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That's how politics come to a close about an issue. Those who lost complain, publicly, loudly, and with no effect whatsoever on the process itself. Then everyone goes back to business.

You can love it or hate it, but if you watch enough politics closely enough, you see this pattern repeat over and over and over again.

There's a difference here though: In most political contexts, nonviolently establishing an alternative process is prohibitively difficult.

In this context, it's still difficult, but much easier. ISO is not an intergovernmental organization. It's just simply a private-sector organization with seat in Geneva. Nothing and nobody has the right stop us from setting up a competing organization.

The key challenge is in convincing governments that the new organization is more worthy of paying attention to than ISO/IEC JTC1. In this context it's very good news that some governments are expressing doubts about ISO/IEC.

Note that since nations are sovereign, it is not necessary for an organization that aims to become a better alternative to ISO/IEC to convince a majority of countries. Even convincing a handful of countries is probably enough if a heavyweight like e.g. Brazil or India is among them, since that would suffice for putting very strong pressure on e.g. Microsoft to allow true interoperability.

Really, I really mean this question.

As long as no significantly more credible replacement exists, ISO will continue to matter, at least with respect to government procurement (which again sends strong signals to the economy as a whole) -- even in fields like informatics where practically all knowledgeable people primarily look elsewhere for standards.

Replacing ISO is not an easy task, but IMO it needs to be done. If you're willing to help, please join the effort at OpenISO.org

What *we* can do when the goverments, corporations and organisations are corrupted and we cant turn to ask help from them, because those who has power, controls those who could help us....?

Despite the name, ISO is not an international organization in the same sense as e.g. WTO or WIPO are international organizations with countries as members. ISO is simply a cartel of national "standardization organizations". Everyone has the right to start an organization to compete with them. I believe that ISO is so strongly committed to acting in the best interest of the dinosaurs that there is no real alternative anymore to doing this. If you agree, please join us at OpenISO.org.

It's definitely important that those who agree that OOXML is not a good standard should help organize a list of problems that can be easily seen by the members of the upcoming ISO OOXML ballot meeting in February 2008 and all the Internet in general.

OpenISO.org, an independent open organization much inspired by slashdot, is planning to include the issue of this post in the problem report document produces in its OpenISO.org Review of OOXML. OpenISO.org is asking for help to organize the comments of your country in a wiki at http://f29500.openiso.org./

Please have a look at all the problem reports at http://f29500.openiso.org/ and help to include more and organize the ones already included, even if only one or two. The more documented and organized the OOXML problems are for discussion in an easy accessible manner, the less likely it will be accepted as a standard.

ps: I'm not associated in any way with openiso.org, it just seems to be the right thing to do.

It's definitely important that those who agree that OOXML is not a good standard should help organize a list of problems that can be easily seen by the members of the upcoming ISO OOXML ballot meeting in February 2008 and all the Internet in general.

OpenISO.org, an independent open organization much inspired by slashdot, is planning to include the issue of this post in the problem report document produces in its OpenISO.org Review of OOXML. OpenISO.org is asking for help to organize the comments of your country in a wiki at http://f29500.openiso.org./

Please have a look at all the problem reports at http://f29500.openiso.org/ and help to include more and organize the ones already included, even if only one or two. The more documented and organized the OOXML problems are for discussion in an easy accessible manner, the less likely it will be accepted as a standard.

ps: I'm not associated in any way with openiso.org, it just seems to be the right thing to do.

It's definitely important that those who agree that OOXML is not a good standard should help organize a list of problems that can be easily seen by the members of the upcoming ISO OOXML ballot meeting in February 2008 and all the Internet in general.

OpenISO.org, an independent open organization much inspired by slashdot, is planning to include the issue of this post in the problem report document produces in its OpenISO.org Review of OOXML. OpenISO.org is asking for help to organize the comments of your country in a wiki at http://f29500.openiso.org./

Please have a look at all the problem reports at http://f29500.openiso.org/ and help to include more and organize the ones already included, even if only one or two. The more documented and organized the OOXML problems are for discussion in an easy accessible manner, the less likely it will be accepted as a standard.

ps: I'm not associated in any way with openiso.org, it just seems to be the right thing to do.

It's definitely important that those who agree that OOXML is not a good standard should help organize a list of problems that can be easily seen by the members of the upcoming ISO OOXML ballot meeting in February 2008 and all the Internet in general.

OpenISO.org, an independent open organization much inspired by slashdot, is planning to include the issue of this post in the problem report document produces in its OpenISO.org Review of OOXML. OpenISO.org is asking for help to organize the comments of your country in a wiki at http://f29500.openiso.org./

Please have a look at all the problem reports at http://f29500.openiso.org/ and help to include more and organize the ones already included, even if only one or two. The more documented and organized the OOXML problems are for discussion in an easy accessible manner, the less likely it will be accepted as a standard.

ps: I'm not associated in any way with openiso.org, it just seems to be the right thing to do.

It's definitely important that those who agree that OOXML is not a good standard should help organize a list of problems that can be easily seen by the members of the upcoming ISO OOXML ballot meeting in February 2008 and all the Internet in general.

OpenISO.org, an independent open organization much inspired by slashdot, is planning to include the issue of this post in the problem report document produces in its OpenISO.org Review of OOXML. OpenISO.org is asking for help to organize the comments of your country in a wiki at http://f29500.openiso.org./

Please have a look at all the problem reports at http://f29500.openiso.org/ and help to include more and organize the ones already included, even if only one or two. The more documented and organized the OOXML problems are for discussion in an easy accessible manner, the less likely it will be accepted as a standard.

ps: I'm not associated in any way with openiso.org, it just seems to be the right thing to do.

It's definitely important that those who agree that OOXML is not a good standard should help organize a list of problems that can be easily seen by the members of the upcoming ISO OOXML ballot meeting in February 2008 and all the Internet in general.

OpenISO.org, an independent open organization much inspired by slashdot, is planning to include the issue of this post in the problem report document produces in its OpenISO.org Review of OOXML. OpenISO.org is asking for help to organize the comments of your country in a wiki at http://f29500.openiso.org./

Please have a look at all the problem reports at http://f29500.openiso.org/ and help to include more and organize the ones already included, even if only one or two. The more documented and organized the OOXML problems are for discussion in an easy accessible manner, the less likely it will be accepted as a standard.

ps: I'm not associated in any way with openiso.org, it just seems to be the right thing to do.

No.

Here's a copy of the draft OpenISO.org "Problem Report" entry for this issue:

Microsoft's attempt to essentially unilaterally dictate office document standards is an abuse of their dominant position

Problem description:

Normally standardization is conducted by means all interested parties participating in a discussion of the desired features, so that all interested parties have an essentially equal opportunity to develop products implementing the standard.

By contrast, OOXML is simply documentation of the document format that Microsoft's products already use, and there is no indication that Microsoft would intend to make the details about future versions of OOXML available to competitors before Microsoft is ready to release their own implementation of the new features for public beta testing.

Expected impact:

To the extent that OOXML is accepted as a standard, all of Microsoft's competitors will be encumbered with a permanent economic disadvantage.

Possible solution:

Reject all claims about OOXML in some way being a standard, and take legal action, on the basis of national and international competition law, against Microsoft as well as against Ecma and all other organizations which are guilty of aiding and abetting Microsoft's anticompetitive actions.

If you agree that this is a real risk, and you're willing to help with doing something about it, please join us at OpenISO.org and help put together a "problem report" document about OOXML that explains the main issues clearly.

The article is about Subcommittee 34 (SC 34), which pertains to "Document Description and Processing Languages". It is a part of Joint Technical Committee 1, a joint committee between ISO and IEC.

ISO is enormously huge and important. It isn't limited to technical specifications. It also define standards for lots of other stuff like food, screws, cars, and timber.

The people who created OpenISO are clueless. Have you seen their website? They, like many, don't seem to realize that ISO does more than just approve technical documents.

So here's where the problem is:
ISO > JTC1 > SC 34
And you want to replace all of ISO? That's ridiculous!

And why is it that people talk so much about replacing ISO, but nothing about replacing IEC? Is it because their name comes second in "ISO/IEC", and nobody's gotten around to looking after the slash yet?

ISO isn't going anywhere. The joint committee between ISO and IEC isn't going anywhere. Maybe subcommittee 34 of the joint committee between ISO and IEC will be dissolved, but that is nowhere near the enormity of dissolving ISO.

There's currently a big fight going on about this in various standardization organizations.

For example, the rules of the Swiss standardization organization say very clearly and unambiguously that if something is patented, it cannot be a standard.

However, Mr Sebestyen, the chairman of the standardization committee for information technology topics (who is also secretary-general of Ecma) is completely ignoring this rule and instead pushing Ecma's "RAND standards are acceptable" agenda. The chairman of the subcommittee which deals specifically with OOXML is likewise happy to ignore the rules. He is an independent consultant who earns money by representing the interests of companies in standardizations organizations, and who hasn't disclosed whether he's currently getting paid for doing that subcommittee chairman work by a company with a particular interest in OOXML.

At the ISO/IEC level, the rules are less clear. The ISO/IEC directives say clearly that any patents should be disclosed and then it should be decided whether or not to accept the patented technology as a standard anyway, and that this should happen only "in exceptional situations". In practice, this rule is again not followed in the fast-track process, where Ecma again has a lot of influence.

It is in the context of this conflict that I've recently started OpenISO.org, an internet-based standards organization which aims at reviewing proposed standards and other specs in order to determine whether they fulfil a reasonable set of requirements for acceptance as a standard. These requirements include that for any patents, at least a patent non-assertion agreement must be available which must be strong enough to prevent discrimination against Free Software software or against other competitors of the patent holder.

The biggest problem is that it took 10 years to get to this point, and Microsoft still hasn't disclosed the specs for how to make interoperable products. We're fortunate that the Free Software way of doing things is rebost enough to survive in spite of this, but profit-oriented companies simply can't hold out long enough for this kind of legal system to really help.

What we need is clear legal rules that vendors with dominant market positions must adhere to genuinely open standards for all protocols and document formats, and of course we also need a genuinely non-corrupt standardization organization Microsoft doesn't sell us something as an "open standard" which really isn't.

If people could easily agree on on which alternatives are sound, people would do it that way all the time, in most fields of human endeavor. You're taking an unsolvable problem and assuming it's solved.

What can be done is to create an organization that makes it its core competence to make decisions in a principled, fact-oriented manner. (I'm right now trying this in the area of standardization of information and communication technologies.) Of course I can't force anyone to trust this organization. I can just do my best to create an organization which does a good job, and then it's up to everyone to choose to trust this OpenISO.org or ISO/IEC JTC1 or Microsoft's propaganda.

While I've been thinking for quite some time about launching a competitor to ISO, it's true that you inspired me with your humorous posting to name it "OpenISO.org"... if you like I'd be happy to give you credit in some way on the OpenISO.org website.

Standard process for brushing teeth

• Hold toothbrush in left hand;
• Hold toothpaste tube in right hand;
• Position tube above toothbrush and squeeze the tube until a pea-sized amount of paste is on the brush;
• Transfer brush to right hand and follow the process detailed in OpenISO.org OI22987 Standard process to brush something.

Brush your teeth the right way

• Buy a Colgate toothbrush;
• Buy some Colgate toothpaste;
• Use them like Steve Ballmer does*.

* For personal reasons, Mr Ballmer will not discuss his dental hygiene routine with anyone.

I've put up a little website with some initial thoughts, and I'd appreciate feedback from the slashdot community please.

Maybe the lesson is that we should not debate whether OOXML is "open" but rather focus on the fact that it is immature, and at the same time point out the massive irregularities at ISO and promote a more reasonable approach to standardization such as OpenISO.org?