Arnaud’s Open blog

Since I gave a presentation on this topic at the OFE Conference in Geneva at the end of February I have meant to post something about it here. As some of us stated before, if anything, the OOXML debacle has achieved one thing: raising awareness for the need for higher quality standards and standards development processes.

Introduction

Having been primarily involved in W3C both as a staff member and a member company representative I had grown to expect a certain quality level which has led me to be genuinely baffled by the whole OOXML experience. I just didn’t know how superior the W3C process was compared to that of ECMA and ISO/IEC. I just didn’t know those organizations had processes which are so broken that they would allow such a parody of a standards development to take place and such a low quality specification to be eventually endorsed as an international standard.

There have been discussions within the W3C for a long time as to whether it should seek to become a PAS submitter and adopt a policy to systematically submit its standards to ISO/IEC. I used to think it should. I no longer think so. The W3C process is so superior to that of ECMA and ISO/IEC, it’s these organizations that need to learn from W3C and those who are working for the W3C standard label to be recognized at an international level in its own right have all my support.

Ecma’s value proposition vs W3C’s core principles

Let’s look at what differentiates W3C from these organizations by first having a look at Ecma’s stated value:

A proactive, problem solving experts’ group that ensures timely publication of International standards;

Offers industry a “fast track“, to global standards bodies, through which standards are made available on time;

Balances Technical Quality and Business Value:

• Quality of a standard is pivotal, but the balance between timeliness and quality as well: Better a good standard today than a perfect one tomorrow!
• Offers a path which will minimize risk of changes to input specs
• Solid IPR policy and practice

Ecma can be viewed as a reconfigurable hub of TCs

The insistence on time, fast track, business value, minimal risk of changes over quality certainly strikes me as odd. Contrast this with some of the key characteristics of W3C taken from various parts of its documentation:

Mission: To lead the World Wide Web to its full potential by developing protocols and guidelines that ensure long-term growth for the Web.

W3C refers to this goal as “Web interoperability.” By publishing open (non-proprietary) standards for Web languages and protocols, W3C seeks to avoid market fragmentation and thus Web fragmentation.

A vendor-neutral forum for the creation of Web standards.

W3C Members, staff, and Invited Experts work together to design technologies to ensure that the Web will continue to thrive in the future, accommodating the growing diversity of people, hardware, and software.

Although W3C is a consortium which for a large part is funded by its members, the staff led by Tim Berners-Lee has a clear understanding that its mission goes far beyond that of merely satisfying its members. It is working for the benefit of all with a long term vision.

Because of this W3C is more open than many other organizations. One such evidence is the notion of invited experts that was introduced very early on and that allows non members subject-matter experts to participate in the development process. Because of this it also favors quality over time, knowing that while publishing standards faster might serve some short term financial interests it is typically detrimental to the overall stability of the web and contrary to a smooth evolution that will benefit the greater community in the long term.

This is of course not without creating some tensions between its staff and its members at times but, to its credit I think the staff has been mostly successful at balancing the various forces at play so that no single interest takes priority over general interest. This was true for instance when it adopted a patent policy which favors Royalty Free licensing, forcing major vendors, often more stuck in their old ways than necessarily fundamentally against it, to reconsider how they manage their IP with regard to standards.

W3C’s standards development process

Looking at the W3C standards development process also reveals some key characteristics that are fundamental to achieving its greater mission. The typical development of a W3C “standard” - officially called “recommendation” - looks something like this:

1. Member or Team Submission
2. Development of a charter / Creation of a Working Group
   • Vote from Members + call for participation
3. Publication of Member-only and Public Working Drafts (WD).
4. Last Call announcement.
   • WG believes all requirements are fulfilled
5. Publication of a Candidate Recommendation (CR)
   • Call for implementations
6. Publication of a Proposed Recommendation (PR).
   • Call for review
7. Publication as a Recommendation (REC).

It is particularly important to note that contrary to Ecma, submissions to W3C in no way constrain what is eventually produced as a standard, and that no guarantee is given regarding how much can be changed. In fact, quite the opposite is said to be expected. Yet, I’ve never heard anyone claim that any W3C standard developed from a submission didn’t turn out to be better than the original submission.

It is also worth noting that several phases of the process stress the need for reviews by various interested parties, going from a fairly small group to an ever bigger community as the level of confidence increases over time and the specification gets closer to final approval.

Also worth noting is the “Candidate Recommendation” stage. I’m happy to say that I, along with Lauren Wood then chair of the DOM Working Group, am at the source of the introduction of this step in the W3C’s standards development process. The idea behind it is simply to stress the need for implementation experience and to ensure that specifications do not move forward unless they are backed by actual implementations demonstrating that the specification achieves its stated goal.

When first introduced, the success criteria for this phase merely relied on having for each feature of the specification a couple of vendors reporting successful implementation. Over time the bar has been raised time after time to now going as far as holding “interop fests” during which implementations from various vendors are tested against each other.

Contrast this with Ecma and ISO/IEC publishing international standards without even a single claim of successful impementation from anyone…

More striking yet, is the alternate paths a specification may follow within W3C:

• Alternate ending
  Working Group Note
• Return of a Document to a Working Group for Further Work when:
  • the Working Group makes substantive changes to the technical report at any time
  • the Director requires the WG to address important issues raised during a review or as the result of implementation experience.

When not enough implementation experience can be gathered after a while the specification is basically parked aside and recorded as a “Note” rather than let through as a “recommendation” or standard.

Any time significant changes occur or issues are found the document is sent back to the beginning. This is simply because it is well understood that 1) all the checks that were made all along may be jeopardized by any significant changes, and 2) any issue found may require significant changes leading to 1). In practice this doesn’t always mean a lot more time being spent. Indeed, if the changes turn out not to raise any particular problems the document will go that much faster through every step the second time around. But this way, no chances is taken.

Contrast this with the ISO/IEC Fast Track process which allowed OOXML to be modified in ways no one could even fully understand and which went its merry way to final vote without even a final document to show for.

W3C’s decision process

Another key differentiator of W3C is its decision process which I’ve talked about in my blog entry called Can you live with it?

• “Consensus is a core value of W3C.”
• Vote is a last resort when consensus cannot be reached.
  • Everyone has one vote (including invited experts)
• Consensus sets the bar higher than a majority vote.
  • Not only ask whether people agree but also whether anybody dissents
  • Practical way to judge the latter is to ask: “Can you live with it?”
  • Can lead to opposite decision

While the notion of “consensus” isn’t that unique I think W3C differentiates itself from other organizations claiming to make decisions by consensus in the way it defines and assesses whether consensus has been reached.

From what I’ve heard of what went on with OOXML many claims of decisions made by consensus I believe would have failed in W3C.

W3C’s constant evolution

Beyond the core principles on which it is founded, the W3C differentiates itself in that it is constantly looking for ways to further improve its process to better achieve its goals.

• Process is constantly evolving to increase quality and openness
• More and more Working Groups are public
• Technical Architecture Group (TAG)
• Based on the belief that the larger the community the greater the standards produced
• Patent policy evolved from RAND to RF

I’ve already talked about the introduction of the “Candidate Recommendation” phase to ensure greater quality. The introduction of the TAG with the mission to ensure that all W3C recommendations follow some key architectural principles and that the sum of all of them constitute a consistent set is another example of how the W3C evolved for the better.

I’ve already talked about the notion of invited experts ensuring greater input and more openness. Allowing its Working Groups to be opened to the public was yet another bold move from W3C. This was feared to be detrimental to ensuring a sustained number of members for which one of the incentives of being a member is to do just that: participate in Working Groups. But here again the W3C favored greater openness over its own self interest and from what I understand it is being rewarded in that more and more WGs are becoming public without having generated an hemorrhage of members.

Contrast this with ISO/IEC’s process which, from what I’m told, has been left untouched for many years, save a few changes to reduce the amount of time allocated to each phase of its process…

(True) Open standards development process increases quality

It is now well understood that the power of open source development comes from its community-driven approach to problem solving. Because open source communities can include people with very different geographical and cultural backgrounds, they are inherently richer than what any single organization can afford. As a result the sum of community innovations thus created far exceeds what any single vendor could create. The same applies to standards development.

• The benefits of open development apply to standards just as well
• Greater community input with different background, expertise, culture, interest leads to better standards
• Example: SOAP
  • SOAP 1.1 submitted to W3C in 2000 by several members
  • SOAP 1.2 Recommendation published in 2003
  • SOAP 1.2 is recognized by all to be superior

As previously stated and demonstrated in the example of SOAP, specifications going through true open development improve. Progressive companies that have understood this embrace this openness rather than fight it or pretend, simply because they’ve realized that when everybody benefits from it so do they.

Conclusion

Not all standards development organizations are the same. Looking forward, I believe that competition between standards organizations will increase and established de jure organizations will be further challenged. In this context, quality will become a differentiator between standards organizations and, just as it is true in the corporate world, standards organizations that do not strive to improve will become irrelevant over time.

The number of ad hoc. community-driven organizations will increase and more standards will be created the way OpenID was: by a group of interested individuals that share a common interest and decide to solve it swiftly in a somewhat informal way using the internet to its full advantage.

Customers will learn to differentiate products, solutions, and services based on quality open standards or seek unbiased counsel from firms and partners who can help them tell the difference between good quality and good marketing.

Ultimately, reliance on traditional de jure standards will probably decrease. In the meanwhile, if they care to survive standards development organizations will need to start a serious introspection of their processes and look to adopt some of the principles set by exemplary organizations such as W3C.

While no organization is perfect and there always is room for improvement, W3C has indeed set itself apart from the pack by showing the way to much greater quality and openness for the benefit of all.

It only makes me more proud to have its name on my resume.

From the outset of the process several countries pointed out that OOXML was inappropriate for Fast Track processing and that it should be rejected and re-submitted to the formal standards process. This has since then be repeated again and again, by me as well as many other people, and I have no interest in rehashing that point once again.

On the other hand it appears to me that some people are getting confused about what the Fast Track is really about and what it’s not designed for.

JTC1’s choice not to listen to the countries that raised contradictions basically led it to trying to replace the multi-year standards process by a few months and a 5 day BRM. Predictably this has failed leaving many issues undiscussed, unresolved, or simply to be accounted for.

I said predictably because the Fast Track process is not designed to fix broken specifications, so it is no surprise that it failed short of achieving that goal.

The Fast Track process is merely designed to ratify specifications that already meet ISO standards criteria or are very close to. OOXML doesn’t, and for this reason alone, if nothing else, it shouldn’t be approved.

People should also remember that voting No to OOXML now doesn’t necessarily mean No forever. It simply means not yet, it is not ready - and there is plenty of evidence this is the case -. By voting No, people are simply giving the world a chance to fix OOXML before ratifying it.

As I stated before the world has nothing to gain from rushing OOXML through ISO. The only urgency here is not to rush into making this broken specification an ISO standard.

For what it’s worth, ISO/IEC officials’ response to criticism over the use of the Fast Track process has been that if people don’t think it is appropriate they should simply vote No. So you can take it from them: Vote No.

If the discussion on OOXML was purely technical I don’t think there would be much debate. Apart from Microsoft employees and a few lost souls, for whom we can only wonder about their real motivations, I have yet to meet any technical person arguing that OOXML is a good specification.

The reality is that from a technical point of view OOXML is just plain terrible and the body of evidence proving this point only keeps growing as people get time to review it. Antonis Christofides of the Greek delegation in his write-up on Some clarifications on the OOXML Ballot Resolution Meeting, sums it all up with “the Ecma responses make the text slightly better, but though slightly better it is still abysmal.“

Given that, it means the only reason OOXML has even a chance to become an ISO standard is political. On that front I see two factors at play. First and for most is the extent of Microsoft’s powerful network built over the years which proves to be enough to, at least in some cases, skew the results in National Bodies. Second appears to be the belief by some people that by approving OOXML as an ISO standard they’re somehow bringing Microsoft to the table and taking control over the format.

It is this second point that I want to talk about here because I have no doubts that many well intentioned people fall in that latter category and I’m afraid they are badly mistaken. To be clear I’d be more than happy to be proven wrong on that front, but Microsoft’s track record leaves me no hope to see this happen.

Indeed, Microsoft’s track record shows that they never give away control and that they only use the standard process to appease customers’ fears by making them believe that everything is all right because their products are based on standards.

Let me share with you some personal experience on this so you can understand where I’m coming from.

At the time I was a W3C employee, in response to when Microsoft would fully implement CSS2 Microsoft’s representative once replied: “We will never do it. We have implemented what we are interested in. This is it.” Almost ten years later, this is still basically true. Yet, Microsoft at the same time kept pushing for CSS3 with new features they were interested in. What this told me is that they pick and choose.

Later, when I became IBM’s main representative at W3C and dealt with Microsoft to bring to W3C several of the Web services related specifications we were developing together I kept being confronted with the problem that while IBM leaned towards bringing the specifications early on to W3C Microsoft kept delaying this as much as possible. This kept me intrigued until one day my peer at Microsoft told me: “For us, the submission to W3C is the end of the road. What happens after doesn’t really matter.“

I didn’t need to ask why. The explanation was obvious. Once the specification is submitted to W3C Microsoft can tell its customers that it is a standard. Technically it’s not, but if any customer ever cares to ask it’s easy enough to put their fear to rest by explaining that the process is started and it’s simply a matter of time. By the time the standard eventually comes out, customers are already using Microsof’s technology and no longer have much choice if they find out that Microsoft doesn’t even bother adhering to the actual standard. They are locked-in.

Now, someone I’m sure could point out that they aren’t the only ones failing to be fully compliant to a given standard and for that matter I’m sure somebody will quickly bring up a case where IBM is at fault. But while I believe it usually is accidental what I got from Microsoft tells me that in their case it is not. It is simply part of their strategy.

So, back to OOXML. I’d like to know what makes people believe this isn’t going to be the case here. I’d like to understand what makes people think that all of a sudden Microsoft has decided to play nice and relinquish control over the technology that constitutes its biggest cash cow, mind you.

Just looking at the their response to the comments that were filed for the BRM I can already see where this is going. In response to the lack of use of standard technologies Microsoft has generously offered to ADD many of these technologies. This is the case of SVG for vector graphics for instance, or ISO 8601 for dates. But while doing so they were very careful not to require implementation of these technologies, and they were very careful not to remove any of the technologies they actually use.

This is all Microsoft needed. They can, and I predict will, ignore all these additions which are optional and stick to what they have. The only reason they were added was to remove reasons for National Bodies to vote against OOXML.

You’ll note that in this case, because governments aren’t satisfied with a mere submission to ISO, it was important for Microsoft to actually get the ISO standard label. That’s why they chose the shortest way and put all their resources into achieving this goal at all cost.

If OOXML becomes an ISO standard, I predict that they will claim compliance with the standard overnight. Quite easy thing to do when the standard was custom made for your product and every modification brought to it was carefully carved out as optional. Then they will either ignore the standard process altogether and dump a new version every once in while through ECMA+JTC1, or pretend they care about the standard process to appease any possible discontents and participate in its “maintenance” while still ignoring it in its product. They will undoubtedly continue to pick and choose.

And what this means is that, if OOXML becomes an ISO standard next week, all the people who thought they were forcing them to the table will simply have given them carte blanche to abuse the ISO standard label.

I hope we’ll never have to find out but if we do, I sincerely hope I’m wrong. I’m used to joke about the fact that I’m always right, but in fact, it that were the case I challenge Microsoft to prove me wrong. I’d be much happier if they did, I just see no reason to believe it.

In case anybody misunderstood my blog entry “Let’s be clear: The Apache Software Foundation does NOT support OOXML“, I did not mean to imply that the ASF has any official position one way or another regarding OOXML.

My point was simply that Microsoft is misleading people in claiming OOXML support from basic XML tools and their parent organizations.

I don’t think anybody who actually read my entry could read it otherwise but I respect the sensitivity of some ASF people on the matter.

Every so often I watch some financial program on TV and one thing I’ve always appreciated is the full disclosure policy they have in the financial world.

That is, when someone from the financial industry is being interviewed by journalists on what they think about a particular financial interest, be it a particular company or a specific sector, a chart is typically displayed disclosing any relationship the interviewee has with the financial interest he or she is speaking about.

The disclosure typically includes information such as whether the person owns stock in the company being discussed, whether his or her company owns that stock or manages a fund that owns that stock, etc.

This is something especially important to know given that if the person owns that stock and tells you to buy it, he or she will directly benefit from your purchase. It doesn’t mean that the expressed opinion is necessarily false or misleading, but it’s important for you to know there is a possible conflict of interest so that you have all the elements in hand to make your own decision.

Once the dust settles on the rubbles left behind by the OOXML debacle, as we move forward in the IT industry and reflect on what we ought to do to improve our standards setting process to prevent this type of abuse from reoccurring, I think we should look into globally adopting a disclosure policy similar to what the financial world has.

Looking at the people who’ve participated in the worldwide debate around OOXML I see two categories of people. There are those who are employed by a company, like myself, and who speak with that hat on clearly disclosing to the world a possible bias. Then there are those who talk without showing any particular affiliation with any interested parties involved. These people are either truly independent or simply hiding the ties they have. The problem is that we don’t know.

I should note that some standards development organizations already have such disclosure policy. When one joins a working group, he or she must disclose any relevant affiliation. But this needs to be generalized.

It is currently too easy for people to speak as if they were independent and use this pseudo-independence to influence uninformed people. Groklaw recently posted a story called “How to Get Your Platform Accepted as a Standard - Microsoft Style” with evidence that Microsoft, for one, has made this kind of tactic an integral part of its business development strategy. It is hard to read this and not wonder about Rick Jeliffe’s continuous lobbying and Patrick Durusau’s recent change of heart. Especially when everything they say becomes Microsoft’s new ammunition in a matter of minutes.

I think in the long run blatantly biased people discredit themselves and can only do so for so long. It takes a lifetime to build a reputation and minutes to destroy it. Those who have been working on destroying theirs for months over OOXML have in my opinion little prospect other than specializing in the job of “pseudo-independent for hire”, with the inherent risk of seeing their value proposition diminish over time, as their game becomes more and more obvious to the world. But more subtle people may still go on for quite a while before being detected, if ever.

Of course a disclosure policy similar to what is used in the financial world isn’t bullet proof either. There will always be some room for game play by unscrupulous people and companies. But at least it would set some expectations and, just like in the financial world, the consequences when being caught to have failed to disclose any relevant affiliation could be far greater than they currently are. I’m not excluding judicial prosecution here. After all, the stakes are not that different than in the financial world and without being a lawyer I think anti-trust laws and others may apply.

Something to think about when considering ways to increase transparency in the standards development process.

OK, I’ll admit that nobody has claimed otherwise. Yet.

But in these days and age you are never too prudent. It wouldn’t surprise me to see this or other similar fancy claim being published eventually.

Indeed, in its desperate and last minute attempts to convince National Bodies around the world that OOXML is happening anyway so they might as well support it as an ISO standard, Microsoft is eager to claim support by as many companies and organizations as possible.

As evidence, in its latest OOXML propaganda open letter Microsoft lists IBM among other companies as having “already adopted (or announced adoption of) Open XML in their products”. This, despite a clear explanation of the contrary by Rob Weir, published two months ago! Does anyone believe they haven’t seen it or heard about this? I sure don’t. And if there was any room for misunderstanding Bob Sutor’s statement filled that in.

A colleague in a foreign country even reported that in a National Body meeting he had been confronted by a representative from Microsoft who was trying to silence him via intimidation and insistence that IBM supported OOXML contrary to what he was saying.

Microsoft’s oversight of IBM’s denials is clearly not accidental. It is part of a well crafted and continuous disingenuous plan to convince NBs at all cost. There is already so much evidence of Microsoft going far beyond what most would consider normal lobbying behavior it is sickening. For one, I’m not ready to forget the case of the NGOs in India. Talk about dirty practices.

But what really is at the bottom of Microsoft’s claims is that basically any software that handles XML supports OOXML. While technically this is true to a certain degree, such a bold claim without any further qualification is pure misinformation. Obviously, one of the advantages of using XML is to make your format, whatever it is, easier to handle, it’s one of the fundamental benefits of using XML. But as I previously touched on in my entry on XML vs Open, there is a big difference between being able to handle XML files at the XML level and truly supporting the particular format at hand.

Supporting OOXML. cannot be merely declared on the sole basis that a software can read OOXML files, or store OOXML files. If that were the case, then any XML parser could be said to support OOXML and the Apache Software Foundation could be said to support OOXML because its XML parser, Xerces, can read OOXML files (one would actually have to unzip them first but it’s not like Microsoft would stop at that kind of detail). But it takes much more than that to really support OOXML.

One has to understand the actual structure beyond the XML representation and the semantic associated to each and every piece of data found in an OOXML file. That’s what the 6000+ pages of the specification are supposed to define, unfortunately they do that extremely poorly.

The good news is that I don’t think Microsoft is fooling that many people. Based on my own observation of Microsoft representatives and the way they talk to people they seem to be completely oblivious to the fact that they appear as if they think the people they are talking to are too stupid to see through their tired arguments. I’ve got news for them: people aren’t that stupid. Thankfully. And I’m hopeful the results at the end of the month will make that clear.

The other good news is that whether OOXML gets approved or not, I believe Microsoft will pay a high price for all of its mischief and its image will come out of this badly damaged, something they can only blame themselves for.

In the meanwhile, don’t take for granted any claims of support for OOXML from Microsoft. The fact that Microsoft claims IBM has adopted OOXML can only make one wonder about all the other companies they list…

A lot of the debate around OOXML has focused on whether it is good to have competing standards or not. The debate started from the simple fact that Microsoft decided to create its own standard for office applications rather than adopt the established ISO standard for office applications: ODF.

While there is clearly a need for evolution and there are times when it makes sense to introduce a new standard to replace an old one there is no doubt in my mind that in general there is much more to lose from having multiple standards rather than a single one than there is to gain.

Interestingly enough I should point out that Microsoft defends that very point at times. In the case of XML for instance, when the W3C introduced XML 1.1 to address some internationalization limitations in XML 1.0, something important to many non-western countries, Microsoft voted against XML 1.1 arguing that the introduction of a new version of XML would be too disruptive!

Yet the tactic of introducing a competing standard to disrupt the status quo is common practice for the Redmond company. For instance, in the Web services management area, an area not so visible to the public as office applications but still very important to the IT industry, they did the same. Microsoft consistently refused to join the ongoing industry effort around Web Services Distributed Management (WSDM) at OASIS for years. They kept claiming that they had no interest in this topic. Yet, in 2005. after WSDM became an OASIS standard supported by a large segment of the industry mind you, Microsoft introduced their own technology named WS-Management, with support from some well chosen partners. Three years later the industry is still trying to figure out what to do with the mess they thus created.

But all this debate around multiple standards is somewhat of a distraction from the real issue at hand. In the end what is really being asked to National Bodies (NB) around the world isn’t to choose between ODF and OOXML, or to choose between ODF alone and ODF and OOXML. The question that NBs are asked to answer is whether OOXML deserves to become an ISO standard in its own right.

The reality is that if the OOXML specification wasn’t of such a poor quality it most certainly would have had a much easier ride through the Fast Track process. If all that could be argued against it was that it was too big, the IP license has gaps, and multiple standards aren’t good, this may not even have made headlines, no matter how true it is.

What is appalling about OOXML is that it is fundamentally a VERY BAD specification and I just can’t understand what process would allow this garbage to even be presented as an ISO standard up for vote. OOXML is from a technical point of view just terrible. All I’ve seen from it and all I’ve read about it only confirms this. And I have yet to meet any technical person arguing in all honesty that OOXML is a good specification. The latest facts reported by Rob Weir speak for themselves.

So, again, the real question isn’t so much whether the world would benefit from having several competing standards or not. The real question is how many bad standards do we need? And the answer is zero.

OOXML must be voted down simply because it is a bad standard.

I wish I knew how to fix it but I don’t. What I do know however is that the ISO/IEC process is severally broken in that it is riddled with room for game play. I guess ISO/IEC managed to get away with it for a long time but things have changed now that Microsoft has shown how to use every loophole in the process to get to its end.

Hopefully, justice will prevail and OOXML will rightly get voted down at the end of the month but the process shouldn’t have allowed to go that far into this sad farce in the first place.

In the latest demonstration of how broken the process is the US V1 technical committee voted on Friday to recommend approval of OOXML in a 17-4 vote, where Microsoft and no fewer than 11 of its business partners voted in favor of the specification. Am I the only one to see a major conflict of interest at play in this?

Evidently the result of the vote simply reflects the make up of the committee and can in no way be trusted to represent any kind of objective evaluation of the proposed standard.

So, I have to ask: how can we ask someone to vote on its own specification? Has any submitter ever voted against its own submission? I actually don’t know if that ever happened but the conflict of interest is so obvious that I wonder why this was ever allowed in the first place.

My guess is that this same process usually works just fine because normally specifications brought up for ratification by ISO/IEC are the product of a standardization process which involves more than one interested party. In such a case, the standard doesn’t solely benefit one particular vendor but represents a compromise between stakeholders.

In the case of OOXML, the reason the process falls apart is I believe primarily because OOXML is the product of a single vendor and because this vendor is supported by a large ecosystem that can participate in what is nothing else than a hijack of the standards process.

To be fair, it is not clear that other standards organizations are immune to that type of scam but thankfully there aren’t that many Ecmas around ready to make it that much easier.

As I said at the beginning I’m not sure how to fix this problem. Given the possible intricacies of partnerships between companies of our modern world it is going to be hard to figure out a clear way to discriminate among the companies involved and decide whether they have a conflict of interest or not. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try though. For one thing, it is not hard to make the call when it comes to Microsoft and OOXML. So, we could definitely do better than what we currently do.

At a minimum when there is an obvious conflict of interest, such as when asking Microsoft whether OOXML should become an ISO standard or not, the rules should make it impossible for the company to take part in the evaluation process.

When I was a kid I remember there was a TV show called “Eurovision” in which musical bands from various European countries competed with each other. The bands were given scores by judges from each country and the band with the highest tally won, a bit like what is done for ice skating. Although my memory isn’t very clear on the rules and all I do seem to recall that judges did not take part in the scoring of their own country band. This was clearly meant to lessen any risk of bias due to conflict of interest.

Maybe some similar rule should be used for standards ratification. Of course, the fact that a company can hide behind a pseudo standards organization such as Ecma makes this a bit trickier to figure out but, again, I still think we should try.

Note that the recommendation from the V1 committee does not necessarily translate in the final US vote. This recommendation now goes to the INCITS EB, for a 6-day ballot and resolution meeting, which will decide on the final position.

I can’t wait to be done with OOXML so that we can focus our energy on fixing the international standards process. If anything, what we’ve learned throughout this whole ordeal is that it is in need of a serious scrubbing.

It appears that, in spite of Microsoft’s attempts to spin the BRM into a successful meeting which delegations from around the world left “happy” and “cheering” (I seriously wonder what they are on, do greed and deception get one high?), people are really upset about the way the BRM went on and are lining up at the “Fast Track Customer Services” counter to file complaints.

I actually took that photo while waiting for my plane in London Heathrow. Even though I wasn’t really paying attention the sign caught my eye and I couldn’t prevent smiling at the whole scene. I took the shot vainly trying not to look too conspicuous to the many puzzled people surrounding me. I didn’t try to explain.

I guess the words “Fast Track” will never be the same for many of us.

Nothing!

I’ve already stated several times before how inappropriate the Fast Track process is, simply based on the size of the specification, the number of reported errors, the lack of time, etc. But as I was attending the OFE conference last week in Geneva I was told something that really made me ponder about the reason this is even taking place.

What I was told is the following: during a break XXX from Microsoft was overheard asking a delegation, that had expressed its dismay over the way the BRM was being conducted, something along the following lines: “you want to throw away all this work? waste it all?” And his tone and attitude was reported to be fairly aggressive.

One can wonder about the appropriateness (and effectiveness actually) of trying to press on delegates by making them feel responsible for wasting everybody’s time but the thought that went through my mind when I heard this story was: “Why? Why does it to have to be a waste? Why does it have to be all or nothing? And why does it have to be decided NOW?? What’s the hurry?“

The level of interest, discussion, argumentation, involvement, and passion put into the various debates taking place around the world have clearly demonstrated that OOXML is important to people - whether they love it, hate it, or are somewhere in between -.

Given that, it seems obvious to me that it should be given the time it needs to get proper treatment and that giving OOXML more time should be in EVERYBODY’s interest.

Indeed, more time would allow the malcontents to articulate their point of view better, list all the issues they have (and not just the few they have a chance to raise during the artificially constrained timetable of the Fast Track process). More time would allow the OOXML supporters to address all issues raised, and make their position stronger with an improved specification. Finally, more time would allow those on the fence to more carefully weigh the pros and cons and take a decision in a more serene atmosphere.

More time would most certainly allow to get all parties closer to one another if not to completely agree.

So, why is it rushed? Well, let’s see.

The only ones really pushing for this to happen faster rather than carefully are Microsoft and Ecma.

In the case of Ecma it is easy to see why. Ecma is nothing more than a rubber stamping organization for hire with no soul, which is pushing for OOXML to go through as fast as possible and with as little change as possible simply because this is what it is paid to do. This is what their “value proposition” is all about: ‘timely publication of international standards [...] “fast track” [...] minimize risk of change‘.

The case of Microsoft isn’t as simple on face value. If, as it claims, Microsoft really wanted to be more open it would have a keen interest in improving the quality of the specification and ensuring maximum interoperability. The world at large would also gain from having a better specification that actually enables competition - be consumers or vendors -.

So why is Microsoft favoring time to “ISO standard” over quality of the specification? The only possible explanation is that its claims about openness are mere pretense. If it’s only pretense then everything becomes obvious.

Microsoft has an inherent conflict of interest in the OOXML standardization process. Not only it does not have any interest in improving the quality of the specification, in fact, the worse it is the better for Microsoft. The lower the quality of the specification the more difficult it is for others to implement OOXML and actually compete with Microsoft products.

All Microsoft really cares about is the ISO standard label, so that it can declare that it’s now safe for everybody to buy its product because (in theory) it is based on an ISO standard. The faster Microsoft can get it, the better.

Unlike every other vendor Microsoft doesn’t need a good specification to develop its product, it already has a product. This really is why the OOXML specification is of such a poor quality. It is not accidental.

Now, what I don’t understand is why should anybody else play Microsoft and Ecma’s game. National Bodies have nothing to gain from playing this game.

NBs shouldn’t feel intimidated by Microsoft’s implications that they would be responsible for wasting a lot of effort by saying No to OOXML. NBs shoud instead tell Microsoft to stop wasting everybody else’s time for its own self and sole interest and request that Microsoft demonstrates genuine interest in opening up its format by taking it to the normal ISO standards process so that due process can take place.