{"id":203,"date":"2009-02-17T11:50:00","date_gmt":"2009-02-17T16:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/2d823b65bb.nxcli.io\/2009\/02\/odf-1-2-committee-draft-01.html"},"modified":"2009-12-27T21:17:43","modified_gmt":"2009-12-28T02:17:43","slug":"odf-12-committee-draft-01","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.robweir.com\/blog\/2009\/02\/odf-12-committee-draft-01.html","title":{"rendered":"ODF 1.2 Committee Draft 01"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is not the end of the end, nor the end of the beginning, but more like the beginning of the end for the development of ODF 1.2. The Committee Draft 01 of ODF 1.2, Part 1 was approved by the OASIS ODF TC yesterday in a 9-2-2 vote. You can download it here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A Committee Draft (CD) is the first step toward finalizing ODF 1.2. The TC will likely approve further CD iterations before voting to approve one as a Public Review Draft. The Public Review Draft, as the name suggests, will be what we send out for a public review of at least 60 days. We can then make changes based on review comments and hold additional public reviews if we make non-trivial changes to the Public Review Draft. The ODF TC can then vote to approve the draft as a Committee Specification. We then hold a further vote to send the Committee Specification out for an OASIS-wide ballot (not just the ODF TC, but all OASIS members) on whether to approve ODF 1.2 an OASIS Standard. Once that is done, we can then start the PAS approval cycle in JTC1.<\/p>\n

Although there are a lot of votes and process steps remaining, the major technical work is just about done. What remains is a period of review, perfecting the text, gaining implementation experience and feedback, etc. Some may call this a “death march”, but I see this pace as consonant with the importance of our activity and our deliverables. Work in OASIS might not be as fast as Ecma, where you can evidently create a 6,000 page standard in less than a year. Our process calls for a bit more than the IETF’s “rough consensus and running code.” But neither are we the slowest process in the standards development landscape. We’re some place in the middle. And when we’re talking about revising an open document format, already adopted and used by governments around the world, I am not ashamed to say that we’re working deliberately and carefully.<\/p>\n

We also need to socialize and grow consensus around ODF 1.2, both from implementers, but also adopters and consumers of ODF. There is still work to be done here. For example, the TC vote on the Committee Draft 01 was not unanimous. We did not have the support of Microsoft or Novell. There are still disagreements over how we define conformance in the standard. We obviously need to continue discussing this topic. Since the final TC vote to request an OASIS Standard ballot requires 2\/3 approval of TC members with no more than 25% disapproving, we’ll need a high level of consensus in the TC to move forward, including, hopefully, the support of Microsoft and Novell.<\/p>\n

Implementation experience is important in OASIS. I know some have criticized OpenOffice for having support of draft ODF 1.2. But this support is a good thing, in my opinion. We need implementers to validate the design decisions we’ve made in the standard, to ensure that our choices are reasonable, that we haven’t missed anything. We’re working in an engineering discipline. We’re not making abstract standards for the mind alone. Engineers build, test and refine. It is what we do. In fact, OASIS requires that before a Committee Specification can be nominated for an OASIS Standard ballot, the TC must certify that there are three conforming implementations of the Committee Specification. So not only are early implementations a good idea, they are required as part of the process.<\/p>\n

If you are asking, “How can I help?”, then here are a few ideas:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. If you are an implementor of ODF 1.0 or ODF 1.1, then now is a good time to start looking at what is required to add ODF 1.2 support. Download the CD of ODF 1.2, but also look at this page for a summary of changes<\/a>. We’ll formalize that list of changes and put it into a appendix of the draft, but this wiki page should give you a good feel for what areas have been touched.<\/li>\n
  2. Although we have not yet approved a Public Review Draft specifically for public review, we welcome comments at any time. You can send comments on ODF 1.2 CD 01 according to the instructions on this page<\/a>. Download the draft, pick a chapter of interest and send us any errors you find.<\/li>\n
  3. We should start thinking ahead to how we can encourage a thorough review of the eventual Public Review Draft. I want to avoid the OOXML-fiasco where Ecma approved and sent to JTC1 a half-baked, deeply-flawed text. What can we do to give ODF 1.2 a really hard scrub in the OASIS review period, so what comes out meets the high standards we should expect from an international standard? I think we’ve done a good job in drafting ODF 1.2 and I want to encourage scrutiny, not shy from it. But let’s have this scrutiny earlier rather than later.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    It is not the end of the end, nor the end of the beginning, but more like the beginning of the end for the development of ODF 1.2. The Committee Draft 01 of ODF 1.2, Part 1 was approved by the OASIS ODF TC yesterday in a 9-2-2 vote. You can download it here. A […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-203","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-odf","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robweir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robweir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robweir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robweir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robweir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=203"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.robweir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":324,"href":"https:\/\/www.robweir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/203\/revisions\/324"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.robweir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robweir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.robweir.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}