Those of you still following the drama that relates to the standardization of OpenXML will probably have caught a story in the Inquirer earlier this week that announced that thirteen of the twenty three members of the Standards Norway document format group had walked out in protest over the countries OpenXML vote.
NORWEGIAN MEMBERS of the Technical Committee of that country’s International Standards Organisation (ISO) body Standard Norge have resigned their posts to protest the approval of Microsoft’s OOXML document formats proposal in defiance of the majority recommendation.
In all, 13 of the committee’s 23 members have resigned, a majority of the membership.
On the face of it this is pretty dramatic stuff.
Rick Jelliffe spent a little time trying to work out what had happened and who these thirteen committee members were.
So if we take these 13, and subtract people who either work for competitors of Microsoft or affiliated with the NUUG/FOSS industry/community, we get…1 person (the esteemed Steve Pepper) by my count.
Of course, affiliation does not mean bought or rote votes: I am the last person to think that, except perhaps for people without technical competence. ODF’s Patrick Durusau, for example, is paid by Sun but his value is largely that he is independent and knowledgeable. And even parrots have value, if they fairly advocate their stakeholder’s view. (Of course, most people like to consider themselves mavericks, even when violently agreeing with each other and the conventional wisdom of their peers.)
But all that being said, I tend to think that a walkout by [people who see themselves as commercial and non-commercial] competitors may generate more scepticism, fairly or unfairly, than, say, a walk-out by prospective users.
The whole post is worth a read, as are the comments.
One in particular from Fredrik E. Nilsen sheds some light on what might really be going on;
12 of the 13 members who walked out (all except Steve Pepper) joined Standard Norge K/185 when the OOXML-process started.
Lars Marius Garshol is a long time member of SN K/185 and has commented the situation at Arstechnica:
“What’s happened here is that lots of people joined the committee to oppose the standard, and while in the committee that’s all they’ve done. Now that OOXML has been approved, they no longer have any reason to be in the committee, so they are leaving. That’s hardly the committee imploding.
It is actually a great shame. Many minds came together to work on the process to standardize OpenXML bringing a wide array of relevant expert opinions. In many cases there was disagreement, but I have always held the view that there was a lot to be gained from the debate.