Do you love Microsoft?

The short answer is that it has not voted yet and the decision on how it will vote has not yet been made.

The proceedings of BSI committees are confidential. Since I was a member of the ad hoc technical committee on OpenXML, and was allowed to attend the meetings of that committee and (as an observer) its parent committee on 24 July by virtue of that membership, I am bound by that confidentiality requirement.

The reason for the confidentiality is to allow a “fuller and franker” discussion and exchange of views. I happen to think that reason is outweighed by the importance of public confidence. The public is always sceptical about secret meetings, which is why our courts and parliamentary proceedings are held in public. In my view, it would be much better if the public and press were allowed in to BSI meetings and if participants were free to blog about them. But that view does not release me from the confidentiality obligation.

So I have to content myself with a few procedural comments.

First, BSI committees do not vote. They proceed by “consensus”. I am not sure exactly what that means. I have not read the relevant BSI manual, but I suspect it does not define the term further. Nonetheless, there must be a good deal of lore and precedent on it, with which unfortunately I am not familiar.

Second, the normal procedure involves three BSI committees. The ad hoc committee makes recommendations (if consensus can be achieved) to its parent, IST/41 and that in turn makes recommendations to its parent ICT/-/1. [I think I have finally got that right, with some help! Not only are all the slashes and dashes important, but the S changes to C as you go up to “eye see tea slash dash slash one”!]

ICT/-/1 is due to meet and take its decision on 10 August. IST/41 did not complete its deliberations on 24 July and is due to complete its work in a conference call on Thursday 2 August.

In most cases ICT/-/1 just rubber-stamps the recommendation it receives from the relevant committee (IST/41 in this case). But it need not do so. In particular, if the relevant committee underneath it is unable to reach a consensus, ICT/-/1 does not need to abstain in the JTC1 vote. Indeed, it can go further and vote the opposite way to the recommendation.

The workings of ICT/-/1 are somewhat mysterious. I am clear that it has on it the chairman of IST/41 (or his nominee) and the chairmen of some (or all?) comparable committees in other standards areas, as well as various full-time BSI employees. My understanding is also that MS is not represented on it, although non-members have historically sometimes been invited to attend as observers.

The date of 10 August was probably chosen (I am guessing) to allow time for further consideration in the event that the issues proved too contentious to resolve at a single meeting. There is also the practical point that if the vote was “No with comments” (which is perhaps the most likely outcome as discussed in several previous articles), the comments would have to be put into the standard, approved JTC1 format. Since the number of comments could be large (the BSI Wiki on the standard, which is in the public domain, has over 600 individual comments), and many are not currently in the approved format, this could be a substantial piece of work.