To me it was classic MSFT trick and so obvious and stupid that I expected everyone to jump on it right away. I failed to comment on it at the time because it was so obvious. Then I failed to comment because I started thinking that it is so obvious that I must be wrong about seeing what I saw there. Surely someone more experienced on legal issues than me would see it.

I mean it is absolutely in clear language in the OOXML IP commitment.

But now we have even SFLC analysis of the agreement which as far as I can see fails to see the most obvious trap. Either I am missing some legal detail or a lot of people seem to not actually read what is actually written.

MSFT IP (intellectual property in the widest sense of words i.e. patents, copyrights, trademarks etc.) guarantee states that they give ***NO rights to any of their IP*** that is not necessary to implement the minimal *mandatory* part of the standard. In particular, they give no rights to anyone just because a legacy formats are REFERRED in the standard.

The more stuff BRM moved to appendices or relegated to legacy status or optional parts of the standard, the happier MSFT was. Only they can ever implement the standard in full!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No one else has any rights to even try to implement any of the functionality that is not spelled out in the mandatory parts of the standard in full. Note that any part that is not spelled out in detail is MSFT property and they agreement gives you no rights to even ask them how their various binary formats work or how MS workd 95 formats a list of items or whatever other thing that is defined by reference to how piece of software XXX works. The binary file formats are not essential part of the standard and even trying to reverse engineer them becomes even more illegal under many jurisdictions in Europe where many of MSFT most abusive behaviour was curtailed in small degree under certain protections w.r.t. rights to reverse engineer or reimplement things independently. Note that the legal status of MSFT binary format changes in each and every jurisdiction quite unpredictabibly if OOXML becomes law.

Of course MSFT could eliminate this obstacle to acceptance to OOXML by simply giving blanket license, right to sublicense and agreement not to sue anyone for any implemenetatons of the OOXML standard.

But then again, that would defeat their purpose of trying to make OOXML a standard….

Remember, all the law applies all the time and I actually see OOXML giving MSFT more protections in some jurisdictions within EU that they never had before!!!!!!

Am I really missing something or are legally minded people missing the big log in our common eye because of the forest of trivial detail?

(Signature FFAQ98)

my comment about OLE has to do with underspecification and proliferation of proprietary underspecificated features in a proposed international standard ( there are lot of them in this draft: Sqlserver, Office art extensions , VML, RTF, DOS paths, Excel functions ,etc.]

“@orlando: Be sure that I have read and reviewed whole text of DIS29500 and all proposed dispositions. Who else could say this? Could you?

let me be more specific, may be i’m getting something wrong ( i’m talking about *peer* and *careful* review of the dispositions, not to just a quick reading ).

For example, see the proposed disposition of this comment:

http://www.dis29500.org/GB-0634/

Clearly the solution is not acceptable, because it doesn’t resolve the problem alerted by the commenter.

You ( representing Czech ) voted “approved” , but the submitter of the comment GB, of course, *disapproved* it.

Do you think that the Czech “approve” is a proper vote to Response 164?

This example is only “the tip of the iceberg”.

To better understand my point ( no technical merits of DIS 29500 to be fast-tracked as ISO ) read for example what said this guy ( one of the major XML contributors ) about it:

http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2008/03/02/On-OOXML

orlando

The output of the Ballot Resolution Meeting shall be a single resolution that instructs the Project Editor to prepare a revised text. The resolution shall list the changes that the meeting has decided on.Jim&Sue2$!

Face it, if a legal requirement is not put in place to require free and open access to a document format’s specification, Microsoft will continue to do what it wants.

Even getting OOXML approved as a standard is more of a delaying tactic to allow time for Office 2007 to be deployed. It wont matter if it is an official standard or not once that happens.

How many people “chose” to buy Vista? MS will simply make the older formats unavailable.

The OSP does not cover Office 2007 files, just some part of the OOXML specification. As even MS claim they cannot tell us whether OO.o is protected by the OSP, their users simply will not have a choice.

OO.o nor any other credible competitor will be allowed to read and write Office 2007 compatible files.

Winter

http://elot.ece.ntua.gr/te48/ooxml/brm-clarifications

Microsoft can keep the $3 for all I care.

I think it will die due to lack of use… even amongst its own Office customer base.

It’s not that Microsoft’s customers don’t want to use the OOXML formats… I don’t think most of them really care (or they don’t know enough on the subject to care… not yet anyway…)

No. They won’t be using the new file formats, because they just can’t get migrated to MS’s latest Office product so that they can start to use them in earnest!!

Office 2007 introduced such an unprecendented high number of content incompatiblity problems between Office versions, that as a result, not many large companies are going to be able to migrate to it without experiencing a lot of unneccessary (and expensive!) incompatibility pains for extended periods of time.

I think a lot of large companies are waiting to see if Microsoft will fix these problems… either in a few service packs or the next major release of Office.

So while they wait it out… how many people do you suppose are going to start creating OOXML files in pre-2007 versions of Office… just because the Compatibility Pack enables them to?

I’ll tell you one thing though…. if this whole OOXML / ISO / ECMA fiasco is what finally brings Microsoft down, I hope the fall will reveal the secret of what Brian Jones has been smoking! Either that, or the flavor of koolade he’s been chugging. I wanna get me some of that!

I like rob’s 5th choice to narrow down the list of items to discuss in the available time. It is unfortunate that it was not an option.

Your OLE/linking example is quite funny. Embeded application binary object could be interoperable only if there is widely supported for such application binary objects between platforms. There is no such format, and OOXML hardly can do anything about it. But at least it will allow you to insert such objects into your document on non-Windows platforms. But if you want portable documents you can’t use embeded binary objects — this simply can’t work and it is irrelevant whether such object is embeded in .doc, OOXML, or other document format.

Where are the MHS mail systems today? Where are the applications using the ISO seven layer protol stack? SMTP, LDAP and TCP/IP and TRULY inter-operable, implementable protocols untimately won. Proprietary protocols time and again failed in the market place.

Will OOXML as an ISO standard really matter? Or will it die of it complexity, codified bugs and patent emcumberances.

As to Microsoft’s market dominance; when IBM was struggling to maintain market dominance in PC hardware, they tried to foist the heavily license encumbered MCA bus architecture on the hardware manufactures and the market place untimately responded.

Just because it has an ISO or EMCA definition does not mean it will be implemented. Microsoft’s heavy handed actions only show their desperation.

The incremental rules changes allowed for a “Press Release” voting victory. One wonders if that outcome was in any way engineered?

What more could I have done? Good question. At the BRM I was part of the US delegation, representing the US NB, not my personal interests or IBM’s interests. That is why, for example, I did not blog during the BRM. However, I did keep my own detailed transcript of proceedings, noting each statement, when someone spoke, paraphrase of what they said, etc.

People with a lot more authority and experience than I protested against process and were ruled out of order. Speaking for 8 seconds before being similarly cut off would not have accomplished anything. The goal is to be effective, not necessarily to be noisy.

So, where do we go from here? Formally, I report back to INCITS and argue for an appeal. Informally, I share my observations and invite other delegates to share theirs as well.

In the end, you bravely stood up to the mugger who gave you the choice of “your money or your life”. In that situation, you came to the understanding that “This needed to end now,” “This ends here. I’m not moving an inch more.” Why couldn’t you have taken that stand at the BRM? Why did your courage fail you there??? What could they have done to you? Did the moderator hold a knife at your throat?

OK – Obviously, even without knowing anything at all, I can easily guess that one person acting alone may not get very far and indeed, perhaps could be dragged out of the room by security, but were you alone in your perception of things there? Though you give much anecdotal evidence that many others were upset about the process, all these observations seem to be from a distance. You make no mention at all about if you personally spoke to others and what was the point of view of people whom you personally spoke to. It would seem obvious to me, that if I had come to a conclusion that it was a total farce, I would seek out others who had come to the same conclusion and explore the possibility of taking some collective action.

For example, what if a dozen delegates stood up and refused to sit down until their concerns were addressed? They would probably have been ruled out of order, but then what if they still refused to sit down? I don’t think anybody would have put a knife to their throats. Would security have been called and all be removed from the room? Well, so what if that happened? It just seems so Kafkaesque that you actually sat through the entire BRM helpless to do anything at all. Why would you even continue under those circumstances? It just seems your situation played out like one of those bad dreams you can’t wake yourself up out of. Sorry to seem to criticize. Of course I wasn’t there, and I have no way of knowing the realities of the situation. Obviously you are a very capable person, who has demonstrated courage in the past, and we should assume that if there was something you could have done you would have done it, but you leave this question without any illumination at all.

Other possible actions to take – I was expecting someone to sneak in a camera – or at least a recorder into the room. Why did no one do that? If those responsible for the BRM showed such little respect for the process, why should any one else show respect for it?

Even if one didn’t want to do anything as dramatic as smuggling a prohibited device into the meeting, one could probably quite legally spend the entire session recording the minutes with paper and pen or on their laptop. I mean, when it was clear that the process was fatally flawed, there was really no further point in participating.

Finally, please tell us – what can be done about this now, after the fact? Who can we write to – to voice our opinion? How can we ensure that this horrible thing will be properly dealt with and undone?

Jirka, with my respect to you:

i know what your “position” is about DIS 29500 and OOXML. You have put it crystal clear on your blog:

“But I was always promoting open formats and complaining about using proprietary binary formats for document interchange. After ten years OOXML could finally change this in a large scale because it is default save format in a new version of MS Office. OOXML is far from perfect and very far from being elegant and technically excellent. But making it ISO standard will somehow freeze this format and will be of benefit mainly to third-party developers and users because there will be much stronger warranty of long term stability of format. Woohoo!
“ ( http://xmlguru.cz/2007/07/czech-comments-ooxml )

So, it is clear why you blindly approve 1024 comments without ever discussing or reviewing it.

For example: you approved that replacing three occurrences of the “OLE” word with “linking technology” was an improvement, for god sake !

Do you really think that this format is interoperable and 98% implementable by other vendor distinct from Microsoft or partners who use .NET libraries to render it?

Another example: please open DIS 29500, the last draft, and search for the word IOleObject::Update , can you tell me were in this +6000 page monster is this term defined ?

Another question: search for the term “Coherent 3D behaviour”. Could you tell me were in this +6000 page monster is the term “Coherent 3d behaviour” defined

And so on, so on and so on

So, please be honest when you talk about Czech motivation, for example you could say:

“Yes, we approved 99.7% of Microsoft(ECMA) proposed dispositions because we *want* this draft approved, no matter it technical merits.”

Thank you

Orlando

Personally, I do not take it as an article of faith that the Ecma proposals are all improvements to the specification. We certainly found on Monday and Tuesday that almost every Ecma response reviewed was found to require more work. The fact that your delegation voted to disapprove 3 of the 1027 Ecma proposals shows that you as well see that there are exceptions.

Other NB’s should be entitled to their exceptions as well. But by resorting to a ballot for the vast majority of issues without discussion, the BRM failed to reach consensus.

Moreover, all Ecma proposed disposition that we approved were improvements over original DIS29500. Some of them were even improved during BRM, some of them not because of the lack of the time.

You also forgot to mention that ECMA proposed dispositions were in many cases discussed with NB and corrected before publishing on Jan-14. Czech Republic have used this approach to resolve many issues even before BRM, because it was the most productive way to improve text of spec.

Unfortunatelly majority of NBs left even the simple typos and very easy to fix to BRM, so time for more important issues was shortened.

Not approving majority of proposed disposition would mean that the final vote would be on much worst specification — of course this could be interesting option for anti-ooxml parties.

NO!

A no vote is against the DISPOSITION. If you don’t know what the disposition IS, you cannot vote against it. And if there is no consensus in the delegation (eg, there are two commercial camps), an abstain is the only solution. We say at the fall ballot that some NBs had to Abstain io vote NO because a SINGLE vendor representative simply refused to support a No vote (without argumentation, as happened in the Netherlands).

As far as I understood, delegates were NOT allowed to vote on the process, only on the content of the dispositions.

However, 4 delegations voted against the Ecma proposals, and two even refused to register for a vote. Only six voted unqualified yes.

Winter