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ISO/IEC JTC1 Approves ODF 1.2 PAS Ballot

2014/09/17 By Rob Leave a Comment

OASIS ODF 1.2, the current version of the Open Document Format standard, was approved by ISO/IEC JTC1 National Bodies after a 3-month Publicly Available Specification (PAS) ballot.  The final vote for DIS 26300 was:  17-0 for Parts 1 and 2, and 18-0 for Part 3.

Of course, this is a very good result and all those involved, whether TC members and staff at OASIS, implementors, adopters and promoters of ODF and open standards in general should be pleased and proud of this accomplishment.

This was a team effort, obviously, and I’d like to give special thanks to Patrick Durusau  and Chris Rae on the ODF TC for their special efforts preparing the PAS submission for ballot, Jamie Clark from OASIS for putting together the submission package and Francis Cave, Alex Brown, Murata Mokoto and Keld Simonsen in JTC1/SC34/WG6 for their continued advice, feedback and support.

Since comments were received by Japan and the UK,  we now start the comment disposition process.  The SC34 Secretariat will determine whether a Ballot Resolution Meeting (BRM) is required, or whether the comments can simply be handed to the Project Editor for application to the specification prior to publication.   One way or another, there will be a little more work before publication of the ODF 1.2 International Standard.

The OASIS ODF TC continues work on ODF 1.3, with renewed vigor.  After nearly a decade of involvement with ODF, and many years leading the committee, I’ve stepped down.   The TC has elected Oliver-Rainer Wittmann, a long-time TC member, ODF implementor and a familiar face at ODF Plugfests, to take over.   I’m currently exploring other areas related to open innovation (open standards, open source, open data, open APIs).  If you know of anything interesting, https://linkedin.com/in/rcweir.

 

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Filed Under: OASIS, ODF, Standards

ODF 1.2 Submitted to ISO

2014/03/31 By Rob 8 Comments

Last Wednesday, March 26th, on Document Freedom Day, OASIS submitted Open Document Format 1.2 standard to the ISO/IEC JTC1 Secretariat for transposition to an International Standard under the Publicly Available Specification (PAS) procedure.

If you recall, the PAS procedure is what we used back in 2005 when ODF 1.0 was submitted to ISO and was approved as ISO/IEC 26300.  ODF 1.1 used a different procedure and was processed as an amendment to ISO/IEC 26300.  Since ODF 1.2 is a much larger delta to the previous version it makes sense to take it through the PAS procedure again.

The PAS transposition process starts with a two month “translation period” when National Bodies may translate the ODF 1.2 specification if they wish.  This is then followed by a three-month ballot.   Following a successful ballot any comments received are reviewed by all stakeholders and resolutions determined at a Ballot Resolution Meeting (BRM).

I am notoriously bad at predicting the pace of standards development, but if you add up the steps of the process, this looks like a ballot ending in Q4 and a BRM around year’s end.

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Filed Under: OASIS, ODF, Standards

Visualizing OASIS Technical Committees

2013/07/01 By Rob 1 Comment

oasis

So what do we have here?  This is a simple social network visualization, of OASIS Technical Committees.  Each circle in this graph represents a single Technical Committee (TC).  The size of the circle is proportionate to how many members are on the committee.  The lines between the committees have a weight that is proportionate to the overlap in membership between the TCs.  In this case I used Dice’s coefficient as a metric, although any of the several set similarity metrics (Jaccard, etc.) would work here.  The color of each node represents the modularity class, a measure of communities or sub-networks within the graph.  The resulting graph was then run through Gephi and its Force Atlas layout algorithm ,  which brings together the TCs that are more closely related by overlapping membership.   Click the image for a larger version.

(For those who are interested, the raw data for this is all publicly available,  on the OASIS website.  Scraping the webpages for the data, calculating the graph and outputting a GEXF format file for Gephi was accomplished in 133 lines of Python.)

Note one important fact:  the graph is formed entirely on abstract concepts, the size of each committee and the overlaps in membership.  It has no knowledge of what the underlying technologies are, the companies and individuals involved, or of other items of semantic value that could describe the work of the committee.   The structure is essentially based on the interests and affiliations of individual committee members.  Where there is common interest it is assumed that there is commonality in the work of the TCs.

So how well does this match reality?   The image that follows (click for an enlarged version) is the same chart, but with each node labeled by the short name of the TC.    As you can see, the above approach does a fine job bringing together related TCs.  This occurs both at the fine-grained level, where the DITA TC and the DITA Adoption TC, or the SCA and SCA Assembly TCs are adjacent, and it also applies at the broader level, where we see communities for content-related standards, for privacy/identity standards, legal/emergency, etc.

oasis-projects

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Filed Under: OASIS, Social Network Analysis

The State of ODF in OASIS

2009/01/26 By Rob 8 Comments

The year 2008 was a great year for ODF. The ODF Alliance has published their 2008 Annual Report [PDF] which is well-worth reading, especially for its coverage of ODF adoption. The date has long passed since I last could keep up with all the news stories related to ODF, so it is good to read over the report and see some of the accomplishments which I failed to note at the time.

It was a good year in OASIS as well, for ODF. The ODF TC, which I co-chair, created a new Subcommittee to investigate ODF-Next requirements, and we created a new OASIS TC, to join with the existing ODF TC and ODF Adoption TC, to work on “Interoperability and Conformance“. We also saw a substantial increased in participation in the ODF activities, spurred by the increased demand for ODF and the increased maturity of ODF implementations.

A few statistics you might find interesting on the level of participation in OASIS TC’s related to ODF, based on a tally I did this morning:

  • The three ODF TC’s have 81 members from 28 corporations/organizations, as well as 9 individual members. This count does not include the even larger number of OASIS members who are “observers” in these TC’s.
  • Large companies with participants in these TC’s include IBM, Google, Sun, Microsoft, Nokia, Oracle, Intel, RedHat, etc. a virtual “Who’s Who” of the tech sector.
  • Members reside in 13 different countries.
  • 16 TC members are also members of their JTC1 or JTC1/SC34 NB’s. A total of 7 NB’s currently have members in the ODF TC’s.
  • The TC’s and SC’s had 95 meetings in 2008 and their current schedule calls for a combined 10 hours of teleconferences per month.
  • The main ODF TC had 439 person-hours of meetings in 2008.
  • The mailings lists for the TC’s received 2,594 posts in 2008, including 95 agendas and 95 meeting minutes.
  • ODF’s public comment list received 603 comments in 2008.

So 2008 was a good year, with robust participation from a wide range of stake holders in the development, maintenance and promotion of ODF in OASIS. I’m hoping for even greater participation and accomplishment in 2009, in spite of less-than-rosy economic conditions.

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Filed Under: OASIS, ODF

What is Rick smoking?

2008/07/17 By Rob 11 Comments

Former Microsoft consultant Rick Jelliffe has posted his own particular brand of science fiction/fantasy, this time in his favorite subgenre, a parody of a drug-induced psychosis, where after uneasy slumber Rick awakes in some alternate parallel universe and finds that JTC1/SC34 is open and transparent and OASIS is closed, and decides to write a rambling blog post about it.

If you like unintentional humor, you will enjoy reading Rick’s over-the-top post.

Rick suggests that organizationally JTC1/SC34 is a more participatory environment for developing standards than OASIS.

JTC1’s process, based on National Body voting is both effective … and more genuinely open, because it is impossible to stack either directly or indirecty.

Let’s test that proposition. Let’s compare OASIS and JTC1/SC34.

Who can participate? In OASIS, anyone can participate, from any company, organization, government agency, non-profit corporation in the world. Or you can join as an unaffiliated individual, as many have. You don’t need your government’s permission to join. You just do it. Most join with a nominal membership fee ($300 for individuals) but membership grants are available in some cases, when the fee would be burden for active individual contributors.

What about participation in JTC1/SC34? First, you must be a member of your NB. How do you become a member of your NB? In the US the price is $1,200 and you must be representing a company or organization. Individuals? Sorry, you are not allowed to participate. In other countries the rules vary. In some cases membership is not available at all at any price. You are essentially wait-listed until an opening becomes available. (Sorry, we don’t have enough seats, we heard in Portugal). In some countries, like China, membership is forbidden to native citizens who are employees of foreign subsidiaries in China. In other countries you can’t join at all. It is entirely a government decision. So, good luck joining the NB of Syria, where the constitution has been suspended under emergency rule since 1963. (But somehow they managed to make time to vote on the OOXML ballot. Zimbabwe as well, that paragon of open participation.)

Now, it is entirely possible for a standards organization to appear open, but in practice to be inaccessible. So we must look at the complete cost of participation, not just the initial membership fees.

The OASIS ODF TC does its work entirely on an email list, a wiki, and via weekly phone calls, which are toll-free calls for most participants. I don’t recall there ever being a face-to-face meeting, certainly not so long as I’ve been a member. This use of technology lowers the barrier to participation, so anyone can be effective on the TC if they wish. In particular it makes it easier for those who have day jobs and can only contribute to the mailing list during non-work hours.

What about JTC1/SC34? To participate effectively requires attendance at several international meetings each year (Plenary’s, WG’s, Ad-hocs, BRM’s, etc.), as well as participation at NB meetings. Since many of the participants are representative of large corporations or government agencies, a junket mentality prevails and the meetings are often held in some of the most expensive places in the world: Geneva, Granada, London, Kyoto, Jeju Island, etc.

JTC1 does not allow meeting participation by telephone. Since important votes, are held at these meetings, and no provision is made for remote participation, one cannot effectively participate in JTC1/SC34 without a substantial budget for international travel. Attendance at a single meeting — the DIS 29500 BRM — was $3687.52 for me, and I flew coach and ate cheap. How many standards meetings like that can you as an individual or your small company afford per year?

Further, note the nature of your membership — what can you actually do? Can you vote? In OASIS, it is one person/one vote. In the TC, your vote as an individual with a $300 membership fee is counted exactly the same as my vote representing an OASIS Foundational Sponsor. At the organizational level, it is one company/one vote, and the smallest OASIS member organization has exactly the same vote as the largest.

In JTC1/SC34 however, you typically can’t vote at all. NB’s vote, not individuals, not companies. So your opinion and your wishes are subject to the will of your NB. If your opinion varies from your NB’s, you may not be accredited to attend an international meeting, and even if you are able to attend you may not be allowed to speak your opinions. This extra level of indirection and censorship means that you, as an individual, can do little. And to the extent your NB’s committee is stacked by a single vendor and their partner community, or your NB decides to overrule or ignore its technical committee, or Microsoft calls your head of state to change the NB’s vote, or any of the dozens of other documented shenanigans that recently occurred, your entire membership fee and participation will be an entire waste of time, money and effort.

Membership is OASIS is far more open and inclusive. You join. You discuss. You vote. Period. In JTC1/SC34, you are mired in layers of bureaucracy at the national and international level, in a system crafted by and for the big boys to cut back room deals and manipulate the process to the benefit of large corporations.

(Now that isn’t to say that there are not some individual consultants out there who thrive in the JTC1 environment by mastering its dark, dusty, demon-haunted hallways. Even the largest corporations occasionally have need of this expertise, as Rick and others are quite aware. If JTC1/SC34 were truly open and transparent, such skills would not be needed. You certainly don’t see anyone selling their services to help companies navigate OASIS, do you?)

What about transparency? As Rick demonstrates, OASIS meeting minutes and agenda are all posted and public. So is our mailing list. So are all of our drafts. So is our member and public comments.

But in JTC1/SC34, most of the documents are private, only accessible to SC34 members by password. And then occasionally JTC1 will step in prevent SC34 from releasing their own work , suppressing documents even from their own SC members. There are no public comments to speak of, and member comments on draft standards are secret.

So when you are back from your “trip”, Rick, please let us know again, who wins on openness, participation and transparency?


And for the record, a couple of outright deceptions in Rick’s post:

  • Rick says that there are 80 NB’s, and thousands people participating in JTC1, but only 13 people participating on the ODF TC. This is a particularly inept comparison. Why is he comparing all of JTC1 to a single OASIS TC? If you look at OASIS overall, you will see that OASIS has more than 5,000 participants, representing over 600 organizations and individual members in 100 countries. The ODF TC itself has 53 members, including 7 members of JTC1/SC34.
  • Rick picks a “random” ODF TC minutes post from a year ago to attempt to suggest domination by a single company. Not so random a choice, methinks. It was a rare joint meeting of the ODF TC and the Metadata subcommittee, which brought in a far greater number of Sun employees than typically participate in a call.
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Filed Under: FUD, OASIS, ODF, OOXML

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