Front-page: The BRM made things even worse for MS

The BRM in Geneva is over. During the five days of discussions 200 simple editorial comments were resolved (mostly typos and the like), but only 20 of the more technical and difficult comments were addressed. Most of the dispositions to these 20 comments were changed significantly from the ECMA-submitted proposal in order to satisfy the delegates enough to reach consensus. This is the purpose of a BRM, so for these 20 issues raised, the process worked as intended. This is what Microsoft is saying is a success and a great testimony to the global support for OOXML.

However, there are hundreds of technical comments that were not even touched during the BRM for lack of time. Fixing these to the level where consensus could be reached would take a huge amount of time, much more than what can be expected from the ISO fast-track process. This makes it more clear than ever that DIS29500 is so full of errors and flaws that it is totally unsuitable to become an ISO/IEC standard in its current form. The BRM fixed only a small fraction of the errors with the document and with the ECMA dispositions, and the final draft of DIS29500 will now basically be a useless, broken document.

From the BRM we learn that there are lots of things that need to be fixed before DIS29500 can become a respectable international standard. Countries which previously voted for approval, with or without comments, would be wise to reconsider now that more facts are on the table. If some countries have hundreds of objections and others have no objections at all, what can be said about their respective motivations? Microsoft tries to blame all negative criticism on fanaticism, covert influence from IBM and an unreasonable anti-Microsoft attitude. I would be more inclined towards regarding a blank approval without comments as a sign of corruption or gross incompetence.

Where is it most likely that you will find corruption and a lack of experience: in long standing P-members, or in small newcomers without even a proper national standards committee?

Microsoft has more problems now than before the BRM. The respectable thing to do now would be to withdraw the standards proposal, go back and do it right, and then submit it again when it's done.

It worth to notice that Microsoft keeping stressing how the participating members was given the opportunity to discuss those questions they thought most important. Something that hint everything about the BRM was fine. The thing Microsoft neglects to mention is how many questions that each NB was allowed to raise. The answer is between 1 and 2.

US, for instance, only got the option to raise one single issue before time was up since the opportunity to raise questions rotated round robin wise and the flaws in OOXML is far to serious to accept any Ecma suggestions without heavy modification and long discussions.

Only Microsoft spin doctors will believe that BRM could handle a document like OOXML…will you allow them alone to tell the world what happened or will you spread the word to the public?

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