osrin.net

Well, we’re only a few days away from the close of the process to standardize OpenXML with the International Standards Organization.

I have been travelling and meeting with various folks over the last few weeks, not surprisingly every meeting seems to have similar themes. The odd part is watching many unrelated organizations move from one talking point to another, almost in unison.

On the upside, the encouraging part of this current step is that the groups that are apposed to the standardization of OpenXML seem to have run out of technical arguments since the successful ballot resolution meetingin Geneva and now seem to be doing whatever they can to discredit ISO rather than Ecma or Microsoft.

I thought it might be momentarily entertaining to look at some of these themes and just how far off the mark most of them are. This is by no means an extensive list, just a few topics that are top of mind today.

I have to give some people credit for making plausible sounding arguments stick, although at the end of the day the facts will prevail;

Withdraw OpenXML from FastTrack and submit it under a “normal” process. FastTrack is a “normal” process, it was developed by JTC1 to provide a mechanism for standards coming from industry to make their way through the ISO process. At a very high level FastTrack simply starts part way through the conventional ISO process, there is no need to convene a committee to develop a specification from scratch when a Liaison-A organization such as Ecma already has a draft document that is ready to be reviewed.

Jan van den Beld, the former Secretary General of Ecma talks about the process extensively in this PC World article that was published in Australia last week.

It is hard to know what “resubmission under a normal process” actually means, there is nothing for a complete ISO process to develop, the newly formed committee that some groups seem to be pushing for would actually have no little or no work to do…

How can we approve OpenXML when we have not seen the final specification. The final text of the specification is a combination of the draft international standard (DIS) that was published prior to the BRM combined with the resolutions that were passed by the member countries present at that meeting. There can be no last minute edits, surprises or other changes beyond those two documents.

I am told that during the last hour of the last day of the BRM the ITTF stood up and clarified the ISO/IEC position on this issue as it relates to a final draft of the specification, stating that the editor has an obligation to deliver a final version of the document no later than thirty days after ratification of the standard.

It is hard to argue with ISO/IEC on this process, although that doesn’t seem to stop anybody…

I don’t have all the IPR and patent rights to implement OpenXML. The Microsoft Open Specification Promise is pretty clear in that it is a direct grant of rights far all patents needed to work with OpenXML made to every individual on the planet, irrevocably and in perpetuity.

Next time you’re walking along the street just cast your eyes upon a totally random individual and consider that fact that the individual that you’re looking at has a full grant of rights to all patents needed to implement, use or do anything else with OpenXML.

If everybody on the planet has access to the IPR in OpenXML it is hard to work out who doesn’t…

The grant given by the OSP cannot be sublicensed, so some developers are disenfranchised. This is one that has been echoing around the chamber since last August and is somewhat erroneous. The individual who started this one needs a huge round of applause for getting so much mileage out of it.

It is correct that the OSP does not allow sub-licensing of the patents that it grants, so on the face of it this is a convincing piece of FUD. In reality though because the OSP is a direct grant of rights to every individual on the planet there is no need to sublicense.

I don’t need to borrow your bike if somebody already gave me one of my own…

There can only be one document format standard. This one implies that standardization is a little like the movie Highlander, somewhere there is an implied winner and a loser. In reality this has never been the case. Standards frequently feed of other standards, as Patrick Durusau (ODF Editor) recently pointed out.

The argument also dismisses the state of the industry in general, as the CEO of I.R.I.S recently pointed out to Stephen McGibbon, there are already a plethora of document formats serving a range of complex use cases. The I.R.I.S OCR software support 75 of them today, so the question is really around support for a 76th format, not a 2nd format.

This is a technical discussion, not an episode of Highlander…