The fat ladies sing "YES" to Microsoft's tune in the US

Summary:

If you don't get it right, try, try try again. IBM's Rob Weir explains the tortuous US voting process and how Lexmark, GS1 and three government agencies (Department of Defense, Dept. of Homeland Security and NIST) did a 180-degree turn that caused the final vote to land in Microsoft's lap.

Rob Weir (IBM) explains the US Vote

podmokle 1188645190|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Rob Weir was asked to comment on the USA vote. As we are so busy we just share the original mail with you that the IBM specialist said is "public news". I must confess I didn't understand the US ANSI voting process at all. The mail helped me to get what happened. Hope it is useful for you, too.

Rob's email answer-

The US vote in JTC1 is owned by ANSI and delegated to an industry forum
called INCITS. INCITS has an Executive Board (EB) as well as several
technical Subcommittees (SC's).

When JTC1 issued the DIS 29500 5-month ballot back in the spring, INCITS
requested that V1, the committee with expertise in XML and SGML markup
languages, review the proposal and provide a technical evaluation. V1 did
this review, generated several hundred technical comments on OOXML.
However, when it came time for V1 to vote on its recommendation on July
13th, they failed to reach a consensus. So votes to approve, disapprove
and even abstain all failed to reach the required 2/3 consensus level. So
the comments were forwarded to the INCITS EB without a recommendation.

Ordinarilly the INCITS EB follows the recommendations of its technical
committees. But since a narrow majority of the EB favored approval of
OOXML, they were able to control the language of the ballot, and sent out
an Approval ballot for OOXML. (This is something that confuses some
people. Before the EB can have a vote on something it must agree on the
wording of the ballot, of what question is to be asked. The approval of
the ballot language requires simple majority, though the approval of the
ballot itself requires 2/3.) This ballot closed on August 9th and you can
see the results here:

http://ballot.itic.org/itic/tallyvote.taf?function=vote&committee=INCITS&ballot_id=2212

The ballot was defeated by an 8-7-1 vote, well short of the 2/3 required.

The INCITS EB met again in DC on 8/15 to discuss OOXML. Since again a
majority favored OOXML, a second Approval ballot was issued. This ballot
closed August 23rd and the results are:

http://ballot.itic.org/itic/tallyvote.taf?function=vote&committee=INCITS&ballot_id=2341

The results were 12-3-1.

The EB will meet again on August 29th and confirmed the vote.

So, what happened between August 9th and August 23rd? Good question. If
you look at the two ballots, you will see that 4 members changed their
votes; Lexmark, GS1 and the three government agencies (Department of
Defense, Dept. of Homeland Security and NIST). The government agencies
had previously stated that they would vote as a bloc according to NIST's
instructions. If you look at their comments, you will see some big
swings.

For example, GS1 in the first ballot (8/9) said: "NO - with the following
comment: I am opposed to approval with comments; it does not assure proper
vetting of the comments submitted. Clause 9.8 of the ISO/IEC Directives,
5th Edition indicates that the correct response, in order to be assured
that these technical comments will be addressed in a satisfactory manner,
is to disapprove (conditional) with comments."

But on the 8/23 ballot they voted Yes with no comment.

On the 8/9 ballot NIST wrote: "Based upon the technical comments
identified, NIST believes that the US National Body should be voting for
conditional approval to DIS 29500. The JTC 1 procedures in clause 9.8,
Votes on Fast-track DISs, contain the note: ?[Note: Conditional approval
should be submitted as a disapproval vote.]? While this is advisory (i.e.,
should versus shall), it is the best way to ensure that the comments
submitted by the US National Body are given careful consideration. "

But then on 8/23 they vote Yes with no comment.

So what happened between 8/9 and 8/23 that would cause three government
agencies to make a 180-degree change in their position? I have no
independent evidence on this, but I suggest that this is not a
coincidence: http://xml.sys-con.com/read/419573.htm

I'd suggest reading the IBM comment on the ballot here:
http://ballot.itic.org/itic/tallyvote.taf?function=detail&response_id=115316

Frank Farance's is also very good:
http://ballot.itic.org/itic/tallyvote.taf?function=detail&response_id=115320

-Rob

Re: Rob Weir (IBM) explains the US Vote

Anonymous (84.9.108.x) 1188649157|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Why didn't Sun vote?

Also, what the hell is Sony doing in there? Or Lexmark? Or HP? None of these are software companies, and Sony is Japanese!

Re: Rob Weir (IBM) explains the US Vote

Anonymous (86.84.111.x) 1188655378|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

INICTS is not just about software
The V1 committee was the place for organisations related to office software.
However they were not able to get a 2/3 majority for approval
I think they voted 15-10 for approval in that committee.

Because they did not get a 2/3 agreement on approval (or any other vote) then the executive board can still overrule the committee. However those are not experts.

The first voted 8-7 for but that wasn't enough. However since they had comments on why they voted in the way they did, I guess it was fairly easy to adress several of those comments for Microsoft.
Some of the objections comments of the department of defense on the first vote were downright ignorant and easy to give reassurance on for MS.

I think the executive board wants the standard to pass allthough it sees room for improvments by sending i the comments.

Re: Rob Weir (IBM) explains the US Vote

podmokle 1188660651|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

"…and Sony is Japanese"

was my favourite. Indeed. But what do the people say in the rest of the world when a US software company enters their committees?

Re: Rob Weir (IBM) explains the US Vote

Anonymous (190.136.119.x) 1188669671|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

INICTS is not just about software
The V1 committee was the place for organisations related to office software.
However they were not able to get a 2/3 majority for approval
I think they voted 15-10 for approval in that committee.

please substract the votes of friends of Doug Mahugh (MS employee ) and the glorious Microsoft Gold Partners that "reviewed" ( jeje ) DIS 29500 and gave his inconditional yes vote at Incits/V1:

1. 3Sharp [http://www.3sharp.com/]-> Microsoft gold partner, mentioned in [2], front page says "3Sharp is a key contributor to Microsoft's new Data Encryption Toolkit"

2. Advaiya [http://www.advaiya.com/] -> 7 ocurrences of "Microsoft" in front page

3. BP -> ECMA TC-45 (OOXML) member

4. Microsoft -> the OOXML creator

5. Mimosa Systems [http://www.mimosasystems.com/]-> Microsoft gold certified, flagship product [http://www.mimosasystems.com/html/prod_overview.htm] is "Mimosa NearPoint for Microsoft Exchange Server"

6. NextPage -> Microsoft certified partner [ http://nextpage.com/about/microsoft.htm ]

7. Peters & Associates [http://www.peters.com/]-> Microsoft gold partner, 10 ocurrences of "Microsoft" in front page

8. Reality Mobile [http://www.realitymobile.com/]-> flagship product transmit real-time video and geospatial coordinates WHAT THIS HAVE TO DO WITH OFFICE DOCUMENT STANDARDS????

9. Xinnovation [http://www.xinn.com/]-> Microsoft gold certified , flagship product built around Microsoft Office software

10. mindjet: Microsoft Gold Certified Partner -> flagship product supports [http://blog.mindjet.com/2007/07/mindjet-to-present-at-microsoft-worldwide-partner-conference] Office 2007

11. z5 technologies [ http://www.z5technologies.com/ ], one of flagship products runs XP with MS Office, mentioned in [2]

—-

[1] http://www.ibiblio.org/bosak/v1mail/200706/2007Jun30-173123.eml, file "v1 comments.pdf"

[2] http://blogs.msdn.com/dmahugh/archive/2007/07/09/open-xml-solution-demonstration-at-wpc.aspx

Re: Rob Weir (IBM) explains the US Vote

Anonymous (89.233.196.x) 1188726058|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Lots of american companies is voting in the european contries too. What the hell are they doing there?

Re: Rob Weir (IBM) explains the US Vote

stegu 1188749946|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Foreign companies who wish to be represented in working groups and committees in national boards need to have local representation in that country. Microsoft, IBM, Sun and Google certainly have a presence in most countries of the world. In some countries they might just have a small sales office, but in many countries they have a large national subsidiary with a significant number of employees. To say that IBM, Sun, Microsoft and Google are "American companies" is therefore not correct. They are international companies with their main headquarters in the US. There is nothing wrong or unusual with large international companies participating in national standards processes.

Last edited on 1188749992|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover By stegu + Show more

Re: Rob Weir (IBM) explains the US Vote

Anonymous (87.139.100.x) 1188793131|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Right, and Sony has a large national subsidiary with a significant number of employees in the U.S. … The comments regarding "US companies in other countries NB" tried IMHO to address the comment saying that "Sony is Japanese", nothing more.

Re: Rob Weir (IBM) explains the US Vote

Anonymous (81.86.155.x) 1188839829|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Why didn't Sun vote?

Sun is not a member of INCITS, only of V1. Sun voted to Disapprove in the V1 committee.

Re: Rob Weir (IBM) explains the US Vote

Anonymous (192.168.0.x) 1188849820|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z|agohover

Actually HP is (partly) a software company. Yes, they make most of their money through printers (and ink!), computer hardware, etc but they continue to sell HP-UX, the OpenView suite of management products for various OS's, etc as well as printing and imaging software. (Plus more obscure OS's like OpenVMS, etc.)

They've contributed a fair bit of software (admittedly mostly drivers) to Linux under the GPL.

But yes, they're also in bed with Microsoft.