[The guy who run the BRM refuses to talk about it. His career will suffer.]
Rules altered in OOXML standardization process
,----[ Quote ]
| Rules changed on the fly to meet five-day deadline to discuss concerns with
| specification; final vote due in 30 days
`----
http://www.linuxworld.com.au/index.php?id=619140964&rid=-50
The Art of Being Mugged
,----[ Quote ]
| The four options presented were:
|
| * Option 1: Submitter's responses (Ecma's) are all automatically
| approved.
| * Option 2: Anything not discussed is not approved.
| * Option 3: Neutral third-party (ITTF) decides which Ecma responses are
| accepted
| * Option 4: Voting (approve + disapprove) must be at least 9 votes.
| Abstentions not counted.
|
| We were told that these options are not in the Directives and that were are
| given these choices because ITTF "needs to act in the best interests of the
| IEC". I don't quite get it, but there appears to be some concern over what
| the press would think if the BRM did not handle all of the comments. One NB
| requested to speak and asked, "I wonder what the press would think about
| arbitrarily changed procedures?". No response. I thought to myself, why
| wasn't ITTF thinking about the 'best interests" of JTC1 when they allowed a
| 6,045 page Fast Track submission, or ignored all those contradiction
| submissions, or decided to schedule a 5-day BRM to handle 3,522 NB comments.
| Isn't it a bit late to start worrying about what the press will think?
|
| We break for lunch.
|
| After lunch and after more discussion, the meeting adopted a variation of
| option 4, by removing the vote minimum. I believe in this vote the BRM and
| ITTF exceeded its authority and violated the consensus principles described
| in JTC1 Directives.
`----
http://www.robweir.com/blog/2008/03/art-of-being-mugged.html
Microsoft is above the law, so it tries hard to change rules.
Related:
Standards Australia defends Jelliffe he has never developed Microsoft products
,----[ Quote ]
| Look at this press release from Standards Australia, it is really funny how
| they carefully weight their words:
|
| The article also incorrectly describes Rick Jelliffe as a ‘Microsoft
| developer’. While Mr Jelliffe consults widely to industry and government
| including Microsoft, he has never developed Microsoft products.
|
| Let's rewrite it like this to see if it changes something:
|
| Rick Jelliffe is not a ‘Microsoft developer’ as such. While Mr Jelliffe
| is being paid for consultancy work by Microsoft, he is not developing
| Microsoft products.
|
| Where is the money?
`----
http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-42872/standards-australia-defends-jelliffe:he-has-never-developed-microsoft-products
Hot stuffin' in Greece?
,----[ Quote ]
| After the voting of the Greek HoD you may ask why the votes were 14 in total,
| when the organisations appointed to the committee are just 12. That's only
| the latest of the magical wonders around OpenXML.
|
| [...]
|
| New voting members are joining the committee at the last minute:
|
| However, during the discussion, the representative of the Information
| Society showed the fax he had received, to which was attached the
| decision 19103/08 of the ELOT administration, dated 1 February 2008,
| which modifies the composition of the Committee by adding four new
| organisations: the Ministry of Education, two departments of the Ministry
| of Economics, and Information Society S.A. The representatives of NTUA
| had not been informed of this decision.
`----
http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-42845/hot-stuffin-in-greece
Battle for the transparency
,----[ Quote ]
| It's been a while now, and I'm still trying to enforce HZN (Croatian national
| standards body, or CSI) to disclose the information on members of their TC
| that voted unconditional yes for Microsoft OOXML. (more about that on
| Croatian blog Fuzzy on www.linux.hr)
| It's no more about OOXML. It's about transparency, about my right to know who
| are the people that declare standards, and about my right to hold them
| responsible for their actions.
| They're stubborn. So am I. I have reached the point where the only sensible
| thing to do is to - sue them. Which is what I'm set up to.
`----
http://www.oddparity.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=10&Itemid=99999999
,----[ Quote ]
| Just yesterday I was sitting in the relevant meeting of SNV/UK14
| (http://www.snv.ch/), that decides how Switzerland will vote. The
| chairman (Hans-Rudolf Thomann) explained the following rules:
|
| - we are here to create standards, not to reject them
| - if we reach consensus (>=75%) to vote for Microsoft, we will vote
| for Microsoft
| - if we only reach a majority (>=50%) to vote for Microsoft, we
| will vote for Microsoft
| - if we reach a majority to vote against Microsoft, we will vote
| for Microsoft
| - if we reach consensus to vote against Microsoft, we will abstain
`----
http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-15521/swiss-cheese
Microsoft’s secretive standards orgs in Former Yugoslavia
,----[ Quote ]
| Croatian laws keep its national body’s votes secret, so the only way for the
| Croatian public to find out how the process went would be if a board member
| illegally leaked information out of CSI. This is, of course, unlikely to
| happen. And the Serbian national standardization body is not officially
| formed, so those two votes were easy for Microsoft, and probably not only
| ones around the globe.
`----
http://www.linuxworld.com/news/2007/092407-ooxml.html?page=1
Microsoft Tech Ed 2007: OpenXML
,----[ Quote ]
| He was asked "Why did Microsoft push OOXML through the "Fast Track" process
| instead of the standard ISO process? Wouldn't they get less resistance than
| faced now?"
|
| His response was very frank: "Office is a USD$10 billion revenue generator
| for the company. When ODF was made an ISO standard, Microsoft had to react
| quickly as certain governments have procurement policies which prefer ISO
| standards. Ecma and OASIS are 'international standards', but ISO is the
| international 'Gold Standard'. Microsoft therefore had to rush this standard
| through. Its a simple matter of commercial interests!"
`---- ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/2007/09/microsoft-tech-.html
Evidence of Microsoft Influencing OOXML Votes in Nordic States
,----[ Quote ]
| "This is how a standard is bought," Bosson wrote later. "I left the meeting
| in protest - pissed off."
`----
http://www.betanews.com/article/Evidence_of_Microsoft_Influencing_OOXML_Votes_in_Nordic_States/1188335569
Microsoft Memo to Partners in Sweden Surfaces: Vote Yes for OOXML - Updated
,----[ Quote ]
| He acknowledges that the rules might need to be changed.
`----
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070829070630660
The OOXML Problem
,----[ Quote ]
| Another thing, by introducing a "new fancy" document format, MS can hold a
| tighter grip round existing customers and get more on the false pretence that
| they've "opened up".
`----
http://phun-ky.net/2007/08/the-ooxml-problem
Rejecting OOXML
,----[ Quote ]
| All the CIOs say they want is XML documents; unfortunately they aren't as
| aware as Georg Greve, above, that Microsoft's implementation of XML is
| exceedingly half-hearted.
`----
http://fussnotes.typepad.com/plexnex/2007/08/rejecting-ooxml.html
http://www.fsfla.org/svnwiki/blogs/lxo/2007-08-31-joy-shame-anxiety.en.html
|
|
