Monday vote) would not have been a "yes" from Sweden, no matter how you look at it. Taken literally, it would have been an "abstain", quite in accordance with the result after the invalidation, and in practice, I still argue that the after a split decision and a discussion, the consensus is often a "no with comments".