[OpenISO] Disagreement resolution process (was Re: Core G..)

[Norbert Bollow]

Janet Hawtin <lucychili at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thought it might be worth thinking about whether there were situations
> where the problem might be resolved by improving the proposal or
> changing it so the oof question was resolved. this might depend on
> whether the proposal seems to be 99% there and whether people feel it
> is valuable to push it that bit further for accessibility.

Thank you for your comments!

I think that this suggestion is certainly worth keeping in mind,
especially for situations where as you say a proposal "seems to
be 99% there".

> Not sure if that would just encourage people to do an ooxml and submit
> broken things but thought it might be a way to channel good work into
> further improvement.

Actually I see nothing wrong with submitting a half-baked draft spec
to a standardization community.  The moral issues with what Microsoft
is doing are my opinion just these: 1) Their half-baked draft "standard"
is at the same time the file format of a software that they're forcing
on innocent users with all of their considerable market power,
2) they submitted that half-baked draft to the ISO/IEC  "fast-track"
process which is only appropriate for mature specs, and then tried (or
are still tying) to buy enough votes to get it approved anyway,
3) their "open specification promise" with its implicit assertion of
patent rights is just a tool for laying the foundation for yet more
patent-based FUD attacks against their Free Software competition, and
4) they intend to accept the result of the standardization process
only if it supports rather than threatens their monopoly market
position.


In writing that "Core Guidelines" draft, my objective was primarily
to give some substance to my claim that I believe it possible to
organize OpenISO.org with a decision-making system that will
reliably make the right decisions in those cases where from a
scientific fact-oriented perspective it is clear what the right
decision is even when strong economic interests are motivating
many people (e.g. all of a monopolistic company's many employees
and partner companies) to want a different decision.


Now I think the main objective should be to get the substantive
review work moving forward.  My work on the list of work-items at
http://F29500.OpenISO.org/ needs to get double-checked and
expanded (wiki password: open )

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