I read a blog post by Charles who critisised the obscurity of the DIS 29500 standardization process.
Open and dark? A riddle? First it makes me think of Beer. Sorry. But Office Open XML? The ISO DIS 29500 process is as intransparent as it may get. Surprise.
My humble advice to the Ecma: it looks like you or some of your members are afraid of publicizing your thought process and the reflections on the improvement of OOXML. Because you are of course working towards improving OOXML, aren’t you?
As the church and its monks.
Last but not least, I am under the impression that what I will receive from the Ecma as part of the Afnor committee is not the whole set of answers, but the set of answers to the particular comments sent by the Afnor. And there I have a problem with that. It may seem picky, but when you come to think of it, it’s not. After the 2nd of September the list of comments made by every national standardization body that had voted was widely available on the Internet. Experts and committees, journalists, concerned citizens were thus able to learn from that list and discover things they may not have realized, or at least, form an educated opinion out of it. Now, if the Ecma sends to each committee the answers to its own comments, there will be no more opportunity to get a broad overview of Ecma’s answers. I would like to have such a document because it helps gaining a better understanding of Ecma’s answers and of the issues they’re fixing (or are refusing to fix).
I am pretty sure ECMA won't provide it.
According to the Commission IDABC EIF definition of Open Standards (let's forget the Gartner report):
The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit organization, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties.
The standard has been published and the standard specification document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a nominal fee.
The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.
There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.
Which makes me thinik of a definition for shared standards:
The standard is adopted and will be maintained by ECMA, and its ongoing development occurs internally by the submitter. Decisions are made available to all interested parties.
The standard has been published and the standard specification document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. Meaningful aid is provided under a non-disclosure agreement.
The intellectual property - i.e. software patents possibly present - of (parts of) the standard is covered by a Convenant Not to Sue and an Open Specification Promise that grants some rights, no?
