Geneva +(almost)2 Weeks

A huge amount of information has passed through my inbox since the DIS29500 Ballot Resolution Meeting, most of it constructive and some of it just a predictable last ditch attempt to inappropriately discredit a very successful meeting. 

Originating from the Asia Pacific region, I’m seeing emails being sent to certain countries in Asia that attempt to obfuscate details of the meeting as well as official looking documents being mailed to places as far afield as the Caribbean that try to apply a negative spin to the facts of what happened at the BRM and the progress that has been made with DIS29500, both examples disregard much of the process, the preparation and the consensus that was reached during the time in Geneva.

The communications involved are not from their respective national bodies, they come from individuals I have met over the last year who claim that they don’t have the time that is needed to complete their own national review – on some minor level, if their objections are valid, then it is amusing that they have so much time time to get involved in extra curricular work that extends beyond their home geographies.

Oddly the text of both communications is ambiguous enough to try and insinuate that a representative national view is being put forwards, when it is clearly not. One of the communications goes so far as to express the views of several other nations, facts that the individual concerned could not possibly have any insight into.

I’m sure there is a lot more of the same going on behind the scenes, it is entertaining to watch but ostensibly it is also mostly irrelevant.

At best it is just fun and predictable under-the-covers shenanigans, and the recipent national bodies appear to be recognizing these communications for what they are - cheap shots.

On a more positive front, there is an increasing amount of commentary being published that talks about the progress that was made during the meeting in Geneva, outlining what that means for the overall specification and where it takes us from here.

When all is said and done progress is what the ISO directives encourage, not conflict or procrastination.

Brian Jones has a really good wrap up of some of the progress that was made during the meeting itself, he talks about the bigger topics that were discussed during the five days in Genevaand what all this ultimately means for the improvement of the specification against the national requirements that were expressed there, he also talks about how Ecma prepared for the meeting through their ongoing work with the various national bodies around the world;

For the past two months, Ecma officially held 4 calls per week where national bodies could discuss the comments, and Ecma could explain their proposed resolutions. This meant that by the time we got to the BRM, the countries had time to find which Ecma responses they were not quite satisfied with, and raise those issues at the BRM. The purpose of this entire process is to make improvements to the specification, which in turn may lead countries to change their vote on whether or not they approve the overall spec.

Brian goes on to cover the fact that 98% of Ecma’s proposed dispositions were approved by the BRM, details of new proposals that were put forwards during the meeting and progress on issues such as conformance, OpenXML as a multi-part standard, support for dates, improvements to accessibility (go New Zealand!), clean up of some of the SpreadsheetML functions and work with the ever controversial bitmasks.

Secondly, Rick Jelliffe has a post on his blog that talks about modifications that were made to the DIS29500 specification during the BRM in term of small, medium and large changes, and then goes on to examine the future, not only for OpenXML but also for ODF;

The upshot is that, if DIS29500 mark II and ODF 1.2 both get accepted as standards, by the end of 2008 we should have two standards which together can thoroughly cover the field of representing current and legacy office documents, each representing one of the two dominant commercial traditions, with both under active and significantly open maintenance to fill in the remaining gaps and to repair pending broken parts, with clear cross-mapping to allow interconversion, with an increasing level of modularity so that the can share their component parts, and at least with a feasible agenda of co-evolution and other kinds of convergence.

Maintenance for ISO/IEC DIS29500 (Office Open XML) will ultimately be governed by JTC1′s SC34, and that presents a phenomenal amount of opportunity for anybody who chooses to get involved in that process.

Finally, if I have learned one thing during the last year it is that there is a need to consult recognised experts at every step in the process to understand what is really going on.

As I look around the internet it is very hard to separate those who are just guessing at how the process should be working, or who have a vested interest in the outcome, from those who actually understand how it works. I put myself in one of these categories, so I’m always keen to talk to people who can give me a more rounded view of the world.

One such expert is Jan van den Beld, the former Secretary General of Ecma International. I have been travelling with Jan over the last few days and have had the chance to explore several areas of the ISO and FastTrack processes that previously made little sense to me, his insight into the history and the reasons for why things work they way they do is enlightening to say the least.

For those who are not aware, the current FastTrack directives are dedicated to Mr. van den Beld out of respect for his decades of service to ISO and to standardization in general.

Jan maintains a blog, and has from time to time commented on the process that OpenXML has been going through, most recently he has posted some thoughts on the BRM itself.

I have extracted his words on what consensus at the meeting meant and now to interpret the outcome, but I would encourage you to read his whole post. (and anything else he posts in the future!)

Alex Brown, the BRM Convener, indicated that the Edited Notes of the Meeting and the Resolutions of the Meeting are publicly available. The voting results as well. By reading those documents and discussing with many people who were present, it is now clear that:

· Consensus prevailed on the process, as shown in the ISO press release http://www.iso.org/iso/pressrelease.htm?refid=Ref1117 (“The BRM was not intended to be a public event but followed the orderly and inclusive process of ISO and IEC”)

· Consensus prevailed on the vote itself: the voting procedures were discussed in length for almost half a day during the BRM on Wednesday and the Resolutions of the Meeting show that the voting procedures were adopted by wide consensus (29 in favor; none against; two abstentions)

· Consensus prevailed during the technical discussions as a look at the Resolutions of the Meeting shows that a very important set of technical work was achieved and adopted by wide consensus during the BRM itself (see list of technical work below)

· Consensus prevailed on adopting 98.7% of the responses (828 + 186 responses (out of 1027)), leaving only 13 responses to be solved during the maintenance phase.

· Consensus is prevailing on the result of the BRM. Many countries are reporting that the BRM provided a positive outcome. For examples the HoD of the US writes in his official report that the “BRM was Successful — Compromises were reached which are acceptable to the U.S.” and the US V1 technical committee votes to recommend Approval of DIS 29500.

Many balanced statements are now published on the BRM for example from Norway, New Zealand, Denmark and the ODF Editor himself http://blogs.msdn.com/jasonmatusow/archive/2008/03/05/some-balanced-statements-regarding-the-open-xml-brm.aspx!

Whatever the outcome of all of this work it is clear that the OpenXML specification has seen significant improvement over the last 18 months, most of it deriving from the inclusion of thousands of individuals from the 87 voting countries that are represented in this process.