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DIN has published a press release declaring that they have technical problems with OOXML, but they will nevertheless vote Yes with comments.
Heise is also reporting on the vote. Also a press-release of Linux Verband.
It seems that Microsoft has good connexions in Germany, the technical committee voted 17 for against 4.
Germany is probably not the country of open standards.
"…DIN has published a press release…"
translation (sort of) via google translate:
Ecma international has made clear it will also look at comments that are accompanying an approval vote.
Ecma will review ALL comments
So any comments of the German national body are also likely to be included in the final resulting ISO ballot resolution proposal on DIS 29500.
Your comment on Germany not being the country of open standards is uncalled for !!
"Ecma international has made clear it will also look at comments that are accompanying an approval vote.
Ecma will review ALL comments"
The main interested parties here, are
. the ISO NBs
. the quality of the standardization process and deliverables.
The only way to assure that the comments are properly handled by SC34 is a "no with comments" vote. This is very clear in JTC1 SC34 procedures, ie:
http://ballot.itic.org/itic/tallyvote.taf?function=detail&response_id=113256
http://ballot.itic.org/itic/tallyvote.taf?function=detail&response_id=113261
http://ballot.itic.org/itic/tallyvote.taf?function=detail&response_id=113257
Why do you fear the 'NO with comments' vote? is there any technical problem in DIS 29500 that you don't want to discuss? Why are you so defensive? Face the problems and fix it, all this people are helping you to achieve a good standard, they are not your enemies. You should thank their work, no criticise it.
Voting form G18 for DIS proposals:
"If a national body votes affirmatively, it shall not submit comments. If a national body finds the DIS unacceptable, it shall vote negatively and state the technical reasons."
ECMA can promise whatever they like, but one thing is to look at and other to correct the problems. As ISO rules, a YES with comments vote is not any warranty that the problem will be solved. When problems have been discovered, the vote, accorting to ISO procedures, should be NO WITH COMMENTS (what is also called, a "conditional approval" that is a so constructive vote). To vote "CONDITIONED NO" is the only warranty that the problems will be solved and not only "looked at" as Microsoft and ECMA have been doing up to now… (check the responses that ECMA did to the contradiction period: just cheap justifications, no any solution, neither any change).
What has no sense is that DIN says that there are a lot of problems and that they are for the contiditional approval but finally, they vote YES, that officially means "everything is perfect in this specification".
As somebody said in Australian Standards, a "YES with comments" is like a "YES with a Christmas Card attached". So nice, but no value. Germany is now out of the process to debug that standard proposal. Sorry for them, they have decided to exclude themselves. A pity.
Unfortunatelly for Germany, DIN is a private entity that seems to care more about its own business than about German interests. The facts talk by themselves.
Alberto Barrionuevo
Vice President, FFII
Anonymous (130.117.98.x), 22 Aug 2007 14:53
It is however commonplace for ISO national bodies to vote approval with comments. This is actually also been the case with several of the ballotvotes on Opendocument which have led to OASIS making a second edition version.
Are you suggesting that Ecma which is an approved ISO A-liason partner organisation will not be serious about implementing changes in OOXML based on the submitted comments ?
obviously supporters of Office Open XML are not comfortable trusting the No with comments vote as it seems several organisation try to add comments that are out of reach for Ecma to fix. In the US they added a comment that would require the inclusion of all previous binary format specifications.
Also there is uncertainty about a national body handing in 100 comments and Ecma fixing 99 of them and then still keeping the NO vote. Something that some people have suggested as a strategy to block OOXML standardization even.
The only party that needs the Microsoft Open XML ISO standard is Microsoft.
Market players are free to implement the ECMA standard. Now, Microsoft fast-tracks an immature standard which parallelises an existing one. ODF is an open standard and its patent conditions are clear.
So the question is: What do they offer in return, e.g. debugging, more specification, clear patent provisions. The only way for a national body to get improvements is to vote conditional, or reject. German here gives a present to Microsoft.
All players despite Microsoft take absolutely no risk. Even when ISO approval would be denied. Take OO.org as an example. OpenOffice will support OOXML by the end of 2008 anyway. The question at hand is if it makes sense to weaken ODF by parallelising it with an immature semi-open standard developed and controlled by a single player, a convicted monopoly abuser. If OOXML ISO standardisation fails Microsoft will present ODF support for EU government agencies. It is already in the making. And if it wants it to get approved, then Microsoft has to offer more, for instance true open standard compliance, improvements of the format, better patent conditions, better interoperability and so on.
DIN offers Microsoft a present but gets *nothing* in return. Bad bad negotiations. Approval is no rational strategy here. It contravenes the German national interest and it contravenes the will of the Bundestag parties.
Are you suggesting that Ecma which is an approved ISO A-liason partner organisation will not be serious about
implementing changes in OOXML based on the submitted comments ?
Put bluntly, yes. ECMA has made a huge mess with their bad OOXML review, and certainly hope
to see its A-liaison status with ISO being reconsidered.
If the OOXML standard is approved, the submitter (which is Microsoft, let's stop pretending that
ECMA has any real influence over the standard, they are obviously incapable of even reviewing it)
has no compelling reason to change it, because it correctly reflects the behaviour of a shipping product,
and is formally an ISO standard. If yo had your own file format approved as an ISO standard, and
you had a complex software product which managed to make use of it in its current form, would you
really care to change it, with the risk of breaking something in the process? Or would you say to
everyone that complained "Stop whining, ISO has approved it, that's as good as it gets"?
So, the question is: do we want OOXML fixed good and soon, by giving Microsoft a clear motivation
to do so, or do we give them an open ticket to fix some things of their own choosing for maybe the next
major release of MS Office? I would like to see a good OOXML format soon in a patched MS Office 2007
instead of possibly in a later major release of MS Office.
"Are you suggesting that Ecma which is an approved ISO A-liason partner organisation will not be serious about implementing changes in OOXML based on the submitted comments ?"
if i were ISO i would send a team to audit the standardization process at ECMA. I don't trust ECMA any more. It's not a serious organization, they have crossed the line for me ( i'm a computer user, computer developer and teacher and i believe in true standards for the benefit of *all* the people, consumers, education, government, final users, independent developers, etc. )
Ii have personally found in DIS 29500 more than 100 syntactical errors, more than 200 errors in XML elements, entire phrases out of order, marks of informative and normative text solaped, undefined terms, reference to no existent parts in the document, errors in formulae, etc., 200 redundant definitions of a "on/off" attribute all through all the text, etc, etc
it is very disrespectful to have submitted this document to ISO without a serious review, shame on ECMA, shame on the standards, sad year for the users of electronic documents.
This people ( ECMA and Microsoft ) are subverting the standardization processes, lowering the quality and usability of standards. And i'm not talking about politics, open source, monopolies or the like: i'm talking about *technical quality*.
DIS 29500 is only a working draft , half baked, rushed standard. People all around the world ( NB ) are wasting time in meetings, rushed reviewings, political fights… only for this crazy race to achieve the "ISO stamp" for the benefit of a product line ( Office 2007 ) , a company ( Microsoft ) and his partners.
Shameful, very shameful.
I'm deeply ashamed by the lack of understanding in our national DIN Organization. Voting "yes" with comments is a ridiculous act. There will arise no need to care about anything that was commented.
If there are any comments needed you can vote "no" … with comments.
Anonymous (84.131.144.x), 22 Aug 2007 21:35
Given the controversy of this issue and the clearly fuzzy notion which national standards boards all over the world seem to have of the ballot rules (strange, I think they are very clear), I think ISO would be wise to actually look into all those "yes with comments" and include them in the upcoming resolution process. I think they will, actually. Such comments might not be given as much attention, but to discard them would be to ask for trouble, as some standards boards have assumed that comments submitted with an approval will be addressed. A member of ISO can actually change a "yes" vote to a "no" vote later. While this is highly improper and defeats the purpose of a resolution meeting (which is to have all "no" votes changed to "yes" and pass a revised standard), it is possible.
Provided we get such a resolution process which is made less likely with every single national YES vote in the fast-track procedure. In fact a YES vote indicates that national bodies are pleased with the current broken proposal, right?
As the edits will be made by Ecma (who is responsible for the suggested Microsoft project editor) and Ecma already stated is will look at all comments there is no doubt that all comments will be addressed.
I think the yes vote with comments means, yes we want this as a standard but we do think you could improve our suggested list of comments.
There will be a ballot resulotion meeting for certain and even Ecma would consider such a meeting a good way to improve on the standard.
Anonymous (86.84.111.x), 23 Aug 2007 19:07
As the edits will be made by ECMA (who is responsible for the suggested Microsoft project editor) and Ecma already stated is will look at all comments there is no doubt that all comments will be addressed.
There is only one option to be sure that ECMA will look at the comments, is to send them back the standards proposal for correction. ECMA is not a member of the Board Resolution Meeting, and I will ask my delegation to oppose their presence at the meeting if they show up.
Anonymous (213.193.162.x), 23 Aug 2007 20:24
As the chair of Switzerland is also an ECMA guy who handled the objections so professionally in that Republic, I guess ECMA's own presence might be unimportant. Let's get the chair to the Switzerland guy because he supports OOXML so much and understands how to deal with technical comments. He also got advisory on legal issues from his wife… Great!
There is only one option to be sure that ECMA will look at the comments, is to send them back the standards
proposal for correction. ECMA is not a member of the Board Resolution Meeting,
and I will ask my delegation to oppose their presence at the meeting if they show up.
Being the submitter of the standard their presence is actually wanted and needed at the meeting.
Your suggestion is laughable.
Anonymous (86.84.111.x), 23 Aug 2007 21:17
Anonymous (88.130.83.x), 26 Aug 2007 12:29
