There is nothing in NYS law, or in our "Strategy for Openness" report, requiring or recommending use by NYS government only of ISO-approved standards.

You can read the report at: http://www.cio.ny.gov/policy/esra/erecords-study.htm

NYS government asked for "full" and "direct" support of ODF in the "Strategy for Openness" report. If you feel the report didn't define this request sufficiently and it would be helpful to have further explication of what "full" or "direct" support consists of, please let that be known to your contacts in NYS government and I'm sure we can issue a supplement to the report. We're here to help.

As to supporting standards that are in process, if there is for all practical purposes a reference implementation generally agreed upon I personally don't see a problem with that except perhaps at the practical level of release cycles.

But Doug, are you sure the concern you raise about that is a consistent one? Please correct me if I am wrong, but I thought the only ISO-approved version of ODF was version 1.0, and because of some procedural reasons at the ISO, ISO approval of version 1.1 had not taken place at the time your company and others started supporting version 1.1.

So if it is okay to support not-yet-ISO-approved version 1.1, then why is it not okay to support not-yet-ISO-approved version 1.2?

PS, please feel free to contact me directly if you would like to continue this discussion in greater detail offline.

And if you or others continue to need further clarity as to what NYS was asking for in its "Strategy for Openness" report, then I strongly encourage you to support the creation of the Electronic Records Committee recommended in that report, and/or the publication of periodic updates of the report.

Thanks, John

impressive.

That is what comes to mind when I read John saying "we ask all vendors to please fully support ODF, throughout all of its OASIS-approved-iterations and in all of its aspects, as soon as possible."

I've said it before (http://tycheent.wordpress.com/2008/04/02/rip-international-standards-organization/) and I'll say it again. ISO is finished as a standards organization. It committed suicide as assuredly as a well to do person willingly walking into a "bad" neighborhood known to be the habitué of rogues and criminals at night. We can only morn their loss and wonder if there will be anything that will replace them.

Are you trying to dodge the question?

Of course Microsoft should provide their best experts. The presence of experts is not Robs complaint…instead he wonders why the meetings are so filled with Microsoft personal that are clearly not experts. What plausible reason are there to send these people?

"Your chart highlights the need for other interested parties to come to the table. There is nothing stopping them, other than maybe a lack of interest."

Exactly, lack of customer interest most likely. It is not like there is any evidence of Microsoft using OOXML to aid interoperability.

Your chart highlights the need for other interested parties to come to the table. There is nothing stopping them, other than maybe a lack of interest.

No need to be confused as to when ODF 1.2 is official. When ODF 1.2 is approved it will be well-publicized.

And note that there are two kinds of "schedules". In the first kind you control resources and priorities and can try to meet a predefined deadline by using various techniques such as adding headcount, eliminating or deferring features to reduce the remaining work, lowering quality, etc. I think we're all familiar with how that kind of schedule works.

There is nothing wrong with that approach per se, but this is not how most standards are created. With open standards you have autonomous resources, who come and go and have their own day-to-day priorities. You also have a consensus-oriented process that gives quite a different dynamic than you might have with the top-down hierarchical control you typically have in an internal corporate environment. So we really can't mandate a schedule for a standard. The best we can do is estimate dates, knowing that these estimates will change. But I wouldn't call this 'drawn out'. This is simply the nature of standards work and dealing with autonomous resources and a consensus process.

In any case, my current estimate is for us to send ODF 1.2 out for public review later this year and then to have a vote to approve it as an OASIS Standard in Q1 2010. Again, this is only an estimate.

@Andre, thanks. I'll correct the spelling.

There seems to be a lack of capacity of other industry players attached to the Committee work and the development of ODF 1.2 components, as Doug points out. This does not withstand or contradict the representation balance issue.

If nobody with clear relationship to ODF is able to make such a prediction then I think it makes many uncertain of ODF's status when even Wikipedia tells that the process has drawn out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument#Standardization

ODF is the only ISO-approved XML-based document format for new documents I am aware of. (Yes, I know about OOXML, but that's not a document format – by ISO's own terms contained in ISO/IEC 29500 OOXML is a temporary converter format to be used only when needed to carry forward old proprietary documents into XML – in other words, rarely needed, applicable only to old documents, and certainly not appropriate for creating original documents. That's what ODF is for).

In terms of support for ODF, there is no need to wait for ISO approval of any new versions of ODF – OASIS approval is good enough for us.

So now you and everyone has heard it. Everyone has previously heard this said loudly also in so many terms in NYS's "Strategy for Openness" report spoken with uniform voice across branches of our state government who helped create that report. And your colleagues have heard this said by us verbally in meetings they requested with us as well. We've been saying it loudly and clearly for a long time.

Respectfully, the old "our customers have not been asking for this" argument is not applicable to ODF. NYS govt is a huge customer. We commend your existing efforts to support ODF but we ask all vendors to please fully support ODF, throughout all of its OASIS-approved-iterations and in all of its aspects, as soon as possible.

John Cody

PS: I have plugged in "anonymously" here but please feel free to contact me offline if you doubt the authorship of this posting. You are always of course welcome to contact our agency if you need clarification of the degree of commitment to open standards we expect.

Obviously SC34 votes on the drafts that are presented to it by the WG. So if the WG is dominated by a single company, then the composition of SC34 is less important. What is the point of being the judge in the International Food Festival if all of the entries are Big Macs?

As for the work that WG4 does, I'm going to cover that in Part II, so don't worry that I'll neglect that important part of the story. And then there is the big Part III. Let me build up to it.

I think the comparisons between OASIS and SC34 here are a little misleading. The member bodies votes on the work WG4 does, and not WG4 itself. And even if we were to take a vote, Ecma (the delegation I'm on) wouldn't get a vote because we are a non-voting liaison member. In OASIS, the TC members vote on approval of committee drafts and other matters, but in SC34 the WG simply prepares a set of proposed changes and then the member bodies vote on them. FWIW, in my experience the majority of those member bodies have both IBM and Microsoft representatives on their technical committees.

It's interesting that you've mentioned the Seattle meeting a couple of times above, but I see upon closer inspection that you didn't actually use the attendance numbers from that meeting in your analysis. You also didn't include the numbers from the WG4 meeting in Prague, thus leaving out the two largest and most diverse WG4 meetings of recent months. What was the thinking behind the particular date range you used?

Judge: You are accused of larceny. How do you plead?

Defendant: Your Honor, the only reason you are accusing me is because all of these innocent people have not committed larceny. If they would just go out and steal something, then you would not be able to find fault with me. So it is entirely their fault that I stand here accused.

Microsoft clearly stated that they were handing over control to an independent committee and then, once they secured their desired ballot approval, they proceeded to stuff that committee. No other company, not a single one, has more than one employee in WG4. Microsoft has 10.

To put it into perspective, would you like to guess how many employees IBM has in SC34 working on ODF maintenance? One (me). Even if we prioritized OOXML as equal in importance with ODF (which we don't) that would suggesting putting only one person in WG4. That hardly gives balance, does it? We would need to add 10 people, right? But you do not solve a committee domination problem by asking other companies to stuff the committee as well.

All it takes is one technically competent person to get the job done. If you are sending 10 people, few of them with expertise in the subject matter, then are you really helping the committee? The feedback I received in Seattle, from the delegations that approached me, was a resounding "No".

I can see how this could be confusing. Since others might also misinterpret what I said, I've answered your question over on the ODF TC's list. Let me know if you have a better idea for how to stage the work. But those are the constraints as I see them. Microsoft is actively helping on the OpenFormula work, and certainly I appreciate that help. I don't think you need to change your priorities there. But over the next few weeks I personally will be emphasizing the remaining Part I defects, for the reasons I mention.

It would be great to see IBM and Sun participate more in IS29500 maintenance, by the way. I think observers could get a clearer sense of how the big vendors are conducting themselves across document format standards activities if they could see every large vendor's track record in all the relevant groups.