Oliver Bell’s Weblog

So we’re a few days past the end of the BRM, as I suggested in my last post we’re starting to see an increasingly solid picture emerge of the success of the meeting and high levels of positive progress made during the five days in Geneva.

Of course folks who have been working against OpenXML over the last year are still doing all they can to continue to whip up the frenzy that increasingly appears to have been staged for the press during the closing part of last week.

On a much more positive and productive note, over the course of the weekend we have started to see National Standards Bodies issue press releases talking about the meeting and how it served their national interests, along with some more rounded information about the process, what the vote actually was and what was approved.

First of all a press release from Standards Norway, Jason Matusow has an English translation on his blog this morning.

The release talks about the meeting purpose, the value that the Norwegian delegation got from attending and includes some quotes from the delegation members.

Every country had the opportunity to put forward their most important comments at the meeting, and most of the Norwegian comments got a good run-through. This goes for instance to the Norwegian proposal on multi-part and “scope” of the separate parts. The meeting was also conducted in an efficient and proper manner according to the instructions and rules for ISO/IEC BRM-meetings. The standards proposal for ISO/IEC 29500 will now be changed by the Editor according to the instructions given during the BRM-meeting.

Second is a similar press release from the Danish National Body, their release is shorter but also talks about the involvement of the Danish delegation at the BRM and how they achieved their objectives by representing Denmark’s comments on the original DIS and as a result have improved the standard.

Again Jason has an English translation up on his site.

The Danish delegations mission to ensure a Danish fingerprint on ISO/IEC DIS 29500 OOXML, and thus improve the standard, was fully accomplished, since all Danish comments have been approved to be worked into ISO/IEC DIS 29500 OOXML. 

Finally, Alex Brown has posted more information in the comments section on Updegrove’s newly renamed post, Alex talks more about the actual process at the meeting, rather than some of the assumptions and suppositions that we have seen posted elsewhere.

I really wanted to post the whole comment here but it was too much text. I would encourage to to jump over to Andy’s blog and read it for yourself, it probably has more value in the context of the entire conversation anyway.

Here is a extract from the comment, as I say please click the link above to read the whole conversation;

Your headline has now transitioned from being “not even wrong” to “wrong”. If you want to fix it you should remove the words “fail to”. However, since this is not then a very on-message headline for you I suggest maybe you should have something like “OOXML still in flux as clock ticks down” or “BRM performs emergency surgery on OOXML in desperate rescue attempt” or some such.

I think it is wrong for you to claim your original headline was some kind of necessary counterbalance to Jason Matusow’s: his was predictably on-message (from the MS POV), yours was (and is) factually misleading.

Also, by my records Charles Schulz was not a BRM delegate as you categorize him.

You then raise several points about the adequacy of the Fast Track process. Fair enough; no comment. On the particular questions about in-meeting voting I can tell you:

• Yes, it was a good idea to take votes (congratulations to the BRM on wisely choosing this route)
• Yes, it was within my, and the meeting’s, powers to allow it
• Yes, what happened was fully in accord with the JTC 1 Directives (O-member voting and all)

OBVIOUSLY (given the red hot controversy here) voting procedure was discussed in minute detail, and decided, in consultation with ITTF before the BRM started. I (as somebody primarily used to SC participation, rather than fast tracking) had some un-learning to do, and I think some other commentators do too. If a country has a complaint it can appeal formally — that (rather than wittering to the press) is the correct way to do it.

Well, the Ballot Resolution Meeting for ISO/IEC DIS29500 (OpenXML) is now over and done with.

Working out what happened in the room itself is a complex task while we still wait for an official release from ISO/IEC, I’m sure we will see something from then over the next few days.

I’ve seen a couple of posts this evening, one from somebody who was part of the process and was in the room and one from somebody who was not.

Brian Jones, who was in the room for the meeting, posted a very positive couple of paragraphs, talking about the significant progress that was made during the meeting. Brian discusses the work that the National Bodies have done over the last few days and the significant improvements to the DIS29500 specification that he believes will come out of that work.

Andy Updegrove, who was not in the room for the meeting, posted a very different story. He discusses outcomes of the various issues that were discussed during the meeting. Given that no information has been released from ISO/IEC I struggle a little with this post and can only guess that Andy is rushing to be “first with the news”.

In his post Andy talks about how 98% of the dispositions were approved, then goes on to talk about how the meeting failed. I’m not sure what success looks like in Andy’s world, but I’m guessing that consensus is only achieved when 100% of people agree with him.

Updegrove’s post is not totally unprecedented. On a couple of occasions last summer he rushed to explain that the National Body in the United States had voted for a disapprove for DIS29500 as the committee went through a preliminary voting process. That was right before the United States approved the draft standard for DIS29500, a fact that I can’t find documented on his blog.

As always, Jason Matusow has a balanced view of the week, the meeting and the outcome.

There was an unprecedented number of delegations from national standards bodies that came to Geneva and participated in the BRM. I have the utmost respect for the contributions from all of the national bodies (P-members and O-members alike). The result of this week’s discussions, by any reasonable measure, has greatly improved the specification and produced a great result. The BRM was a complete success - congratulations to all who were involved with it.

For now I guess we will have to wait for the details of the final outcome, everybody I have spoken to tells me it was a very positive meeting and a resounding success.

March 2nd, additional:  

I see Alex Brown (the Chairman and Convenor of the BRM) has posted a very brief comment on Updegrove’s blog, seeming to confirm that, in the eyes of the lead of the meeting, the conclusions that Andy is reaching don’t reflect the meeting itself;

Authored by: Alex Brown on Saturday, March 01 2008 @ 03:59 AM PST
Andy,

I’m won’t be composing a blog entry on the BRM for a bit, but I wil point out that your article contains surprising inaccuracies about what the subject of the vote was, how it worked, and what the governing rules were. A health warning is in order.

The ODF Alliance have been very active during the process to standardize OpenXML, in the early days they did some good work highlighting parts of the specification that needed work.

Of late though they seem to have given up promoting ODF or contributing to the OpenXML debate in any constructive way and have instead chosen to generate paper after paper that I can only assume are aimed at trying to confuse the process as much as possible.

A clipping from their front page today clearly shows the weighting of their current agenda with only three out of the current seven “New and Noteworthy” articles having anything  to do with promoting ODF.

As an example, one of the recently issued a papers is titled “Developers Beware, OOXML – IPR: Minding the Gaps and Why They Matter”. There is nothing new in the document, just a regurgitation of comments that have been raised, addressed and closed many times.

In this paper, the ODF Alliance ignores the requirements of the ISO/IEC patent policy [and the statements made by the ISO/IEC Central Secretariats] and argues that there are gaps in the Open Specification Promise Microsoft has made available to implementers of Open XML that leaves them at risk.

In fact, the commitments that have been made go well beyond the requirements of ISO/IEC, and the “gaps” hinted at by the ODF Alliance are at best illusory, as demonstrated by the fact that many developers, including OSS developers, are already implementing Open XML without any IP barriers.

I thought it might be useful to look at some of the fiction in this document and and examine the three points that The ODF Alliance raise in detail so I spent a little time with Steve Mutkoski (part of the original team who authored the OSP) to add a little reality back into this debate… a brief response to the ODF Alliance paper follows;

1. Microsoft’s commitments go beyond what ISO/IEC requires.

ISO/IEC’s patent policy requires those involved in developing a specification that hold patents needed to implement the specification to declare whether they are willing to license those patents on reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) terms. Microsoft has submitted a Patent Declaration and Licensing Statement to ISO/IEC that goes beyond the required commitment to offer a RAND license in two respects. First, Microsoft has agreed to offer, to any implementer, a RAND license without a monetary royalty (a so-called RAND-Z license). Second, Microsoft also provides implementers with an option to rely on one of two different patent non-assertion promises – the Open Specification Promise and a Covenant Not-to-Sue – that are free and do not require implementers to sign a license agreement.

2. The OSP covers all parts the Open XML specification.

Contrary to the ODF Alliance’s paper, the OSP covers all parts of the Open XML specification. Like many standards bodies’ IPR policies and patent non-asserts, the OSP excludes basic enabling technology and referenced documents. These exclusions are customary, as Andy Updegrove has noted (see below). IPR licensing obligations in standards bodies almost always exclude so-called “enabling” technologies (such as the fact that one needs a computer to implement OpenXML) – for example, see Section 8.2 of the W3C’s patent policy.

Similarly, referenced documents do not form part of the specification, and those that are existing standards are already covered by their own patent declarations that provide access to the patent rights needed to implement them – for example, see Section 2.12 of the OASIS patent policy. As a further example, Open XML references the ISO standards for country codes and time/date formats. The ODF Alliance misconstrues the OSP by taking the phrase “described in detail” out of context, when the OSP juxtaposes it with the phrase “not merely referenced”.

Andy Updegrove on the OSP:

“With this as an introduction, let’s take a look at the new Microsoft promise, both on an absolute as well as comparative basis. Here’s what it says, and what I take it to mean:

* * * *

‘…that are described in detail and not merely referenced in such Specification….’

While not usually phrased in this fashion, this is a common limitation intended to clarify that, for example, other standards that may be referenced, or so-called “enabling technologies,” the use of which would be required to use an implementation (e.g., the computer upon which the software is running) are not included.”

3. The OSP covers both semantics and syntax

In connection with the national body comment process, the Open XML specification has been revised to include semantic as well as syntactic requirements (requiring that schemas not only be read or written but that the data represented by that schema be correctly understood and acted upon by a compliant application). Thus, by its terms, the OSP covers both semantic and syntactic requirements. Moreover, the OSP applies to any portion of an implementation that implements any portion of Open XML. Thus, developers who only implement parts of the specification (either by design or as a result of errors) are still covered.

4. The OSP covers patents held by Microsoft’s subsidiaries

As the ODF Alliance’s document recognizes, the OSP covers both patents directly owned by Microsoft and also those controlled by Microsoft. This includes patents covered by Microsoft subsidiaries, as they are under the control of their parent company.