Despite the NO, ISO will handle a BRM in February

Summary:

Despite the majority of NO to OOXML voted by many delegations, the ISO secretariat has decided to move forward with the next step, which is to organise a Ballot Resolution Meeting (BRM). Do you remember that it is the secretariat who decided to go forward with the Fast Track in February?

Despite the NO, ISO secretariat will handle a BRM in February

Anonymous (83.235.186.x) 04 Sep 2007 17:14

ISO has published a press release which mentions the following:

Comments that accompanied the votes will be discussed at a ballot resolution meeting (BRM) to be organized by the relevant subcommittee of ISO/IEC JTC 1 (SC 34, Document description and processing languages) in February 2008 in Geneva, Switzerland.

And also the objective of the meeting, which will be to try to find solutions to unsolvable problems, called OOXML poison pills, such as the French proposal:

The objective of the meeting will be to review and seek consensus on possible modifications to the document in light of the comments received along with the votes. If the proposed modifications are such that national bodies then wish to withdraw their negative votes, and the above acceptance criteria are then met, the standard may proceed to publication.

The work for us will be to reverse the decision of many Yes countries, and to support OOXML poison pills that Microsoft don't like, which is basically every amendment that create distance between Office 2007 and the proposed ISO29500. But beware, most of the Yes countries are already mostly controlled by the vendor and its business partners.

Last edited on 04 Sep 2007 17:17 by zoobab Show more

Re: Despite the NO, ISO secretariat will handle a BRM in February

stegu 04 Sep 2007 17:55

One option here would be to continue to expose and criticize irregularities like committee stuffings. I like to think that most people are actually very reasonable and decent persons, and I would imagine that many of the committee members from small companies that joined extremely late on Microsoft's initiative could actually be interested in learning more about what they approved to, and be prepared to listen to the advice of reasonably independent experts instead of just following the lead of Microsoft. I'm not sure they realize yet what kind of shady business they have participated in, and if they knew, some might raise doubts about the validity of Microsoft's claims. Microsoft has said that their partners all participate on their own accord and with their own opinions. We could actually take that statement to the test. Microsoft clearly has a big influence over its partners, but it doesn't own them.

It is hard to change a "yes" to a "no", but given the false information given before the vote, many "yes" votes are actually "no" votes, i.e. conditional approvals cast in the shape of a "yes" because of Microsoft's influence. Let's keep pointing a finger to that influence, it should not be forgotten. Our sharpest weapon right now is to clearly expose the rotten methods of Microsoft, which show that there is something wrong with the standard. Otherwise, it would have passed on its own merits like any other standard.

One nice report is that the first NB to change its mind after the ballot was closed is Finland. Their official position is now "no", not "abstain". (Edit: this is unconfirmed, my only reference seems to have disappeared)

Last edited on 04 Sep 2007 21:03 by stegu Show more

Re: Despite the NO, ISO secretariat will handle a BRM in February

zoobab 04 Sep 2007 17:57

Any evidence about the Finish change of mind?

Re: Despite the NO, ISO secretariat will handle a BRM in February

stegu 04 Sep 2007 21:02

I did have a link to Finland's statement to that "no" position being reached two days after the ballot closed, but now I can't find it, it seems to have disappeared. Perhaps it was wrong. I have edited my statement above to be safe.

Re: Despite the NO, ISO secretariat will handle a BRM in February

Anonymous (81.64.156.x) 04 Sep 2007 21:53

Then the efforts should focus on convincing the honest NBs to adopt the French position, which is nicely written and argumented in standards speak, and effectively defangs OOXML. It would also kill the "IBM spawns" argument, as Afnor has been active long enough in ISO no one can seriously accuse it of being vendor-controlled

Re: Despite the NO, ISO will handle a BRM in February

Anonymous (125.235.2.x) 04 Sep 2007 18:25

What the majority you are talking about? Are you consensus enough to make a simple calculation?

The ISO process has been worked out before the ballot began. It's childish to cricticize ISO and it's processes to build standards. If it not trustworthy, why should ODF and many other specifications get ISO ratification?

It's better to save your time and resources to help developers out there to learn how to implement ODF and help users realize benefits from ODF via applications.

Re: Despite the NO, ISO will handle a BRM in February

zoobab 04 Sep 2007 18:51

Well, the ISO secretariat is organising a BRM under Microsoft and ECMA pressure. I doubt that they had the technical staff to analyse the tons of comments in 2 days.

This is the same story as for the Fast Track decision in February.

Re: Despite the NO, ISO will handle a BRM in February

stegu 04 Sep 2007 21:32

There is actually nothing unusual about this particular decision. A ballot resolution process is normally initiated when there are technical comments. This is standard procedure regardless of whether the first vote fails or passes. The difference here is that the amount of comments is huge. There are thousands of comments to resolve in a document of 6000 pages, compared to the more typical amount of a dozen or so comments on a document of a few hundred pages in total.

The sheer volume of the document and its many serious problems could perhaps motivate a decision by the ISO secretariat to cancel the project now, but that would require them to stick out their neck in an unexpected manner. A decision to cancel a DIS is normally taken later by the sub-committee handling the ballot resolution process, in this case SC34. Furthermore, the project editor has said that ECMA and Microsoft will work with SC34 to try to resolve the comments in just a few months, and the ISO secretariat has no real authority to step in and cancel the project against the will of the appointed project editor. SC34 has that authority, but they haven't even started their work on the comments yet.

The ISO secretariat allowed DIS 29500 to be put on fast track in the first place. While this was clearly a mistake, we now have to see it through to the end in February. Formally, this is normal procedure. It's just that the draft standard being considered here is abnormal.

Re: Despite the NO, ISO will handle a BRM in February

Anonymous (86.84.111.x) 04 Sep 2007 21:53

The difference here is that the amount of comments is huge.

Allthough he total number might be huge the number of identical comments might be huge too. For instance IBM that produced most comments submitted a lot of similar comments in most of the committees they participated in.

So 10k comments might easily shrivle to 2k non-identical and even to a few hundred of really distiguishable comments.

Re: Despite the NO, ISO will handle a BRM in February

rizox 05 Sep 2007 00:26

There are several countries that have put a lot of people to work in analyzing the specification and they have produced their own and so original comments. Check the work done in France or UK for example. And it was a real pity that the 500 comments from US didn't entered in time. Also the ones from Holland. That people invested a lot of time in the specification.

Finally, check that the first people that analyzed the specification, indeed when it was just MS-OOXML posted at ECMA committee, was the people of the OpenDocument Fellowship. Their work can be found in Groklaw and this work has served as a base for IBM and many others to make their comments.

Please, don't simplify: IBM has been only one more of the entities that have produced comments. Indeed they have produced only 200 comments and surely no more than 100 of them have entered in the votes (the other 100 came really late…)

Re: Despite the NO, ISO will handle a BRM in February

Anonymous (78.84.123.x) 04 Sep 2007 20:23

Problem is that ISO is giving handicap for Microsoft again and again. In return, Microsoft just screws up all ISO process and creates heated disscussion instead of admitting their own mistakes. FastTrack process? Most countries where against that. Nah, let's go with it. Most countries want to vote against? Let's stuff comitees up with "our people". Still fail to win majority vote? Ok, let's give another change.

And for @#$#@%^ what reason? WHAT in Microsoft is SO different than other Vendors who tries to screw up ISO system and are set back where they came from?

Ohh, they got lot of money for officials, right?

Sorry for rant, but Microsoft actions gets my blood boiling. And I even hoped that with OOXML they want start to change. How naive from me.

Re: Despite the NO, ISO will handle a BRM in February

stegu 04 Sep 2007 21:53

Sorry for rant, but Microsoft actions gets my blood boiling.

It upsets me too, rather a lot actually, but please try to keep calm. You think a lot better when you are not angry, and we need to stay smart to have any chance against these large scale bullying tactics. Letting out steam in public feels good sometimes, I know, but it gets us nowhere. The bullies might be stronger, but I wouldn't bet they are smarter than us if we take care to really use our brains. If nothing else, at least we stand a good chance of outnumbering them, as those 42,000 names in the petition indicate. We are being bullied, yes, but we have a lot of honest and smart people on our side who are willing to stand up and take the fight. We are still in a fairly good position to defend ourselves and fight back, and this fight is far from hopeless.

Last edited on 04 Sep 2007 21:53 by stegu Show more

Re: Despite the NO, ISO will handle a BRM in February

stegu 04 Sep 2007 21:09

It's childish to criticize ISO and its processes to build standards. If it not trustworthy, why should ODF and many other specifications get ISO ratification?

Maybe because previous ballots (those on PDF, ODF, any standard you can think of except OOXML) were not surrounded by foul play, bribery, ballot stuffing and truckloads of misinformation from a rich and powerful software giant? Or don't you think that makes any difference at all?

Re: Despite the NO, ISO will handle a BRM in February

Anonymous (81.146.42.x) 10 Sep 2007 10:29

anyone know exactly where the BRM will take place in Geneva..?

Re: Despite the NO, ISO will handle a BRM in February

stegu 12 Sep 2007 07:34

The call for participation on http://www.jtc1sc34.org says it will be held at the International Conference Centre: http://www.cicg.ch/en/index.php. The same announcement also says "Further details have not been released at this time and attendance registration is not yet open".

Last edited on 12 Sep 2007 07:35 by stegu Show more