Archives for 2008

Where’s Rob?

2008/10/07 By Rob 14 Comments

Alex Brown is saddened that I did not attend the JTC1/SC34 Plenary in Korea last week. You can view his photo essay and lament on my absence here.

[A] question being asked along the committee corridors by perplexed NB members is whether IBM has withdrawn its staff from participation SC 34. I have no idea, but IBM people are certainly conspicuous here by their total absence.

Well, I’m truly touched, and by way of reciprocation maybe I can help Alex and any other similarly perplexed attendees understand the situation better.

First, it will help if we start by taking a look at recent SC34 meetings and what the attendance record (publicly accessible) says:

Date	Location	Total Attendance	Size of US Delegation	# of IBM/OASIS Participants	# of Microsoft/ECMA Participants
Nov 2004 Plenary	Washington DC	25	6	0	0
May 2005 Plenary	Amsterdam	28	4	0	0
Nov 2005 Plenary	Atlanta	22	4	1	0
May 2006 Plenary	Seoul	30	4	2	2
Mar 2007 Plenary	Oslo	37	6	0	5
Dec 2007 Plenary	Kyoto	52	3	2	12
Apr 2008 Plenary	Oslo	37	3	1	8
July 2008 Ad Hoc 1	London	20	1	1	10
Oct 2008 Plenary	Jeju Island	35 est.	2 est.	0 est.	12 est. (estimates from Alex Brown, since no official attendance has been published)

To put it in perspective, the US SC34 shadow committee currently has around 20 members. Before Microsoft stuffed it we had around 7. Regardless, the US SC34 mirror committee typically sends a delegation of 2 or 3 people to international meetings. IBM attendance at these meetings has varied from 0 to 2. It really depends on where the meeting is being held. If it is being hosted by an NB where an IBM employee is a member, then he will typically attend. If something is on the agenda that I find interesting, then I’ll typically attend regardless of location.

Now what is really interesting is how Microsoft has increased its attendance over the years, something Alex does not mention and presumably does not find fault with. I remember introducing myself to the first Microsoft attendee at a SC34 Plenary back in 2006. He was an attorney, from Microsoft’s anti anti-trust department. An odd person to send to a technical standards committee meeting, don’t you think?

Since then, Microsoft’s representation has swelled so it now comprises 20-50% of any given meeting. And that does not count those additional “independent” companies and contractors that are employed by Microsoft to create OOXML convertors or to consult with on OOXML matters. I’m only counting those people who explicitly list “Microsoft” or “Ecma” as their corporate affiliations.

I think you’ll find no other case in SC34 attendance records of a single company sending more than a single representative. Everyone else in the world sends one person. IBM once sent two people. Microsoft sends ten or a dozen.

Despite Microsoft’s successful attempt to stuff SC34, as they did NB’s around the world, participation from IBM remains in the range of 0 to 2 participants. I’d be hard pressed to justify the expense of any greater attendance. The real work on ODF goes on in OASIS. That’s where we put our people, where they can be most effective on the technical topics related to ODF.

Alex, of course, misses all this. Sitting in a room full of non-technical Microsoft employees, the only unusual thing worth mentioning is my unclaimed badge. Good job as always, Inspector Clouseau!

In any case, the greatest concern should be given to that last row in the table, giving the attendance of the recent Jeju Island Plenary. Although the resolutions of this meeting have been posted and discussed, they lack any record of the actual attendance of this meeting. It has been the constant practice of JTC1/SC34, for many years, to record the attendance of their meetings and to post this document to the SC34 document repository and to make it publicly accessible. But in this case, the attendance record is missing entirely. It isn’t even available to SC34 members.

What are they afraid to reveal? Exactly how many Microsoft employees were at this meeting? The trend certainly has been upward. But this information is not available. Is Alex, the Convenor of WG1, only going to publicize my absence, but then fail to report who actually attended his own WG meeting? Is Alex going to express pleasure in saying “In the event this went extremely smoothly: all resolutions passed with unanimous consensus” without mentioning who exactly was there to vote for these resolutions?

I hope this is not yet a further sign that JTC1/SC34 has taken a decent into vendor domination and reduced transparency.

Oh, and where was I? I was on vacation. (Yes, I am allowed vacation). I was in Colorado, spending some time above the timberline and among the rocks.

Introducing the ODF Interoperability and Conformance TC

2008/09/25 By Rob 5 Comments

A short tale, all true, to relate. The names have been changed to protect the guilty.

Years ago, but not so very long ago, when XML still had that new car smell, two companies, let’s call them Red and Blue, decided to make a new XML-based standard. This new standard would be, they claimed, a huge step forward and would increase interoperability, especially in complex heterogeneous environments, with multiple operating systems, multiple vendors and applications, etc. Their activities received much fanfare in the press. Everyone was pleased that Red and Blue were cooperating together to make this new standard.

This wonderful new standard was eventually completed, and Red and Blue both went and implemented the standard in two implementations which I’ll call RedLib and BlueLib. But when they tried running their RedLib and BlueLib implementations against each other, to demonstrate interoperability, it didn’t work. It was a total failure. There was zero interoperability.

So what did Red and Blue do? They realized that interoperability is not guaranteed merely by the existence of a standard. You also need high quality implementations, implementations that accurately and completely implement the standard. For any non-trivial standard, implementation errors will dominate the list of causes of interoperability problems. So Red and Blue worked together, with other vendors, to create an interoperability lab for the new standard, and created test suites to test interoperability, and held interoperability demonstrations at conferences, and tested and iterated on this until the implementations provided a high level of interoperability.

Today billions of dollars are transacted every day using this XML-based standard.

With ODF we find ourselves in a similar, though more complex, situation. There are more vendors involved than just Red and Blue. We are starting with many commercial and open source implementations. In some cases, with some editors, interoperability is quite good. In other cases it is rather poor. But when a user loads a document, which they may have downloaded on the web, or received via email, they have no idea where that document came from, what application, what operating system. And when you create an ODF document, you may not know who will eventually read it. It isn’t enough to have good interoperability between some ODF implementations. We need good interoperability among all ODF implementations.

From a technical perspective, this is a goal we all know how to achieve. It has been done over and over again throughout the history of technology standards, especially network standards. You develop test suites, you test your implementations against these test suites, you have interoperability workshops (or plug-fests as they are sometimes called). You iterate until you have a high level of interoperability.

For the past 6 months I’ve been talking to my peers at a number of ODF vendor companies, to fellow standards professionals in OASIS, to ODF adopters, as well as to people who have gone through interoperability efforts like this before. I’ve given a few presentations on ODF interoperability conferences and led a workshop on the topic. I led a 90-day mailing list discussion on the ODF interoperability. Generally, I’ve been trying to find the best place and set of activities needed to bring the interested parties together and achieve the high level of interoperability we all want to see with ODF.

The culmination of these efforts is the creation of a new Technical Committee in OASIS, called the ODF Interoperability and Conformance TC, or OIC TC for short. The official 30-day OASIS Call for Participation went out last Friday. You can read the full charter there, but you can get a good idea by just reading the “Scope of Work”:

Initially and periodically thereafter, to review the current state of conformance and interoperability among a number of ODF implementations; To produce reports on overall trends in conformance and interoperability that note areas of accomplishment as well as areas needing improvement, and to recommend prioritized activities for advancing the state of conformance and interoperability among ODF implementations in general without identifying or commenting on particular implementations;

To collect the provisions of the ODF standard, and of standards normatively referenced by the ODF standard, and to produce a comprehensive conformity assessment methodology specification which enumerates all collected provisions, as well as specific actions recommended to test each provision, including definition of preconditions, expected results, scoring and reporting;

To select a corpus of ODF interoperability test documents, such documents to be created by the OIC TC, or received as member or public contributions; To publish the ODF interoperability test corpus and promote its use in interoperability workshops and similar events;

To define profiles of ODF which will increase interoperability among implementations in the same vertical domain, for example, ODF/A for archiving;

To define profiles of ODF which will increase interoperability among implementations in the same horizontal domain, for example ODF Mobile for pervasive devices, or ODF Web for browser-based editors.

To provide feedback, where necessary, to the OASIS Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) TC on changes to ODF that might improve interoperability;

To coordinate, in conjunction with the ODF Adoption TC, Interop Workshops and OASIS InterOp Demonstrations related to ODF;

To liaise on conformance and interoperability topics with other TC’s and bodies whose work is leveraged in present or future ODF specifications, and with committees dealing with conformance and interoperability in general.

We have a broad set of co-proposers of this new TC, representing ODF vendors, ODF adopters, private sector and government:

Robert Weir, IBM
Bart Hanssens, Individual
Dennis E. Hamilton, Individual
Zaheda Bhorat, Google
Charles-H. Schulz, Ars Aperta
Michael Brauer, Sun Microsystems
Donald Harbison, IBM
Alan Clark, Novell
Jerry Smith, US Department of Defense
Aslam Raffee, South Africa Department of Science and Technology

The OIC TC will have its first meeting, via teleconference, on October 22nd. At that point members will elect their chairman.

I’d like to see broader representation in this TC’s important work. In particular, I’d like to see:

Additional vendors that support ODF, such as Corel and Microsoft (and yes, before you ask, I have already extended a direct and person invitation to Doug Mahugh at Microsoft)
A representative from KOffice
A representative from the OpenDocument Fellowship, which has already done some work on an ODF test suite. Wouldn’t it be good to combine our efforts?
Representatives from non-desktop ODF implementations, e.g., web-based and device-based.
Broader geographic participation.
Participation with specialized skills to help define and review test cases in areas such as: Accessibility, East Asian languages, Bidi text, etc.
People with an interest in archiving, to help to define an ODF/A profile.

So, if you fall into one of those categories, I hope you’ll consider joining the new TC. Heck, even if you are outside of those categories you are welcome to join. The only prerequisite is that you are an OASIS member. OASIS membership is $300 for individuals, and for companies has a sliding scale according to company size. More information on OASIS membership is here.

We have a lot of work to do, but now we finally have a place where we can get the work done. This is big. This is important, both for ODF vendors and ODF users. I hope you’ll join us as we all work to improve interoperability among ODF implementations!

[Update: On 12 November Doug Mahugh accepted my invite and announced that Microsoft would join the TC.]

ODF: Translations and Errata

2008/09/21 By Rob 8 Comments

Although the ODF 1.0 standard was approved several years ago (by OASIS in 2005 and by ISO/IEC in 2006), work on the standard does not cease. Of course, we have work on technical revisions of ODF, in the form of ODF 1.1 and the current work on ODF 1.2. New releases make the news and are talked about at conferences. etc. But also important, though not talked about as much, is the ongoing work on the text of ODF 1.0., in the form of translation and error correction. Even after ODF 1.1 and ODF 1.2 are created, ODF 1.0 continues to be maintained.

Why is translation important? Aside from increasing the number of developers who can read the standard in their native language, translation is a prerequisite in several countries in order to make ODF into a national standard. So translation increases the number of places where ODF support can be an official requirement. So far the ODF 1.0 standard has been translated into Russian, Chinese, Spanish and Portuguese. (There may be others — Let me know if I’ve missed any.)

(Interesting to note the size advantage of ODF compared to OOXML. I’ve heard from one reliable source that to translate OOXML would cost $500,000. This will certainly hamper its ability to be adopted in some parts of the world. ODF, by reusing existing standards, is only 1/10 the size.)

Also in progress is a translation of ODF 1.0 into Japanese. From what I understand, a JISC committee has completed an initial pass of the translation and then passed the translation off to a second committee. This second committee is reviewing the translation and raising any issues where the text is unclear. In some cases this may be caused by a faulty translation. But in other cases errors may be found which were present in the original English text.

That’s the second ongoing activity related to ODF 1.0 — error correction. Although we received most of our comments during the mandated 60-day public review prior to approval as an OASIS Standard, we do continue to get a trickle of comments months and years after publication. Each OASIS TC has their own mailing list for receiving comments. For the ODF TC, the mailing list archives are here. Anyone can subscribe to the comment list and post using the instructions here. The additional complexity in the sign-up procedure compared to your average mailing list is to ensure that all feedback submitted by the public to the list is in accordance with OASIS IPR rules. This helps ensure that ODF remains an open standard, unencumbered by patents.

Although we are only obligated to address comments received during the pre-approval public review period, around a year ago the ODF TC decided to formally record and process all comments received, regardless of when they arrived. So far, from May 2005 to the present, we’ve received around 250 comments. We note each comment in a spreadsheet, along with what ODF versions it pertains to (ODF 1.0, ODF 1.1 or ODF 1.2 draft), what section number the comment concerns, and whether the comment is reporting an editorial error, a technical error, or proposing a new feature. My estimate is that 50% of the comments are feature proposals, 40% are reporting editorial errors, and 10% reporting technical errors.

The preeminent source of comments on ODF 1.0 has been Murata Mokoto, of the Japanese SC34 mirror committee. Murata-san relays to us the defects found during the Japanese translation of ODF. The vast majority of these are editorial errors, mainly typographical or grammatical. But there are a handful of more significant issues found, and we are especially pleased to receive reports of these.

You may recall the old saying, “Every new class of users finds a new set of defects”. Translation of a standard is a laborious process, especially when combined with the additional review step that JISC is engaging in. This has subjected the text of ODF 1.0 to more scrutiny, at a more detailed level, than any typical technical review could provide. So I am appreciative of the detailed comments from JISC, and of the effort made in this translation by them.

My personal aim is to ensure that all of the reported editorial errors are fixed in the ODF 1.2 text, and that any technical flaws are addressed via errata. An errata document (That’s what we call it in OASIS. Others, e.g., ISO, call it “corrigenda”) allows us to make small changes to the ODF 1.0 text to address defects.

But this goal certainly debatable. Why not aim to fix every reported error in ODF 1.0 via published errata? Why knowingly leave even the smallest typographical error in the text? What relative priority should be placed on fixing typographical errors (and others) in ODF 1.0 versus work completing ODF 1.2?

This is entirely at the will of the ODF TC. The combined priorities of the vendors and other interests represented on the committee determine the direction we take. My perception of the expressed interests is that we should address the JISC comments via an errata document, but that the overall priority is on completing the work on ODF 1.2, and not attempting to fix every last instance of subject/verb disagreement or misuse of “A” for “An” in ODF 1.0.

And so our work on the ODF TC follows that priority. I’d estimate that we spend 80% of our time on ODF 1.2 topics and 20% on processing public comments on ODF 1.0/1.1, including those from JISC. We are nearing completion of an official Errata document for ODF 1.0, consisting of fixes to defects reported by JISC. Expect to see a call for public review soon. After that, the TC will continue to review and process public comments from the comment mailing list. If warranted, we are able to issue an updated errata document in the future, to address additional issues as they are reported.

Giving the Finger to the DIS 29500 Appellants

2008/08/17 By Rob 16 Comments

The news broke on Friday, with the ISO press release, and additional coverage and analysis by Andy Updegrove and on Groklaw. But it would be remiss if I did not share a few details on how, true to form, the end of this DIS 29500 process was botched.

First, let’s put this in perspective. We’re talking about members of an organization, in this case four members of ISO/IEC JTC1, raising an appeal under the rules of that organization, alleging that the organization failed to follow its own rules. Almost every organization has a provision for dispute resolution, including the rights of members to appeal the decisions of elected officers or staff. This is a basic part of governance.

It is a worthwhile exercise to see how this “right to appeal” is handled by other SDO’s. Let’s take a few examples from other organizations that deal with tech standards.

First, let’s look at OASIS, a consortium that creates XML standards, like ODF. Any three OASIS members may lodge an appeal if they believe that OASIS procedures have been violated. Resolution is first attempted via correspondence, but if that fails to satisfy the appellants, they then may request a in-person hearing at the next OASIS Board of Directors meeting, where they can present their complaint. This request cannot be denied. It is a right of the members.

INCITS, the US NB in JTC1 has a different approach to appeals, detailed in section 5.8 of their RD-2 [pdf] Procedures guide. Appeals in INCITS are based on the following principles:

Appeals shall be addressed promptly and a decision made expeditiously.

The right of the involved parties to present their cases shall not be denied.

These procedures shall provide for participation by all parties concerned without imposing an undue burden on them.

Consideration of appeals shall be fair and unbiased and shall fully address the concerns expressed.

Records of appeals shall be kept and made available upon request. The INCITS Secretariat may levy a nominal charge to cover the cost of reproduction, handling and distribution for requests received from other than the involved parties.

Any INCITS member may lodge an appeal, and if an informal attempt at resolution with the INCITS Secretariat fails, an appeals panel is formed to hear the appeal. The impartiality and balance of the appeals panel is explicitly considered:

The appeals panel shall consist of three individuals who have not been directly involved in the matter in dispute. At least two members shall be acceptable to the appellant and at least two shall be acceptable to the INCITS Secretariat.

From large consortia, to NB’s, let’s poke around further and look at a industry group, AIIM, with a standards program focused on enterprise content management (ECM) technologies. Section 7.0 of their Policies and Procedures [pdf] manual defines their appeals process.

Persons who have directly and materially affected interests and who believe they have been or will be adversely affected by any procedural action or inaction by AIIM as a standards developer with regard to the development of a proposed American National Standard or the revision, reaffirmation, or withdrawal of an existing American National Standard, have the right to appeal.

The appeal is heard by three member panel, selected as in INCITS to be impartial and balanced:

The appeals panel shall consist of three members selected from the AIIM membership in addition to the Chairperson. The Chairperson of the panel shall be the Standards Board Chairperson, and shall not have a vote in the decision of the panel. The voting members of the panel shall not have been directly involved in the matter in dispute, and not be currently involved in the development of the standard(s) in question, and shall not represent or be an employee of an interest that can be made directly or materially affected by any decision made by or to be made in the dispute. The voting members of the appeals panel shall be agreed to by both the appellant and the respondent.

Perhaps readers can post other summaries of SDO appeals procedures, to give a broader sense of what the common features are. From what I can tell, the best practices are:

Members have a right to appeal decisions of the organization, and to have their appeal heard and considered, in person, by a panel chosen to be impartial and balanced. Although the appellants are not guaranteed that their views will prevail, the rules do no allow the organization to repress the appeal and not let it be heard.

So with that as background, it is interesting so observe how ISO/IEC JTC1’s antiquated cold war era rules in effect serve to stifle criticism, repress dissent, and prevent even a hearing on the merits of an appeal. As I’ll show, even with this strong organizational bias against appeals, the current DIS 29500 were only dismissed with assistance from a poorly written ballot question, NB confusion resulting in contradictory votes, and an unwillingness of committee chairs to attempt to reach consensus. Organizational failures, in the end, are usually leadership failures.

For an appeal in JTC1 to be heard, two different committees, ISO/TMB and IEC/SMB must first agree to allow the appeal to be heard. The reader should note the increased difficulty of getting two different committees to agree on the same decision, and consider the following mathematical diversion.

———

Suppose you are pushing for an proposal that has, on average, 50% support within a given organization. It is put to a vote in a subcommittee drawn randomly from that population. What is the probability that the proposal will pass a vote in that subcommittee?

50%. I think most of us have an intuitive sense of that.

But what if there are two subcommittees drawn randomly from that organization, and the proposal must win a vote in each one of the subcommittees, what is the chance it will pass?

Is it still 50%? No. I hope most of us have that intuitive sense that the need to pass two committees is harder than passing a single committee. In fact, your chances of approval could be as low as 25%, depending on whether the two committees make independent decisions, or whether there are factors that cause their votes to be partially correlated.

But the general rule is: the more stages of approval required, the less your chances of success

———

In the particular case of the DIS 29500 appeals, the IEC/SMB requires a 2/3 super majority to approve a ballot. ISO/TMB presumably requires only simple majority. (Like most of JTC1 Directives, this is not explicitly defined).

The astute reader will note that the odds are against the appellants even getting their appeal considered by a panel. In fact, these committee odds match what is required to impeach a U.S. President (50% in House) and remove him from office (2/3 in the Senate).

Given these odds, how did the appellants fair? In ISO/TMB the first irony comes with the title of the ballot:

Remember, a core matter of the appeals is the mistreatment of the contradiction phase of the DIS process, and one of the core matters of the contradiction arguments raised was that the official name of the DIS, “Office Open XML” bore a close and confusing resemblance to the submitters main competitor, Open Office, and that this would lead to confusion in the name of the standard. Well here we are, and in denying this appeal ISO/TMB commits that same error, giving the incorrect name of the standard!

Looking at the actual results, for each of the 4 appeals, ISO/TMB tied on two of them, 6-6, and voted not to pursue two others by 7-5 and 8-3 votes. So, it was very close. In fact I am a bit surprised they simply dropped further consideration of the appeals when they had tied votes like that.

A basic rule that applies to voting is JTC1 Directives, 9.1.3:

The Chairman has no vote and questions on which the vote is equally divided shall be subject to further discussion.

In this case, the Chair (Denmark) did not vote. That is correct. But why did the procedure end with two appeals showing a 6-6 “equally divided” vote? According to the rules this should be leading to further discussion. An equally divided vote is as far from consensus as one can get. Is this how they want to leave it, just hanging like this?

In IEC/SMB, the voting results are even more bizarre. I don’t know quite what to make of them. So just a few quick observations.

First, a motion should be carefully worded to it is clear what will happen if the motion passes, and what will happen if the motion fails. A Chair should insist on this, and indeed that is one of their primary duties as Chair, to ensure that questions put to their committee are clear. However, in the case of the DIS 29500 appeals, the ballot questions, as dictated by the Secretaries General, were muddled. I remarked on this in a previous blog post, and other readers observed this as well. Whether done by malice or incompetence, the ballot questions were destined to cause confusion.

The reported results indeed were muddled, as you can see here:

Of the 15 SMB members only two (China and the Netherlands) followed the explicit instructions and voted either the questions in Part A or in Part B (but not both). Both China and the Netherlands voted in one part, and abstained in the other part.

Most members voted both sections, but while expressing a consistent intent, e.g., vote No for not processing Brazil’s appeal further, but vote Yes for processing Brazil’s appeal further.

However, it appears that three other NB’s voted inconsistent, contradictory instructions. In fact one NB (Canada) gave exactly the same votes on section B as in section A, essentially canceling out their vote on every single question. This was from an NB whose written comments stated they they strongly supported hearing the appeals further. Similarly, the votes from Korea are partially contradictory.

We can attempt to reconstruct what a less-confusing ballot would have yielded. For example, take the questions in part A, whether “not to process the appeal any further”, where the recorded results were 8-4-3 for the Brazilian appeal, yielding a 2/3 super majority (ignoring the 3 abstentions). But note then that two of the three abstaining NB’s (China and the Netherlands) in fact voted in the affirmative for the question on whether to process the Brazil’s appeal in part B. It looks like the only reason why they abstained in Part A is that they actually followed the ballot instructions and cast a vote in Section A or Section B. If we apply their clear intent consistently to the Part A question, then the results become 8-6-1 and the motion to “not process the appeal any further” would have failed for lack of 2/3 majority.

I cannot make sense of Korea’s votes. Although they seem to have supported two appeals, while not supporting two other appeals, their inconsistent votes make it impossible to tell which ones they supported and which ones they did not.

Needless to say, a ballot that yields results where it is impossible to tell what the voters wanted is a hallmark of a seriously flawed, useless ballot. The SMB results are tainted by a poorly written ballot question, given to them by the Secretaries General, which has clearly caused confusion among the SMB voters, and which had a material effect on the results. My analysis of IEC/SMB shows that, like ISO/TMB’s vote, the results are nearly equally divided, and IEC/SMB should hang their head in shame if they persist in denying a hearing to these four appeals because of ambiguous results from a poorly written, botched ballot.

This is why ballot results should be released publicly and subject to scrutiny. I do not believe we can trust ISO/IEC to perform quality control on their own processes. The rot is too deep.

Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

2008/07/22 By Rob 18 Comments

We are coming down to the last week for JTC1 to decide on whether to hear the four NB appeals concerning various claimed errors in the processing of DIS 29500 (OOXML), or whether summarily to dismiss these appeals without hearing them. The decision lies with two committees, the Technical Management Board (TMB) in ISO and the Standards Management Board (SMB) in the IEC.

Back on July 4th, the Secretaries General of ISO and the IEC referred the four NB appeals, with their comments, to the TMB/SMB. Groklaw has the text of these comments, in PDF format, as well as HTML transcription.

The comments of the Secretary General are accompanied by a ballot, asking the question:

ACTION

The members of the Technical Management Board are invited to indicate, by replying yes, no or
abstention on EITHER a) OR b) for each of the four appeals (see item 14 in annex A):

a) not to process the appeal any further:
Item 1 ABNT
Item 2 BIS
Item 3 FONDONORMA
Item 4 SABS

OR

b) to process one or more of the appeals, which would require setting up of a conciliation panel

Item 5 ABNT
Item 6 BIS
Item 7 FONDONORMA
Item 8 SABS

by no later than 4 August 2008.

This is quite a strange animal to see. Why are we having a ballot at all, and only a 30-day one? This is questionable from several perspectives.

First, why are the Secretaries General the ones calling for a ballot? The Directives do not call for them to do so. In fact the Secretaries General are not even called upon to make a recommendation. They are only asked for comments. The Directives say:

11.3.3 The Secretaries-General shall, following whatever consultations they deem appropriate, refer the appeal together with their comments to the TMB/SMB within one month after receipt of the appeal.

11.3.4 The TMB/SMB shall decide whether an appeal shall be further processed or not. If the decision is in favour of proceeding, the Chairmen of the TMB/SMB shall form a conciliation panel (see 9.2).

But deciding is not the same as voting. One of the cardinal principles of JTC1 is to discuss and seek consensus, not rush to a vote. Indeed, this is one of the matters under appeal, the rush to voting at the OOXML BRM. JTC1 Directives, section 1.2 says (my emphasis):

These Directives are inspired by the principle that the objective in the development of International Standards should be the achievement of consensus between those concerned rather than a decision based on counting votes.

But here we are, with a vote pushed on the TMB/SMB.

The sense of the vote is wrong as well. The Directives call for a decision on “whether an appeal shall be further processed or not.” Note the wording. It did not call for a decision on “whether to accept the recommendation of the Secretaries General”. But somehow, we skip discussion, skip over consensus and get a ballot question which asks the opposite question first “not to process the appeal any further”. In an environment where many parties automatically vote Yes to the ballot question, changing the sense of the question in this way is prejudicial to the appellants.

So it is clear from the start that the powers that be do not want to give these four NB’s the opportunity to make their case or be heard. In any case, let’s take a deeper look at some of the subjects under appeal and see if we can detect what it is exactly that cannot bear the scrutiny of a duly processed appeal.

First up is the alleged mishandling of the contradiction period last year. The Secretaries General dismiss this complaint, saying that it was a matter of judgment:

The Directives give the JTC 1 Secretariat and ITTF latitude to use judgement as to whether a meeting should be organized to address alleged contradictions. Considering that other issues could potentially be identified during the DIS ballot, the JTC 1 secretariat and ITTF concluded that it was preferable to initiate the ballot and to allow all issues to be addressed by the BRM. The NBs were fully informed of all the claimed contradictions and Ecma’s responses to them.

This argument doesn’t hold water. Although the JTC1 Secretariat and ITTF are allowed judgment, this is not an absolute license which cannot be questioned. The Secretariat and ITTF also have defined duties, and their actions or inactions with respect to these duties can be questioned and are subject to appeal. Specifically, an NB may appeal the issue of an inaction of JTC1, according to JTC1 Directives, 11.3. So for the Secretaries General to suggest that this inaction cannot be appealed because it is a matter of judgment is nonsense. Judgment and duty are the proper matters for an appeal.

So what is the duty in this case? As stated in JTC1 Directives, 13.4:

If a contradiction is alleged, the JTC 1 Secretariat and ITTF shall make a best effort to resolve the matter in no more than a three month period, consulting with the proposer of the fast-track document, the NB(s) raising the claim of contradiction and others, as they deem necessary. A meeting of these parties, open to all NBs, may be convened by the JTC 1 Secretariat, if required.

If the resolution requires a change to the document submitted for fast-track processing, the initial document submitted will be considered withdrawn. The proposer may submit a revised document, to be processed as a new proposal.

If the resolution results in no change to the document or if a resolution cannot be reached, the five month fast-track ballot commences immediately after such a determination is made.

The Directives call for the JTC1 Secretariat to make a best effort to resolve the matter (JTC1 Directives, 13.4). The JTC1 Secretariat is not given latitude to do nothing, or allowed discretion to immediately defer this question to the ballot period, without making a best effort to resolve the matter.

When a new 6,000 page DIS is submitted to JTC1 only one month after the publication of another standard (ODF) in the exact same space (XML document formats for office applications) and 19 NB’s submit contradiction statements, and the JTC1 Secretariat’s “best effort” is to hold no consultations with the NB’s claiming contradictions, to hold no meeting, to make no attempt to resolve the question, then I believe that any NB would has a legitimate grounds for appeal on the inaction of JTC1 with regards to contradictions. There is no evidence that a “best effort” was made here to resolve the contradictions. Doing nothing is clearly incompatible with the required “best effort”.

It should be noted that JTC1 has had challenges in the past getting ITTF to carry out their responsibilities with respect to contradictions, which lead to this resolution adopted unamimously at the 2000 JTC1 Plenary:

Resolution 27 – Consistency of JTC 1 Products

JTC 1 stresses the strong need for consistency of its products (ISs and TRs) irrespective of the route through which they were developed. Any inconsistency will confuse users of JTC 1 standards and, hence, jeopardize JTC 1’s reputation. Therefore, referring to clauses 13.2 (Fast Track) and 18.4.3.2 (PAS) of its Directives, JTC 1 reminds ITTF of its obligation to ascertain that a proposed DIS contains no evident contradiction with other ISO/IEC standards. JTC 1 offers any help to ITTF in such undertaking. However, should an inconsistency be detected at any point in the ratification process, JTC 1 together with ITTF will take immediate action to cure the problem.

Perhaps it is time to give ITTF another reminder of their obligations in this regard?

Further, the determination claimed to have been made by the JTC1 Secretariat and ITTF was not communicated to JTC1 NB’s. Instead, the JTC1 Secretariat merely forwarded Ecma’s responses to the contradiction submissions along with a notification that the DIS ballot should then commence. No statement was made as to whether the ballot was commencing because the contradictions had in fact been resolved, or because a resolution could not be made, which are the only two outcomes allowed by the Directives in 13.4. Not to notify NB’s of the actual state of the resolution of the contradictions submissions is incompatible with the JTC1 Secretariat’s duty to make a best effort to resolve the matter.

This failure by JTC1 materially effected the ensuing ballot, since Microsoft was then able to take advantage of this procedural nonperformance and repeatedly represent to NB’s that the contradictions had been rejected as invalid and could not be considered in the DIS ballot. In fact, this led to several NB’s issuing explicit, but erroneous instructions to their members that the contradictions had been resolved and thus could not be raised again as a criterion for determining their national position, e.g., in Australia.

Further, although the Secretaries General claim that “the JTC 1 secretariat and ITTF concluded that it was preferable to initiate the ballot and to allow all issues to be addressed by the BRM” the documented fact is that the BRM Convenor explicitly disallowed any discussion of contradictions at the BRM.

Another subject of appeal was the irregular voting procedures used at the DIS 29500 BRM in February. This is the P-member versus O-member question. The Secretaries General dismiss this appeal in this way:

2e. Correct but inapplicable. The BRM was neither a meeting of JTC 1 nor of SC 34 but was open to all 87 national bodies which submitted a vote (including abstentions) on the DIS. Applying 9.1.4 would have disenfranchised the voting NBs present at the BRM which were not P-members. The fact that any votes in the BRM would be open to all national delegations present was communicated over three months prior to the BRM.

This argument presented is flawed, and amounts to saying, “The voting was done by P- and O-members because the meeting was attended by delegations from P- and O-members”. Who attended the meeting is immaterial. Liaisons such as Ecma also attended the BRM? Should they have been able to vote merely because they attended? No, of course not. Voting rights are defined in JTC1 Directives, and this must not be set aside in favor of an ad-hoc rule made without NB consultation or approval.

Asserting that applying 9.1.4 would disenfranchise NB’s is an example of circular reasoning. One can only be disenfranchised if one first has the right to vote. So the statement by the Secretaries General is arguing a conclusion (O-members are permitted to vote at BRM’s) by assuming the very thing it tries to prove.

JTC1 Directives 14.4.3.9, which defines the parallel BRM process for the Publicly Available Specification (PAS) transposition process, reads: “At the ballot resolution group meeting, decisions should be reached preferably by consensus. If a vote is unavoidable, the approval criteria in the subclause 9.1.4 is applied.” So here we see 9.1.4 explicitly called for. By the argument put forth by the Secretaries General, all PAS BRM’s which follow the Directives are also flawed because they “disenfranchise” those NB’s who are not P-members of JTC1. I believe this is a tortured reading of the Directives. The voting rules of 9.1.4 are explicitly and unambiguously called for in PAS BRM’s, so one cannot dismiss their application to Fast Track on general principles that would apply equally to PAS. When Fast Track rules say that the BRM vote shall (“if a vote is unavoidable”) “be taken according to normal JTC 1 procedures” then we are faced with two alternatives:

Use the voting rules of 9.1.4, which declares itself to be the normal voting procedures (“In a meeting, except as otherwise specified in these directives, questions are decided by a majority of the votes cast at the meeting by P-members expressing either approval or disapproval.”)
Or use a voting rule which is not to be found anywhere within the Directives.

Which one is “normal JTC 1 procedures”? Where is the basis in the Directives for believing that O-members had the right to vote at the BRM?

Finally, neither BRM Convenor, Alex Brown, nor ITTF, nor indeed the assembled delegations at the BRM were competent nor had the mandate to make or change voting rules for a DIS BRM. The rules are set in JTC1 Directives, and must be followed. “These Directives shall be complied with in all respects and no deviations can be made without the consent of the Secretaries-General.” (JTC1 Directives 1.2).

Notifications made by the BRM Convenor in advance of the BRM have no weight on matters which exceed his mandate and authority. The communication referred to by the Secretaries General, which was given in advance by the BRM Convenor, was from this FAQ:

6.8 If votes are taken during the BRM, who votes?

Those present.

This in fact was not the rule applied at the BRM. For example, Liaison representatives could not vote, though they were undoubtedly present at the BRM and participated fully in other ways. Also individual participants could not vote, only delegations, via their HoD could vote. So the Convenor’s glib communication should not be taken as notification of a novel voting procedure.

Additionally, the BRM Convenor was unambiguous in his communications on his blog where he clearly stated that the voting rules of 9.1.4 would be applied:

…Now, paper balloting follows normal JTC 1 in-meeting rules: In a meeting, except as otherwise specified in these directives, questions are decided by a majority of the votes cast at the meeting by P-members expressing either approval or disapproval. (9.1.4)

(After the BRM the Convenor dutifully went back and “corrected” his earlier blog post to reflect how the BRM actually operated.)

The Secretaries General further dismiss the concerns regarding BRM voting procedure, saying:

4e. Not correct. Decisions on the comments not discussed during the BRM and proposed dispositions were taken by a process agreed by the BRM itself (29 votes in favour, none against and 2 abstentions).

On the contrary, the BRM was not competent and had not the mandate to set its own voting rules or to negate the provisions for consensus stated in JTC1 Directives 1.2:

These Directives are inspired by the principle that the objective in the development of International Standards should be the achievement of consensus between those concerned rather than a decision based on counting votes.

[Note: Consensus is defined as general agreement, characterised by the absence of sustained opposition to substantial issues by any important part of the concerned interests and by a process that involves seeking to take into account the views of all parties concerned and to reconcile any conflicting arguments. Consensus need not imply unanimity. (ISO/IEC Guide 2:1996)]

The Directives specify the rules. If NB’s do not like the rules, then NB’s may work with SWG-Directives to define new rules and then vote on them using the defined process. But if the rules are not applied correctly, then the proper course is for NB’s to appeal against the actions or inactions of those with a duty to carry out the rules. This is the essential governance model of JTC1. NB’s rule, but they rule through the rules. We may not merely decide by majority vote to ignore rules for this DIS, or to institute new rules for that DIS, or to substitute different rules for another DIS, in an ad-hoc fashion, based on a BRM vote.

Using the logic given by the Secretaries General, what in principle would prevent a BRM from voting itself an Augur in addition to a Convenor for the purpose of observing the flights of birds to decide whether a given change to the DIS text was auspicious or not? Is there any voting procedure that would not be permitted them once we say that a BRM, by majority vote, can institute their own voting rules? Are TMB/SMB certain that this is the principle that they want affirmed by their rejection of the NB’s appeals?

Further, NB’s were not duly notified that their BRM delegations would be determining their own voting rules, so few if any of them had NB instructions on that matter. An agreement among BRM HoD’s to set aside cardinal principles of JTC1, in the absence of NB consultations, should not be allowed to stand.

Finally, the existence of a vote at the BRM is not incompatible with the assertion that the BRM was “too short, arbitrarily short, or otherwise incorrectly conducted”. When given the choice between several bad alternatives, the delegations made a choice. That does not legitimatize the flawed application of JTC1 process that incorrectly gave them only bad choices and forced upon them a vote which they did not have the mandate to hold.

I could go on and on, but I’ll spare you all more of the same. I am sorry to report that I find the response by the Secretaries General to be perfunctory, poorly reasoned and self-serving. It does not serve to resolve the issues, including important issues where clarification is needed. Majority rule, within the rules, should be encouraged. But to dismiss legitimate complaints by arguing that the majority agreed to not follow the rules, this is to substitute mob rule (or orchestrated monopoly rule) for the rule of law. We know where that leads to — curtailed rights for those with minority opinions. And that should concern everyone.

The Secretary General of ISO, Alan Bryden, retires at the end of the year. August vacation is approaching, and before you know it there will be a retirement party with the cake and gifts, maybe a wall plaque or pewter paperweight. I am sure he does not need or desire to spend more time being reminded of the OOXML disaster that occurred during his last year at ISO. TMB/SMB members all want vacation as well. So do I. But out of respect for Mr. Bryden’s eventual successor, and our shared mission in JTC1, shouldn’t we urge TMB/SMB to do their job and not leave this all unresolved for the next guy to deal with? Dismissing an appeal with so many open unresolved issue is not expediency. It is merely creating more dissent, more distrust and more trouble that we’ll all need to deal with next time around. It is better, I think, to hear the appeals, get to the bottom of this, seek resolution, consensus and closure, and then to move on. Ignoring mistakes will not make them go away.