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How "Ignorant of Standards" was Microsoft Really?

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 09:20:09 -0700

Regular readers will notice that I've been woefully silent the last few weeks, at first due to having too many irons in the fire, and for the last ten days due to being on a family vacation abroad, returning not till July 2. As a result, I've been not only behind on blogging, but also on keeping up with the news while limited primarily to Blackberry access since I left. But I thought that it might be useful to take a break and share the "Huh?!?" I experienced when I stumbled across this article by Andrew Donoghue at ZDNet while briefly enjoying an island of laptop connectivity in a hotel lobby in Florence. The article is titled, "Microsoft admits to standards ignorance pre-OOMXL" and is based on remarks by Microsoft national technology officer Stuart McKee. Even more incredibly, it bears the following subtitle:

Microsoft has admitted that, despite being one of the dominant names in IT for over 30 years, it had little or no experience or expertise around software standards until the company was mid-way through the process of getting Office Open XML approved by the International Organization for Standardization.

Why "Huh?" Because Microsoft has been playing the standards game, butting heads over prior technologies such as ActiveX, Java and much, much more with the best of them for decades as a member of hundreds of standards organizations. Moreover, it has held many board seats along the way, and has had a staff of attorneys for some time dedicated to standards matters. That staff includes the former General Counsel of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI).

Still, while McKee has over-spun the point by a few hundred RPMs, there is an important point to be made on the subject of Microsoft's standards-related capabilities, as I'll explain in greater detail below. McKee's comments were made during a panel debate I regrettably declined to be part of, due to current travel, at a Red Hat conference in Boston last week entitled 'The OOXML battle: Who really won?' According to McKee,

We found ourselves so far down the path of the standardisation process with no knowledge. We don't have a standards office. We didn't have a standards department in the company. I think the one thing that we would acknowledge and that we were frustrated with is that, by the time we realised what was going on and the competitive environment that was underway, we were late and there was a lot of catch-up.

Given the history as I know it, you'll have to forgive me for coughing a bit into my hand over that one, although there is a grain of truth in McKee's statement.

That grain comes from the fact that Microsoft, in truth, does not have the kind of global standards infrastructure in place that IBM maintains. IBM's position is, I believe, unique among US multinational IT companies in this regard, with no other peer company having the first hand experience, presence and participation in standards bodies around the globe that IBM has created over the last fifty years.

IBM has enjoyed this position since Tom Watson, Sr., decided to split responsibility for the company between his two sons at the time that he stepped down from day to day control. When Tom Watson, Jr. took over as President in 1952, the consolation prize for his brother was assuming responsibility for IBM's foreign operations. The result was a decades-long degree of focus and autonomy that later caused some issues Lou Gerstner had to wring out in order to make IBM a leaner survivor in the mid-nineties, but also gave birth to a level of local autonomy for managers in many countries around the world that helped foster greater integration into local National Bodies.

As a result, it is certainly true that when IBM, and to a lesser extent companies such as Google and Oracle, decided to lay on the full court, global OOXML press, Microsoft was left to play catch up ball, and lacked the type of finesse that its more experienced rival could bring to the game in countless venues around the world. In consequence, much of its activity had to be undertaken not by standards professionals, but by a host of other staff from many disciplines. Perhaps this is part of the reason for the number of both publicized as well as alleged missteps that attended the OOXML process. In contrast, the ODF camp was able to make its case with very few accusations of heavy handedness being made against them.

According to the ZDNet article, McKee had no apologies for any of Microsoft's actions however:

Microsoft did not regret any of its actions during the voting process and claimed the company was merely trying to catch up with a process that it had very little experience of. "I think the thing is that Microsoft was really, really late to this game," he said. "It was very difficult to enter into conversations around the world where the debate had already been framed."

So if Microsoft is in fact an experienced player in the standards game, why did it allow itself to get so far behind in the standards race infrastructurally?

The answer is doubtless in part because most of the action in IT standards occurs in consortia, and not in the traditional standards infrastructure, made up of National Bodies, ISO, IEC and JTC 1. Putting boots on the ground in the "mirror committees" for a given technical committee in countries around the world is a significant undertaking, and a far smaller percentage of IT standards are either created in the first instance through that process, or approved after development through the Fast Track process (as OOXML was, through Ecma) or the PAS process, as ODF was (through OASIS). And few, if any, of the standards that do become so blessed by the traditional process have been as closely contested as was OOXML. More typically, a far smaller number of National Bodies take an active interest in any single standard, and are generally interested only in improving it, rather than opposing it. Hence, from a resources point of view, it's hard to make a case for the type of investment in standards professionals on a global basis that IBM maintains.

The result is that, notwithstanding all of the criticism that has been levied (including by me) at the traditional National Body/JTC 1 system, it does have one thing to be said for it: it's a huge job to try and steamroll (in this case) 86 National Bodies, compared to a single consortium or accredited body - a point that Rick Jelliffe has repeatedly made. That takes an enormous amount of time if there is serious opposition.

This time around, Microsoft was willing to make the effort, although with four appeals being processed and DIS 29500 OOXML implementation in Office now postponed until the next major release due to the number of changes to the OOXML draft along the way, the jury is still out on whether Microsoft can be said to have succeeded. Indeed, McKee was also quoted as saying at the same presentation that "ODF has clearly won," although I doubt that this statement is any more reflective of Microsoft's internal strategic decision making consensus than his portrayal of his employer's standards capabilities.

So what will Microsoft have learned from this long, hard process? Should it enter into a standards equivalent of the Cold War arms race, matching IBM standards professional for standards professional in virtual silos around the world, or become a more effective team player within the existing process?

Embarking on the first strategy would take not only millions of dollars but many years to bring to fruition. You can't simply send a green employee into a standards committee where the most influential members have often been working together for years and expect to get results. Thus it would seem that in open standards, as in open source, Microsoft will need to adopt a strategy that involves being a more savvy and collaboratively effective player in the overall ecosystem, rather than trying to maintain the hegemony of its historical, proprietary environment through efforts to promote defensive standards across the industry, at least in the face of determined opposition.

That would be good news for everyone - including Microsoft. Why? because it would be far easier for Microsoft to execute on such a strategy effectively, because it's not really ignorant about how to participate in this process at all. Indeed, after being a team player in many, many consortia over the years already, working shoulder to shoulder with its competitors to help create many standards of common interest, it has no catching up to do at all. Moreover, when competing in this manner, IBM and others should have no great advantage over Microsoft at all.

Or, as the old saying goes, "If you can't beat them, join them." You'd have to be truly ignorant about standards not to take that advice.

Updated: An anonymous reader below has provided a link to a blog entry by Microsoft's Jason Matusow in response to the ZDNet article. You can read much more of interest in that blog entry here, but I thought I would paste in here some of the details confirming my account of Microsoft's past and current standards activities:

More than eight years ago, a corporate standards organization was formed in the company to help product teams be better participants in standards orgs, to make more strategic decisions about what and where to contribute specifications, and how to deal with the legal issues surrounding standards bodies (there is an entire specialization in the legal field for this kind of work believe it or not).
Currently, the standards organization at Microsoft has more than 25 full-time employees in it and is focused not only on standards, but how the company thinks about interoperability and standards as a whole. What's more, because we are active in more than 150 standards orgs at any one time, and more than 400 overall - we have more than 600 product team and field employees who have been internally certified for standards work (and most of them are active in some committee or other). Our products have supported literally more than 10,000 standards and we have contributed specifications in the areas of development languages, runtimes, networking protocols, systems management, hardware, mobility, document formats, security,...the list goes on.

For further blog entries on ODF and OOXML, click here
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The Open Collaboration Revolution

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 05:44:53 -0700

Last week I sent out the latest issue of Standards Today, my bi-monthly eJournal of "News, Ideas and Analysis." This time around, my topic is what I call "The Open Collaboration Revolution," by which I mean the unprecedented ways in which the Internet and the Web are allowing communities to form around projects of all types. The benefits that can be enjoyed as a result of such collaboration are leading those involved to reevaluate the traditional rights of creators and content owners. What they are realizing is that they have more to gain by sharing than hoarding. The result is a new focus on "openness" of all kinds - not just open standards and open source, but open development, open content, open data and more. The promise held out by these new methodologies and the innovative legal tools that have been created to serve them will, I believe, be truly transforming.

What follows below is the Editorial from this issue, titled Patience and the Possibilities of Collaborative and Derivative Expression. If that piques your interest, you may want to read the deeper dive that I take on openness of all types in the Feature Article for this issue, titled Openness and the Pursuit of Knowledge.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Patience and the Possibilities of Collaborative and Derivative Expression

Human cultures have deep roots, put down across millennia of shared experience. Over time, societies develop detailed systems of law, morality and social conduct to protect those cultures, and these frameworks properly adapt only gradually over time. In some cases, changes are enacted self-consciously (as with law), while in others they occur organically (as with evolving norms of social conduct), but in neither case are they apt to morph abruptly.

That is, until now. Increasingly, fundamental and sustaining changes are occurring in the world around us that are comparatively sudden, and therefore present greater challenges to existing systems. Because the cumulative effect of changes that occur deliberately and slowly tends to go unnoticed, we may be tempted to think of abrupt change as being, at best, a necessary evil.

And indeed, much change can be unwelcome and daunting, such as the need to deal with the pressures of increasing population and decreasing natural resources. But other transitions can be liberating and beneficial — although still daunting to embrace. When this happens, we face the dual task of applying the strengths of our historical systems and values to address new realities, while at the same time resisting our predisposition to allow historical biases to stand in the way of embracing the opportunities of the future.

One such liberating and beneficial opportunity I will call the greatly expanded potential for "collaborative and derivative expression" made possible by the Internet. By this I mean the ability to not only share and build upon ideas, but for trans-national, self-selecting communities to form to collectively instantiate them, often incorporating the work of others as quickly as those modules are created. The result can be discrete works (e.g., source code projects involving from a few individuals to thousands of developers), or more diverse, affiliated works of authorship (such as the Wikipedia, with its increasing number of largely independent language editions). Any of these efforts would have been impossible to imagine as other than geographically local, slower moving projects in the very recent past, if indeed they would have existed at all.

New opportunities, of course, are apt to raise new questions. Looked at from the outside in, if a project does not carefully record the authors of discrete contributions, who can or should be held liable for infringement or libel if unauthorized reuse occurs or defamatory statements are made (and if the answer is no one, then who can be protected from such acts?)

Viewed from the inside out, other issues emerge: who should own works of collective expression in order to maintain them into the future, and how? Are the rights of free speech of those that contribute to works of collective expressions in any way different or weaker than those of the sole author of a work of self expression? Should the rules governing fair use under copyright law be more liberal when creating Web-based, interactive "mashups," simply because the Internet enables far richer opportunities for expression than were conceivable in a world possessing only printed pages?

And in each case, absent amendment by legislatures or reinterpreting in the courts, will existing laws dictate the "wrong" answers — answers that over restrict and under deliver?

To derive the best answers to questions such as these, it is important to recognize that virtually all rules that restrict human behavior involve a balancing between the rights of the individual and those of society. In short, the specifics of many laws have been determined not empirically and universally, but subjectively and situationally, based upon the assumption that a certain amount of benefit can be gained (or harm avoided) by society in exchange for imposing a certain degree of restriction on the individual. When the facts underlying such equations change, it becomes appropriate to reexamine whether the location of the legal boundaries that evolved in the past should be relocated to better serve the best interests of all concerned in the future.

Is now such a time? The answer is both yes and no. Yes, because the benefits of both collaborative and derivative expression are becoming obvious. But also no, because the exact new locations for such historical boundaries is not yet obvious. Instead, what is most needed is patience and forbearance on the part of the traditional owners of rights in intellectual property and those charged with protecting those rights, in order to allow the rich and rapid experimentation that is ongoing today in a wide variety of projects and settings to continue.

Such patience, I believe, will be well rewarded. What we are seeing on a daily basis today is a fascinating process of organic adaptation as the marketplace explores new models. Many content owners, at first concerned by the ease with which their content can be copied, are learning to benefit from this same activity. Others are willingly embracing free and open source software licenses, Creative Commons licenses, and open content publishing models that use existing laws as a means to encourage reuse of the fruits of their labors rather than to tax or discourage such use. The result is a creative ferment of collaboration, innovation, advancement and opportunity for all concerned.

If this exploration is too tightly restricted by new laws, or if courts too strictly apply old laws, this process could be inhibited, or, worse yet, brought to a halt entirely. That would be a great tragedy, as the Internet has already proven itself capable of providing an unparalleled vehicle for sharing knowledge, creativity and opportunity.

Disruptive technologies, by definition, stir the pot, upsetting the status quo and applying stress in areas where all may have seemed in balance. Until things once again settle down, that stress may be extremely unwelcome and painful. But attempts at putting the genie back in the bottle are rarely successful. Moreover, the wishes that are within the power of the same genie to grant can be lost as well.

Clearly, the Internet has much more to deliver that we have yet to experience, or perhaps even guess. Where it will take us can hardly be presumed after so few years of wide use. With so much promise, it is certainly too early to set the promise of the future in the concrete of comprehensive laws enacted today. Indeed, it may be that if traditional content owners press too hard to protect their traditional rights rather than join in the creative exploration of this far larger stage, they may lose the most of all.

For further blog entries on Intellectual Propery Rights issues, click here

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Make that Three [now Four]: India [and Venezuela] Appeal Adoption of OOXML

Fri, 30 May 2008 05:56:33 -0700

Update: This is an overdue update to this blog entry, noting that a late appeal from Venezuela was received and accepted after the deadline recognized by ISO/IEC. I had thought I would write a separate entry on it, but as it is now old news, I am updating this entry so as not to leave a misleading impression that the final count was only three.

Last night was the deadline for filing appeals to the adoption of OOXML by ISO/IEC JTC 1. This morning, a spokesman for the IEC acknowledged the receipt of a total of three appeals by the deadline, with the third and final appeal being filed by India, as reported by Peter Sayers, of the IDG News Service. I have no news as yet whether the fourth country that planned to file an appeal has decided not to do so, missed the deadline, or sent its letter only to ISO (Peter reports that an ISO spokesman declined to confirm how many appeals it has received at this time. The deadline date is a matter of some confusion, as some National Bodies were under the impression that the deadline was June 2, so it remains possible that a fourth appeal will (or already has been) received.

In other technicality news, the IEC spokesman noted that the Brazil letter had been improperly addressed - duplicate copies should have been sent to the CEOs of both the IEC and ISO - but that this technical irregularity would be waived [Jonathan Buck, the IEC spokesman, inaccurately stated to Peter that the Indian appeal, rather than the Brazilian appeal, had been improperly addressed; the IDG story will be corrected shortly]

More substantively, what happens next? Ironically, "what happens next" is described in the same general and sometimes vague Directives that have caused ongoing dissent in the process to date, and figure prominently in the South African and Brazilian appeals themselves. According to Jonathan Buck, the IEC spokesman, the CEOs of the two organizations are charged with trying to reach a solution with each of the National Bodies that have filed appeals. If that fails after one month of effort, then the issue is transferred to two committees, one in each of the two sponsoring organization of Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC 1). They are the Technical Management Board (at ISO) and the Standards Management Board (at the IEC).

Here's how the actual rules under the Directives for handling appeals describe the process:

11.2.2 Upon receipt, the JTC 1 Secretariat shall advise all its P-members of the appeal, and take immediate action, by correspondence or at a meeting, to consider and decide on the appeal, consulting the Secretaries-General in the process.

"Upon receipt" appears to have been interpreted as "after the deadline has passed." Presumably the three NBs involved will now be contacted.

11.2.3 If JTC 1 supports the SC, the P-member who initiated the appeal may either
• Accept the JTC 1 decision, or
• Appeal against it.

"Supports the SC" here presumably means that if the Secretaries-General (the "CEOs" referred to by the IEC spokesman) are of the opinion that the appeals do not justify the action(s) requested in the appeals. Given that there have been three appeals, two of which only partially overlap in their objections, and the third of which has not yet been disclosed, there are a variety of possible permutations which may occur entering and exiting this step.

11.3.3 The Secretaries-General shall, following whatever consultations they deem appropriate, refer the appeal together with their comments to the TMB/SMB within one month after receipt of the appeal.

This is in alignment with the spokesman's comments, as quoted in the IDG story.

11.3.4 The TMB/SMB shall decide whether an appeal shall be further processed or not. If the decision is in favour of proceeding, the Chairmen of the TMB/SMB shall form a conciliation panel (see 9.2). The conciliation panel shall hear the appeal and attempt to resolve the difference of opinion as soon as practicable. If the conciliation panel is unsuccessful in its endeavours, it shall so report within three months to the Secretaries-General, giving its recommendations on how the matter should be settled.

As with the other rules that have been at issue in the OOXML Fast Track process thus far, those that will apply here are superficially rational - but also superficial, when it comes to detail. As has consistently been the case to date, that means that a great deal is left to the discretion to those in the ISO/IEC hierarchy. What this means is that ultimate control of the resolution remains in the hands of the same individuals, and their colleagues, that made or approved, the decisions in the first instance upon which the appeals are based.

As a result, we can expect that any poorly justified rejection of these appeals will be met with the as much disagreement and emotion as virtually ever other judgment made under the same Directives along this long and winding road.

I will update this post later as necessary, and also add the text of the Indian appeal when and if it becomes available.

For further blog entries on ODF and OOXML, click here
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Now There are Two: Brazil Appeals OOXML Adoption

Thu, 29 May 2008 15:02:27 -0700

Associação Brasileira de Normas Técnicas (ABNT), the National Body representing Brazil, today filed an appeal to the approval of OOXML by ISO/IEC, bringing the current total of appeals to two, with as many as two additional appeals to come, based upon what I have heard from private sources. The text of the Brazilian appeal appears in full at the end of this blog entry, supplied by a trusted source in Brazil.

While this latest appeal overlaps the South African objections in part, it also raises new concerns, some of which are particular to the interests of Brazil, rather than applying to the process as a whole. As a result, it raises not only additional issues, but also ones that present a categorically different basis for appeal as well.

Brazil's objections fall under two main headings, the second of which was also raised by South Africa. That objection relates to the fact that the reconciliation draft of DIS 29500 that was delivered to ISO on March 29 still has not been released, even to the National Bodies. Despite the fact that this release has been requested by many different parties representing multiple viewpoints, no public or private explanation has thus far been given for the failure to follow rules calling for the releasee of the draft within 30 days of the close of the BRM. The new issues fall under the second major objection, which the letter summarizes by stating that the results of the BRM wre "inconclusive." It supports that contention with a variety of examples, including:

1. The fact that the Brazilian delegation was not permitted to present a proposal regarding legacy binary mapping

2. Repeated refusals to address requests and issues due to lack of time

3. Decisions were mandated by lack of time, lead, leading to decisions Brazil deems "to completely incompatible with the kind of decisions that should have be taken."

4. Decisions taken based upon an asserted "need to give answers to journalists"

5. Misuse of limited time for irrelevant purposes

6. Misapplication of the rules relating to who was entitled to vote in the BRM (a point also raised in the South African appeal)

7. Votes taken without prior discussion

8. Recourse to block voting not because it was an adequate approach, but only because it was "less bad"

9. An error relating to an objection in the official notes of the meeting

Each of these assertions is explained in detail, giving specific instances of conduct taken (and not taken) at the BRM. The ABNT appeal concludes its first argument by highlighting the fact that only 189 out of 1027 responses were actually discussed at the BRM, and stating "For the above-mentioned reasons, Brazil considers that the ISO/IEC DIS 29500 BRM was inconclusive."

Whether or not this latest appeal will be rejected out of hand or allowed to become the subject of serious consideration remains to be seen. Presumably some of the examples given above will receive scant attention, given that ISO was represented at the meeting, and participated in the decision making that lay behind the key decisions made at the time. But with each additional appeal that is filed, one would hope that a review of the process will be found to be more urgent, given the evident unhappiness of National Bodies that attended the BRM in good faith, and left unsatisfied not with the result, but what they had witnessed in the course of a long and frustrating week in Geneva.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Here is the text of the letter from ABNT in Brazil:

Dear Sirs,

The Associação Brasileira de Normas Técnicas (ABNT), as a P member of ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC34, would like to present, to ISO/IEC/JTC1 and ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC34, this appeal for reconsideration of the ISO/IEC DIS 29500 final result.

This appeal is based on two main considerations:

1. Brazil considers that the BRM was inconclusive.
2. Brazil considers that the final version of the ISO/IEC DIS 29500 text shall be released immediately.

1. About the BRM

At the BRM, the Brazilian delegation was not allowed to present an important proposal regarding the legacy binary mapping. This proposal was a complementary part of USA delegation proposal regarding the new organization of the ISO/IEC DIS 29500. It also shall complement the scope change proposal approved at the BRM.

Brazil has tried to present this proposal, during the debates, on the first day of the meeting and, attending to a request made by the convenor, Brazil has taken offline discussions with USA and other delegations and prepared its proposal to be presented on Friday, during USA proposal presentation.
On Friday, when USA ended their part of presentation and asked for Brazil to present its part of it, the convenor denied this opportunity to Brazilian delegation.

Several delegations has protested against that arbitrary decision, but those appeal was in vain and until the end of the BRM, the Brazilian delegation was not able to present its proposal. The main reason alleged by the convenor was “lack of time”.
The proposal here mentioned, is the one available on the file “Br_Multipart_Proposal.ppt” available to all BRM members the ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC34 website at least since the fourth day of the meeting.

Brazil also noticed that most of the decisions taken during the BRM were based on the “lack of time” argument, and we think that this is completely incompatible with the kind of decisions that should have be taken on that meeting.

During the BRM, some decisions were also taken based on the argument that “we need to give answers to journalists”, and we think that the media coverage of that meeting was not so important as the meeting results, to be used as a decision making criteria.
Even with the “lack of time” alleged, some members of ECMA delegation, and not members of any NB, was allowed to do half-hour speeches during the two first days of the meeting.

The voting rules of that meeting were not taken in accordance with ISO/IEC/JTC1 directives subclause 9.1.4. Brazil also notes that the ISO/IEC DIS 29500 was voted under ISO/IEC/JTC1 but the BRM was organized by ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC34. Even if the directives subclause 9.1.4 was intended to be used, Brazil cannot understand if the P member status considered, should be the ISO/IEC/JTC1 or the ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC34 one.

Brazil also considers that if most part of the issues was to be decided by vote, without any kind of discussion allowed.

About the same subject, Brazil considers that the elected “default voting criteria” was only elected because it was the “less bad” criteria that could be analyzed, and we do not consider that this voting decision represents the intent of the vast majority of BRM delegates. They went there to discuss the technical propositions.

Analyzing the document “SC 34 N 990 - EDITED NOTES OF THE MEETING”, on page 7, we have found the register of BR objection to the multi-part split decision but analyzing the document “SC 34 N 989 - RESOLUTIONS OF THE MEETING” we do not find that objection registered.

During the BRM, the delegations were asked to vote in block for the rejection of a set of responses that was considered by the convenor as “responses without any editing instructions”. Those responses are listed on the file “dis29500-nochange.txt”, available at the SC34 website during the BRM and, as far as Brazilian delegates remember, this set of responses was “rejected in block” as requested.

When we analyze the documents N989 and N990 we do not see any reference to that decision and also at the ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC34 document with title “Result of Proposed disposition of comments (SC 34 N 980)”, that presents a table with the status of each response, some of the “block rejected responses” appears as accepted (e.g. responses 3, 5, 10 and 11 among others).

To finalize our considerations about the BRM, analyzing the document N 989, we've found that the BRM can be summarized by:

Total of responses available for discussion:                     1027 – 100 %
Total of responses addressed at the BRM:                     189 – 18,4 %
Total of responses decided by “default” vote:                   838 – 81,6 %

We use the term “responses addressed at the BRM” above because the majority of those responses was decided by block vote without any discussion at the BRM.

For the above-mentioned reasons, Brazil considers that the ISO/IEC DIS 29500 BRM was inconclusive.

2. About the final version of ISO/IEC DIS 29500 text

According to the directive item 13.12, the final version of the ISO/IEC DIS 29500 text shall be distributed on not more than one month after the end of the BRM.

Seen that almost three months has passed after the end of BRM, without any final version of the text distributed or published, and based on directive subclause 13.12, Brazil request the distribution of ISO/IEC DIS 29500 final text.

For all those reasons presented, Brazil kindly request that the final result of ISO/IEC DIS 29500 should be reconsidered by ISO/IEC/JTC1 and ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC34.

Best regards,

Marcia Cristina de Oliveira

ABNT – Manager Standardization Process

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South Africa Appeals OOXML Adoption

Fri, 23 May 2008 05:24:58 -0700

SABS, the National Body member of ISO/IEC JTC1 for South Africa, has filed a formal appeal with both ISO and IEC, challenging the Fast Track adoption of OOXML. With the filing of this formal appeal, DIS 29500 is now formally in limbo (i.e., cannot become an approved standard) until the appeal has been addressed.

The cited basis for South Africa's appeal is found in the following text of Clause 11.1.2 of the applicable Directives:

A P Member of JTC1 or an SC may appeal against any action or inaction, on the part of JTC 1 or an SC when the P member considers that in such action or inaction:

- questions of principle are involved;
- the contents of a draft may be detrimental to the reputation of IEC or ISO; or
- the point giving rise to objection was not known to JTC 1 or SC during earlier discussions.

The identical three page letters, signed by Mr. M. Kuscus, Chief Executive Officer of SABS, include other concerns not directly based upon the language of the Directives, as follows:

In addition, South Africa wishes to register its deep concern over the increasing tendency of international organizations to use the JTC 1 processes to circumvent the consensus-building process that is the cornerstone to the success and international acceptance of ISO and IEC standards. The ability of large multi-national organizations to influence many national bodies, with the resultant block-voting over-riding legitimate issues raised by other countries, is also of concern.

The letter then gives detailed arguments supporting its appeal under each of the subclauses (discussed below in greater detail), and gives the following summary in closing:

In conclusion, South Africa challenges the validity of a final vote that we contend was based upon inadequate information resulting from a poorly conducted BRM. Moreover, we challenge the validity of a process that, from beginning to end, required all parties involved to analyze far too much information in far too little time, involved a BRM that did not remotely provide enough time to perform the appointed purpose of that procedure, and for which an arbitrary time limitation was imposed to discuss and resolve a significant number of substantial responses, despite the
Directives not requiring any such limitation as to duration.

It is our opinion that the process followed during all stages of the fast track has harmed the reputations of both ISO and IEC and brought the processes enshrined in the Directives into disrepute, and that this negative publicity has, in turn, also harmed the reputations of all member bodies of ISO and the IEC.

The closing of the letter is both telling as well as ironic, coming just after Microsoft's announcement that it would support ODF in Office 2007, but not DIS 29500, the ISO/IEC JTC 1 version of OOXML, until the as yet unscheduled shipping of Office 14. As a result, the business basis for fast tracking OOXML to begin with - to benefit the enormous installed base of Office users - will be rewarded, at the earliest, in 2010. The Fast Track thus would appear to be a lose-lose all around: a huge imposition on all involved, a lower quality specification at the end than a more deliberative process would have proven, and a damaged reputation for ISO/IEC as well.

The primary bases given for the appeal are as follows:

A failure of the Contradictions process to be run in accordance with the Directives. The one month Contradictions period that begins a fast track process garnered of issues submitted by a number of National Bodies. However, no meeting was called to address these contradictions. The Directives do not require, but do provide for such a meeting when warranted. SABS notes that the Contradictions were not addressed to the satisfaction of the National Bodies, which continued to raise them during the following five-month comment period, indicating to SABS that a meeting was needed to give due consideration to the issues raised.

A failure to achieve consensus on most of the issues that were to be addressed by the BRM. SABS notes that more than three quarters of the issues raised prior to the BRM ("responses") were tabled, and ultimately dispensed with by "blanket voting." SABS calls this decision "procedurally flawed," concluding:

Effectively, this required the national bodies to write a blank checque approving the proposals of the authors of the proposed standard, which is inappropriate for any standard, never mind one that has generated considerable controversy.

The letter also challenges the voting procedure utilized at the meeting, which allowed all attendees, and not just P members, to vote, a controversy that has previously been aired an a variety of blogs, including that of Convenor Alex Brown.

ISO/IEC has failed to release a final version of DIS 29500 and the Meeting Report within 30 days of the close of the BRM: Clause 13.12 of the Directives provides as follows:

In not more than one month after the ballot resolution group meeting the SC Secretariat shall distribute the final report of the meeting and final DIS text in case of acceptance.

The BRM ended on February 29, and although Ecma delivered a revised draft based on the BRM to ISO on March 29 (at the very end of the period during which National Bodies could change their vote), that draft has still not been released, even to the National Bodies. SABS concludes this point with this observation:

Given the magnitude of the specification and the number of identified edits required it was clear that the directive could not have been met. This is the clearest possible indiation that DIS 29500 as submitted by Ecma and as modified by the BRM is not ready for fast track processing. It was not incumbent on the participants of the BRM to modify this clearly stated requirement.

And so, with the implementation of DIS 29500 in Office now postponed for the indefinite future (and therefore, presumably, its implementation by any other vendor as well), the formal post mortem on the process that hatched this orphan standard begins.

The full text of the letter, titled, Appeal from the South African national body regarding the outcome of the fast-track processing of DIS 29500 Office open XML can be found here.

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Microsoft Office 2007 to Support ODF - and not OOXML

Wed, 21 May 2008 09:29:30 -0700

Microsoft today announced that it would update Office 2007 to natively support ODF 1.1, but not to implement its own OOXML format. Moreover, it would also join both the OASIS ODF working group as well as the ISO/IEC JTC1 working group that has control of the ISO/IEC version of ODF. Implementation of DIS 29500, the ISO/IEC JTC 1 version of OOXML that has still not been publicly released will await the release of Office 14, the ship date of which remains unannounced.

The same announcement reveals that Office 2007 will also support PDF 1.1, PDF/A and Microsoft's competing fixed-text format, called XML Paper Specification. XML Paper Specification is currently being prepared by Ecma for submission to ISO/IEC under the same "Fast-Track" process by which OOXML had been submitted for consideration and approval.

Yesterday afternoon was when I first began to hear news through the grapevine that Microsoft's Jason Matusow (director of corporate standards) and Doug Mahugh (senior product manager for Microsoft Office) would announce native support of ODF. later in the day, I started to get email from journalists who had been alerted that Microsoft would make a format-related announcement, and were trying to figure out what it would say. Now that the announcement has been made and the first press reports are beginning to surface, there may be more questions to ask about ODF support now than there were yesterday. In this blog entry I'll review what has been said, what has not, and what questions remain. The first reporter to break the story, according to a Google search, was David Worthington, writing for Software Developer Times. Worthington also reported that Microsoft will also join ISO Technical Committee 171, the working group responsible for PDF, and also offer an API that developers can use to develop Office plug in converters that would permit users to select another format, such as ODF, as their desired default save format.

Worthington's story includes quotes from Matusow and Mahugh that provide intriguing insights into how the decisions were made. After noting that saving to the OASIS ODF 1.1 format would now be possible, Worthington writes:

However, the company is not quick to embrace its own creation. Mahugh stated that Microsoft would not implement the final ISO version of OOXML until Office 14 ships at an unstated date in the future. This variant of OOXML was designated ISO/IEC 29500 at the time it was certified as an ISO International standard in April.

“One way to look at it is the prioritization of formats,” Mahugh explained. “We reach a point in time where we have to decide whether to continue to invest in a previous version [of Office] or to cut the cord and move forward.”

ODF support was a priority for Microsoft, Mahugh noted, adding that “real world” customers say that there is a pressing need for PDF [AU: ODF?] support. “At this point there are no products using [ISO/IEC 29500] in the marketplace.”

When will Microsoft support its own file format? Worthingon quotes Gartner Research's Michael Silver on that question as follows:

“Customers that are expecting true document fidelity from XML-based, ISO-standard document formats will continue to be disappointed." Silver observed that the most compatible formats to use today are Microsoft’s legacy binaries, and he believes that Microsoft will be unlikely to convince customers to move to OOXML in the foreseeable future.

So what exactly does this all mean? Let's start with what we still don't know.

When will the ODF feature be available? We don't know. I've heard through the grapevine that we might be looking at 6 - 9 months. A formal planned ship date would obviously be useful to receive. [Update: The press release posted later in the day to the Microsoft Web site (reproduced in full below) states that Service Pack 2 (SP2), which will include support of the additiona formats, is "scheduled for the first half of 2009."]

What will the source of the function be?   There are two obvious possible sources. One would be the CleverAge open source project conversion code generated by the long-running project at Source Forge funded by Microsoft. The other would be internal development. While either is possible, in comparing notes with others there are indications that development work may have been ongoing for some time to enable this function.

Under what terms will the API be made available? Until Microsoft announces to the contrary, the most logical assumption would be Microsoft's existing Open Specification Promise (OSP). That commitment is fine for proprietary vendors and non-commercial open source use, but incompatible with commercial open source products.

Finally, and most intriguingly, Why has this announcement been made now? Clearly, Microsoft could have provided native support at any time over the last several years. Office already supports dozens of formats, and the development work for a company of Microsoft's size would be trivial. Until now, avoiding native support has helped limit the spread of ODF-compliant software, due to the fact that documents created using such products could not as easily be exchanged with ubiquitous Office users. And while several plugins have been available for some time, adding them requires effort to locate, download and configure. Individual users are not likely to go to the bother (or may not be sophisticated enough to do so), while enterprise CIOs have more than enough to deal with already, and would be unlikely to bother until a critical mass of requests for ODF capability had built up.

Once Office users can easily open, edit and reexport files that were originally created in ODF, however, there will be less business and social pressure against creating such files. Given the quality of open source office suites such as OpenOffice, the long-delayed advent of Linux on the desktop, support for ODF in other products such as WordPerfect, and government and open source community enthusiasm for ODF-compliant products, the frequency of ODF-based files popping up in the work flows of Office-based shops can now be expected to increase much more quickly.

So that still leaves the question, why now, especially since ISO/IEC JTC1 is one formality step away from adopting OOXML as DIS 29500? Here's where the other part of the announcement comes in: Microsoft has decided that it will not attempt to implement DIS 29500 until Office 14, the arrival date for which remains in (at least public) limbo. What to do, then, about government customers that require an ISO/IEC approved product?

That's a problem. Alex Brown, the Convenor of the Ballot Resolution Meeting for OOXML in Geneva in February, confirmed yesterday that Ecma delivered a revised specification to ISO on March 29, but that draft remains closeted behind ISO's doors, despite the fact that the final voting period expired at the end of March, and now even the two month appeal period is rapidly reaching a close - this despite a requirement under the applicable Directives that the release of a final draft to National Bodies should have occurred weeks ago. Until the final draft is finalized and released, final programming work cannot begin to implement it.

So what can Microsoft do to meet its customers' requirements?   Notwithstanding the pedal to the floor pressure to push OOXML through the formal standards approval process, Microsoft will lack the ability to deliver a product that complies with an ISO/IEC-approved version OOXML for the indefinite future. Moreover, investigations by the European Commission are continuing regarding Microsoft's practices, including its conduct during the adoption of OOXML.

The most it can do, therefore, is to provide native support to that other format - ODF. A silver lining is that any added appeal for Office 2007 will provide a welcome boost for a product that continues to lag Microsoft's originally projected sales.

One possible flaw in the above reasoning is the fact that Microsoft has announced that it will support ODF 1.1, the current OASIS version, rather than DIS 26300, the ISO-adopted specification based on OASIS ODF 1.0. Presumably this is a reflection of the fact that ODF 1.1 will be the foundation for the next version of the ISO standard, as well as the practical reality that all other ODF products in the marketplace will be built to 1.1, due to the additional functionality that it supports. Presumably government users will be more interested in buying and being able to exchange documents created using the most useful products available, rather than those that are limited by the constraints of an already dated standards release. Suddenly, it appears, Microsoft has found that indeed its customers really do want usseful native ODF support - something that it had steadfastlly denied for years.

Regardless of the motivation, today's announcement is indeed good news for everyone that believes in open document formats in general, and in ODF in particular. Once Office users can round trip documents with ODF users and vice versa, the frequency of that process should begin to increase. Hopefully, Microsoft's years-long delay in agreeing to participate in the ODF working group will allow better interoperability as well over time.

All of which, for now, must remain on the "wait and see" list. Here's what to watch for in the months ahead:

1. A release date for the service pack with ODF support and for the API.

2. Whether the API will be available as open source

3. More specifically, whether the API can be used in GPL situations

4. Reviews of how good a job the upgraded suite does in round tripping ODF-generated documents of all types (text, spreadsheet and presentation).

That's all for now. I'll update this entry as further facts become available.

Updated 5/21/08 3:45 PM EDT:   Scott M. Fulton, III, who has followed the ODF - OOXML saga from the early days, has posted an article with additional details, based on interviews with Jason Matusow and Doug Mahugh, including the following:

Beginning with Office 2007 Service Pack 2 -- which for the first time, Microsoft acknowledged this morning will be available during the first half of 2009 -- users will be presented with an option, both during installation and through options settings, enabling them to choose ODF as the default save format for spreadsheets, documents, and presentations. In a remarkable move that also shows how much Adobe's format has become an independent standard in its own right, PDF format will also be offered as an optional default, as well as Microsoft's XML Paper Specification (XPS) portable format.

This goes many steps beyond the ability to export documents to what would be considered foreign formats. With one-time settings, users will be able to say their own native format is not Office Open XML, the current default format of Office 2007, but one of these three other formats instead. This puts Office in direct functional competition not only with distributors of the OpenOffice suite such as Novell and Sun, but with Adobe's Acrobat Professional as well. Users will still be able to save in other formats, through a selection made from the Save as type combo box in the Save as dialog box.

The full story is here. Scott indicates that he will have more information to pass along shortly. See also the Microsoft press release, below.

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Microsoft Expands List of Formats Supported in Microsoft Office
Move enhances customer choice and interoperability with Microsoft’s flagship productivity suite.

Please Welcome Digistan

Fri, 16 May 2008 01:07:00 -0700

On Wednesday, I introduced The Hague Declaration to those that visit this blog, promising to write again shortly to introduce the new organization that created the Declaration. That organization is called the Digital Standards Organization (Digistan, for short), and I'm pleased to say that I am one of its founders. In this entry, I'll give you my perceptions of what Digistan is all about, and what I hope it will accomplish.

You'll notice that I just used the words "my perceptions." This is for a number of reasons, the first being that this is still a very young organization that has taken shape, primarily via a listserv. I was welcomed onto the founders listserv on November 12, bringing the total number of participants to 13. Since then, that list has grown. As of today, there are 19 individuals that have agreed to publicly associate themselves with the organization as founders, and it would be fair to say that there is a broad range of views (from conservative to radical) represented in this cross section of experienced professionals. Together, we have been reaching consensus on various pieces of the still-incomplete and evolving puzzle, adding them to the Digistan site as sufficient agreement is reached to make them public, while still allowing the pieces to change to reflect continuing discussion.

The result is that the organization, to an extent, is not unlike the story of the five blind men touching the proverbial elephant, but with a twist. It would be more accurate to say that each of the blind men has arrived on the scene not to find a strange new creature, but rather bearing a piece of the elephant. Today, we are still completing the process of putting the beast together. For this reason, what I write in this entry should be regarded as my perceptions alone, and the rights of the other founders to describe their piece of the elephant, and their vision of the final product, must be preserved.

With all that said, what is innovative new animal we call "Digistan?" Here's how it feels to me. What is Digistan's Mission? First and foremost, it must be acknowledged that Digistan is the result of the vision and tireless (but tactful) energy of Pieter Hintjens (I'll return to Pieter's contribution later in this post). That vision incorporates and channels the work of many others who have spoken out in the past in favor of "openness" in general, and in some cases on the intersection of openness and human rights (Digistan founder Alberto Barrionuevo being an example of the latter). Pieter's vision, as it has evolved in discussions with the other founders, is now instantiated in the Mission statement, which you can find in full here. It reads in part as follows:

The Digital Standards Organization (Digistan) seeks to promote customer choice, vendor competition, and overall growth in the global digital economy through the understanding, development, and adoption of free and open digital standards ("open standards").
In concrete terms, we seek to:

Educate industry and government about the socioeconomic benefits of open standards;

Advocate legislative and regulatory backing for open standards;

Help standards developers produce high-quality open standards;

Help standards authorities understand, qualify, and enforce open standards.

Defend the open standards community, small and large, against capture by vendors.
Digistan is active in, and welcomes active support, in all these areas.

Much of the above is fairly non-controversial, but some is more activist. Notable is item 5, which is one of the elements that distinguishes Digistan from various other organizations. This concern is also reflected in the current (in the sense that nothing is fixed, and can further evolve) definition of a "free and open standard." That high-level definition is as follows:

The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard as follows:

The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit organization, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties.

The standard has been published and the standard specification document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy, distribute, and use it freely.

The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.

There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.
A key defining property is that a free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.

A fair amount of discussion went into this definition, which went down a variety of roads before we decided to closely paraphrase the European Commission's European Interoperability Framework v.1 definition. Again, the last line stands out. The reason for its existence is that while a well-run standards process that meets the prior criteria would be likely to achieve the same result, that result is not guaranteed.

It is important to note that avoiding vendor capture is hardly the only challenge to creating useful, high quality, widely adopted standards - only that this particular organization has identified this result as being relevant to its mission. Speaking for myself, this is only one among many important issues that require ongoing attention in order to ensure that the standards we end up living with are the standards that we truly need.

How did Digistan come about? It would be fair to say that Digistan is to some extent a reaction to the ODF/OOXML experience. That said, it would be inaccurate to say that in the future Digistan will be particularly focused on that situation. Rather, the document format battle informed a great many people for the first time about the importance of open standards, as well as gave them some visibility into how technical standards are created. It also exposed a wide audience for the first time to what the existing standard setting structure does well, and what it does not so well.

This information fell on fertile ground (especially in Europe), given the widening awareness of the importance of creating free and open source software, open content and open development. For the first time, those who were already committed to those methodologies and goals became aware of the importance of open standards to achieving their related goals. It also revealed the fact that while standards can have enormous impact on people everywhere, very little influence is asserted on their development by anyone other than vendors and small subsets of government, academic and other constituencies.

Historically, this has not been a source of great concern to most citizens. But with the rising importance of the Internet and the Web, it has become clear that certain standards that can appropriately be called "digital standards" are of great concern to everyone. And from this realization, Digistan was born, catalyzed by a very public contest involving two document formats bearing the seemingly innocuous acronyms ODF and OOXML.

Who formed Digistan? As noted above, the motive force behind Digistan has first and foremost been Pieter Hintjens. Pieter's brief bio on the About page at the Digistan site reads in part as follows:

Pieter Hintjens is a software entrepreneur, software designer, writer, and campaigner with over 25 years' experience in the IT business. His specialty is the analysis and design of large-scale systems (both technical and social) through the mixture of top-down structural guidelines and bottom-up organic activity. He is the founder and director of iMatix Corporation, and the CEO of Wikidot Inc. He was the main author of the AMQP/0.8 industry standard messaging protocol, developed by JPMorganChase and iMatix Corporation, and the main designer of the OpenAMQ messaging system. He is the founder of the European Software Market Association and the European Patent Conference. He has a bachelors degree in Computer Science.

I asked Pieter to summarize briefly what motivated him to spend so much of his time creating Digistan. He provided the following in response:

Open standards matter very much to me. I've watched the growth of the Internet since its earliest days, and there is something magical about how freedom makes people productive, and wealthy. I do hope that the freedom to innovate will help mankind step over the chasms that face us in the future, as oil and other natural resources run out. I don't want my children to grow up in a world where freedom is the luxury of the wealthy. And free and open standards are essential to the open Internet we're used to. So when I see open standards under threat,from software patents and from vested interests, my reaction is to call out to people like me, to organize, and to fight back. Digistan is meant to become an umbrella for the many, many groups working for open standards around the world.

It's fair to say that all of the founders share Pieter's belief in the importance of digital standards to ensuring that the benefits of the Internet and the Web are enjoyed by everyone around the world, although not all of us (me, anyway) might be as vigorous in our style and approach.

Pieter has driven the process, set up and maintained the Web site, and been the motive force in framing out the concept and mission. He has also been the initial draftsman of each of the artifacts of significance at the Digistan site. In each case, these documents were then posted to a Wiki, after which they evolved through discussion and incremental changes by those on the founders list. These artifacts include both internal policies as well as The Hague Declaration and a related Open Letter to Standards Professionals and Activists, and the current (remember that all elements can, and doubtless will, continue to evolve) mission statement and definition of a Free and Open Standard.

Is Digistan simply a bunch of rabid Microsoft bashers? No. Digistan has not been founded to act against any single company, or group of companies. In fact, the only employee of a major vendor (IBM) among the founders, Rob Weir, is a very late arrival to the group. Rather, there is a wide range of viewpoints and priorities represented among the founders, and none of us speaks for the others, although together we share certain goals and values.

The initial founders derived heavily from the European open software movement, including individuals active in organizations such as the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure. Over time, it has expanded geographically and categorically, with additions such as myself, Brian Kahin (a Senior Fellow at the Computer & Communications Industry Association in Washington, DC. as well as a Research Investigator and Adjunct Professor at the University of Michigan School of Information), Bob Jolliffe (founding director of Freedom to Innovate South Africa (FTISA)), and Rob Weir (author of An Antic Disposition).

It is true that Pieter was one of the motive forces behind <NO>OOXML, as were two other Digistan founders, Benjamin Henrion and Alberto Barrionuevo. However, Digistan is not NOOOXML under a new name. Over the past six months, the character of the organization has evolved, with some founders advocating for an edgier, more confrontational tone that will appeal to grass-roots activists, and others (such as myself) pushing for a more toned down, conservative approach that will make it harder for critics to dismiss the organization as being either a front for opposing vendors, or a radical fringe that is best ignored.

Already, one such blog entry has been posted, rather incredibly suggesting that the name Digistan was selected "to identify with the fascist terrorists based in countries and regions using the Farsi-based suffix 'stan'” (a counter opinion is offered by Glyn Moody here). This is interesting news to those that came up with the name, and, for the record, I am not aware of the presence of a single representative of Mr. bin Laden on any Digistan listserv. Moreover, there is no intention to require any member of Digistan to take political oaths to any particular ideology. Nor is it clear to me in any event how the creation of open standards can preferentially be directed towards the destruction of any particular social, religious or political belief system. I promise to report promptly to Mr. Byron if this situation should change.

In summary of this point, Digistan is neither a radical organization nor a front for any other organization, vendor or group of vendors, or I would not have joined. In fact, one of the reasons that I agreed to be named as a founder was to try and counteract such an impression (at least among those that are not of the opinion that I'm a radical), and thereby encourage others to join and become active as well.

How does Digistan operate? Very openly (naturally), though listservs, Wikis and face to face meetings, such as the workshop to be held in The Hague on May 21st. It is important to note that Digistan is based upon a "grass roots" model, welcoming not only individuals, but encouraging local organizations (existing or created for the purpose) to affiliate. To date, there are three affiliates: LesStandardsNumeriques.org, in France, Koalicji na Rzecz Otwartych Standardów (KROS) in Poland, and Proyecto Estándares Abiertos in Spain.

The best way to find out more is by browsing through the Digistan site, and then joining the public list, one of the several working groups that have already been set up, or one of the three local chapters.

I believe in the goals of Digistan, and hope that Digistan will be able to act as the focal point for the efforts of individuals around the world that are committed to ensuring that the benefits of the Internet and the Web are secured for all. If you share those goals, please consider offering your support as well, including by adding your name to those that have already signed The Hague Declaration. For those of you that want to know more about the Declaration, my commentary on it can be found here.

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