Information on Sweden and OOXML

Summary:

Update on the Swedish OOXML review process

Information on Sweden and OOXML

stegu 12 Aug 2007 22:18

Being one of the reviewers of ISO DIS 29500 in Sweden, I have some inside information on the process. Please feel free to ask me if you have any further questions on the progress of the Swedish review process.

The request for comments period for SIS ended August 10. Voting will take place some time soon, and SIS will send their vote to ISO early September. The technical committee responsible for OOXML consists of the following entities:

• Riksarkivet, STOCKHOLM (National Archive, a government entity)
• Kungl biblioteket, STOCKHOLM (Royal Library, a government entity)
• Verva, STOCKHOLM (Department for Development of Administration, a government entity)
• Sun Microsystems AB, KISTA (Swedish subsidiary of Sun Microsystems)
• IBM Svenska AB, STOCKHOLM (Swedish subsidiary of IBM)
• Diamo AB, GÖTEBORG (Open standards solutions provider, not focused on Microsoft software)
• WM-data Sverige AB, STOCKHOLM (IT business solutions provider, not Microsoft-specific)
• Iamcp Sweden Chapter, BROMMA (International Association of Microsoft Certified Partners, Swedish chapter)
• Humandata Inventus AB, HANINGE (A Microsoft Certified Partner)

So, it seems that MS has not stacked the deck with its boughten friendship. At least not yet.
Rumor has it that more members are possibly joining the group before the vote, but I have no
more information at the moment.

The SIS main committee on IT standardisation issues, which is possibly also involved to some
extent in the final voting, are these:

• Ericsson AB, STOCKHOLM (Ericsson, a large telecom company)
• Helsingborgs stadsarkiv, HELSINGBORG (The municipal archive of the city of Helsingborg)
• Högskolebiblioteket i Jönköping, JÖNKÖPING (University library of Jönköping)
• Kungliga biblioteket, STOCKHOLM (Royal Library, Stockholm)
• Landsarkivet I Lund, LUND (Regional National Archive in Lund)
• LFV, NORRKÖPING (Air traffic regulations agency of Sweden)
• NUTEK, STOCKHOLM (National scientific foundation of Sweden, a governmental research funding institute)
• Riksarkivet, STOCKHOLM (National Archives of Sweden)
• SIS Forum AB, STOCKHOLM (A standards consultant company, affiliated with SIS)
• Stockholms Stadsarkiv, STOCKHOLM (Regional Archive of Stockholm)
• Sundsvalls kommun, SUNDSVALL (the Municipality of City of Sundsvall)

As you can see, almost exclusively government representatives, no clear Microsoft-bias.
The list of members for this main committee is not going to change before the final vote.

I would be very surprised to see anything else than a "No with comments" from the SIS committee.
Given the sheer number of objections (I found hundreds myself, and commented in detail on about 50
of the more grave errors I found in the proposal), and the reportedly large amount of comments from
the general public, which I expect to be mostly negative, I see no way for OOXML to pass in Sweden.

Stefan Gustavson (moc.liamg|nosvatsug.nafets#moc.liamg|nosvatsug.nafets)

Last edited on 29 Aug 2007 19:50 by stegu Show more

Re: Information on Sweden and OOXML

podmokle 13 Aug 2007 21:30

Is there any awareness in Sweden regarding conformity with the WTO TBT agreement?

Was a legal opinion commissioned regarding patent license conditions? Is the OSP a binding declaration under Swedish laws?

What can be done to improve the openess of standard review procedures? Do you think bug reporting tools as Mantis could be used? Some nations used Wikis or comment tools but "OOXML sucks" comments are not what a Committee needs.

Is a fast-track standard review always like this or is it a special case also for standard boards members?

Re: Information on Sweden and OOXML

stegu 13 Aug 2007 21:56

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

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

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

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

Re: Information on Sweden and OOXML

Anonymous (130.236.134.x) 16 Aug 2007 12:33

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

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

Re: Information on Sweden and OOXML

stegu 20 Aug 2007 16:54

Update: WM-data is actually a Microsoft partner and rather a lot more deeply involved with Microsoft than I first realized, and Diamo AB, whether it is a formal partner or not, is providing their "open" solutions only for the Windows platform. Sloppy research on my behalf, it seems the committee is full of MS partners after all. 4 out of 9 can not really be expected to vote against the adoption. Sigh. If the Microsoft partners are not blind drones and actually show the courage to think for themselves before voting, we might still see a "no" vote pass, though.

Re: Information on Sweden and OOXML

Anonymous (128.197.11.x) 20 Aug 2007 23:06

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

Re: Information on Sweden and OOXML

stegu 21 Aug 2007 00:46

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

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

Re: Information on Sweden and OOXML

stegu 22 Aug 2007 08:33

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

Re: Information on Sweden and OOXML

stegu 27 Aug 2007 18:33

With the sudden addition on the voting day of 23 new companies to the committee, most of
which are Microsoft partners, forget all I said above and weep. Sweden was hiijacked today,
just like lots of other countries where the voting procedures were open to exploit.

Re: Information on Sweden and OOXML

Anonymous (86.84.111.x) 29 Aug 2007 20:33

Your prediction on the vote would also have been wrong on thse 9 as they voted 5-4 for approval anyways

Re: Information on Sweden and OOXML

stegu 31 Aug 2007 10:50

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

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

Re: Information on Sweden and OOXML

stegu 31 Aug 2007 10:57

Update in case you have not noticed: the vote was invalidated on Thursday by SIS, and Sweden will abstain. Details are all over the Internet and in other threads in this forum, and I will not link to them here.