Category: Standards

ISO finally revises the voting directives for open standards after the OOXML debacle in 2007 / 2008. One of the changes is that the national bodies should no longer vote with “Yes, with comments” if they encounter serious flaws and trust on the ballot resolution meeting to get their issues solved (which evidently did not happen for OOXML), but should vote “No, with comments” instead.

Furthermore, if the “standard” receives more than 25% disapproval, it should now officially “be over” as well – if these rules would have been applied in the past, OOXML would not be an ISO certified standard as it is unfortunately today.

There are also smaller, less substantial changes. For example, the dedication to Jan van den Beld, the former head of Ecma, for his “unwavering dedication to the development and evolution of the JTC 1 procedures”, has been removed. Ironically, both Ecma and Microsoft have indeed made long-term contributions to the evolution of Fast Track in JTC1, but probably not the way they intended.

(Source)

Now the only paragraph I’m missing in the new rules obviously is a way to revoke a broken standard, but I guess this won’t happen. Lets just hope that OOXML sinks into insignificance in the next couple of years.

Remember this number – 7228.

This is the total amount of pages the final ISO version of Office Open XML (OOXML) will have – spread over four parts.

If I put this number in perspective with Microsoft’s recent effor to “save our trees” (Link, IE-only…), I’m not sure if I should be laughing or crying…

Via the NoOOXML mailing list:

When one thinks of international human rights, one thinks of The Hague
– home of the International Court of Justice and the International
Criminal Court, and the situs of an increasing number of Tribunals
chartered to redress the assaults on human dignity that inexcusably
continue to plague this planet. It is therefore appropriate that The
Hague has been chosen to witness yet another pronouncement in defense
of human rights. That pronouncement has been titled The Hague
Declaration by the new international group, called the Digital
Standards Organization (“Digistan,” for short), that crafted it. In
this blog entry, I’ll talk about what the Declaration is all about,
and what it is intended to achieve.

(Source)

Go to www.digistan.org for more information and sign The Hague Declaration.

ISO failed horribly last time to achieve what Digistan now goes after, lets just hope they get the creditbility and acceptance throughout the community and public they need to move on.