On the "Fii destept" ("Be Smart") website http://www.fii-destept.ro , we have some arguments for legally buying Windows 7 preinstalled on new computers:

"Would you buy a bike without chain or brakes ? Then why would you buy a PC without Windows legally preinstalled ?" says the announcement. "P.S. If you've answered YES at the first question, then it must be something wrong with you".

"If you trust your neighbour, Gigi, to install an operating system on your new computer, well… Our advice is to purchase an original Windows 7 license and don't rely on Gigi".

Other campaign sites are http://ftw.ro/ („volunteer” bloggers on the same subject), http://www.schimbafontul.ro , http://scoaladeeficienta.ro/

The general impression is that Microsoft is targeting the less IT-educated audience in Eastern countries, to counterbalance market share loses in other parts of the world.

How do you comment on that ?

I spent 22 years as the chairman of what is now ISO/IEC JTC1/SC34. SC34 is the committee that standardized SGML in the 1980s and now is responsible for both ODF, supported by many open-source products, and OOXML, the XML released by Microsoft in response to ODF. Neither ODF nor OOXML has anything to do with ODA/ODIF, which have been dormant since the turn of the current century but were still under development in the 1990s in a committee that was parallel to the one that became SC34.

Our past analysis: OOXML is a response. Thank you very much for the confirmation. Stronger language from Mason found in this article.

A Texas judge ruled Tuesday that Microsoft cannot sell one of its flagship products, Word, in the United States because of patent infringement. …Judge Leonard Davis.. ordered a permanent injunction that "prohibits Microsoft from selling or importing to the United States any Microsoft Word products that have the capability of opening .XML, .DOCX or DOCM files (XML files) containing custom XML," according to an announcement by the plaintiff, Toronto-based i4i Inc.

i4i? Ah, the world famous inventor of the "Method and system for manipulating the architecture and the content of a document separately from each other" which is so basic to our digital societies?

PERMANENT INJUNCTION
In accordance with the Court’s contemporaneously issued memorandum opinion and order
in this case, Microsoft Corporation is hereby permanently enjoined from performing the following
actions with Microsoft Word 2003, Microsoft Word 2007, and Microsoft Word products not more
than colorably different from Microsoft Word 2003 or Microsoft Word 2007 (collectively “Infringing
and Future Word Products”) during the term of U.S. Patent No. 5,787,449:
1. selling, offering to sell, and/or importing in or into the United States any
Infringing and Future Word Products that have the capability of opening a .XML,
.DOCX, or .DOCM file (“an XML file”) containing custom XML;
2. using any Infringing and Future Word Products to open an XML file
containing custom XML;
3. instructing or encouraging anyone to use any Infringing and Future Word
Products to open an XML file containing custom XML;
4. providing support or assistance to anyone that describes how to use any
infringing and Future Word Products to open an XML file containing custom XML;
and
5. testing, demonstrating, or marketing the ability of the Infringing and Future
Word Products to open an XML file containing custom XML.
This injunction does not apply to any of the above actions wherein the Infringing and Future
Word Products open an XML file as plain text.
This injunction also does not apply to any of the above actions wherein any of the Infringing
and Future Word Products, upon opening an XML file, applies a custom tranform that removes all
custom XML elements.
This injunction further does not apply to Microsoft providing support or assistance to anyone
that describes how to use any of the infringing products to open an XML file containing custom
XML if that product was licensed or sold before the date this injunction takes effect.
This injunction becomes effective 60 days from the date of this order.
__________
LEONARD DAVIS
UNITED STATES DISTRICT JUDGE
So ORDERED and SIGNED this 11th day of August, 2009.

Patent problems

We may add that while Microsoft always pays lip service to patent reform and patent quality, it effectively obstructed even moderate steps of pragmatic reform in the field of software patenting with massive lobbying investment and an ideological agenda. An ideological motivation you don't find among all the other players which have a real business. The massive lobbying also applies to colonial attitudes towards patent regimes of third nations in which the American company operates, or the European Union, our main area of operations as the FFII e.V. Ironically Microsoft itself is a favourite target of troll challenges and no one knows how much profits Marshall Phelps actually generates by selling their Microsoft FAT patents. In the spectacular case of TomTom we were told it was a very small amount. Some American critics as Brian Kahin speak of a patent bubble of low value patents but how is it going to burst? When you have a licensing business a good patent is one that hurts. Maybe the Encyclopedia Brittannica is an example, it failed commercially and now became an (unsuccesful) patent enforcement agency against actual market players.

In the recent referral G03/08 about software patentability an European Patent Office case named T 424/03 (Microsoft) was center to the debate. Find the Amicus letters here. Currently you also have a pending referral on Bilski in the US Supreme Court which is more far reaching than software. In the US many examination tests were dismantled such as the machine or transformation box test which opened the flood gates and unbalanced the system. It was reintroduced under the Bilski ruling but appealed at the supreme court. The Bilski test does not rule out software or business method patents but provides means to reduce the pressure within the examination system in later stages.

First you wreck the law, then the trolls wreck you.

Software Patents are a pain for market players of all sizes. In Europe some people from the FFII Community run a new Petition and we also prepare an international effort. The FFII, a charity under German law financed by membership fees and donations, has a lot of expertise and proposals on how to overcome the current troll problems and improve the examination and litigation system. Unfortunately learning the hard way does not guarantee a quick learning process.

What does it mean to Open XML?

Right now ISO/IEC 29500 ("OOXML") is patent encumbered and cannot be called an "open standard" according to conventional definitions and looks unusable for the public sector. Microsoft's own patents and lack of licensing clarity were a real concern, but i4i's enforcement efforts are on another level. ISO Open XML is currently in a critical situation as you can expect more enforcement attempts of i4i to follow in order to sqeeze money out of the market, in particular once Microsoft is forced to pay. On the other hand Microsoft will be forced to use all legal means to get rid of the patent. We need to keep a close eye on the upcoming developments but i4i may not prevail.

Expect the FFII, Eurolinux and many others to fight for that.

• European Petition: Stopsoftwarepatents.eu
• FFII Website FFII e.V. and FFII website for "Groff" text processing tools

The recommendation from Microsoft is that users roll back to an earlier version. So here is the official workaround for Office users:

• Remove Office manually, reinstall Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac from the original installation media, and then upgrade to Office 2008 for Mac 12.1.9 Update. Do not upgrade to Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Service Pack 2 (12.2.0) from Microsoft AutoUpdate.
• Use Time Machine to roll back to Office 2008 for Mac 12.1.9 Update or an earlier version.
• Convert your document to .doc, .xls, or .ppt, by using Open XML Converter.

There is a more simple fix: Open file formats as ODF and more competition. Maybe you'd better try other word processors for instance Openoffice for Mac or Neooffice?

If you have time to read it, there are probably nice bits in there.

Microsoft will be the "social host" of the Seattle meetings, hosting the reception and dinner, etc. They will also be organizing a Document Interoperability Initiative (DII) event to occur the day after the SC34 Plenary, at Microsoft, to announce how they intent to support Office 2010 as extensions to OOXML.

The previous DII event organised by Microsoft in Brussels was basically a meeting of the Microsoft ecosystem.

Here is the announcement of the meeting on the SC34 website:

For general questions about Westin meeting logistics, or things to do around Seattle, please contact Dave Welsh, moc.tfosorcim|hslewmd#moc.tfosorcim|hslewmd, cell phone +1 206 313 0879.

[…]

More hotel options, at different rates, are also available. For more hotel options in the immediate Bellevue area and the Seattle vicinity, please try Live.com.

[…]

Located in downtown Bellevue, just twenty minutes outside Seattle, The Westin Bellevue is situated minutes from major corporate offices including Microsoft, Nintendo of America, T-Mobile, and Expedia.

You can expect a lot of people member of the Microsoft ecosystem at the next SC34 meeting in Redmond.

A word processor including a native XML file format is provided. The well formed XML file fully represents the word-processor document, and fully supports 100% of word-processor's rich formatting. There are no feature losses when saving the word-processor documents as XML. A published XSD file defines all the rules behind the word-processor's XML file format. Hints may be provided within the XML associated files providing applications that understand XML a shortcut to understanding some of the features provided by the word-processor. The word-processing document is stored in a single XML file. Additionally, manipulation of word-processing documents may be done on computing devices that do not include the word-processor itself.

Inventors: Jones; Brian M. (Redmond, WA), Bishop; Andrew K. (Redmond, WA), Snyder; Daniel R. (Bellevue, WA), Sawicki; Marcin (Kirkland, WA), Little; Robert A. (Redmond, WA), Krueger; Anthony D. (Woodinville, WA)
Assignee: Microsoft Corporation (Redmond, WA)
Appl. No.: 11/005,183
Filed: December 6, 2004

manoj87

Find Lawyer

The supporters of ODF should react to this. I therefore propose the following actions:

- Ask the ODF Alliance to publish a press release recommending not using the "Save as ODF" facility included MS Office SP2, due to the bad quality of the produced ODF files.

The ODF Alliance issued a press release on 28-Apr-09 saying:

The ODF Alliance today welcomed the release of Microsoft’s Service Pack 2 for Office 2007, a software update that provides long-awaited support for the OpenDocument Format (ODF), while cautioning governments to evaluate the new software to ensure sufficient interoperability with other ODF-supporting applications.
[…]
"Microsoft has dragged its feet for over three years now. The key test will be whether Microsoft’s support for ODF plays well with other ODF-supporting software,” continued Marcich. “Governments will want to further evaluate the support for ODF provided by Microsoft and whether it sufficiently meets their needs for greater openness and interoperability.”

The initial tests made by Rob Weir shows the very bad interoperability delivered, and I think that a warning to the users is deserved.

- Start a petition asking Microsoft to make MS Office SP2 unavailable until the design flaws in the product have been corrected.

We must make it clear to Microsoft that their attitude is not acceptable, and force them to behave in a better way.

Would it work to promote OOXML and the next generation ooxml implementations (let us coin them code name "Greenhorn")? eWeek's Larry Seltzer:

Obviously, Microsoft would like to have us all move to the new formats, mostly by virtue of moving to Office 2007, but that's not happening soon and Microsoft's not making us do it. In fact, Office 2003 will be getting security updates for five more years, until April 8, 2014, the same date security fixes for Windows XP will end.

Needless to say that this is about the implementation. He is speaking here about earlier implementations to support the format. He talks about support for the format as such.

…the damage from targeted attacks can be immense, and many users may be exposed. If Microsoft is going to claim to support the old formats for five more years, it needs to make security updates for them a high priority for five more years.

You can be sure that the corpus of existing binary document formats will be continued to be supported. The only revelevant question is if the next generation will be OOXML or ODF.

Will we listen to the binary insecurity tune to force customers to upgrade?

Whether OOXML Wins Or Not, Older MS Docs Aren't Safe

Here is another one to sell the next Office generation: the old binary formats are not "open". Diabolic laughter included.

29500 Defects: Explanation of whether to resolve defects by Corrigendum or by Amendment

Defects in ISO/IEC 29500:2008
Explanation of whether to resolve defects
by Corrigendum or by Amendment
ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34/WG4
2009-03-26
[…]

However, ISO/IEC 29500 is a very large and complex multi-part standard, and it is not surprising that the text contains many unintentional technical defects, which nevertheless don't make it impossible to implement the standard.

In the course of drafting, some existing office document features were unintentionally overlooked, which result in it being impossible to fully represent some of the corpus of existing documents in ISO/IEC 29500.

The corpus of existing documents probably means Office 2007 documents, which is an undocumented file format.

Here is the email I sent to the SC34 chairman:

From Benjamin Henrion <gro.iiff|noirnehb#gro.iiff|noirnehb>
to moc.liamg|12homas#moc.liamg|12homas
date Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 4:53 PM
subject Definition of an "existing document"

Dear Chairman of SC34,

I would like to submit a request and a comment by having read the
following text:

0036(pdf) 29500 Defects: Explanation of whether to resolve defects by
Corrigendum or by Amendment

http://www.itscj.ipsj.or.jp/sc34/wg4/archive/sc34-wg4-2009-0036.pdf

"In the course of drafting, some existing office document features
were unintentionally overlooked, which result in it
being impossible to fully represent some of the corpus of existing
documents in ISO/IEC 29500."

Can you provide a definition of what an "existing documents" means?

Best regards,

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

Let's have a look what definition they provide.

The document N1101/N1168 contains for example, several items in which they recognize that there are decisions made in the BRM (BRM resolutions) which were not incorporated into the final published text of the standard. In other words, even taking almost a year after the aproval of the standard to publish the text (yes, approved without reading), there wasn’t time/attention or anything else necessary to assure that the changes were published in the text (most of those changes, “conditioned” the approval). What makes me much more angry about this is that during the BRM I asked about who would be responsible for verifying that all these changes would be part of the final text and the answer was ITTF (kind of joint ISO/IEC secretariat).

He may be wrong that this is the final proof of misconduct at the BRM under the lead of Alex Brown and its mission impossible to fix the standard. Following the shocking uncoverings Jesper Lund Stocholm, Alex Brown and Doug Mahugh are acting like little school girls with their gossip and giggles on Twitter. But there may be method to the madness. OOXML is already approved by ISO JTC1. Microsoft no longer needs to persuade the national bodies or influence the press or call out their business partners. It is enough for them to rely on social engineering in SC34, shmoozing, sponsorships, free dinners, free beer, etc.

The reporting of Groklaw about the Microsoft outbursts of unfiltered truth and sillyness made Alex Brown hit back to BRM allegations and he claims the British BSI did not do its job, didn't review ODF properly:

Fact is though, we (the team) did NOT read ODF - we merely made a rapid pass through parts of the text over half a day, looking for obvious problems. Even so, the UK generated by far the greatest number of NB comments. This fact tells you all you need to know about the degree of scrutiny ODF got in its JTC 1 ballot. If you believe it was studied in detail in the UK, you are very wrong. … We learned from our ODF mistake, and rectified our errors [with open xml].

Pamela Jones of Groklaw answers to his flamebait:

Now, as it happens, I have formed the impression that you and the the MS elves want to "interoperate" with ODF so Microsoft forces can take it over, since even you must now realize that OOXML will never work and will never be adopted.

So, I did download few dissertation examples but was not sure about the authenticity of the source. Then one day I found this service giving away FREE dissertations. Initially I thought they must have a hidden cost or something but when I read the whole page, I was quite relaxed since they clearly mentioned why they are giving the dissertation sample. Furthermore, they clearly stated that the sample dissertation will not necessary be relevant to your subject. The objective behind giving the example dissertation is to help students understand the intricacies of writing a dissertation rather than making students copy and paste the material.

The page also talks about the disadvantages dissertation example can bring as well as how to make good use of the downloaded dissertation sample. All and all I did learn a few good things about dissertation writing especially, how to make my dissertation writing better using a dissertation sample even if it is not related to my topic or subject.

I would recommend them to students who are in search of good dissertation samples and also appreciate members sharing their dissertation writing experiences.
http://www.dissertation-help.co.uk/dissertation_samples.htm

«In order to be answered, you have to be a client of Microsoft, as by article 9 of law 54/2008, there is a "duty of cooperation" which means that the survey must be answered, says Rui Seabra, vice-president of the board of ANSOL, in the association's blog.

The survey aims to be a guide for evaluation of the risks in the area of public procurement and granting public benefits, so Rui wonders «why a Council for Corruption Prevention is benefiting Microsoft.»

A reply to a citizen's email who questioned this practice was found to be extremely revealing: it's all about vendor lock-in. An extensive analysis (in portuguese) details many technical misconsiderations made by the Account's Court, some of them quite unreasonable:

• that Microsoft's binary and XML formats are open standards
• considers Microsoft's OSP an acceptable software license
• that since they use Microsoft, others must use Microsoft
• OpenDocument Format is used by a small number of people (perhaps the state should not have wheelchair ramps since wheelchairs are used by a small number of people), and would require installing third party software

The reply actually tries to turn the third item into the worse problem, and avoids the matter of granting an exclusive benefit to Microsoft, which would go directly against the objectives of the survey.

The conference will be held in Bucharest - details on http://www.eliberatica.ro

Romania is still a "red mark" on Microsoft's empire map: no official discussions about OpenDocument at government's level, Excel studied in Economics University (ASE http://www.ase.ro) like the Bible, no OpenOffice.org or alternative software in schools, OLPC program furiously rejected by Romania's think-tank senators ("this toy computer can't even run Microsoft Word !")…

Even Romania's president officially thanks to Bill Gates on his visit in Romania because "an entire generation of IT professionals grew up illegally copying Microsoft Office" and "Microsoft is an important, strategic partner to Romania's govermnent"…

Maybe Eliberatica it's a good occasion to inform Romanian public at large about the OOXML corruption scandal, the importance of real standards and the peril of proprietary software ?

Can someone please help?

We’re going to continue working closely with others in the IT industry - customers, partners, competitors and developers, including those in open source communities. They will help identify and solve interoperability challenges. As we mentioned earlier, this is a time of change. We’ve made some progress and we’re going to continue taking steps toward fostering greater interoperability.

Also the terms openness and interoperability are embraced in the article as if the company was going to apply for OFE membership and to stop obstruction of forceful Slovak proposals in the European Parliament for better interoperability (which were initially overlooked).

We also find a reference to a public affairs forum:

One forum where this takes place is in the Interoperability Executive Customer (IEC) Council, which consists of more than 35 CIOs and CTOs from governments and leading corporations around the world. The IEC Council helps Microsoft identify and solve the top challenges facing customers today. Working with them, we’re actively resolving issues in the areas of systems management, security and identity management, as well as office productivity and collaboration tools.

Not IEC as in ISO/IEC. That acronym overlap seems to be just a coincidence. It was established in 2006 and made no significant impact on the OOXML process. Details about the process can be found here.

Anyway, what is hot? You know these PRs make you suspicious. They are usually sent out when something is going on. Texas to go for open document formats? One year old news. And I am convinced no one is aware of the Dutch economist message which could be turned into an openness tsunami in the context of recent bailout spending madness:

Governments should seriously consider to act as leading customers to enhance competition on the market for PC operating systems, office applications and enterprise content management software, suggest micro economists at the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis (CPB). Governments should also require open source software in public procurement.

The CPB economists write these three markets are 'tentative examples' of inefficient markets. Such markets suffer from vendor lock-in and the lack of competition is stifling innovation. Normal economic processes are not strong enough to correct such failing markets. "This will not lead to optimal choices of licensing, price, quality and innovation."

Paoli's colleague Craig Shank has a different concept: vendors help governments to make the most of their IT.

This is a time of change. Increasing globalization, rising Internet use, and higher consumer and business expectations are driving increased demand for technology choice and flexibility. Governments and businesses alike have assembled a diverse mix of applications and technologies from a variety of vendors. In this environment, technology can present new opportunities and deliver new solutions. Key to that is helping organizations make the most of their mixed IT environments.

"Vendor capture" as economists call that. Don't expect any trade association to lobby against it. This has to be left to common sense and the ethos of public officials who want to keep their independence. A focus on market order improvements, even in times of bulk emergency keynesian spending on broadband, green-IT and ICT education remains important. In the current situation I am sure a "microbillion" for interoperability actions can be made available in many nations around the world. Crumps for common sense, free markets and more openness.

Mandatory ODF policies are only a small step in a long transformation process in the field of communications technologies but it is time to walk the talk. The financial markets have shown that we cannot afford to lean back on the regulatory side as society as a whole suffers the consequences.

Fraunhofer Fokus is also represented in the DIN document committee for document formats. There it was a proponent of the adoption of the questionable OpenXML format while German government representatives sent furious protest letters. Now Fraunhofer is in the news again:

February 23, 2009 Microsoft partners with Fraunhofer Fokus
Fraunhofer Fokus recently announced a new project to create an IS29500-Validator and Document-Library. The project will test the validity of documents regarding conformance to ISO/IEC 29500. As part of the project activities Fraunhofer Fokus will initiate the development of an Open Source document validator.

Fraunhofer FOKUS initiates its new Document-Interoperability-Lab. The lab will test the validity of documents regarding the document-standard ISO/IEC 29500 known as Office Open XML. As part of the lab activities Fraunhofer Fokus will initiate the Open Source development of a document validator. Additionally a library consisting of valid test and template documents will be offered. Word processing, presentation as well as spreadsheet documents will be taken into consideration. Microsoft Corporation will support these activities as development partner.

The question is who will trust the research results of Fraunhofer Fokus? And why does the German tax payer invest in a research institution that sells out to companies across the Atlantic regardless of our national public interest in interoperability? For instance Fraunhofer Fokus applauded(!) the ISO adoption of Open XML.

• 2008-04-09 Fraunhofer FOKUS begrüßt die ISO-Normierung DIS 29500 von Office Open XML

Fraunhofer DIN NIA person Gerd Schürmann sent also emails that seemed to be equivalent to those of Microsoft's Mario Wendt. Let's look if the document experts can validate that. Does it make you feel comfortable that Schuermann was named for the DIN NIA 43 subcommittee which deals with translation matters of ISO/IEC 26300 (ODF) and ISO 29500 (OOXML)?

Here is what Doug Mahugh is saying on the ODF mailing-list:

It's worth noting that the ODF metadata mechanisms don't allow for the use of a private/custom schema to tag content within a document. And that use case has value to many users. So if we decide that ODF won't be able to support those types of scenarios, for whatever reason, we should not be surprised to find that users who need such capabilities will look elsewhere.

Consider the trivial example of a pre-existing document, created years ago, which needs to be logged in to a content management system that requires an abstract to be identified for each document. If the format of the document is HTML, then a div with class="abstract" can be used to tag the appropriate paragraph(s) as the abstract. If the format of the document is DOCX, a customXml element with element="abstract" can be used for the same purposes. In both cases the document content remains valid HTML or WordprocessingML, while the user adds the custom semantics required for their purpose. The custom semantics can be (and should be) ignored by others. The user is free to innovate quickly, and does not have to think in terms of a tradeoff between strict compliance and flexibility/business value. They can, and do, have the best of both worlds in such scenarios: strict compliance to a standard, and freedom to innovate quickly for their own specialized purposes.

I think ODF would benefit from being as supportive of such scenarios as HTML, IS29500 and other formats already are. No committee can anticipate every possible class of extension that users might find useful, so I think the format itself should allow for clean, simple tagging of content according to schemas that may never be standardized, and may never be widely known or used. Done correctly, such tagging puts no burden on simple interoperability between word processors (which typically ignore it), but can enable other types of interoperability that many people find valuable.

- Doug

There is only one way to do interoperability at Microsoft: embrace and extend. "Freedom to innovate" here means "Freedom to embrace and extend", or "Freedom for Microsoft to add proprietary patented extensions that makes users dependent on Microsoft technologies".

Time to join the ODF TC!

An attacker who successfully exploited this vulnerability could gain the same user rights as the local user. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less affected than users who operate with administrative user rights.
In a Web-based attack scenario, an attacker would have to host a Web site that contains an Office file that is used to attempt to exploit this vulnerability. In addition, compromised Web sites and Web sites that accept or host user-provided content could contain specially crafted content that could exploit this vulnerability. An attacker would have no way to force users to visit a malicious Web site. Instead, an attacker would have to persuade them to visit the Web site, typically by getting them to click a link that takes them to the attacker's site.
The vulnerability cannot be exploited automatically through e-mail. For an attack to be successful a user must open an attachment that is sent in an e-mail message. Users who have installed and are using the Office Document Open Confirmation Tool for Office 2000 will be prompted with Open, Save, or Cancel before opening a document.

So users probably should be very cautious with .xlsx files sent to them until the risks are contained through security updates.

Background:

• PCmag
• Security Focus

It's fortunate that it didn't start pointing to an adult-related site… lol.

Keep in mind it is 'just' oil and gas. Petrol is elementary to keep you warm and your car running. You can buy it on a world market from multiple sources. Only oil companies and leftists believe that you need to go to war to secure access to petrol resources. But what about the real dependencies of regions like Europe on software and standards? The Russians are here about to lower these strategic dependencies in their national interest. The Open XML standardisation effort has shown to players in the IT business how ruthless it gets when strategic concerns come into play, and multinational corporations and governments are not much different here.

Most governments around the world already have a national operating system, it is called Windows and their tax payers have to pay large amounts of money for this national 'choice' to an American company. Fortunately it also contributes to the functioning of the political system through sponsoring of regulatory action, new career perspectives for politicians, sponsoring of an EU Presidency or reform of 'open standards' requirements. Ireland is a good place to base your software licensing business as the Irish government helps you with tax evasion.

A good reason why governments need Windows is an Office application and you can say it is their National Office Application. It only runs on Windows, has a cousin on the Mac and tinkerers sometimes manage to get it work under Linux occasionally, perhaps. Just ask, you find so many good excuses why it became their National Office Application and why they want it to remain their Office application. For instance because governments urgently need the Office software to process the files other people with the same software sent to them. Thus some governments backed the standardisation of the proprietary format through ISO. The OOXML saga.

Other governments want to be able to switch to other products or actually do that. Most of them migrate to Staroffice or [OpenOffice.org] which support the ODF format and the old binary doc format out of the box. Government agencies understand that a creation of an international standard as ODF was crucial to reduce their switching costs, they understood that only strong economic pressure would force Microsoft into full ODF compliance. Some governments also understand that you have to invest into alternative products and migration studies to further reduce the dependencies and built up the market pressure for interoperability.

I wonder if Russia will consider to develop its national word processor as well. A wise Russian will understand the danger to their national independence that a support for the Open XML format instead of ODF bears. If they have no opportunity but to chose Open XML it shows that their national independence is already compromised. When I went to the military part of the mission of military service was to shield our nation from foreign extortion. I wonder how these institutions can contribute to liberate our nations from these dependencies. Guns and nukes do not seem to help against the viral software sales model from Redmond. A clear software and interoperability strategy and effective action does help, as long as governments do not fraternise with the opponent of their national interest.

Andrew Tridgell, …, did not speak about this subject; rather he focused on the way Microsoft manouevred the OOXML standard through the International Standards Organisation last year, using means which are widely acknowledged as being non-kosher.

Tridgell said Microsoft had subverted the entire standards process by ramming the OOXML standard through and the company should make reparations, including an apology.

Last year there was a bunch of other outraged persons in Norway. I leave it to you for now to make up your mind how this relates to recent unexpected developments on the European level you find in the news. CTO Hakon Wium Lie explained what powers their entrepreneurial success in a Geneva conference: Genuine Open Standards and adherence of their competitors to them. As a coincidence the Open Forum Europe event happened to take place at the same time and in the same building as the Ballot Resolution Meeting for OOXML.

Poor Lawrence Crumpton.

We were particularly pleased to see the issue of software patents addressed in a manner that prevents them being used to hinder competition rather than the original purpose of patent law, to promote innovation. We are concerned about the current state of the standards process, as evidenced by the recent ISO process relating to a standard that no-one implements "Open XML" which appears to be achieving full recognition in spite of safeguards in the standards process rather than because of them.

Other contributions can be found here. Although Microsoft said it wants to offer Open XML patent licensing on a royalty-free base it strongly advocates against the existing European interoperability definition of open standards which currently provides for no patent restrictions. Of course it doesn't. The American company writes to the Commission:

The discussion of standards and technical specifications is necessary, and would serve the requirements of an interoperability framework better without the redefinition of the meaning of “open standards” carried over from EIF 1.0.

For IT professionals it might sound odd that a term as 'open standards' the EU Interoperability Framework explains correctly is suddenly described as a redefinition by the very company that redefines it and invested so much in lobbying. You are lying, yells the liar.

The European Interoperability Framework 1.0 is so popular because it adapts to business reality. This is why the contributions to the EIF update process which lead to an EIF2 have a specific political relevance for software professionals in Europe. If foreign companies succeed to subvert terminology and standards driven by their commercial interests, what role for Europeans whom their administrations and standard bodies are supposed to serve?

NORMAPME is an international non-profit association created in 1996 with the support of the European Commission, under the full name of the "European Office of Crafts, Trades and Small and Medium- Sized Enterprises for Standardisation".

NORMAPME is the unique European organisation focused on small enterprise interests in the European standardisation system. Its members represent over 11 million enterprises in all European countries, including all EU and EFTA member states.

In a letter to CEN members and National mirror committees of ISO JTC1 NormAPME asked these decision makers to disapprove the Open XML format. The document that was leaked to us is dated 26 of march 2008. The text fully endorses the common criticism of the format, but director Loucas Gourtsoyannis who signed the letter added another aspect to the communication:

The standard drafting process did not guarantee the involvement [of] all interested stakeholders, including SMEs. Instead it was monopolized by Microsoft.

You might argue that SMEs do not implement or develop Open XML. Small and medium sized companies exercise (pretty) weak procurement power. They have to take what is dictated by market consensus. A standard process is not only relevant to the different vendors, notably Microsoft, IBM, SUN, Adobe et al., but also to buyers as consumers and regular SME customers. Small and medium sized companies are the backbone of the European economy and unlike larger players they don't pay taxes in offshore-irelands or ask for state aid but contribute to domestic prosperity, job and wealth creation and fiscal income. Organisations as NORMAPME ensure that the SME's voice gets heard and their interests are better reflected in a standard process.

A real surprise to many observer of the Open XML debate was that most of the usual suspects of SME astroturf were not called to arms in the Open XML standard struggle. The new turf Voices for Innovation seriously lacked maturity and didn't take off. The attempt appeared rather foolish. Vendor capture was not restrained but frank, as if European standard setting was the natural domain of European sales departments and partners. Another indication of SME weakness in the process.

As now all relevant sides agree that the ISO fasttrack process needs reform, I am curious what proposals the standard technocrats in Europe will come up with to strengthen true SME representation in the standard setting process. New instruments of competition law are expected to be developed to overcome the misrepresentation problem for which OOXML became a paradigm. How to crack down on future standard voting cartells in Europe and foreign influence? I wonder what reform suggestions NORMAPME would make.

One aspect is evident, the interests of 11 million European SME need to be better reflected in standard setting, to get on an equal footing with multinational vendors.

Here is the letter for the ECMA376v1:

Here is the letter for the ECMA376v2:

If you have some time, you could transcript it for blind people and bloggers to quote it.

ECMA has also a good sense of humor (the right source is a PPT presentation about ECMA):

Patents: Solid and proven patent policy and practice:

The General Assembly of Ecma shall not approve
recommendations of Standards which are covered by
patents when such patents will not be licensed by their
owners on a reasonable and non-discriminatory basis.”

However, Ecma does not:

• Assess the essentiality and validity of patents for implementation of a standard, nor
• Conduct patent searches for patents used in standards, nor
• Define the term “Reasonable And Non Discriminatory” (RAND)

We have requested a commercial patent license in July, but radio silence since then on the Microsoft side. Yet another proof that the patent system does not work.

The ECMA code of conduct in patent matters is here:

1. Policy
General Declaration:
The General Assembly of Ecma shall not approve recommendations of Standards which are covered by patents when such patents will not be licensed by their owners on a reasonable and non-discriminatory basis.

1.1
In case the proposed Standard is covered by issued patents of Ecma members only: Members of the General Assembly are asked to state the Company licensing policy with respect to these patents.

I wonder what the latest requirement means. Nobody knows exactly which Microsoft patents covers the specification. Nobody has ever seen the list.

Even The Register covers the story:

Microsoft has today released a plug-in for Firefox that allows Open XML documents to be viewed within the popular open source browser. The software giant said that its new Open XML Document Viewer works within Firefox and can be used on Windows and Linux platforms without needing a local installation of MS Office. .. So today’s announcement will be seen – by MS at least – as going some way to placate the firm’s naysayers.

Let's check the source.

Interoperability solutions announced today translate Open XML documents to a Web page (HTML) allowing readability on Web-friendly browsers such as Firefox,…

There are two kinds of people. Those who don't get it and those who enjoy the failblog. Those who enjoy the failblog may also wonder why the referenced document is called 12-03DIIBrusselsPR.mspx.

Anyway, at present also the ISO standard ODF is supported by Firefox through inadequate and experimental plugin solutions.

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has published the specification for a Microsoft-created file format that caused bitter debate during its path to become an international standard.

The documentation for Office Open XML (OOXML) runs 7,228 pages and can be ordered on CD from the ISO for 342 Swiss francs (US$285). The specification is named ISO/IEC DIS 29500:2008.

Microsoft won a hard-fought battle in April when the ISO announced enough countries voted to approve OOXML as an international standard.

OOXML was opposed by many on grounds it was unneeded, as software makers could use OpenDocument Format (ODF), a less complicated office software format that was already an international standard.

The debate became so embittered that IBM, which backs ODF, threatened in September to consider leaving standards bodies that allowed dominant companies such as Microsoft to wield what it perceived as undue influence. Microsoft was accused of leaning on countries in order to secure enough votes for OOXML to pass.

ISO has also made a press release, referring to file formats produced by a particular vendor:

This defines a set of XML elements and attributes, over and above those defined by ISO/IEC 29500-1, that provide support for legacy Microsoft Office applications; that is, those prior to the 2008 release. It specifies requirements for Office Open XML consumers and producers that comply to the transitional conformance category.

BoycottNovell got the message right:

By the way, do you know when is the official burial date of ISO?

Who pays for interoperability in public IT procurement?

A public letter to the IT industry about document format standards

Delft, 16 November 2008

L.S.,

It is not uncommon for governments to voluntarily head for vendor
lock-in[1]. As a citizen, however, I have a direct stake in my
government basing its public procurement of IT on open standards. This
stake may be most evident for 'civil ICT standards' (Andy Updegrove),
i.e., for standards that support access to government information and
exchanges with government such as document formats[2] (e.g.,
sustainable digital data). However, I also have a standards-related
stake in IT procured for government-internal processes because, first,
in practice government-internal and –external IT processes cannot be
separated[3]. Second, because of the increasing costs that accompany
vendor-lock-in. Third, because government procurement is good for 16%
of the European IT market and is therefore a means towards a more
competitive and sustainable IT market.

A main reason for voluntary vendor lock-in is the fear of lack of
interoperability of IT products in a multi-vendor environment.
Experience shows that standard-compliant products from different
vendors need not necessarily interoperate. As is known, a dominant
vendor may design in incompatibility to break the integrity of a
standard (e.g. Java platform). But usually incompatible standard
implementations are the unhappy outcome of good intentions.

Problem of document format standards

In the field of document formats there is an additional complexity.
For the external reader: ISO[4] has ratified two competing
XML-oriented standards for document formats. The first one, the Open
Document Format (ODF, ISO/IEC 26300) was ratified in 2006 and stems
from OASIS, a standards consortium. The second one, Office Open XML
(OOXML, ISO/IEC 29500) originally stems from Ecma International,
another standards consortium. Although ISO's OOXML process has been
widely contested, which caused a delay in its final approval,
according to the ISO website the standards is to be published shortly.

ISO's approval of a second, overlapping standard will not have
lessened government fears about interoperability in a multi-vendor
environment. The market has become less rather than more transparent
by means of this standards effort. To re-create some transparency
about the interoperability of applications and reduce the fear of post
hoc expenses in public procurement, conformance and interoperability
testing is needed. Plug-test events are needed to test the factual
interoperability of standards-based products from different vendors.
To be credible to all concerned, a neutral, independent testing centre
such as ETSI may need to be involved to e.g. develop test-suites and
coordinate plug test events.

Interoperability between multi-vendor OOXML applications

Current discussions on open standards highlight that multiple
implementations are an important sign that standards are really open
(see presentations by Rishab Gosh and by Thiru Balasubramaniam[5]).
Regarding ISO's OOXML, the contention is that no company has yet
implemented the full standard, not even its primary sponsor Microsoft;
and that the six thousand page specification is too complex and too
inconsistent to implement. Are these contentions true? If not,
governments will want more than verbal claims to the contrary.
Moreover, they can easily be countered with third party conformance
and interoperability tests, including a plug-test event with multiple
OOXML-compliant IT vendors.

Interoperability between ODF applications

All major vendors, Microsoft included, have agreed to support ODF
ISO/IEC 26300, or are already doing so. That is, the availability of
multiple implementations is not a problem here. Moreover,
interestingly, two weeks ago OASIS initiated a technical committee to
organize conformance and interoperability tests. Given its scope[6],
this committee will provide transparency to governments about the
degree of conformance of applications to ODF and the interoperability
of ODF-documents. Less clear is whether the committee also intends to
address interoperability between standards versions, or more general:
what policy it has on standards change[7]. To my knowledge, such
policies have not yet been defined by any standards consortium or
standards body. They would befit the area of civil ICT standards.

The OASIS committee explicitly does not address "identifying or
commenting on particular implementations" or any certification
activities. Government procurement officers will ultimately need
testing at this level and want to involve an independent third party
testing centre for this purpose. Moreover, OASIS, too, might at a
later stage want to involve an independent third party in order to
avoid credibility problems.

Having two overlapping standards brings about its own problems, as
testifies a review of current ad hoc solutions - converters,
translators, plug-ins - to re-create compatibility between
ODF-products and Microsoft's partial implementation of the OOXML
standard[8]. Those who develop a low quality and overlapping standard,
qualifications which also OOXML supporters use, are not the ones who
pay for the consequences. Regrettably, citizens will be paying the
price for lack of interoperability.

Although there is no formal accountability to fall back upon in
standardization[9], those who initiated the duplicating effort may
feel a - corporate social - responsibility for what happened. Their
help is needed to shift interoperability costs from governments and
citizens (post hoc) back to IT vendors (ex ante), the source of the
interoperability problem. As a start, will they fully cooperate and
support OASIS' initiative of conformance and interoperability testing?
Are they prepared to shoulder the costs of independent, third party
conformance and interoperability tests, tests that are needed to
assure governments that no unexpected problems will arise ex post?

Kind regards,

Tineke Egyedi

Delft University of Technology

A while ago, I was riding my mountain bike under the deluge, with plenty of mud on the eyes, I was unable to ride correctly, it was dangerous. Now it seems that Alex Brown has also some mud in the eyes:

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) requested at the beginning of October that ODF maintenance work be aligned between Oasis and ISO, in a move that Groklaw's Pamela Jones described as "a takeover attempt of ODF". Groklaw alleged that ISO's SC34 committee, which oversees the development of Microsoft's rival OOXML format, was "tilted by Microsoft employees". SC34 would be in charge of ISO's ODF work.

However, Alex Brown, the convener of SC34, told ZDNet Asia sister site ZDNet UK at the time that Jones's post was "chock-full of misinformation and spin". ISO/IEC standards have to be managed and published by ISO/IEC committees even if they are created elsewhere, Brown said.

Dear Mr Brown, who paid the dinner in Korea? How many Microsoft employees were around the table?

The RAND terminology is confusing because RAND is not well defined and covers a zoo of patent licensing schemes. Of course RAND terms can also be free of charge, this is the case with some RAND licensing models, e.g. FRAND. RAND-Z licenses are "zero fee". However, even royalty-free RAND standards may impose other restrictions. The litmus test whether an international standard is really "royalty-free" without undue restrictions, also known as an essential condition for an "open standard", is whether it enabled implementations under the GNU GPL. If participants in the standard process chose to make it voluntarily an "open standard" ISO does not provide a standard scheme on how to indemnify implementers and users. They don't have a standard RF license. The field of patent indemnification license models is still under development. Just have a look at the collection of licensing and indemnification models at the patent commons website. No one really knows which model is legally safe and sound on a world wide scale as international private law is very much diverse. Certainly trust into the licensor comes into play here.

The main sponsor behind OOXML, the Microsoft Corporation, assured the European Commission that they would chose a RF model for their future Office format.¹ However, their public affairs representatives repeatedly casted doubt whether their chosen patent license model would enable implementations under the GNU GPL and forcefully lobbied domestic and oversees legislators against open standards. The intense struggle has two levels. On one layer the question is RAND or RF as appropriate licensing conditions, on a second layer the attempt was to redefine the terminology of "open standards" to become RAND compatible. A "success" of the lobbying effort was the ITU-T definition of "open standards" drafted by a patent attorney working group which made the limbo for RAND licensing conditions. As an effect all international standards would become "open standards". It comes at no surprise that vendors are sceptical about the honesty of the Microsoft patent schemes and are suspicious about hidden agendas.

Following criticism of the first model, the CNS, Microsoft came up with an Open Specification Promise as their new favourite patent indemnification model. In the FAQ they deliberately leave the question of GPL applicability open and stress that the OSP "does not need to be sublicensable".

The Open Specification Promise is a simple and clear way to assure that the broadest audience of developers and customers working with commercial or open source software can implement the covered specification(s). We leave it to those implementing these technologies to understand the legal environments in which they operate. This includes people operating in a GPL environment. Because the General Public License (GPL) is not universally interpreted the same way by everyone, we can’t give anyone a legal opinion about how our language relates to the GPL or other OSS licenses, but based on feedback from the open source community we believe that a broad audience of developers can implement the specification(s).

Recently a new item was added to the OSP FAQ:

Q: I am a developer/distributor/user of software that is licensed under the GPL, does the Open Specification Promise apply to me?
A: Absolutely, yes. The OSP applies to developers, distributors, and users of Covered Implementations without regard to the development model that created such implementations, or the type of copyright licenses under which they are distributed, or the business model of distributors/implementers. The OSP provides the assurance that Microsoft will not assert its Necessary Claims against anyone who make, use, sell, offer for sale, import, or distribute any Covered Implementation under any type of development or distribution model, including the GPL.

We will see how future updates of the Open Specification Promise (OSP) would reflect this policy. The uncertainty causes many vendors to ask for other bilateral patent indemnification agreements. Some persons who do not trust the OSP asked Microsoft for the text of the FRAND license (mentioned in the ISO documents) as the third available model along CNS and OSP but had no success. Apparently such a third license model is not provided contrary to earlier formal statements and the argument is raised that the OSP would obsolete the third FRAND license.

Continuing the reading of the document, I found at the “Acclamations Section” a particular item, that would transcribe here:

Acclamation C:

SC 34 expresses its appreciation to Microsoft Korea for sponsoring the dinner of Sept 29th.

I’d rather not write here any comment or conclusion about it, but I really would like to read the your comments.

Things like these which cause reactions such as the members of the Norway’s NB, that simply abandoned ISO (cheers to them).

I am also pretty sure that other participants to this meeting had their flight ticket paid by Redmond. I personally do not have the finances to afford such expensive flight tickets, hotels, and so on.

Physical meeting is the ISO way to exclude participation.

And (I did hint we might come down from being high-minded) talking of copyright violation I notice some of the dafter quarters of the web have published the ISO/IEC 29500:2008 (OOXML) text. Now, while not many people know for sure what ITTF do to a text when they prepare it for publication, one thing they do do for sure is to put a copyright statement on every page. So what we have witnessed is a brazen act of copyright violation. The boobies have even been so good as to boast about the bandwidth requirements their crimes have occasioned (no further questions, m'lud). Even now, I can hear those Geneva lawyers licking their lips over this one …

After all, the Standards Bodies needs money to pay their staff. Here is the position of the Finish Standards Body about free standards available online:

Recommendation 10 - Free standards

SFS is strongly against the free delivery of the ENs.

If EN standards on ICT sector will be free:

• The coherency of the national standardization system will be distorted which will have negative impact on the legal IPR of the NSBs at European level as well as globally.
• It also has impacts on the NSBs economy, whose business model is very much leaning on the sales of standards.
• One of the most important issue is the marketing of the standards (and thus enhancing the use of standards) ­ it's not attractive for NSBs to make standards available, if they can't have any economic benefit for their attempts. Who will publish, promote and make EN standards available if they are free?
• If EN standards will be made available by some other channels, who will guarantee that they really are available and the collection is kept up-to-date? Who cares for the revisions and corrections? Which are the other channels, and how will customers find them? Will availability of standards be equal to all stakeholders and all users? Who will assist the users (SMEs!) in the implementation of EN standards?
• It will be difficult to define which standards belong to ICT sector ­ the classification between ICT and other sectors will become unclear.
• The visibility of the EN standard on ICT sector could actually be much worse than it is now.
• Internet is not a solution; Internet as a channel to deliver products is not free for the provider.

Respect for IP! At least in Taiwan, they do promote it:

Meanwhile, you could start to check if the approved comments are well integrated in the "specification":

1. 1080.pdf
2. OfficeOpenXML-WordprocessingMLArtBorders.zip
3. OfficeOpenXML-SpreadsheetMLStyles.zip
4. OfficeOpenXML-DrawingMLGeometries.zip
5. OfficeOpenXML-RELAXNG-Strict.zip
6. OfficeOpenXML-XMLSchema-Strict.zip

The specification contains 'legacy' parts to be compliant with the existing bugs of one vendor:

For legacy reasons, an implementation using the 1900 backward compatibility date base system shall treat 1900 as though it was a leap year. [Note: That is, serial value 59 corresponds to February 28, and serial value 61 corresponds to March 1, the next day, allowing the (non-existent) date February 29 to have the serial value 60. end note] A consequence of this is that for dates between January 1 and February 28, WEEKDAY shall return a value for the day immediately prior to the correct day, so that the (non-existent) date February 29, 1900, has a day-of-the-week that immediately follows that of February 28, and immediately precedes that of March 1, 1900.

Don't write standards for one vendor!

partial quote from PJ:

Guess what the SC 34 committee, the ISO/IEC committee responsible for OOXML, is up to now? I call it a takeover attempt of ODF, according to my reading of the published notes of the most recent meeting held yesterday, October 1st, and starring a document titled "Request to JTC 1 for alignment of OASIS and JTC 1 Maintenance Procedures." Uh oh. That sounds polite, but it is what it is. An attempted coup. They have already sent a "Liaison Statement" to OASIS. Surrender or else, what? SC 34 asks JTC 1 "to establish with OASIS a synchronised mechanism for maintenance of ISO/IEC 26300 and to inform SC 34 of the outcome." I gather they think they can do a better job of maintaining ODF than OASIS. What will JTC 1 do, do you think? You doubt they will hop on to this wonderful plan?

13 members of the TC in Norway has left their Standards Body in protest. They say that the Standards Body has lost its credibility in the IT area. Remember that Standards Norway was voting Yes with the support of only 2 companies (Microsoft and Statoil), and against the will of the rest of the technical committee (read our previous article "Norway: 21 "No", 2 "Yes" and Microsoft still gets its way?"). Here is also a list of irregularities of the broken Norwegian process.

Here is a rough google translation of the letter sent by the 13 :

Oslo, Monday 29 september 2008

We, the undersigned, are ending our work within Standard Norway.

It is sad when organizations that work for our common interest fail the task. Through the OOXML work Standard Norway has shown, with a clear margin, that they are not fit to represent Norway in the ISO.

"Standardization of formats for content on the Web is more important than ever. A large part of mankind's communication is done digitally, and all - ALL - must have the ability to read and write these formats," said Håkon Wium Lie.

Standard Norway chose to defy their own technical committee and vote yes to a specification that is immature, useless, and unworthy of being called an ISO standard.

Standard Norway has lost its credibility in the IT area from the way it has administered the process. Standard Norway has set its own commercial interests ahead of what is best for society, most feasible technologically, and what is professionally advisable. "By participating in a further work in Standard Norway will we lose our professional credibility," said Arne S. Nielsen.

Therefore, we have chosen to leave the committee.

We end our work with Standard Norway because:

* The administration of Standard Norway trust 37 identical letters from Microsoft partners more than their own technical committee.
* The process within Standard Norway has been unpredictable and the administration has changed the rules along the way.
* Standard Norway and ISO have committed a series of violations of their own rules and other irregularities in the OOXML process.

"Standard Norway has overruled hundreds of thousands of users in the public and private sectors", says Martin Bekkelund.

The mass-copied Microsoft-letter did not contain a single professional argument. Standard Norway first said that these kinds of statements would not be given any weight. However, at the end of the process they changed their mind and emphasized the Microsoft letters. Thereby, Standard Norway misled the committee members.

The process in Standard Norway is unpredictable, subjective and is continuously changed behind the scenes. "There is no way to appeal a decision, neither inside nor outside Standard Norway — the administrative staff who makes the decisions is the same who 'reviews' (i.e., lingers, ignores and shelves) appeals and complaints", says Trond Heier.

Each and every one of use will continue our for better standards within organizations other than Standard Norway.

The undersigned:

1. Haakon Wium Lie
2. Martin Bekkelund (NUUG)
3. Petter Reinholdtsen (NUUG)
4. Linpro AS v/ Trond Heier Linpro AS v / Trond Heier
5. Bjørn Venn
6. Steve Pepper
7. Arne Sigurd Rognan Nielsen
8. Henning Kulander
9. Axel Bojer
10. Geir Isene
11. Thomas Malt
12. Anthony Lardahl (NUUG)
13. Knut Olav Bøhmer Knut

It seems that Norwegians has also made the experience of the broken chairman phenomena, similar to what happened in other countries:

Jachwitz has been handling the case quite inconsistently. In the first SN/K 185 meeting, he demanded full agreement on any comments to be sent to ISO, meaning that the default vote in case one person wouldn't agree on any of the comments would be YES.

BRUSSELS — International Business Machines Corp. will review its membership in the bodies that set common standards for the technology industry and may withdraw from some, potentially undermining the system that makes electronic equipment and software interoperable world-wide.

The Armonk, N.Y.-based computer maker is expected to announce the review Tuesday, according to company officials. IBM has become frustrated by what it considers opaque processes and poor decision-making at some of the hundreds of bodies that set technical standards for everything from data-storage systems to programming languages, those officials said.

A recent battle over the selection as an international standard of the file format used in Microsoft Corp.'s Office software suite appears to have influenced IBM's decision. Microsoft, of Redmond, Wash., won that contest in April when its Open XML format was approved by the Geneva-based International Organization for Standardization, or ISO.

Standards are key to the tech industry, where they provide a common foundation for products from different manufacturers. Internet standards allow millions of computers to display a Web page the same way. IBM controls a vast cache of intellectual property in the high-tech field. As a result, its contributions and agreement are often critical to forming a standard.

IBM and open-source groups that support collaborative software development said Microsoft had stacked the national committees that make up the ISO with employees and sympathetic voters. They also said Open XML is so complicated and obscure that only Microsoft could fully exploit it, cementing the software company's already-considerable lead in office-document software. IBM backed a rival format called Open Document that was already certified as an ISO standard.

A Microsoft spokesman said standards bodies are "invaluable" because they provide "an even and predictable playing field" to the industry. Their decisions reflect the views of a preponderance of members, "not the interests of any single party," he said.

"There are lots of issues" with standards groups beyond the office-documents arena, said Bob Sutor, an IBM vice president who is the company's top standards official. He cited high membership fees that deter small players, complicated intellectual-property policies and opaque procedures.

In an interview, Mr. Sutor singled out for particular criticism Ecma International, a Geneva-based group of which IBM was a founding member more than 45 years ago. Ecma certified the Open XML standard over IBM's objection and submitted it to ISO for broader approval.

Getting a company-backed product approved as a standard can be a boon: In Microsoft's case, Open XML's certification eased hesitations by some government purchasing agents, who were reluctant to buy nonstandard software.

Istvan Sebestyen, Ecma's secretary-general, said he was "really amazed" at Mr. Sutor's contention that Ecma certification can be bought, and added he hadn't heard formally from IBM about any intention to withdraw. "Ecma didn't get one single dime more" from the Open XML approval, he said.

Write to Charles Forelle at moc.jsw|ellerof.selrahc#moc.jsw|ellerof.selrahc

Maybe ECMA can justify why they are producing so crappy standards with so many bugs inside?

Maybe someone reading this blog might want to draft an Open Letter to ECMA, asking them if they have not seen this guy redrafting the Fast Track rules in 2006 for a client from Redmond?

From: Voices for Innovation [mailto:eu@voicesforinnovation.info]
Sent: 22. september 2008
Subject: Policy Alert: Open Source activists secure close to 100 signatures in effort to mandate OSS

Open Source activists secure close to 100 signatures in effort to mandate OSS

Over the past few weeks radical elements in the open source community have intensified their efforts in the European Parliament. They are attempting to significantly change the existing public procurement framework, which follows a policy of technology neutrality, by introducing an open source software preference.

The Parliament’s current approach reflects a much more balanced view, as it uses both proprietary and open source technology. The Members of the European Parliament (MEPs overseeing the Parliament’s IT spending follow the clear line that the Parliament’s IT procurement choices must be based on reasonable and objective criteria, such as “interoperability, cost/value for money, reliability, vendor support, ease of use and security”, thus ensuring the best value for tax payers money. If the Parliament moves away from this established policy we must fear that the choice available to both citizens and institutions will be significantly reduced, limiting the functionality and user-friendliness of the European Parliament’s portals.

Next week their efforts will intensify further, as they are planning to approach Members of the European Parliament with the view of signing and supporting a draft entitled “Written Declaration on the use of Open-source software”. The draft has been tabled for consideration by MEPs in May and calls on the Parliament to migrate its entire computer network to Open Source software as a means to tackle the digital divide in Europe. Open Source proponents need to collect signatures of the 50% +1 Members of the European Parliament by next Thursday. At the moment they are far from reaching that number – clearly as many of the MEPs have seen through the ploy of masking an attempt to change the procurement policy of an institution, with a cause benefiting the disadvantaged members of our society.

It is unclear how the proponents of this draft Declaration draw a link between implementing an ‘Open-source software only’ policy in the European Parliament and confronting the challenges of the digital divide. The major challenges of the digital divide are widely regarded to be the consequence of limited access, poverty, social exclusion, personal factors (age, disability) or education and skills gaps. The exclusion of proprietary software models could potentially result in a significant increase of people without access to technology – thus achieving the exact opposite of what they set out to do - increasing the digital divide in Europe.

In order to address these challenges, governments, industry (including proprietary and OSS vendors) and civil society are already working together to drive greater awareness of the benefits of technology and investing in e-skills and education across the populations – see for example the European Alliance on Skills for Employability. The main goal of the Alliance is to help better co-ordinate industry and community investments, services and other offerings, dialogue and engagement with NGOs and public authorities in a way that enhances the positive impact of ICT literacy and professional training on employability prospects of the young, the disabled, older workers and other unemployed or under-employed people throughout the European Union – thereby seeking to address the digital divide.

The Written declaration therefore falls short of doing anything about its stated objective. In fact it does something much more radical, which many of the ones signing it might well not have been aware of – it drastically changes the procurement policies of European institutions, effectively excluding all but OSS solutions from its use.

Should you be interested in presenting an opinion to your local Member of Parliament please contact ofni.noitavonnirofseciov|ue#ofni.noitavonnirofseciov|ue

More information will be posted up on the following website https://www.voicesforinnovation.org/

Links to the written declaration can be found on the European Commission’s website http://osor.eu/news/meps-petition-european-parliament-switch-to-open-source

Here is the resolution in plain text:

EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT
2004- 2009

19.5.2008

0046/2008

WRITTEN DECLARATION
pursuant to Rule 116 of the Rules of Procedure by Jean Louis Cottigny, Pierre Pribetich, Michel Rocard, Bronisław Geremek and Daniel Cohn-Bendit on the use of open source software

Lapse date: 25.9.2008

DC\721370EN.doc
PE406.962v01-00
EN

0046/2008 Written declaration on the use of open source software

The European Parliament, – having regard to Rule 116 of its Rules of Procedure,

A. having regard to the growing disparities in access to information and communication technologies in the European Union, reflected in the establishment of a digital divide, a new cause of social disparity which further excludes an already vulnerable population,

B. whereas these new technologies have become an essential tool in areas as varied as employment, education, information etc.,

C. whereas European citizens have the inalienable right freely to access documents and information from the institutions which represent them,

D. whereas the use of open source software is one of the effective ways of reducing this digital divide and whereas this solution, established by some Member States in their administrations, delivers significant results,

1. Calls on the European Union to take the necessary measures to help finance public research on open source software;

2. Calls for Parliament to switch its whole computer network to this type of software;

3. Instructs its President to forward this declaration, together with the names of the signatories, to the parliaments of the Member States, the Council and the Commission, so that they may join forces on this measure.

Remember the goals of OOXML:

Goal No. 1

Keep the other numerous car-makers from advancing their technology […]

ODF in this case.

Goal No. 2

Lure as many developers into building useful apps (or the entire car) with Microsoft-technology.

You cannot implement OOXML without Microsoft dependencies, whether they are legal (FRAND patent license) or technical (WMV files in an OOXML document).

1. re: Microsoft CSS Vendor Extensions

Monday, September 15, 2008 8:26 PM by Scott

Interesting that so many people buy into the idea of vendor-specific code. It's enough of a mess with this vendor's fubar'ed browser now that it just makes more sense to ignore it altogether and let end user's see a message stating their browser is broken when visiting standard's compliant sites that don't work in it.

Where is the petition against Microsoft fonts extensions in CSS 2.1 so that I can sign it?

MSDN bloggers are important assets of the company to deliver the message:

…you know, we trust our people to represent our company - that is what they are paid to do. And if they don't wannna be here they wouldn't be here… Hey, if people need to be trained or understand better we can always do that.

As the Danish delegation once said in the Council

None of us are totally happy. If we were we would not be here.

Or as ex-ECMA's Jan van den Beld described standardisation:

…the answer is always the same: You are well paid, shut up.

We, the undersigned representatives of state IT organisations from Brazil, South Africa, Venezuela, Ecuador, Cuba and Paraguay, note with disappointment the press release from ISO/IEC/JTC-1 of 20 August regarding the appeals registered by the national bodies of Brazil, South Africa, India and Venezuela. Our national bodies, together with India, had independently raised a number of serious concerns about the process surrounding the fast track approval of DIS29500. That those concerns were not properly addressed in the form of a conciliation panel reflects poorly on the integrity of these international standards development institutions.

Whereas we do not intend to waste any more resources on lobbying our national bodies to pursue the appeals further, we feel it is important to make the following points clear:

1.The bending of the rules to facilitate the fast track processing of DIS29500 remains a significant concern to us. That the ISO TMB did not deem it necessary to properly explore the substance of the appeals must, of necessity, put confidence in those institutions ability to meet our national requirements into question.
2.The overlap of subject matter with the existing ISO/IEC26300 (Open Document Format) standard remains an area of concern. Many of our countries have made substantial commitments to the use of ISO/IEC26300, not least because it was published as an ISO standard in 2006.
3.The large scale adoption of a standard for office document formats is a long and expensive exercise, with multi-year projects being undertaken in each of our countries. Many of us have dedicated significant time and resources to this effort. For example, in Brazil, the process of translation of ISO/IEC26300 into Portuguese has taken over a year.

The issues which emerged over the past year have placed all of us at a difficult crossroads. Given the organisation's inability to follow its own rules we are no longer confident that ISO/IEC will be capable of transforming itself into the open and vendor-neutral standards setting organisation which is such an urgent requirement. What is now clear is that we will have to, albeit reluctantly, re-evaluate our assessment of ISO/IEC, particularly in its relevance to our various national government interoperability frameworks. Whereas in the past it has been assumed that an ISO/IEC standard should automatically be considered for use within government, clearly this position no longer stands.

Charles commented

The ISO of course, standing straight in the boots of stubbornness, will not pay any attention to that letter, will dismiss it as a something that has no importance, and Patrick Durusau will entertain us with one his tirade on those lousy teenagers. Patrick will ignore that “only” South Africa, Brazil, Cuba, Venezuela have appealed, as in case of a doubt, Microsoft and the pseudo-scientific arguments we had to bear for more than a year now about how much care the ISO has been taking on the standardization of OOXML will prevail over entire countries.
But who are we to interfere with the Masters of Scholastics of Geneva?

Which implies two questions:

• Does ISO receive declarations like these on a daily base?
• Does the quality of the text demonstrate it was drafted by lousy teenagers?

Charles notion of "angry teenagers" refers to a letter of Patrick Durusau we discussed before:

The objections were heard, considered and the vast majority of us simply disagree. The required majority has spoken, the appeals have been denied. Everyone should ignore further teenager type complaints and join SC 34 in working on both ISO 26300 and ISO 29500.

South America and South Africa have been aligned for quite some time on many occasions of international legislation and often vigorously oppose government agendas of the "North". What makes me as a European feel ashamed is that they take the freedom to speak in plain words while European and Northern American standard bodies fail to express the obvious. A reform of ISO would only be possible when all nations work jointly on that matter. Here it looks like the four nations actually consider to leave ISO and set up their own vendor-neutral standard organisation. I guess many standards consortia will try to gather the fortune and get these nations on board.

What is wrong with the comparison?

While the amount of documentation for Open XML is large, too large, we put emphasis on the size of the corpus as it is written in a documentation style we referred to as "rice pudding". It feeds you well, yes it does, but it's no "real meal". The efficiency of open xml documentation had no good carbon footprint and we exposed serious shortcomings where you would expect the interesting parts.

Generally speaking it was important to us that size does not matter. It does however matter when you expect competitors to implement the standard. The number of pages of the LHC documentation as opposed to the size of the Open XML corpus carries no relevant meaning.

What do they have in common?

The LHC is expected to let "strange things happen" which is the reason why some lunatics oppose the LHC and expect literally the end of the worlds. The public communication around the LHC stressed they wanted to recreate a near-big bang scenario which makes some persons suspicious. The experimental Open XML format had some strange idiosyncratic elements and weird things happened during the ISO process.
Benjamin coined the phrase to compare the Open XML process with physics and thought of the experiments you can make in a classic environment with materia in between the liquid, solid or gazoid phases: "When you increase the pressure strange things happen." The BRM for Open XML took also part in Geneva. Neither the LHC nor Open XML are the end of the world. In fact they are just the beginning of a New World. Our sincere hope is that as of Open XML it will be the unconditional surrender of the format and a landrush move towards open standards and open document format (ODF). The process towards more open and interoperable standards which go beyond ISO started at CERN where Tim Berners-Lee launched the web revolution with its html standard, an early example of a open standards.

…what MOICE does is it hijacks the file associations in the registry and redirects them to a process called ‘MOICE.EXE’. This process basically spawns the Office 2007 file format converter to up-convert the double-clicked Office 2003 document to the new Open XML file format. Oh and the converter runs in its own desktop with a super-locked down token (Dave is the freaking man!). Why run the converter in its own desktop with a super restricted token? Simple - what if the act of converting the file leads to an exploitable bug and / or code execution. This is effectively dropping the rights of the logged on user to *below* standard user levels in order to do the file conversion. Anyhoo - after the file is up-converted to the new Office 2007 file format - the theory is that the vulnerability will have been ‘wrung’ out (indeed the code name for this project was ‘Wringer’).”

So in other words Moice is an Open XML converter which converts to Open XML in a sandbox. As if it was dangerous to convert to Open XML! Explains the National Security Agency (NSA):

Malicious Office files often exploit vulnerabilities that exist in the parsing code used to open and save supported file types. Microsoft has responded to this type of threat by creating more robust parsers and by introducing new file formats in Office 2007. Further, the default file formats in Office 2007 (.docx, .xlsx, .pptx, etc.) are not allowed to contain embedded code or macros.

That is right, as Office 2007 files that contain macros use just another file extention: .docm (Word Microsoft Office Open XML Format Document with Macros Enabled), xlsm, pptm, etc.

Right or wrung theory?

What if the wringer is just a psychological tool to get users to adopt Open XML as a format? A kind of witch doctor trojan to infect your computer with the Open XML format conversion because you are afraid of viruses? Oh, they would never do that. I trust them. And trust is all about security. They know what's best for me and work hard to make my computer more secure and benefit my user experience with Open XML.

And what happens next. It would not surprise me to see security specialists publish open xml proof-of-concepts attacks. We are on the way to expose a new security open xml hell, 12 August:

In this month’s update for Excel we addressed … the first vulnerability to affect the new Open XML file format …. This is an information disclosure vulnerability that can arise when a user makes a data connection from Excel to a remote data source and checks a checkbox to have Excel NOT save the password used in that connection to the file. The checkbox had no affect when saving the file in the new Open XML (.XLSX) file format and the password was thus errantly saved to the file…

Or what about that one: Users want security, we have no security, we sold it out, we just have Open XML converters. ..use your imagination

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.

Jan van den Beld works now for CompTIA, a well know Microsoft lobby proxy in Brussels and Washington, which claims to defend the interests of software SMEs.

SWG-Directives is the "special working group" that proposes changes to JTC1 Directives. They met at the end of July. In advance of the meeting many NB's submitted proposals for fixing Fast Track and BRM procedures, base on the obvious flaws in the process brought out by the processing of DIS 29500 OOXML. However, when they arrived at the meeting, the Chairman, Scott Jameson (from HP) ruled that these items must be removed from the agenda because the OOXML appeals were still in progress. Page 7, Adoption of the Agenda is where it gets interesting:

ISO/IEC JTC1
SWG-Directives
29-31 July 2008
Mont Tremblant, PQ, Canada
Location:
Hotel du Lac / Club Tremblant
121 Rue Cuttle
Ville du Mount Tremblant,
Quebec, Canada

1. Opening of Meeting (09:00 hrs)
2. Introduction of Participants
3. Adoption of Agenda

DOCUMENT: JTC 1 N 9178

The Chairman opened the discussion by noting the concern about postponing agenda items related to Fast Track and Ballot Resolution Meetings expressed by some delegates. The Chairman agreed that these topics are important, and acknowledged that National Bodies had done significant amounts of work on contributions related to these topics, but because of the pending appeals on ISO/IEC DIS 29500 (OOXML), discussion of these topics would be inappropriate. The Chairman informed attendees that as per the note on the draft agenda, items 9, and 15-21 would not be discussed. He then opened the floor for comments from attendees.

Mr. Barta of the ITTF expressed support for the decision of the Chairman, as the appeals address the Fast Track process, and discussing them would impede members of the IEC SMB and ISO TMB from doing their jobs.

The National Body of Japan requested a clarification about exactly would and would not be discussed; and expressed their concern about delaying these discussions. It was recommended that discussions on these topics occur, but making official decisions would not be made. The Chairman again stated that because of the open appeals, these topics would not be discussed.

The National Body of Germany suggested that as the appeals are related to the procedures in place when the Fast Track ballot of ISO/IEC DIS 29500 began, any discussions that might occur at this meeting are unrelated, because these are future procedures. The National Body of Germany further stated that the amount of contributions on this topic indicate that National Bodies are dissatisfied with the Fast Track process, and that the IEC SMB and ISO TMB should be made aware of this dissatisfaction.

The National Body of Canada supported the German position; stating that if the Fast Track process was not discussed, it would be interpreted as a show of support for the current process.

The National Body of Canada further noted that the SWG-Directives does not make decisions, but makes recommendations that are forwarded to JTC 1 for approval. It was suggested that any ballots on changes to the Fast Track or Ballot Resolution Meeting procedures be deferred until the close of the appeals.

The National Body of the United Kingdom stated that it recognized the difficulties and possible misinterpretations of any discussions that might occur, but wished to have a firm timeline for when such things could be discussed. The UK expressed concern about postponing discussions until the March 2009 meeting.

The Chairman explained the appeals process, and the timelines associated with it. The IEC SMB and ISO TMB will conclude their votes on whether or not to move forward with the appeals on 4 August 2008. Upon the close of this ballot, there will be a two-month window where appeals to this decision can be submitted. If no further appeals are received, the process will be concluded.

If the SMB and TMB agree to consider the appeals, conciliatory panels will need to be established. Should this occur, a final decision may not be reached for as long as a year.

The National Body of Japan suggested planning a meeting of the SWG-Directives to be held in conjunction with the October 2008 JTC 1 Plenary in Nara, Japan. The Chairman thanked Japan for this suggestion, and informed the group that a decision would be made on an additional meeting in Japan later in the agenda.

The Chairman asked attendees if there any objections to approving the agenda contained in JTC1 N 9178 with the deletion of agenda items 9, and 15-21. While no National Bodies objected to the adoption of the agenda, the National Bodies of Canada, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom expressed their disappointment with the deletion of the items.

4. Chairman's Remarks
The Chairman informed attendees that a discussion of the draft JTC 1 Supplement, circulated to attendees via email in advance of the meeting, would take up the bulk of the meeting. He further informed attendees of his intention to circulate the text to all of JTC 1 after an initial review by the SWG-Directives.
The Chairman also suggested that the SWG-Directives might want to adopt a more ambitious schedule to ensure that the JTC 1 Supplement is published in conjunction with the 2010 edition of the ISO/IEC Directives.

4.1 Report of the June ISO/IEC Joint Directives Maintenance Team meeting

The Chairman reported on the 2 June 2008 meeting of the JDMT. He reported that some corrections of ambiguities for the clauses on the roles and responsibilities of Chairmen and Secretaries were made, but no other changes will affect JTC 1.
The Chairman also informed the group that Ad Hoc 25, which was established to review the length of ballot periods, reported to the JDMT and it was agreed that there will be no change to the length of the DIS ballot.

5. Review of Recommendations of March 2008 SWG-Directives meeting

DOCUMENT: JTC 1 N 8987

The Chairman noted that Recommendation 5 from the March 2008 meeting is not complete but that the JTC 1 Secretariat would work to complete it.

ACTION: See Recommendation 1.

SWG-Directives is the "special working group" that proposes changes to JTC1 Directives. They met at the end of July. In advance of the meeting many NB's submitted proposals for fixing Fast Track and BRM procedures, base on the obvious flaws in the process brought out by the processing of DIS 29500 OOXML. However, when they arrived at the meeting, the Chairman, Scott Jameson (from HP) ruled that these items must be removed from the agenda because the OOXML appeals were still in progress. Page 7, "Adoption of the Agenda" is where it gets interesting:

ISO/IEC JTC1
SWG-Directives
29-31 July 2008
Mont Tremblant, PQ, Canada
Location:
Hotel du Lac / Club Tremblant
121 Rue Cuttle
Ville du Mount Tremblant,
Quebec, Canada

1. Opening of Meeting (09:00 hrs)
2. Introduction of Participants
3. Adoption of Agenda

DOCUMENT: JTC 1 N 9178

The Chairman opened the discussion by noting the concern about postponing agenda items related to Fast Track and Ballot Resolution Meetings expressed by some delegates. The Chairman agreed that these topics are important, and acknowledged that National Bodies had done significant amounts of work on contributions related to these topics, but because of the pending appeals on ISO/IEC DIS 29500 (OOXML), discussion of these topics would be inappropriate. The Chairman informed attendees that as per the note on the draft agenda, items 9, and 15-21 would not be discussed. He then opened the floor for comments from attendees.

Mr. Barta of the ITTF expressed support for the decision of the Chairman, as the appeals address the Fast Track process, and discussing them would impede members of the IEC SMB and ISO TMB from doing their jobs.

The National Body of Japan requested a clarification about exactly would and would not be discussed; and expressed their concern about delaying these discussions. It was recommended that discussions on these topics occur, but making official decisions would not be made. The Chairman again stated that because of the open appeals, these topics would not be discussed.

The National Body of Germany suggested that as the appeals are related to the procedures in place when the Fast Track ballot of ISO/IEC DIS 29500 began, any discussions that might occur at this meeting are unrelated, because these are future procedures. The National Body of Germany further stated that the amount of contributions on this topic indicate that National Bodies are dissatisfied with the Fast Track process, and that the IEC SMB and ISO TMB should be made aware of this dissatisfaction.

The National Body of Canada supported the German position; stating that if the Fast Track process was not discussed, it would be interpreted as a show of support for the current process.

The National Body of Canada further noted that the SWG-Directives does not make decisions, but makes recommendations that are forwarded to JTC 1 for approval. It was suggested that any ballots on changes to the Fast Track or Ballot Resolution Meeting procedures be deferred until
the close of the appeals.

The National Body of the United Kingdom stated that it recognized the difficulties and possible misinterpretations of any discussions that might occur, but wished to have a firm timeline for when such things could be discussed. The UK expressed concern about postponing discussions until the March 2009 meeting.

The Chairman explained the appeals process, and the timelines associated with it. The IEC SMB and ISO TMB will conclude their votes on whether

or not to move forward with the appeals on 4 August 2008. Upon the close of this ballot, there will be a two-month window where appeals to this decision can be submitted. If no further appeals are received, the process will be concluded.

If the SMB and TMB agree to consider the appeals, conciliatory panels will need to be established. Should this occur, a final decision may not be reached for as long as a year.

The National Body of Japan suggested planning a meeting of the SWG-Directives to be held in conjunction with the October 2008 JTC 1 Plenary in Nara, Japan. The Chairman thanked Japan for this suggestion, and informed the group that a decision would be made on an additional meeting in Japan later in the agenda.

The Chairman asked attendees if there any objections to approving the agenda contained in JTC1 N 9178 with the deletion of agenda items 9, and 15-21. While no National Bodies objected to the adoption of the agenda, the National Bodies of Canada, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom expressed their disappointment with the deletion of the items.

4. Chairman's Remarks
The Chairman informed attendees that a discussion of the draft JTC 1 Supplement, circulated to attendees via email in advance of the meeting, would take up the bulk of the meeting. He further informed attendees of his intention to circulate the text to all of JTC 1 after an initial review by the SWG-Directives.
The Chairman also suggested that the SWG-Directives might want to adopt a more ambitious schedule to ensure that the JTC 1 Supplement is published in conjunction with the 2010 edition of the ISO/IEC Directives.

4.1 Report of the June ISO/IEC Joint Directives Maintenance Team meeting

The Chairman reported on the 2 June 2008 meeting of the JDMT. He reported that some corrections of ambiguities for the clauses on the roles and responsibilities of Chairmen and Secretaries were made, but no other changes will affect JTC 1.
The Chairman also informed the group that Ad Hoc 25, which was established to review the length of ballot periods, reported to the JDMT and it was agreed that there will be no change to the length of the DIS ballot.

5. Review of Recommendations of March 2008 SWG-Directives meeting

DOCUMENT: JTC 1 N 8987

The Chairman noted that Recommendation 5 from the March 2008 meeting is not complete but that the JTC 1 Secretariat would work to complete it.

ACTION: See Recommendation 1.

OOXML has been approved by a super-majority of those eligible to vote, appeals have been denied and yet the cry: “You're Not LISTENING TO ME!” goes on. I don't normally restrict my posts to one type reader but if you have never raised teenagers, please stop reading here. For those of you who have raised teenagers, you will recognize the persistent cry from IBM and its many surrogates around the world that ISO and its national member bodies are “not listening” to IBM. When your angry teenager said “you're not listening,” your response was: “no, I am listening but I simply disagree.”… The objections were heard, considered and the vast majority of us simply disagree. The required majority has spoken, the appeals have been denied. Everyone should ignore further teenager type complaints and join SC 34 in working on both ISO 26300 and ISO 29500.

The outstanding polemics of P. Durusau shows to me that a codger is losing his argument.

Still there is grounds for appeal as ISO pointed out and good reasons to go for it. Those bodies dissatisfactory with the outcome are free to exercise their right of appeal. If the constructive approach towards a standard pushed through by rule bending and committee stacking process is to recommend others to join a stacked committee where Microsoft not only controls the majority but aims to control everything, good bye ISO.

Unlike editors as Durusau Microsoft standardisation participants are loyal drones of their company's standard they edit. SC34 won't be able to do anything which is not approved or developed in the United States. External input would be ignored unless there is a leverage. We saw it during the process. "Vendor capture" as we call it. The whole situation makes a joke out of international standardisation institutions. ISO should be as concerned as industry veterans are.

So why surrender to perpetrators because Durusau finds it more cozy? I have to admit, that is the wrong question. The true evil ISO perpetrator is IBM, a company behind everything:

Now, I consider minerals as an issue of the past that might or might not affect technology development. Sure, we have some debates over oil and gas prices and Americans wonder how the UK drivers can get along with 11$ a gallon. But nothing of that is life treathening on a short term base. It would just affect our Western way of living. The worst thing to expect in Brussels is oh!-no-more Green IT lobbying and the Belgiums to adopt real windows (not the legacy operating system this time). ISO standards in that area are more reliable.

Standards have a significant importance as the strategic resource of the information society. We talked about "Standards War". Yet, no one has been killed in our Standards War although billions were at stake. Last summer we had news about a Nigerian standards guy beeing killed but were unable to confirm it and did not publish. Sure, also a supporter of ours was bought and later died(?!), most likely for a natural cause. Some persons were cast out of their jobs, others got promoted. This is why the Microsoft bloggers were right as they talked down the Open XML issue. We are complaining on high grounds and don't expect any mass graves.

What we/are concerned about is the integrity of international standardisation. And here the decision to reject the appeals (as expected) contributed to greater dissatisfaction of industry with the system. Or did it put an end to a we-got-the-message-thanks situation which enables ISO to proceed with let's-talk-reform?

Silence in the woods

One US industry player commented on the list:

And after this insane process they can spin OOXML as Next-Gen Office Standard Approved
Its pretty absurd.

and another one suggested

Is it possible to start a requirements document/process/petition around transparency of process for ISO? There is some kind of irony about the idea that ISO is a brand which is intended to represent procedural clarity and perhaps it would be interesting to make that an explicit want so that ISO needs to attend to that aspect of their service with more rigor/evidence/open documentation and public review and participation? Call it ISO 2.0 ?

Yes, there is was you find some prior discussions and of course we have the Hague Declaration but… what I found more absurd than an alleged spin on the appeal rejection is the silence in the woods.

• Matusow didn't say a word, it is still his defensive article.
• McGibbon: no word
• Brian Jones: rien
• Eric White: more of the same code snippets
• Gray Knowlton: nothing
• …

Media mostly made up the story on their own. Also this site didn't talk much about the appeals and a half-baked article of mine was linked by many external commentators. Unspinned stories, maybe a bit too much for media workers who like the world to be explained to them. After all that is the role of journalism, to get the world explained and repackage it, no? Astroturfing with Open XML? These tactics are so common that it feels hypocrite to complain about but when you go down that road the backslash will undo the lobby investment as recently with the attacks on Google. This is why it's fun to expose it.

I was told Britain was for the appeal and France against. I didn't write an article about it. Andy Updegrove took the task to dig a bit more in the mud. Does it sound familiar?

One has to wonder whether various SMB members understood the difference between the two votes differently, because the votes on the second question came out so differently relative to the first. Instead, some votes switch, while others translate from an active vote to an abstention, or visa-versa…

and he concludes:

So, while the appeals are likely dead, I would certainly hope that the cause of reform will proceed.

Rob Weir has a deep analysis of the voting process and what might be wrong:

Needless to say, a ballot that yields results where it is impossible to tell what the voters wanted is a hallmark of a seriously flawed, useless ballot. The SMB results are tainted by a poorly written ballot question, given to them by the Secretaries General, which has clearly caused confusion among the SMB voters, and which had a material effect on the results.

So let me give some points: What can be won through another ISO delay?

• more OOXML uncertainty
• ISO to expose itself even more and get ready for procedural reform
• keep the debate in the news

An appeal of the appeal is possible and it would be unwise to not go for it. Unlike in the Congo and any other wars no one gets killed from standards war.

"None of the appeals from Brazil, India, South Africa and Venezuela received the support for further processing of two-thirds of the members of the ISO Technical Management Board and IEC Standardization Management Board, as required by ISO/IEC rules governing the work of their joint technical committee ISO/IEC JTC 1, Information technology."

A rejection means that the ISO 29500 could be published and set into effect unless further complaints are launched. We and others discussed before the appeal water down documents and the offensive Bryden interview. From this ISO appeal recommendation document we may get a clue what the voting process was precisely about:

14. The TMB and the SMB may choose one of two options for each appeal:
14.1 Not to process the appeal any further. This is the equivalent of denying the
appeal. If all four are denied, publication of ISO/IEC 29500 may proceed. The NB
concerned may appeal this decision to the Councils.
14.2 Process the appeal further. This has the consequence that a conciliation panel
must be organized. In this event it seems indicated to organize a single
conciliation panel for all the appeals being processed.

So apparently option one was chosen. Additionally the recommendation was:

The processing of the ISO/IEC DIS 29500 project has been conducted in conformity with the ISO/IEC JTC 1 Directives, with decisions determined by the votes expressed by the relevant ISO and IEC national bodies under their own responsibility, and consequently, for the reasons mentioned above, the appeals should not be processed further.

I wonder what the subject of the vote precisely was as recommendation 20 apparently goes further than 14.1 and 14.2.

Just curious, how does the voting work

It is evident to me that the appeal voting is highly vulnerable to manipulation when you have to get a 2/3 majority. The voting was not even on the substance of the appeals but on "further processing" them and I am not aware of any "further processing" formality decision requirement. A 2/3 majority rule always means that one option is favoured in advance. In ISO and national bodies it is common for processing of specifications where the bias is usually towards adoption. Do you need a 2/3 majority for "processing further" the appeal or "rejecting it before consideration"? You get the point. At times you vote until you get the wanted results. A friend of mine was furious about the ISO/IEC decision and asked himself similar questions:

Where is it written that it is needed a support of 2/3 to process an appeal? This could be considered a humiliation for the countries that have summitted the appeals.

Looks like the ISO/IEC procedural rules and their interpretation offer great surprises again. Or as a more devilish commentator suggested

It is an elegant abuse of newly invented rules to justify the abuse of previous rules. You have to admire the way it even sounds democratic…

Or as ISO/IEC words it:

Experiences from the ISO/IEC 29500 process will also provide important input to ISO and IEC and their respective national bodies and national committees in their efforts to continually improve standards development policies and procedures.

or as Mr. Bryden would say:

Some of the negative publicity is quite extreme and as ISO's Secretary General it's not exactly pleasant for me to see ISO vilified, particularly when much of the extreme criticism is based on false assumptions and a lack of understanding of what ISO is and how it works.

We will find out once again. It is a challenging task to carefully study all the details but sure someone would do.

This is not the end

The NB concerned may appeal this decision to the Councils.

I am curious if that would happen. The effects are described by the ISO press release

According to the ISO/IEC rules, DIS 29500 can now proceed to publication as an ISO/IEC International Standard. This is expected to take place within the next few weeks on completion of final processing of the document, and subject to no further appeals against the decision.

Effectively it would make a lot of sense for National Bodies to file more.

"None of the appeals from Brazil, India, South Africa and Venezuela received the support for further processing of two-thirds of the members of the ISO Technical Management Board and IEC Standardization Management Board, as required by ISO/IEC rules governing the work of their joint technical committee ISO/IEC JTC 1, Information technology."

A rejection means that the ISO 29500 could be published and set into effect unless further complaints are launched. We and others discussed before the appeal water down documents and the offensive Bryden interview. From this ISO appeal recommendation document we may get a clue what the voting process was precisely about:

14. The TMB and the SMB may choose one of two options for each appeal:
14.1 Not to process the appeal any further. This is the equivalent of denying the
appeal. If all four are denied, publication of ISO/IEC 29500 may proceed. The NB
concerned may appeal this decision to the Councils.
14.2 Process the appeal further. This has the consequence that a conciliation panel
must be organized. In this event it seems indicated to organize a single
conciliation panel for all the appeals being processed.

So apparently option one was chosen. Additionally the recommendation was:

The processing of the ISO/IEC DIS 29500 project has been conducted in conformity with the ISO/IEC JTC 1 Directives, with decisions determined by the votes expressed by the relevant ISO and IEC national bodies under their own responsibility, and consequently, for the reasons mentioned above, the appeals should not be processed further.

I wonder what the subject of the vote precisely was as recommendation 20 apparently goes further than 14.1 and 14.2.

Just curious, how does the voting work

It is evident to me that the appeal voting is highly vulnerable to manipulation when you have to get a 2/3 majority. The voting was not even on the substance of the appeals but on "further processing" them and I am not aware of any "further processing" formality decision requirement. A 2/3 majority rule always means that one option is favoured in advance. In ISO and national bodies it is common for processing of specifications where the bias is usually towards adoption. Do you need a 2/3 majority for "processing further" the appeal or "rejecting it before consideration"? You get the point. At times you vote until you get the wanted results. A friend of mine was furious about the ISO/IEC decision and asked himself similar questions:

Where is it written that it is needed a support of 2/3 to process an appeal? This could be considered a humiliation for the countries that have summitted the appeals.

Looks like the ISO/IEC procedural rules and their interpretation offer great surprises again. Or as a more devilish commentator suggested

It is an elegant abuse of newly invented rules to justify the abuse of previous rules. You have to admire the way it even sounds democratic…

Or as ISO/IEC words it:

Experiences from the ISO/IEC 29500 process will also provide important input to ISO and IEC and their respective national bodies and national committees in their efforts to continually improve standards development policies and procedures.

or as Mr. Bryden would say:

Some of the negative publicity is quite extreme and as ISO's Secretary General it's not exactly pleasant for me to see ISO vilified, particularly when much of the extreme criticism is based on false assumptions and a lack of understanding of what ISO is and how it works.

We will find out once again. It is a challenging task to carefully study all the details but sure someone would do.

This is not the end

The NB concerned may appeal this decision to the Councils.

I am curious if that would happen. The effects are described by the ISO press release

According to the ISO/IEC rules, DIS 29500 can now proceed to publication as an ISO/IEC International Standard. This is expected to take place within the next few weeks on completion of final processing of the document, and subject to no further appeals against the decision.

Effectively it would make a lot of sense for National Bodies to do it.

The high-profile exit of Neelam Dhawan created a vacuum in the company for almost two months, who quit Microsoft India to join HP India in June this year.

Rajan Anandan is now the person who joins the company who fired an executive who didn't perform in international standardisation and fill the vaccuum. First job day would be Sept 1st.

Rajan Anandan expects "Microsoft … is poised to play a leading role in every major new technology arena over the coming decade."

Originally Rajan Anandan aimed to go to the United States after leaving Dell operations before the summer break.

For further readings

• EFytimes
• Hindu Business line
• Abhishek Kant Blog

[Bob Sutor] is convinced that the industry will regard OOXML as a dead end, and that will force Microsoft to accept ODF. We have already seen some evidence of this in Microsoft's recent decision to support ODF in Office—a change of heart that was precipitated by pressure from ODF adopters. Sutor suspects that this trend will continue and that Microsoft will eventually fully embrace ODF.

Although the article is quite opinionated it hints towards an important conclusion: ODF could become the next generation office format of Microsoft. It was early admitted that OpenDocument's architecture would provide the better clean room framework than the home-grown format with all its legacy. But hey, we do care about the legacy and backwards compatibility, the proponents of Open XML said.

Domino Pahang

What we observe these days is that more and more government agencies make the move towards OpenDocument, sometimes through adoption of OpenOffice.org. The most recent news is from Malaysia. Malaysian Yoon Kit, known to everyone in the debate as the entertaining blogger on Open XML standardisation insanity and OOXML BRM participant himself, points us to developments in Pahang.

Its just been made official that the State of Pahang is migrating all its productivity suites to OpenOffice.org.

He concludes:

State Governments are faced with the reality that software costs money, and they would rather use the money saved with FOSS…

Now I wonder if tomorrow, Microsoft will 'extend' their RM99 Microsoft Office Home & Student license for 3 computers to these Government officials now. Or maybe even better; USD5 per seat? Any takers?

Bye bye fat margins, you've been commoditized!

Government officials often point out how cheap licenses have become. Better competition drives the margins down. Good for Yoon Kit and his Schadenfreude humour. Good for Yoon Kit as a tax payer. Good or bad for business? That depends on your interests. From a procurement perspective you need to avoid all vendor dependencies, reduce procurement costs and put the vendor in chains if you can. A behaviour as moral or immoral as when you are on the sales side and attempt the opposite. Microsoft early understood the need to regard interoperability control as crucial for its business. The awareness among procurement agencies is on the rise to pay similar attention to the strategic importance of procurement policies and interoperability promotion. But also on the sales side of the medal it is a fight between one and many.

A few month ago I enjoyed the fun to issue a spooky deterrence message to a journalists of the "LinuxInsider"¹:

"International standard-setting should enable a free competitive market, a level playing field and not promote lock-in for the benefit of a single party".."Dependency on a semi-open format as Open XML would continue to let a foreign software vendor milk our governments and markets while it inhibits national competitors to catch up with support"

There are other parties which want their share in the market. Open Standards strike a balance and enable a free competitive market. A dominant player would become at least contestable. No one can blame it to resist these developments. But if it does fight the Open standards slippery slope it is upon others to increase their pressure.

The road ahead for ODF is filled with both challenges and opportunities. Sutor sees a very promising future for open standards and is convinced that companies and governments are now capable of recognizing the value of interoperability.

Here is the recommendation from Canada: John Weigelt, National Technology Officer for Microsoft Canada.

Germany put down Mario Wendt of Microsoft Deutschland. Mario also attended the horrific BRM in Geneva.

Let's ask OASIS to put the maintenance ODF in ISO :-):

Microsoft will join the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS) technical committee working on the next version of ODF and will take part in the ISO/IEC working group being formed to work on ODF maintenance. Microsoft employees will also take part in the ISO/IEC working group that is being formed to maintain Open XML and the ISO/IEC working group that is being formed to improve interoperability between these and other ISO/IEC-recognized document formats.

The editor of OOXML was also a Microsoftie. The world is small.

http://www.heise-online.co.uk/open/NATO-supports-ODF-open-document-format--/news/111127

Regards,
Răzvan

Adam Farquhar (Ecma)
Alex Brown (UK)
Benjamin Henrion (BE)
Brett Roberts (NZ)
Dave Welsh (US)
Doug Mahugh (Ecma)
Francis Cave (GB)
Isabelle Valet-Harper (Ecma)
Istvan Sebestyen (Ecma)
Jasper Hedegaard Bojsen (DK)
Jean Paoli (Ecma)
Jean Stride (GB)
Jesper Lund Stocholm (DK)
Jirka Kosek (CZ)
Keld Simonsen (NO)
Ken Holman (CA)
Kimmo Bergius (FI)
Manu Setälä (FI)
Michiel Leenaars (NL)
Murata Makoto (JP)
Patrick Durusau (US)
Pia Elleby Lange (DK)
Rex Jaeschke (Ecma)
Shahzad Rana (NO)
Wemba Opota (CI)

As Rob Weir mentions:

So a quick tally shows that there will be 25 participants, of which 12 are Ecma TC45 members (as listed) or Microsoft employees (Brett Roberts, Dave Welsh, Jasper Bojsen, Kimmo Bergius, Shahzad Rana and Wemba Opota).

The number of Microsoft employees seems to be pretty high. Yet another stuffed committee?

Here is the original post on the newsgroup comp.os.linux.advocacy:

Message-ID: <moc.spuorgelgoog.xsh0002g52|9a63dbe8843e-e9e9-5174-7e9d-96166a13#moc.spuorgelgoog.xsh0002g52|9a63dbe8843e-e9e9-5174-7e9d-96166a13>
From: Rex Ballard <moc.liamg|drallab.xer#moc.liamg|drallab.xer>
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.advocacy
Subject: Re: Leaked ISO Document Reveals Crooked ISO Amid MS OOXML Corruptions
Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2008 08:20:23 -0700 (PDT)

[…]

ODF is a comprehensive document that provides detailed specifications
from the high level document content down to the smallest elements of
scalable vector graphics. There are some “standard” mime object types
that are supported, such as PNG and JPEG, but other embedded formats
must be installed using plug-ins which have to be authenticated by the
user and by the system at installation time, and cannot be installed
by the content. Furthermore, the installed content can easily be
identified as trustworthy or not, and can be restricted in it’s
capabilities.

OpenXML on the other hand, is a high-level specification which
describes the high level envelopes used to embed binary objects which
are included in the content. The content itself contains the binary
code which can call any function in any Microsoft library and has all
permissions of the person opening the document. If a user account is
set up as “Administrator”, then the application can mess with the
registry, create, download, and hide files, can execute applications
in those files, can install any number of new viruses, and generally
wreak havoc on the system.

I’ll leave it to others to document the exact details (as I said, I’m
busy these days), but I’m sure anyone who tries to publish these
vulnerabilites will probably find themselves getting the same
treatment that Tracy Reed of Ultraviolet.org got when he tried to
publish his warnings about ActiveX controls back in 1997. Microsoft
got a court injunction against him, and forced him to take down the
content, claiming that it was being used to encourage hacking, and was
damaging the Microsoft brand.

“I got a couple of docx documents and had trouble getting them to open, even with the plug-in for Office XP. Next thing I know, I get a notice from my registry auditor that I have 1300 new registry errors.”Over the last 10 years,
we’ve seen these very same techniques, documented back in 1997,used widely to spread viruses including
Melissa, Nimda, Sky, BugBear, and about
250,000 other viruses, worms,
and malware, not including spy-ware and
other “Microsoft Authorized”
invasions of our privacy.

I got a couple of docx documents and had trouble getting them to open,
even with the plug-in for Office XP. Next thing I know, I get a
notice from my registry auditor that I have 1300 new registry errors.
And suddenly, my PC is churning the disk-drive and the network
connection at 3:00 AM (I’m getting old and have to get up), and the
network shows that I’m uploading something at full speed, even though
my computer is supposedly sleeping.

It isn’t a back-up program that I’m running.

I would encourage COLA readers and OSS advocates to explore this in
more detail.

get someone with Office 2007 to send you a docx file.
unzip it using pkzip or winzip or unzip.

look at the binary files.

replace one binary object with another.

zip up the document,

see if your office-2007 user can read the “enhanced” document.

For those of you with OLE programming skills, create an OLE object
that creates a file, and e-mails that file to you using smtp.

Send a document with this new ole object embedded (along with the
others) and see if you get an e-mail.

I haven’t tried this, and I don’t know if it will work. I’m not sure
how hard it would be to make it work. I just think it might be an
interesting project worth investigating, especially if you are
considering the migration of a few thousand users to Vista and Office
2007.

I’d love to see what the results turn out to be. After all, if it’s
that easy to take control of a recipient’s machine just by sending
them a “trusted” Word, Excel, or PowerPoint attachment, just think how
much chaos a really aggressive malicious hacker, with a goal of
obtaining marketable information about your business, could do.

6. “Final” text of ISO/IEC 29500 or ISO/IEC DIS 29500, or “revised FDIS text”, not released

6e. Correct but irrelevant. The decision being appealed is the JTC 1 decision to approve the draft. The text mentioned in the Directives and by the appellants is not germane to that decision, which must be taken on the basis of the original DIS text and the actions taken by the BRM on the comments. The provision of any revised text is not for purposes of further decision by NBs.

Article 13.2 of the JTC1 directives says that the final has to be distributed to the members one month after the BRM, which was not the case here:

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.

As you can see, Mr Bryden says it is irrelevant, trying to argue that the appeal is about something else. It looks like Mr Bryden don't want to read the JTC1 directives. Mr Bryden is just lobbying for the honor of its institution, and I really doubt the judges who will decide about the rules are really neutral either.

Alan Bryden, Secretary-General of ISO and ex-President of the French Standards Body AFNOR, has sent a recommendation (PDF, 37 pages) to all countries members of the TMB (Technical Management Board) asking them to throw away the 4 appeals tabled by South Africa, Brazil, Venezuela and India, and to give their views before the 4th of August. He does not however justify its position in regard of the JTC1 directives. Mr Bryden said recently to the press that the criticisms of the Fast Track process were unfounded. Here is what he is writing to the countries members of the TMB (Brazil, Spain, France, USA, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, Netherlands, South Africa, China, Canada, Norway):

ACTION

The members of the Technical Management Board are invited to indicate, by replying yes, no or abstention on EITHER a) OR b) for each of the four appeals (see item 14 in annex A):

a) not to process the appeal any further:
Item 1 ABNT
Item 2 BIS
Item 3 FONDONORMA
Item 4 SABS

OR

b) to process one or more of the appeals, which would require setting up of a conciliation panel
Item 5 ABNT
Item 6 BIS
Item 7 FONDONORMA
Item 8 SABS

by no later than 4 August 2008

Here is what the Chief of ISO is recommending, putting the responsability of interpreting the rules on the members of ISO themselves (???):

Recommendation
20. The processing of the ISO/IEC DIS 29500 project has been conducted in conformity with the ISO/IEC JTC 1 Directives, with decisions determined by the votes expressed by the relevant ISO and IEC national bodies under their own responsibility, and consequently, for the reasons mentioned above, the appeals should not be processed further.

He is not mentioning any justification using the JTC1 directives.

Here is the full version in text mode:

TMB Secretariat
Vote/Information-Form
Number: 078/2008
Date: 2008-07-04

ISO TECHNICAL MANAGEMENT BOARD

SUBJECT: Appeals on ISO/IEC DIS 29500 Open Office XML

BACKGROUND

ISO/IEC DIS 29500, OOXML, was circulated for voting under JTC 1's Fast Track Procedure (note that this differs from that used in the rest of ISO and IEC) in April 2007 following a one month internal review within ISO/IEC JTC 1. Following that vote, which resulted in insufficient votes for approval, a Ballot Resolution Meeting (BRM) was held in February 2008. After the BRM, the JTC 1 national bodies had 30 days in which to confirm or change their votes and at the end of this period, sufficient votes to approve the document were obtained.
JTC 1's appeals procedure resulted in 4 appeals being received. These appeals have been reviewed by the ISO Secretary-General and IEC General Secretary and are being submitted, in accordance with the JTC 1 procedures, to the ISO/TMB and IEC/SMB.

Full information is given in:
Annex A: CEOs' comments
Annex B: Appeals from ABNT (Brazil), BIS (India), FONDONORMA (Venezuela) and SABS (South Africa) (together with further correspondence on requested remedial actions)

ACTION

The members of the Technical Management Board are invited to indicate, by replying yes, no or abstention on EITHER a) OR b) for each of the four appeals (see item 14 in annex A):

a) not to process the appeal any further:
Item 1 ABNT
Item 2 BIS
Item 3 FONDONORMA
Item 4 SABS

OR

b) to process one or more of the appeals, which would require setting up of a conciliation panel
Item 5 ABNT
Item 6 BIS
Item 7 FONDONORMA
Item 8 SABS

by no later than 4 August 2008.

ANNEX A
From: Alan Bryden, Secretary-General and CEO, ISO
Aharon Amit, General Secretary and CEO, IEC
To: Technical Management Board (TMB), ISO
Standardization Management Board (SMB), IEC

Subject: Appeals received concerning approval for publication by ISO/IEC JTC 1 of ISO/IEC DIS 29500 (Office Open XML)

Date: 2008-06-30

Background

1. In 2006 Microsoft proposed an XML version of the formats of its Microsoft Office documents (used in the products Word, Excel and PowerPoint) to Ecma International (“Ecma”) for standardization.
2. After work by Ecma Technical Committee 45 with members from Apple, Barclays Capital, BP, The British Library, Essilor, Intel, Microsoft, NextPage, Novell, Statoil, Toshiba, and the US Library of Congress, ECMA 376 was published in December 2006.
3. On 2006-12-20 Ecma—as an A-liaison—submitted ECMA 376 for fast-track standardization in ISO/IEC JTC 1. Note that the Directives governing fast-track standardization in ISO/IEC JTC 11 are different from those in the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 1.
4. On 2007-01-05 ECMA 376 was submitted to National Bodies (NBs) for the 30-day “review” period mandated by the rules, asking them to notify any “contradictions”2. 20 NB replies were received, and Ecma provided a response to each of them. The replies and Ecma responses were distributed to all NBs on 2007-03-01, and were also enclosed with the DIS sent for NB voting (see 5. below).
5. As specified in the rules, the perceived contradictions were “addressed by the ITTF 3 and JTC 1 Secretariat”, which came to the conclusion that the issues raised could only be settled by the NBs, and that therefore the planned five-month DIS vote should proceed. The vote took place from 2007-04-03 to 2007-09-02 according to the “combined voting procedure” which involves all ISO and IEC national bodies (not just ISO/IEC JTC 1 P- or O-members). 87 NBs voted, and the acceptance criteria were not met: only 53 % of P-members (min. 66.66 %) and 74 % of all NBs (min. 75 %) voted to approve.
6. In accordance with the JTC 1 Directives, a “ballot resolution meeting” (BRM) was arranged by ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34, the subcommittee to which the standard (once approved) would be allocated for maintenance. The JTC 1 rules specify that such a BRM should normally be held, and that at its conclusion—if the acceptance criteria (66.66 % and 75 %) are met—the standard should be published,. The BRM took place on 2008-02-25..29 in Geneva; a full list of answers to “frequently asked questions” (FAQ) concerning the Directives, their interpretation and the procedures governing the BRM had previously been made available to all NBs in November 2007 (JTC 1/SC 34 N 932). The full results of the BRM, consisting of Resolutions (editing instructions) and notes, were published on 2008-03-06 and served to allow the national bodies to determine whether they wished to maintain or change their original votes.

[1] The ISO/IEC JTC 1 Directives, replacing Part 1 of the ISO/IEC Directives, may be found in their entirety at http://isotc.iso.org/livelink/livelink.exe/3959538/Jtc1_Directives.pdf?func=doc.Fetch&nodeid=3959538.
[2] The rules mention “perceived contradiction with other standards or approved projects of JTC 1, ISO or IEC”.
[3] ITTF = Information Technology Task Force, ISO C.S. and IEC C.O. function supporting ISO/IEC JTC 1.

7. The rules include a provision that “after the deliberations” of the BRM, NBs have an opportunity to decide whether they wish to change their votes on the basis of the actions taken on their comments. There is no provision that a final text be provided at that stage. Because of the controversy surrounding the project and the consequent need to guarantee each NB a fair chance to express its decision, NBs could notify a change in their vote by midnight on 2008-03-29.
8. On 2008-04-02 IEC and ISO announced that the acceptance criteria had now been met (75 % and 86 % respectively).

Appeals received

9. By the two-month deadline for appeals (2008-06-02) four appeals had been received:
• Brazil • India • South Africa • Venezuela.
10. The South African appeal (submitted on 2008-05-23) and comments from ITTF were included for information in the SMB and TMB agendas (meetings 2008-06-02..03), but the appeal was not formally submitted to the TMB and SMB at that time.
11. The CEOs determined that none of the four appeals satisfied the condition laid down in 11.1.4 that “the specific remedial action(s) that would satisfy the appellant’s concerns” shall be stated. They therefore wrote to the appellants on 2008-06-12 requesting this information by 2008-06-25. By this date India, Brazil, South Africa and Venezuela had responded and the responses are included in annex B following the appeals.

Formal situation

12. The present document constitutes the formal submission of the four appeals by the CEOs to the TMB and the SMB.
13. Brazil is not a P-member of ISO/IEC JTC 1 and technically does not have a right to appeal a JTC 1 decision.
14. The TMB and the SMB may choose one of two options for each appeal:
14.1 Not to process the appeal any further. This is the equivalent of denying the appeal. If all four are denied, publication of ISO/IEC 29500 may proceed. The NB concerned may appeal this decision to the Councils.
14.2 Process the appeal further. This has the consequence that a conciliation panel must be organized. In this event it seems indicated to organize a single conciliation panel for all the appeals being processed.

Evaluation of the appeals

15. The appeal from India identifies a “remedial action”, extending the time for appealing to allow reading the “final text”, which is irrelevant to the decision being appealed and therefore to the appeal (see item 6. in Attachment 1). Therefore the Indian appeal identifies no remedial action and is not receivable.
16. The appeal from Brazil proposes a remedial action of cancelling the voting result and putting the project back to the new work item proposal stage, not on the fast track. That from South Africa proposes rediscussing and revoting on “794” edits, all of which were voted on by NBs at the BRM, according to a procedure also approved by NBs at the BRM. That from Venezuela proposes cancelling the voting result and putting the project back to the CD stage (not fast track). These actions, reversing decisions reached in accordance with due process by the members of ISO and IEC, would require demonstration of serious procedural problems in the voting.
17. Several further remedial actions are identified by South Africa and Venezuela; of these, changing the title may be relevant if it is technically justified and if the appeal is upheld. Proposed “remedial actions” which are not pertinent to the appeal include instructions to SC34, provision of the text resulting from the BRM, and several suggested modifications to the Directives.
18. The replies from Brazil, Venezuela and South Africa contain much material which is not relevant to completing their existing appeals with the addition of remedial action(s). That from South Africa in particular is a wide-ranging discussion of standardizing such a specification, makes many valid points and recommendations for the future while also containing errors of fact, and in these respects does not concern the appeal sent in May.
19. Attachment 1 contains a summary of the distinct grounds for appeal claimed in the four appeals, together with an explanation from the ISO and IEC CEOs for each one.

Recommendation

20. The processing of the ISO/IEC DIS 29500 project has been conducted in conformity with the ISO/IEC JTC 1 Directives, with decisions determined by the votes expressed by the relevant ISO and IEC national bodies under their own responsibility, and consequently, for the reasons mentioned above, the appeals should not be processed further.

Attachment 1 to annex A
Claimed grounds for appeal and corresponding evaluations by the ISO & IEC CEOs

The following distinct claimed grounds for appeal may be identified in the four appeals. For each a brief explanation and evaluation is given.

1. Incorrect application of ISO/IEC JTC 1 Directives 13.4 to address claimed "contradictions" identified during the 30-day review period before the DIS ballot, including not informing NBs of the claimed contradictions
1e. Not correct. The Directives give the JTC 1 Secretariat and ITTF latitude to use judgement as to whether a meeting should be organized to address alleged contradictions. Considering that other issues could potentially be identified during the DIS ballot, the JTC 1 secretariat and ITTF concluded that it was preferable to initiate the ballot and to allow all issues to be addressed by the BRM. The NBs were fully informed of all the claimed contradictions and Ecma's responses to them.
2. BRM not conducted in accordance with ISO/IEC JTC 1 Directives 9.1.4, but with 9.5 instead, in spite of the fact that it was not a “letter ballot”
2e. Correct but inapplicable. The BRM was neither a meeting of JTC 1 nor of SC 34 but was open to all 87 national bodies which submitted a vote (including abstentions) on the DIS. Applying 9.1.4 would have disenfranchised the voting NBs present at the BRM which were not P-members. The fact that any votes in the BRM would be open to all national delegations present was communicated over three months prior to the BRM.
3. BRM did not take into account NBs’ efforts during the meeting to reach consensus on modifications to the proposed responses from the Project Editor
3e. Not correct. The resolutions of the BRM document decisions taken where consensus was reached.
4. BRM “inconclusive”, too short, arbitrarily short, or otherwise incorrectly conducted
4e. Not correct. Decisions on the comments not discussed during the BRM and proposed dispositions were taken by a process agreed by the BRM itself (29 votes in favour, none against and 2 abstentions).
5. Final report of the BRM not issued
5e. Not correct. The final report of the BRM was issued on 2008-03-06.
6. “Final” text of ISO/IEC 29500 or ISO/IEC DIS 29500, or “revised FDIS text”, not released
6e. Correct but irrelevant. The decision being appealed is the JTC 1 decision to approve the draft. The text mentioned in the Directives and by the appellants is not germane to that decision, which must be taken on the basis of the original DIS text and the actions taken by the BRM on the comments. The provision of any revised text is not for purposes of further decision by NBs.
7. Document “as submitted by Ecma and as modified by the BRM is not ready for fast track processing”
7e. A matter for NBs’ judgement, which they expressed through their positive or negative vote on the draft.
8. Document does not follow ISO guidelines for presentation of standards
8e. Correct but irrelevant. Fast-track submissions need not follow ISO or IEC guidelines for presentation of standards. The corresponding standard must be made to follow the guidelines from its next revision onwards (see JTC 1 Directives, 13).
9. NBs were required to analyze far too much information in far too little time
9e. A matter for NBs’ judgement, which they expressed through their positive or negative vote on the draft.
10. Process followed was incompatible with the principles of consensus, technically-oriented discussions and “redundancy of standards”, was dominated by large multinational organization(s), and has harmed the reputations of both ISO and the IEC
10e. Insofar as observation of Statutes, Rules of Procedure, Directives and other rules is concerned, this is not correct. Otherwise it is a matter for NBs’ judgement, which they expressed through their positive or negative vote on the draft.

Attachment 2 to annex A
Additional grounds submitted in BR, VE (2008-06-24) & ZA (2008-06-25) letters:

11. Fast-track process was handled by ISO/IEC JTC 1 instead of SC 34
11e. Not correct. No actions identified in the Directives as SC actions were carried out by JTC 1 instead of SC 34 in this case.
12. “Contradictions” (cf. point 1. above) were not adequately handled by ITTF and JTC 1 Secretariat according to Directives 13.2, second bullet
12e. Not correct. See 1e.
13. Voting should have been conducted electronically rather than at a meeting
13e. Not correct. The Directives require a physical meeting, and say nothing about a voting process distinct from the meeting.
14. Discussing “only 67 out of the 1027” proposed resolutions ”does not constitute a successful conclusion of the BRM”
14e. Not correct. All the proposed resolutions were decided according to well-defined voting procedures accepted by the NBs; all NBs had the opportunity to raise priority items; all those raised by NBs as priority items were discussed. Whether the conclusion of the BRM was successful is for NBs to decide; by their votes, they have done so.
15. Important topics were postponed and finally not discussed in the BRM
15e. Not correct. See 14e.
16. Title of standard doesn’t reflect contents
16e. Not correct technically; otherwise a matter for NBs’ judgement, which they have expressed in their vote.
17. Proposal of US & BR on legacy mapping and division into parts not considered, in spite of “a chorus of objections”
17e. Not correct. See also 3e and 14e.
18. It is wrong to delay SC 34 ad hoc groups’ work until standard is published
18e. Irrelevant. (Additionally, if not delayed, SC 34’s activity may interfere with the process of dealing with the present appeals.)
19. Except for political pressure, it would be best to publish only after these groups have completed their work
19e. Irrelevant. (It is also not correct: it would be a violation of the Directives.)
20. Ecma should have had no role in making the judgement referred to in 1 and 1e
20e. Correct. Ecma did in fact have no role in this judgement.

At its recent plenary meeting in Norway, JTC 1/SC 34 established 2 ad hoc groups concerned with the collection of comments on and maintenance of ISO/IEC 29500. Adjudicating these appeals will necessarily delay ISO/IEC 29500, at a minimum, and this delay could have a significant effect on the work of these ad hoc groups. SC 34 and its ad hoc groups should take this into account when planning their future work.