NoOOXML

This article?

http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/news/16C7B66F72705F19CC2573F60010F2B4

The Standards Australia rebuttal does not answer the main concerns:

The only reason Computerworld has obtained for the backflip is the original two employees are unable to attend the BRM.

Director of government affairs at IBM Australia, Kaaren Koomen, who manages a technical person in the OOXML working group, says there were obvious discussions within the committee about who should represent Australia in Geneva and it was satisfied with the two Standards Australia people.

"We were quite surprised there was a change in the delegation without consultation with the committee and when we were advised by Standards Australia of the change there was consternation," Koomen says.

Standards Australia agrees with the Committee to sent a neutral delegation to the BRM and then breaks that agreement by sending no one else than the Open XML "independent expert" Rick J. Someone who worked closely with ECMA to prepare the disposition of comments.

As Rick said:

As I understand it, they picked me exactly on the reasons they pick anyone to be the technical half in a delegation: seniority, experience, subject competence, availability, professionality (e.g. trying to be scrupulous in making them aware of possible conflicts of interest.) Political issues one way or another don't come into it.

I am not head of delegation so I have no vote, of course. But I expect some people will not be happy that I am going at all. That I submitted most of the Australian issues (20 or 22 out of 30), that no-one on the committee has identified any outcomes from our committee that I actually disagree, that I have a kind recommendation from the highest level of ODFdom, and that in this area I think I have a track record of being able to get a good outcome, does not seem to calm them.

and

So how does this get handled? 1) I made sure that I declared potential conflicts of interest, even thought it makes me a sitting target for nongs and trolls and the reserve army of the self-righteous. 2) Standards Australia had me sign in writing a declaration that I would not be being paid by anyone but my company for attendance at the meeting, which I most certainly would not, that I would be on top of our committee's positions and so on. 3) Standards Australia then judged something like that there was no conflict that is different in scale or kind than is usual and supervisable.

I think, in regards to Rick Jelliffe to point out a few facts :

I have had this discussion with him in the past, and he confirmed that he never implemented anything related to Microsoft "OOXML" proposal. It's very important to understand the implications. His domain of expertise is XML, not Microsoft "OOXML". So it's for him to justify why he thinks he can have a better say than technical people in Australia entrenched in file formats.

The other fact is that Microsoft "OOXML" is not about XML. It's angle brackets surrounding binary streams. By binary streams, I mean either litterally (binary parts, attribute values with non XML-encodings, …) but also, and perhaps mainly, all the format stream that was designed with only performance in mind, not XML.

It is not against Rick Jelliffe, it is against Standards Australia. They do not regard Rick J. as a neutral expert because of his committee work.