Do you love Microsoft?

In Part 1, we got as far as noting that the vote should clearly be “No with comments”. MS representatives may try to push “Yes with comments”, but that really amounts to an unconditional “Yes” and should be resisted. So the main issue is what comments should be included and what BSI should require (in the way of meeting them) before it changes its vote to Yes in the inevitable Ballot Resolution Meeting (BRM). In particular, should it require that VML be replaced with SVG, and the MS-variant by MathML before the draft is approved, or is some undertaking about future revision sufficient?

Even more fundamental is the question of whether it is acceptable to have two ISO/IEC standards in the same space. If BSI gives as its “technical reasons to be stated” that the draft standard is in contradiction with the existing ISO/IEC ODF standard, then it is in effect voting an unconditional No, because there is no way the draft can be amended to meet that comment.

MS has claimed repeatedly that the two standards are not in the same space. It claims that OpenXML covers a different area because it is better suited to representing the “legacy documents” - the billions of existing documents saved in earlier MS file formats (mainly binary file formats).

At the first meeting of the BSI technical committee, IST/41/-/1 on 10 May 2007, I asked the MS representatives for evidence to support this claim. If the claim is true, it should be possible to produce a large (preferably randomly chosen) pile of legacy documents which are demonstrably better represented when converted to OpenXML by Office 2007, than when converted to ODF by OpenOffice, or by Office 2007 with one of the “converters”. Moreover, it should be possible to examine at least some of these documents and to see, by reference to the standards, that this is not a function of poor current implementations, but an inherent feature of the standards.

Not a single document has so far been produced. I repeated the request (several times) at the NCC meeting on 4 July 2007 and many times since by email to Jerry Fishenden and Stephen McGibbon (both MS).

When I finally spoke to Stephen for 45 minutes yesterday (by phone), it appeared that MS now takes a rather different line. It believes that in the IT area it is acceptable to have two standards in the same space. The argument appeared to be that otherwise a vendor would have to ensure that its specification became the standard first, to shut out the competition. That would mean that standards were inevitably half-baked, because there would be no time to get them right in the rush to be first. To avoid this absurdity, it is necessary to allow multiple standards.

I look forward to unpicking this argument in detail, but that will have to wait for another day. Suffice to say for the moment that it casts a revealing light on MS’ attitude to the standards process, and that it is wrong! Agreeing a single standard is every bit as fundamental to progress and the common good in Information Technology as it is in other areas.

There are two other issues which the more senior BSI committees might want to consider. One is whether it should be pushing further on the contradiction it raised in the initial 30-day period. The point is that the outcome of the ballot is a matter of how the majority votes, but a contradiction should sink the draft even if raised by only a single National Body. BSI and 11 other National Bodies raised such a contradiction during the 30-day period, but were apparently ignored by the JTC1 Secretariat without following the procedure laid down in the JTC1 Directives.

Finally, there is the question of whether the MS OSP is sufficient. It seems similar to the comparable undertakings by IBM and Sun, but is regarded by some as unacceptable.