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;
Sphere: Related ContentAuthored 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.
Oliver,
Thanks for including the link to my blog. While first with the news, I’ve been careful to only include factual data from multiple sources. So long as an account is factual, there’s no harm in being prompt.
I’ll be quite happy to let your readers read my blog entry and allow them to form their own judgments. I’ve also provided contact information to multiple delegates that were in the room to quite a few journalists already who have called them and confirmed my facts.
Andy
“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.”
who are they? jason matusow and brian? or the delegations members paid by Microsoft?
@Andy, As I understand it Andy, the “process” that you question – along with the US head of delegation in CIO Magazine this morning – is the very same process that the room of international delegates decided was the right one earlier in the week.
As I say, I suspect the truth will out over the coming few days.
“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.”
Which was factually right before Microsoft started high-level interventions in the US.
Let’s see what Microsoft will do to achieve the same among ISO members. Nobody doubts that they can. It is really depressing to see that the company doesn’t stop when its over.
Im a programmer,a simpleton but Please please why is this issue seem to be very complicated? why does other party scared of another standard? If you have another standard will it EAT AWAY your FREE WILL? will having one other standard make esisting standard an ‘UN-STANDARD’? This issue is very simple and like confucious say “life is very simple but we insist on making it complicated..” Why not let us choose what we want? DO you think we are foolish and un-educated? Even if we maybe.. we want to choose our own. ODF Dont be scared if we like you we will choose to use you.. if we like ooxml we will use it too.. let the process happen and let people think for themselves.. you make us feel stupid for your own good.. let us be
Totally agree… competition in standards is a very good thing for the industry as a whole.
OpenXML and ODF will compete side by side, they won’t be the last document formats that we know in our lifetimes either. The industry innovates, new technology comes along and we all work out how to use it.
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Sorry Oliver, I have to disagree. Competing *implementations* of the same standard are good. Multiple competing standards that do more or less the same thing are just plain stupid – bad for industry (time wasted on supporting multiple formats when one would suffice) and worse for users (added cost, complexity, persistent incompatibility).
MS’s attempts to push MSOOXML through ISO is just a disingenuous attempt to retain control of its format while simultaneously being able to sell to governments and organisations who are increasingly requiring software to implement *open* standards.
Oh, and Oliver, call it by it’s name: MS OOXML. It’s not “OpenXML” [sic].
I sincerely hope the NBs are wise enough to say no to MSOOXML.
Dave
Hi Dave, Actually the specification currently running through the FastTrack process is “ISO/IEC DIS29500 (Office Open XML)”.
As for competing standards, as an OSS advocate you surprise me a little with your comment. While it has somehow become a mantra when it comes to promoting ODF, competing standards are pretty much the bedrock of the OSS and internet worlds that we know today.
If “first to standardize” was the right way for us behave in this industry we would probably have no internet, and we would be exchanging email in a much more complex manner than we do today.
TCP/IP and SMTP were both standards that competed for the position that they have today, they competed for a little while with the OSI (TP0/TP4) stack and x400 and thankfully won out in the end.
If you want to get really esoteric then I seem to remember that the Windows 3.1 API was standardized in the mid 90s, I think we can both agree that it is a good thing that we didn’t all stop there. The POSIX API was standardized through ISO, as was the Linux API which is pretty similar in many ways.
I can’t see a situation where choice is anything other than a good thing, different choices generally do different things, and where they do identical things then it is more relevant for the market to decide which one stays and which one doesn’t.
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