[OpenISO] OpenISO.org Review of OOXML: Launch

Sat Nov 24 02:15:30 CET 2007

Hi Norbert and All

As a non techie, I find your draft extremely clear. By coincidence I
mentioned OpenISO.org in a message to Pakistan ICT Policy this
morning, in the "Re: the OOXML issue and Meeting PSQCA"
<http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/pakistanictpolicy/message/601>
thread started by Fouad Riaz Bajwa (maybe you know him, Norbert? He is
also a member of the Digital Divide Network).

In nuce: Pakistan's first "yes" was due to the very late decision of
the government to participate in the vote. So the commission was  made
of  Microsoft people and Microsoft products sellers. And both
citizens' rights activists and free software campaigners (quite a bit
of an overlap there) want to change that next round.

There may be simiar situations in other countries: i.e.  groups who
comprise both tech-knowledgeable and socially committed people, but
have to catch up on the ISO ratification process because they got
excluded from the first vote.

So I hope your draft soon becomes definitive, so that we can send it
through mailing lists of both categories.

Thanks

Best

Claude
On Nov 23, 2007 11:45 PM, Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch> wrote:
> It's high time to get started seriously with the OpenISO.org review of
> OOXML.  Here's a draft "Call For Participation" that I would like to
> circulately widely in order to attract participants for the review
> process.
>
> What do you think?
>
>
> --snip-------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> DocumentID: OI F29500:draft1
> ShortTitle: Review of OOXML
> LongTitle: OpenISO.org Review of OOXML (ECMA-376): Call For Participation
> Date: 2007-11-23
> Working-Group: discuss at OpenISO.org
> Editor: Norbert Bollow
> About: ECMA-376
>
>
>
>                    OpenISO.org Review of OOXML
>
>                      Call For Participation
>
>
> What is OOXML (ECMA-376)?
>
> Via ECMA, Microsoft has submitted documentation for the XML-based file
> formats used by the company's "Excel 2007", "PowerPoint 2007" and
> "Word 2007" products for "fast track" approval as an "international
> standard".
>
>
> Why is this so controversial?
>
> There is already an international standard for XML-based file formats
> for office documents, known as the "OpenDocument Format" (ODF;
> standardized as ISO/IEC 29300).  Nobody denies Microsoft's right to
> freely decide that the company does not want to support this
> international standard in their products, and nobody denies that
> computer users have the freedom to choose office software which
> supports this standard, such as e.g. OpenOffice, KOffice or Google Docs.
> However many people feel that Microsoft's initiative to get their file
> formats also recognized as an "international standard" is an abuse of
> the system of international standardization and should in fact be seen
> as an anti-competitive attack against the company's competitors,
> especially against Free Software like OpenOffice.  In fact when
> Microsoft chose the name "Office Open XML" for their file formats,
> they must have been aware that choosing this name must necessarily
> create confusion with "OpenOffice", the name of the leading competing
> software package which has been using an open XML-based office
> documents format since long before Microsoft started pushing "Office
> Open XML".
>
>
> What has happened?
>
> Microsoft has intensively lobbied the various national member
> organizations of ISO/IEC and encouraged a large number of economically
> dependent partner companies to acquire voting rights in the concerned
> national decision-making committees.  Nevertheless, in the
> international vote, the required qualified majority for approval of
> the OOXML specification as an "international standard" has not been
> reached.
>
>
> What happens next?
>
> There will be a "Ballot Resolution Meeting" in Geneva on February
> 25-29, 2008, with the goal of deciding changes to the OOXML
> specification which could make it acceptable in the eyes of the
> national ISO/IEC member organizations that have voted against
> approval of OOXML as an international standard.  If (as can be
> expected) some changes are adopted at the "Ballot Resolution Meeting",
> the national member bodies will have 30 days time to review the
> changes and decide whether to change their vote, e.g. from "APPROVE"
> to "DISAPPROVE" or vice versa.  The national standardization
> organizations can at that stage change their vote for any reason, and
> they are not required to provide a justification for changing their
> vote.
>
>
> What is OpenISO.org's role?
>
> Since it is clear from preliminary discussions that OOXML does not
> fulfil OpenISO.org's criteria for an open standard, OpenISO.org will
> prepare a "problem report" document explaining the main problems why
> from the perspective of OpenISO.org's criteria, OOXML cannot be
> accepted as an open standard, and should not be approved as an
> "international standard".  This "problem report" document should be
> ready by mid-February 2008 so that it can help guide the discussions
> at the "Ballot Resolution Meeting" to focusing on the most important
> questions, and so that after "Ballot Resolution Meeting" the "problem
> report" can assist the national standardization organizations in
> evaluating whether or not the important issues have been appropriately
> resolved.
>
>
> Who can participate in the OpenISO.org Review of OOXML?
>
> Everyone is welcome to participate who is able to participate in a
> constructive manner in a fact-oriented discussion that is conducted
> via email, in the English language.  (Unfortunately currently no
> resources are available for facilitating participation in other
> languages.)
>
> Participation by people with disabilities and other accessibility
> experts is especially requested, since the evaluation of information
> technology standards with regard to their effect of people with
> disabilities is of the utmost moral importance!
>
>
> How to participate:
>
> Subscribe to the OpenISO.org "discuss" mailing list where the
> OpenISO.org Review of OOXML will be conducted:
>
> http://www.openiso.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>
>
> Please join in and contribute!
>
> Norbert Bollow
> Founder of OpenISO.org
>
>
> P.S. Here are some further links:
> OOXML specification in HTML format: http://OpenISO.org/Ecma/376/
> OpenISO.org Core Guidelines         http://OpenISO.org/OI/A200
>
>
> --snap-------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Greetings,
> Norbert.
>
>
> --
> Norbert Bollow <nb at bollow.ch>                      http://Norbert.ch
> President of the Swiss Internet User Group SIUG    http://SIUG.ch
> Working on establishing a non-corrupt and
> truly /open/ international standards organization  http://OpenISO.org
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