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Open Letter to ISO Calls For Standardization of Process
In a recent open letter to the ISO FreeCode CEO Geir Isene calls for standardization in the processes used by the ISO to help prevent future OOXML blunders. "It seems ISO is not prepared for a politicized process where a big and influential commercial enterprise will use any means possible to push its own standard through to certification. Committees are flooded by the vendor in support of the standard. Votes are bought and results are hijacked. Several national bodies have flawed and skewed procedures open for corruption."
Whatever the merit of his suggestions, the idea that ISO is new to high-pressure corporate gamesmanship and requires a condescending lecture from a titan of industry like "the CEO of Freecode" has to qualify as the laugh of the day.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I have some second hand direct experience with ISO standardization as, when I was growing up my father was a member of several ISO committees. One was for example the X.500 standard. Hes told me many stories that would lead me to assure people that if they think hard core politics and vendor vested interests don't go on in ISO they are sadly, sadly mistaken. This kind of microsoft OOXML thing is really nothing that new. Its just been rather public. In true ISO style, what will now happen I think is they will now argue about it for the next 25 years. A final spec will come out and be ignored by everyone.
If true International consensus is to be achieved, then the criteria for adopting a submission as standard must be altered. The present criteria state:
1. Over 67% of P-grade members to vote Yes.
2. Less than 25% overall members could vote No.
The scope for abuse wiht the above criteria exists because 'countries' like Khazakstan, Cote' de Ivorie and Cyprus have equal voting rights; and can become P-members as well. So, the ISO could consider modifying the voting requirements on the lines of the Senate / House pattern:
1. The over 67% P-grade members criterion to be amended as "Positive votes corresponding to over 67% of the total population represented". Populous natins like India, China, the UK, Brazil have all voted No. The present ISO rules allow this popular opinion to be sidelined.
2. Secondly, lots of new 'countries' have opted for voting and P-status. None of these have participated or voted in any other sphere of the ISO actvities. This points strongly to financial inducements and corruption, and cannot be dismissed as coincidence. The rules must be altered before the BRM in February.
3. Thirdly, Microsoft has admitted to wrong-doing in the voting process in Sweden. This alone ought to be sufficient for the ISO to null and void the entire submission, and debar said firm for a minimum period. There is no credibility if rules are blindly applied, when benefitting parties themselves are guilty of subversion. This is similar to the submission of licenses to the OSI - the standards bodies must take into account past conduct and sincerity; not just rule on technicalities.
4. Fourthly, the "Yes, with comments" option must be removed. This is meaningless, and mischevous. What incentive does a vested interest have in listening to these comments, and redressing the grievances?
5. The ISO must take a clear stance wrt patents. Any patent-encumbered submission must be rejected until:
a. The submission is amended so as to be patent-free
b. The patents in question have expired all over the world.
More later.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
I'm a stakeholder. I pay money in form of tax which in turn is paid to support the ISO infrastructure.
Also, the company i work for is member of our national standard body (which in turn is member of ISO).
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
a. The submission is amended so as to be patent-free
b. The patents in question have expired all over the world. ISO already does take the beginning of a clear stance: all essential patents must be licensed on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms. But I agree that "reasonable" and "non-discriminatory" have not been applied consistently with the goals of free software or open source.
All that crap happens all the time nowadays.
;)
It's just the usual Microsoft doing "version 1.0" of "Influencing Standards Bodies" really badly. Wait till their 4th or 5th try at it.
Hardly anyone making new standards is really interested in the good of the industry much less the world.
In the past the geeks made TCP/IP etc because it was just a bunch of geeks who wanted to get things to _work_ and get stuff done.
Nowadays, it's "How can we influence the standard so we can get an advantage".
If someone actually comes up with a decent standard the competitors will just try to come up with something different.
Lots of crap standards nowadays - look at WiFi - they could have taken a leaf from SSL, and had a standard that allowed _secure_anonymous_ connections, but instead you get the huge mess that's WiFi- where it's easy to be open and insecure, and difficult to be secure.
Look at the upcoming HTML standards, all "throttles" and no "brakes", nobody _really_ cares about security. They just tell people to "please drive safely, and you should stay in your lane and not crash please raise a security exception instead", but do they really lift a finger to help?
AMD come up with Hyper Transport? No way is Intel going to support it.
And then there's RDRAM and the whole bunch of people trying to get their patents into standards.