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.
How would OpenISO be impurvious to any and all corruption yet still be open to all stakeholders and at the same time be efficient and manageable?
Ok, the fundamental management idea is to have, similar to how other standardization organizations are organized, a hierarchy of working-groups dealing with more and more specialized tasks. The rule here is that when a working-group becomes inefficient due to too many participants, the working-group should be divided into subgroups, all of which report their results to the parent working-group.
The fundamental decision-making principle is of course that decisions should be made in a fact-based manner. The fundamental question is: What happens when there is no consensus about an appropriate fact-based decision? In most existing standardization organizations, at that stage the decision-making process either breaks down or the committee members vote. Both of these mechanisms are inadequate because is the first case a company like Microsoft can prevent any decision it doesn't like by means of breaking the consensus, and in the second case it can manipulate every vote by means of telling enough "gold certified" (economically dependent) partner companies to vote. What OpenISO.org will do in case of such disputes is to have its employees or external experts selected by its employees evaluate the arguments for the various positions on their merits. If it turns out that there are several justifiable viewpoints, the proponents of the various possible approaches can all get their preferred solutions equally endorsed by OpenISO.org provided that the openness and maturity requirements are fulfilled. (Openness requirements will include that there should be no patent issues etc; maturity requirements include that there should be a BSD-, Apache- or LGPL-licensed reference implementation and that the spec has been reviewed for cross-cultural applicability and with regard to its impact on people with disabilities.)
If there are unresolved conflicts and OpenISO.org does not have the necessary financial resources for resolving them, OpenISO.org standardization work will be stalled in the concerned areas until some interested party contributes the necessary money for getting the conflicted questions examined in a proper, professional manner.
In order to prevent to wasting too much money on dealing with trolls, those who have taken positions which are found to be frivolous will after wards have to pay themselves for getting their disputes resolved. The same applies to anyone who engages in conflict-bombing (initiating many conflicts simultaneously.)
While untimately no absolute guarantee of corruption-proofness can be given, I can promise to do what I can to prevent it. In addition, OpenISO.org can be set up as a foundation under Swiss law so that if it fails to act according to the principles in its by-laws, legal action can be used to force the foundation to comply with its by-laws.
OOXML was overthrown at ISO, isn't this what you wanted after all.
No, MS-OOXML hasn't been "overthrown" at ISO, at least not yet. There's going to be that "ballot resolution meeting" in February 25-29, 2008 in Geneva (I've already booked my hotel room, since hotel bookings can be a bit difficult in Geneva if attempted on short notice) and then there's going to be another vote. In my opinion it'd take a miracle for MS-OOXML not to get passed then regardless of how many of the substantial comments the "ballot resolution meeting" manages to resolve.
So the system works
No, it doesn't. It's totally broken. And if in the end the voting result happens to be the correct one (rejection of the "fast track") after all, that won't be the case because of a trustworthy process based on legitimate, valid arguments, but rather it would be the case because of the successful application of comment-bombing and similar tactics by the opposition.
no need for anti-establishment rebellion for anti-establishment's sake
I have seriously tried to work within the existing system, with the only resulting success being that I have learned just how badly broken it really is.
In this particular case, there's plenty of evidence of irregulaties in how national standardization organizations handled MS-OOXML, so the causal relationship is not really at issue.
The questions which are relevant for standardization can, and therefore should, be always decided in a fact-oriented, principled manner. Otherwise the corruption problem will always remain regardless of voting weights.
Since in so many counties the MS-OOXML "evaluation" process was a
farce and the outcome shows complete incompetence because it amounts
to blind approval of MS-OOXML, I believe that it is time to put some
pressure of competition on ISO (which is essentially a cartel of
national standardization organizations) by means of creating
OpenISO.org, a new international standardization organization committed to principles of openness.
I've put up a little website with some initial thoughts, and I'd appreciate feedback from the slashdot community please.
Application to "OOXML is an open standard" myth?
on
Why Myths Persist
·
· Score: 0, Offtopic
Sounds like this means that we'll really have an uphill battle in convincing decision-makers that despite the name, OOXML is not really an "open standard" but rather Microsoft's anticompetitive strategie aimes at killing ODF.
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?
An important thing to remember is that this isn't over by a long shot. There's
a military adage about not stopping the fighting when the enemy is momentarily
defeated; you need to pursue and keep up the fight or he'll just turn and fight
again.
As Sun Tzu put it, defeat occurs in the mind of the enemy, and clearly Microsoft
hasn't given up on this yet.
As others above have pointed out, there needs to be a serious push in all those
countries with voting irregularities (which includes the US with our last minute
vote change) to root out exactly what happened and why, and to bring popular
opinion and, if appropriate, legal action to bear against any who acted
unethically. Certainly shine a bright light on the activities.
This pressure has to be maintained to discourage others from being corrupted by
MSFT shenanigans and to keep up the pressure on "no" voters to not
change their vote without their concerns being seriously and legitimately
addressed.
This battle is over, and we can all take a few minutes to cheer and congratulate
ourselves. But we haven't won the war yet.
Note in particular the importance of taking legal action now in those countries where corruption occurred, in order to discourage corruption from occuring now in those countries that have appropriately voted "disapprove with comments" in this round, but which are still able to change their votes.
Can comments be of the form "I would need more money in order to vote 'yes'"?
Actually that particular form of corruption is not allowed by the rules (the comments have to be "technical reasons").
However there are other possible ways of corruption that are not disallowed by the rules. For example, in Switzerland, the relevant committee was chaired by H. R. Thomann, a consultant who earns money by representing business interests in standardization organizations. The rules of the Swiss standards organization did not require him to disclose whether he was getting paid by one of the interested companies. Thomann was appointed to this role by Sebestyen who besides his role in the Swiss dtandardization organization is also secretary-general of Ecma. For some more details about this conflict of interests, see SIUG's appeal.
I'm also hopeful that every other participating body has also heard about Microsoft's goof in trying to buy the "yes" vote by stuffing the votes. (And there is NO way that happened at the direction of a mere 'underling.' Someone with real decision-making power and responsibility must have directed the "program." This sort of activity may easily be considered lobbying... but I consider a lot of 'lobbying' activity rather subversive to a democratic process as well.)
Here is a U.S. supreme court decision holding that committee stuffing in standardization organizations is fundamentally different from lobbying.
From the decision: "Petitioner, and others concerned about the safety or competitive threat of polyvinyl chloride conduit, can, with full antitrust immunity, engage in concerted efforts to influence those governments through direct lobbying, publicity campaigns, and other traditional avenues of political expression. To the extent state and local governments are more difficult to persuade through these other avenues, that no doubt reflects their preference for and confidence in the nonpartisan consensus process that petitioner has undermined. Petitioner remains free to take advantage of the forum provided by the standard-setting process by presenting and vigorously arguing accurate scientific evidence before a nonpartisan private standard-setting body.[Footnote 13] And petitioner can avoid the strictures of the private standard-setting process by attempting to influence legislatures through other forums. What petitioner may not do (without exposing itself to possible antitrust liability for direct injuries) is bias the process by, as in this case, stacking the private standard-setting body with decisionmakers sharing their economic interest in restraining competition."
Most of the public (and non-public) discussions seem to miss the main point: From Microsoft's business perspective, pursuing the ISO/IEC strandardization process for OOXML isn't at all about OOXML, but rather it is about trying to kill ODF.
As pointed out in this U.S. supreme court decision, "Agreement on a product standard is, after all, implicitly an agreement not to manufacture, distribute, or purchase certain types of products." In the case of OOXML, the agreement is primarily about not manufacturing, distributing or puchasing products relying on the truly open document format standard ODF.
Really it is only acceptable for the standardization of OOXML to proceed if OOXML is first revised to make it "map ODF", see this article for a precise definition and detailed argument.
If a proposed standard is acceptable as it is, but during review you found points where it can still be improved, "yes with comments" is the appropriate vote.
The judge has ruled that the ISP should ban P2P traffic [...]. All other Belgian ISP's have received a letter treathening to sue them too if the don't cut off P2P traffic.
This is very dangerous for freedom on the 'net. The only way to "ban P2P traffic" effectively is to ban all traffic that can not be verified to be something else.
This means for example that ISPs would have to restrict ssh remote login to hosts on a whitelist.
Making ISPs more "responsible" means increasing their costs, which can only result in higher prices for internet services that all of their customers will have to pay, including those who (e.g. out of respect for the law) would never engage in non-authorized "file sharing".
Slashdot Mirror
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.
Ok, the fundamental management idea is to have, similar to how other standardization organizations are organized, a hierarchy of working-groups dealing with more and more specialized tasks. The rule here is that when a working-group becomes inefficient due to too many participants, the working-group should be divided into subgroups, all of which report their results to the parent working-group.
The fundamental decision-making principle is of course that decisions should be made in a fact-based manner. The fundamental question is: What happens when there is no consensus about an appropriate fact-based decision? In most existing standardization organizations, at that stage the decision-making process either breaks down or the committee members vote. Both of these mechanisms are inadequate because is the first case a company like Microsoft can prevent any decision it doesn't like by means of breaking the consensus, and in the second case it can manipulate every vote by means of telling enough "gold certified" (economically dependent) partner companies to vote. What OpenISO.org will do in case of such disputes is to have its employees or external experts selected by its employees evaluate the arguments for the various positions on their merits. If it turns out that there are several justifiable viewpoints, the proponents of the various possible approaches can all get their preferred solutions equally endorsed by OpenISO.org provided that the openness and maturity requirements are fulfilled. (Openness requirements will include that there should be no patent issues etc; maturity requirements include that there should be a BSD-, Apache- or LGPL-licensed reference implementation and that the spec has been reviewed for cross-cultural applicability and with regard to its impact on people with disabilities.)
If there are unresolved conflicts and OpenISO.org does not have the necessary financial resources for resolving them, OpenISO.org standardization work will be stalled in the concerned areas until some interested party contributes the necessary money for getting the conflicted questions examined in a proper, professional manner.
In order to prevent to wasting too much money on dealing with trolls, those who have taken positions which are found to be frivolous will after wards have to pay themselves for getting their disputes resolved. The same applies to anyone who engages in conflict-bombing (initiating many conflicts simultaneously.)
While untimately no absolute guarantee of corruption-proofness can be given, I can promise to do what I can to prevent it. In addition, OpenISO.org can be set up as a foundation under Swiss law so that if it fails to act according to the principles in its by-laws, legal action can be used to force the foundation to comply with its by-laws.
No, MS-OOXML hasn't been "overthrown" at ISO, at least not yet. There's going to be that "ballot resolution meeting" in February 25-29, 2008 in Geneva (I've already booked my hotel room, since hotel bookings can be a bit difficult in Geneva if attempted on short notice) and then there's going to be another vote. In my opinion it'd take a miracle for MS-OOXML not to get passed then regardless of how many of the substantial comments the "ballot resolution meeting" manages to resolve.
So the system works
No, it doesn't. It's totally broken. And if in the end the voting result happens to be the correct one (rejection of the "fast track") after all, that won't be the case because of a trustworthy process based on legitimate, valid arguments, but rather it would be the case because of the successful application of comment-bombing and similar tactics by the opposition.
no need for anti-establishment rebellion for anti-establishment's sake
I have seriously tried to work within the existing system, with the only resulting success being that I have learned just how badly broken it really is.
In this particular case, there's plenty of evidence of irregulaties in how national standardization organizations handled MS-OOXML, so the causal relationship is not really at issue.
The questions which are relevant for standardization can, and therefore should, be always decided in a fact-oriented, principled manner. Otherwise the corruption problem will always remain regardless of voting weights.
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?
According to the ISO/IEC press release, the decisive "Ballot Resolution Meeting" (BRM) next Februrary will be in Geneva, Switzerland, where e.g. Ecma is headquartered. How can Ecma be prevented from having a similarly corrupting influence on the "Ballot Resolution Meeting" as they had in the Swiss standardization organization SNV (SIUG appealed)?
Note in particular the importance of taking legal action now in those countries where corruption occurred, in order to discourage corruption from occuring now in those countries that have appropriately voted "disapprove with comments" in this round, but which are still able to change their votes.
Actually that particular form of corruption is not allowed by the rules (the comments have to be "technical reasons").
However there are other possible ways of corruption that are not disallowed by the rules. For example, in Switzerland, the relevant committee was chaired by H. R. Thomann, a consultant who earns money by representing business interests in standardization organizations. The rules of the Swiss standards organization did not require him to disclose whether he was getting paid by one of the interested companies. Thomann was appointed to this role by Sebestyen who besides his role in the Swiss dtandardization organization is also secretary-general of Ecma. For some more details about this conflict of interests, see SIUG's appeal.
Here is a U.S. supreme court decision holding that committee stuffing in standardization organizations is fundamentally different from lobbying.
From the decision: "Petitioner, and others concerned about the safety or competitive threat of polyvinyl chloride conduit, can, with full antitrust immunity, engage in concerted efforts to influence those governments through direct lobbying, publicity campaigns, and other traditional avenues of political expression. To the extent state and local governments are more difficult to persuade through these other avenues, that no doubt reflects their preference for and confidence in the nonpartisan consensus process that petitioner has undermined. Petitioner remains free to take advantage of the forum provided by the standard-setting process by presenting and vigorously arguing accurate scientific evidence before a nonpartisan private standard-setting body.[Footnote 13] And petitioner can avoid the strictures of the private standard-setting process by attempting to influence legislatures through other forums. What petitioner may not do (without exposing itself to possible antitrust liability for direct injuries) is bias the process by, as in this case, stacking the private standard-setting body with decisionmakers sharing their economic interest in restraining competition."
As pointed out in this U.S. supreme court decision, "Agreement on a product standard is, after all, implicitly an agreement not to manufacture, distribute, or purchase certain types of products." In the case of OOXML, the agreement is primarily about not manufacturing, distributing or puchasing products relying on the truly open document format standard ODF.
Really it is only acceptable for the standardization of OOXML to proceed if OOXML is first revised to make it "map ODF", see this article for a precise definition and detailed argument.
If a proposed standard is acceptable as it is, but during review you found points where it can still be improved, "yes with comments" is the appropriate vote.
This is very dangerous for freedom on the 'net. The only way to "ban P2P traffic" effectively is to ban all traffic that can not be verified to be something else.
This means for example that ISPs would have to restrict ssh remote login to hosts on a whitelist.
Making ISPs more "responsible" means increasing their costs, which can only result in higher prices for internet services that all of their customers will have to pay, including those who (e.g. out of respect for the law) would never engage in non-authorized "file sharing".