I have a lot of respect for Patrick Durusau. He has taught me much about how ISO standards work in practice, and I have benefited from his thoughts on that subject. I hope I can repay my debt to Patrick even in part, by teaching him something about how Microsoft works, in practice, a subject where I have expertise he lacks.<\/p>\n
From the start Patrick has remained publicly silent on the topic of OOXML. No blog posts, no press, nothing. If you asked, he would say that this was his policy. Privately, you would get an earful (all negative), but as befits the unbiased chair of the committee which is responsible for the technical recommendation for the US NB, he kept his personal opinions out of the public arena.<\/p>\n
This public orientation changed recently. As best I can figure it, on returning from a conference<\/a> in Seattle in late January, Patrick was a changed man. Patrick is now an enthusiastic OOXML supporter and is eager to inform the world of his delight in OOXML at every opportunity. He posts his “open letters” on his web site, which are linked to, often within minutes<\/span>, by the various Microsoft bloggers, and then sent around by Microsoft employees to the press and the various JTC1 NB’s.<\/p>\n Patrick is entitled to his own opinions. Free speech (and free enterprise for that matter) are things which all red-blooded Americans believe in, among other things. So long as Patrick makes it clear that he is speaking for himself, I have no problem with this.<\/p>\n Of course, Microsoft will not be so careful to distinguish Patrick’s personal opinions from his professional affiliations. So a post from Patrick’s personal web site is retold on a Microsoft blog as “The ODF Editor says….”, and then the next day is sent in an email to NB’s with a larger set of “endorsements”:<\/p>\n Chair, V1 – US TAG to JTC 1\/SC 34 By the time it is actually discussed at the NB committee level, I wouldn’t be surprised if it morphs into an assertion that JTC1\/SC34, INCITS, the ODF TC and the City Council of Covington, Georgia have all approved OOXML. It is dangerous to wear many hats when dealing with Microsoft. They are not ones for fine distinctions.<\/p>\n But now on to the substance of Patrick’s letters.<\/p>\n In his first note, the “OpenXML Poster Child<\/a>“, Patrick says:<\/p>\n OpenXML has progressed from being developed in a closed environment to being handed over to approximately 70% of the world’s population for future development so I am missing the “not open” aspect of OpenXML. If anything, the improvements made to OpenXML during that process make it a poster child for the open standards development process. We’ve covered this before. Let’s go down the list again. Where are the minutes from Ecma TC45 teleconferences? Where are the public archives of their mailing list? Where is the list of individuals participating in the TC? Where is the list of voting members? Where are the public comments they have received on OOXML? You call this open?<\/p>\n For ODF, all of this information is easily available to the public, here<\/a>, here<\/a> and here<\/a>.<\/p>\n And don’t give me the canard about how moving to SC34 results in greater representation.<\/p>\n In the US who represents our population? The 7 members of V1 before the DIS 29500 process began? Or the 26 members after Microsoft stuffed V1 (the committee that you chair) with business partners last summer? Or V1 after several of them were kicked out for not paying their dues? Or the V1 after the DIS 29500 procedure completes and the warm bodies fade away? In your opinion, which one do you believe truly represents our US population?<\/p>\n Similarly, SC34 was stuffed with new P-members and swelled from 9 P-members in 2006 to 40 today, most of which voted in favor of OOXML and then failed to participate in any other SC activities. Are you seriously suggesting that SC34 was increasing the world’s influence over Microsoft’s decisions? That sounds quite naive. To me this looks much more like Microsoft is increasing their influence over the world, and JTC1 NB’s in particular.<\/p>\n The long list of shenanigans recorded, from Sweden to Portugal, from Poland to Switzerland is further evidence that the second interpretation is the accurate one. Is offering Microsoft partners rewards for joining a committee a way of increasing openness? Is joining JTC1 three days before the Sept. 2nd vote, then voting Yes without comments the way in which the world is able to gain a seat at the table?<\/p>\n Moving on.<\/p>\n Patrick’s next post is “Co-Evolution<\/a>“. This, plus Microsoft’s recent interoperability announcements (yes, yet more announcements) give the impression that they believe it is better to talk about interoperability than to do something about it. Interoperability is something we only talk about now, but accomplish sometime in the nebulous future, like weight loss or reducing the national debt. Create studies, write reports, open labs, make test cases, write more reports. But when given the opportunity to do something now<\/span> which would actually improve interoperability, like adding missing features to OOXML to accommodate the richer text model in ODF, then just say “No”. You can always do a study on this later, and write another report, and make a test case.<\/p>\n But if announcements alone could improve interoperability, then Microsoft would have solved this problem long ago and many times over.<\/p>\n The perspective that is missing in Patrick’s analysis is that of the vast part of the world’s population that does not benefit, and in fact is distinctly disadvantaged by having multiple incompatible document standards. We’ve been here before, in the 1980’s and 1990’s. It was not fun. We should not be seeking ways to repeat that failure.<\/p>\n Much of the world is also disadvantaged by the monopolist’s rent paid on Microsoft products and the associated lack of choice in today’s software monoculture. I’d rather help the world free itself of this oppression than appease the oppressor in hopes that he’ll wield a more lenient whip.<\/p>\n Last September, the NB’s of Great Britain, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, New Zealand, and the United States all requested that specific features be added to OOXML in order to improve interoperability with ISO ODF, in total 40 features such as the ability to have background images in tables or to have font weights beyond \u201cnormal\u201d and \u201cbold\u201d. These were the exact features that Microsoft’s translator project on SourceForge identified as needed to improve interoperability with ODF. Ecma rejected all of these requests. They did not reject them because the features were unreasonable. They were rejected purely because they were ODF features.<\/p>\n So given the chance to do more than just write reports and have panel discussions, Ecma refused to move interoperability forward even one inch. If this is them on their best behavior (they desperately need NB approval votes), then why would we expect greater consideration from them if OOXML were approved?<\/p>\n In his next letter,”Confusion<\/a>“, Patrick responds to Andy Updegrove, but not having followed that debate, I’m the one who is now confused. Patrick seems to be arguing that it doesn’t matter whether OOXML is “good” or not (in fact he seems to argue that there is no “good” or “bad” when it comes to XML) but that it will be better if OOXML was someplace where we could talk at it more.<\/p>\n I don’t know whether I’d choose to use moral terms when describing engineering artifacts either, but I would note that if the basic protocols and formats of the web were as poorly designed as OOXML, the web would never have thrived to become the glory it is today.<\/p>\n In “On the Importance of Being Heard”<\/a> Patrick generously gives us his opinion of the DIS 29500 BRM he did not attend. The argument formally comes down to this:<\/p>\n This argument has several critical flaws.<\/p>\n First, it is inaccurate to call the BRM proceedings “public”. Neither the public nor the press was allowed to attend. Security guards were posted at the door to enforce this mandate. JTC1 is a private, Swiss-headquartered NGO, answerable to no one, with no statutory responsibility to the public. Patrick talks about “ordinary users, governments, smaller interests” having a seat at the table. This is a fantasy. I did not see any such representation at the table in Geneva. One in five BRM attendees were Microsoft employees. Over 25% of the 114 people in attendance were either Microsoft or Ecma TC45 members. I fear that Patrick underestimates the extent to which NB’s have been stacked over the past two years and that he preserves some illusion of SC34 NB’s comprised of “ordinary users, governments, smaller interests”. Maybe that was true a few years ago, but the neighborhood has changed.<\/p>\n Was everyone at the table heard? Formally, it is true that every delegation had the opportunity to raise a single issue during the week. Some (those earlier in the alphabet) had the opportunity to raise two issues. But I think it is disingenuous to cast that as “everyone at the table was heard”. For many delegations it was true that for every issue they were able to raise, they had 10 or 20 more that they wanted to raise, based on their analysis of Ecma’s proposed dispositions, but were unable to because of insufficient time.<\/p>\n Was Microsoft listening? Yes. Everyone in the room was listening. Formally only the BRM itself could authorize changes to the standard at this point, regardless of Microsoft’s or Ecma’s opinion. So it is moot as to whether Microsoft was attentive. Whether they listened or not has zero impact on the ability of the BRM to make changes.<\/p>\n Patrick also appears to be impressed that this discussion all takes place “at a table where a standard for a future product was being debated by non-Microsoft groups?” What future product? The future product is Office 14 (Office 2009). Microsoft has not informed JTC1 nor Ecma on what the changes to OOXML will be for Office 14, due out later this year in beta form.<\/p>\n And then we come to main point of Patrick’s argument. Vote “Yes” so we all have a seat at the table. Before we buy into that logic, I suggest we examine other Microsoft\/Ecma standards and see how their approval has or has not lead to increased participation.<\/p>\n Microsoft has two primary ways to negate broader participation in a standard’s maintenance. The first is standards abandonment. Take for example Ecma-234 “Application Programming Interface for Windows”. A contemporary observer might have been just as enthusiastic as Patrick is now. Wow! Isn’t this great? They are finally opening up and listening to the world! We finally have a seat at the table! I have a feeling that things are going to be better from now on!<\/p>\n Unfortunately, this standard was approved in December 1995 and covers the Windows 3.1 API only. Since Windows 95 shipped in August 1995, this Ecma standard was obsolete on the day it was approved. No revision of the standard was ever issued. Microsoft abandoned it.<\/p>\n Now certainly, there was nothing in principle that prevented the non-Microsoft Ecma members from continuing to maintain Ecma-234, creating errata documents, polishing up the language of the clauses, etc. But they had no effective way of actually evolving the standard when Microsoft withdrew from the process. That is the danger when you approve a single-vendor standard on the false assumption that this leads to openness.<\/p>\n The other way to negate broader participation in standards development is to create technical revisions at a rapid pace, and to create them within Microsoft with little outside participation. Note that this is how OOXML was created in the first place. And this is how Microsoft\/Ecma maintains standards like the C# Programming Language. Ask your friends in JTC1\/SC22 whether “70% of the world’s population” has a “seat at the table” in evolving that standard. Let me know what you hear. I believe you’ll hear that there has been negligible WG activity around C# maintenance, and that new revisions are promulgated by Microsoft, rubber stamped by Ecma, and sent on to SC22, canceling the previous standard and replacing it with the new one.<\/p>\n This trick can be very effective whenever the underlying Microsoft product has an update every 2-3 years. If your product revisions are more frequent than the required JTC1 maintenance checkpoints, then you can effectively ignore JTC1. That’s how Microsoft\/Ecma has played the game in the past.<\/p>\n Note that Office 2007 has been out since late 2006. Office 14 (Office 2009) is due out in beta form this year, with expected release next year. Any bets on whether the file format will require a technical revision to accommodate Office 2009? There is absolutely nothing that prevents Microsoft from submitting a revised file format specification for Ecma, getting a rubber stamp approval and then Fast Tracking it back into JTC1. Since that is how they have treated other Microsoft\/Ecma standards, the burden is on those who argue the contrary to support their optimism.<\/p>\n So consider the facts:<\/p>\n Until the following occur I’d advise a bit more skepticism, considering that we’re dealing with a company with a clear record of abusing, subverting, abandoning, embracing and extending etc., standards:<\/p>\n Until you have that, you have nothing. Get that, and then you can start talking about having a “seat at the table”.<\/p>\n
Convener, JTC 1\/SC 34\/WG 3 (Topic Maps)
Editor, OpenDocument Format TC (OASIS), Project Editor ISO\/IEC 26300
Co-Editor, ISO\/IEC 13250-1, 13250-5 (Topic Maps)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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I understand that SC 34 will be taking on the maintenance and future development of OpenXML (with the participation of Ecma). That will mean that approximately 70% of the world’s population will have a say (through their respective national bodies) on how OpenXML continues to develop. I can’t speak for anyone other than myself but that sounds pretty open to me. (That presumes approval of OpenXML as an ISO standard, which must be decided by every national body for itself.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n
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