[LINK] Australia abstains on Office Open XML vote

[Janet Hawtin]

On 9/4/07, Andy Farkas <chuzzwassa at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 9/3/07, Kim Holburn <kim.holburn at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > > an abstention is the next best thing to a "yes,"
>
> In order to vote "no", they actually had to vote "no, with comments" -
> comments that say what needs to be changed in order to make it
> acceptable. They couldn't do that because they couldn't get a
> technical committee together to pour over the 6000 pages and make it
> right in such a short time.

They were given the techincal comments sets which have been developed thus far.
People have been working hard on those to try and cover the specifics.

Yes 6000 pages in 6 months is not workable.
The legal concerns and procedural issues are at least as much of a
concern than the face the proposal is broken in itself. Especially for
australia with the AU DMCA issues around safe legal interoperability
are important for our ability to work with or interface with the
format

> SA will still be able to vote at the BRM.

I thought that Abstention meant you were no longer a part of the
ongoing process.

Janet