Jesper Lund Stocholm <jls2008@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> espoused:
> "[H]omer" <spam@xxxxxxx> wrote in news:t4ju95-ojr.ln1@xxxxxxxxxx:
>
>> Jesper Lund Stocholm wrote:
>
>> I understand that "improving the text" may have been the formal
>> bureaucratic jargon for this process, but you are nonetheless greatly
>> understating the significance of this meeting, by continually trying
>> to distance delegates' participation from their opinions, with
>> platitudes.
>
> To be clear - this was a very important meeting indeed. I am not trying
> to say otherwise. All I am saying is that it was not about approving DIS
> 29500.
>
>> Regardless of the specific purpose of any given meeting, any vote
>> which furthers the successful ratification of OOXML is an idealogical
>> "vote" in its favour.
>
> Aaah - I think we finally see why we dissagree. It is here important to
> know that even those countries that have strong oppositions on OOXML all
> participated constructively in the sessions and out-of-meeting debates.
> They did not just sit on their hands and protest. They actively
> participated in improving the text.
>
And here we have a problem. It's not possible to "improve" a 6,000 page
document in a few hours which has thousands of problems.
Personally, I spent about 10 years working on international standards, I
know how long it can take just to get agreement to a few words in a
sentence, let alone 6,000 pages.
The whole situation is absurd. Anyone trying to "improve" a document in
such a situation, knowing that the rules of fast-track approval were
never intended to be abused in such a way, is merely becoming party to
the abuse.
Fortunately, in spite of the efforts of Microsoft in trying to stack the
committees, get countries into the meeting who've never attended before,
fill the place with "Microsoft partners", the whole exercise seems to
have collapsed into an embarassing mess.
I also know, however, that the only technique left for stopping such
abuses can be to merely prolong debate. It's essential that the debate
is done within the local rules, but it's also essential to show that it
would be impossible to achieve agreement. Those delegates with no
experience of such events would probably not even realise what's going
on.
No, Sir, you have it wrong. The delegations which were trying to stop
this protested in the appropriate way - they did it by attempting to do
something they knew could not be achieved. They tried to fix a 6,000
page document in a few hours in a large committee.
--
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