[LINK] Noes from OOXML standards forum

Janet Hawtin lucychili at gmail.com
Tue Aug 21 17:02:04 AEST 2007


On 8/20/07, Tom Worthington <Tom.Worthington at tomw.net.au> wrote:

> I do not believe that Standards Australia are biased in favour of
> Microsoft. The standards people make standards in a vast range of
> areas and can't be experts in the details. It is up to the experts on
> the committees to advise on what is a good standard and what is not.
> It does not good to shout abuse at the standards administrators about
> the technical details of a topic they do not understand.

I agree that the SA staff seemed to be making a best effort.

I also agree with Glen and others that it seems that the process was
not really focused around the content of the standard and direct
implications for AU folk and nation.

Part of that is due to 6000pages on a fast track which seems to me to
be a recipe for a train wreck.

Part of that is perhaps related to the way the SA site encourages
people to represent their own or partisan interests rather than being
an opportunity to look at what the national interest would be best
served by. The MOU is phrased around national interest but the
processes are not well structured to serve those purposes imho. They
can be easily lost in the overlapping self stuff which started these
threads off.

I do think this is an opportunity to look at what a formal standard
offers Australia in terns of whether it means something is safe to use
and whether it is a format which people can use as a standard or
whether standards do not mean those kinds of things and are simply a
signal that the format or brand has enough critical mass to get the
numbers on a committee of self interest.

Given that market share generates a kind of inertia and skill base
'standard' I would have thought that Standards Australia would be well
positioned to offer a point of difference from that and to be able to
provide a brand around formats which can be used by Australians for
government data and for all AU developers to interoperate with safely.

The combination of the TPM and DRM aspects of the copyright act and
the squirrelly legal aspects of this proposal make it hard to see how
this proposal serves as anything other than proof you can drive a
humvee over a footbridge if you go fast enough.
How is the SA ISO brand currently used, what does it mean for people
who look for it?

> Also keep in mind that international standards are not made by the
> more open, free process used for Internet standards. ISO standards
> are made by small closed committees of vested interests, copies of
> the standards are sold for money and standards can use patented
> technology where a licence fee is charged for use. In that context
> the process for OOXML is relatively free and open.

The process for ODF was more open and negotiated and I think it is the
ongoing open process which is the core value of the ISO brand. It is
what provides the opportunity to be more than a vendor sumo match and
to be something around best practice, interoperable formats and
accessible data for people/users all of us.

> You can't blame SA staff for following their set down procedures. If
> you don't like the way such standards are made, then what is needed
> is for those procedures to be changed, or for other bodies with
> different procedures to be used for making standards. The easiest way
> I can see to do this is the same "fast track" process being used for
> OOXML.

I think the fast track is the problem. I think the use by a vendor to
push something through a fast track is the natural outcome of a
process like that and that it will encourage those kinds of results.

> With this some other body prepares a draft using their own
> process and then puts it up, completed, to be a standard. That body
> can use a freer process and make its draft freely available. SA, ISO
> and other standards bodies can then endorse it officially and sell
> their official version of the standard.

I would be concerned that this would abdicate national interest to the
kind of process we are currently watching. imho Open negotiation of
the *development* and ongoing review and improvement of best practice
standards for infrastructure as fundamental as information access and
storage should be something which Australia has a collective interest
in.
I feel we need to polish up our own Australian priorities for
processes around developing and branding standards which enable our
full participation and provide reliable long term access to our
information assets.

I am a newbie to these kinds of processes but to me, both in the USFTA
process and in this process I see that vendors are well positioned and
that the consumer or public interest of our country is not a strong
vision or guiding principle by which the standard is assessed.
Perhaps this is a resourcing issue or a policy shift? Perhaps it is
just that I am new to these issues and that there are Australians
working to those principles in ISO and OASIS.
Would be great to see the national and public interest get a stronger
apparent purpose and scope for value than is currently apparent.

Janet



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