Norway changes its vote to NO

The Norwegian mirror committee to ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34 has send a letter to ISO to confirm that the committee agrees with chairman Steve Pepper. Norway votes NO.

http://www.digi.no/php/art.php?id=519159

Denmark will vote NO! [UPDATED]

The committee S-142/U-34 under Danish Standards could not agree to change their vote from No to Yes, so the committee has asked Danish Standards to vote
NO !

This is still unconfirmed !
Danish Standards has told the chairman (professor at Copenhagen Business School Mogens Kühn Pedersen) to keep his mouth shut: http://www.version2.dk/artikel/6718


[Added 22:00]Clarification
The meeting in the committee was yesterday afternoon. The chairman has been ordered to keep his mouth shot and Danish Standards will say nothing until tomorrow friday.

The committee did not reach a consensus decision yesterday and has asked Danish Standards (DS) to make a conclusion. So much is clear. The question is, what exactly didn't they agree on ?

Was the question: "Should we approve the standard ?" or was it "Should we change the Danish vote ?"

A press release from Danish Standards from just after the BRM said: "All the Danish complaints has been fulfilled". This is exactly what the members couldn't agree on yesterday. A complaint has been posted to DS that a conclusion was published long before the meeting. See my earlier
blogpost http://lodahl.blogspot.com/2008/03/here-are-minutes-of-tomorrows-meeting.html

Today in the press and on discussions:
Jesper Lund Stockholm said: "Read the press release from Danish Standards: All Danish complaints has been fulfilled. Thats the prove."
Morten Kjærsgaard from The Danish Open Source Business Association (OSL) said: "Rubbish. Several items from the Danish complaints hasn't been solved. Some has just been answered to and other items has been rejected".

So it's all up to Danish Standards to decide. Just as it was on the first vote. I can guarantee you, that at least one minister has been involved in the decision.

We will just have to wait until tomorrow. I don't think DS will vote YES. This would be too dangerous for the government. If the question was: "should we change the vote", then DS will vote NO. There couldn't be consensus to change the vote. But if that wasn't the question, DS might ABSTAIN from voting.

If you can't beat them, talk badly about them

You can see this in the kinder garden and in the school yard.

When small children are fighting over something, they often tend to speak in a bad language and talk about each other behind the back.

Now Microsoft is showing us a very adult and much more mature version of this behavior.

In New Zealand Matthew Holloway has been working as an adviser for the National Standard Body in the matter of voting for or against the approval of OOXML at the ISO BRM last month. As far as we know, he has done a great job.

But Microsoft apparently doesn't share this feeling and so much that they had to write an e-mails to members of another national body in another country, about how badly Matthew did his job in New Zealand.

How low can you go ?

The Standard National Body in New Zealand found this so serious that they found it necessary to send out a message trying to rescue the honor and integrity of an employee.

This is another example of how Microsoft employees are willing to use any method to reach their goal.

http://nzoss.org.nz/news/2008/old-dog-same-old-tricks

Here are the minutes of the tomorrows meeting

Yes thats how it works in my country. I wonder when we will see the agenda ? After the meeting, perhaps !

The meeting is at Danish Standards (S-142/U-34 Document standards) on Marts 26th. and the information is in this press release: http://www.ds.dk/4196 . The press release was published by Pia Elleby Lange, lead of the Danish delegation in Geneva.

All Danish comments has been approved.

Thats what she says. Even that not all Danish comments was even discussed at the meeting.

The committee will meet on Marts 26th. where the result of the delegation will be presented to the committee.

Didn't she just do that when she claimed that all comments was approved ?

The scope of the meeting is to discuss the next step...

and then:

The next step is to ...

Is this putting words into the mouths of the members or what ?
What is the purpose of having a meeting when the chairman has already made all the decisions ?

I call it another scandal in the ISO process.

It didn't make it !

The BRM meeting in Geneva is over. The plan was, from the Microsoft point of view, that OOXML should now be an ISO standard. It didn't make it.

OOXML was proposed an ISO standard by the industrial organization ECMA in a fast track route. The basic philosophy behind this is, that a standard that has already been prepared by one organization can be submitted to a fast track route in ISO. This requires that the submitting organization does all the work and make the proposal ready to be confirmed before submission. In this case ECMA didn't do their homework properly.

At this BRM meeting there should be no outstandings and the process should have been a core formality. It wasn't. Still there are several open issues and the meeting couldn't even get through all the issues. The head of the U.S. delegation at the meeting, Frank Farance says:

At this week's ballot resolution meeting (BRM) in Geneva, the sponsor of the draft standard, industry consortium ECMA International, presented 1,100 recommendations for changes to the draft.

However, delegates only had time to discuss and modify around 20 percent of those, said Farance, an industry consultant with expertise in standards issues.

http://www.cio.com/article/190752/Changes_to_OOXML_Draft_Standard_Waved_Through

http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?story=20080229055319727

Open ? - Yah right !

Microsoft has announced that they are open.
http://www.version2.dk/artikel/6341 (Danish) about Steve Balmers announcment from yesterday

Yah, and I believe in Santa.

Of cause I see any approach from Microsoft towards openness and interoperability as positive. But my experience with that company is, that they say one thing and continues as nothing has happened.

http://www.version2.dk/artikel/6346 (Danish) about the European Commission in doubt about Microsoft being honest.

From my own point of view, this is just Microsoft trying to catch a few votes in the BRM meeting in Geneva next week. Many of the outstanding objections to ISO approval of OOXML is about referencing binary and proprietary file formats. Some participants might change their vote to a yes if Microsoft can convince them, that these file formats are open in some way.

The big problem is, that none o the participants have time to find out whats behind all this.
http://www.version2.dk/artikel/6340 (Danish) about warning: It's happening too fast.
They can only read the headlines, not the complete articles. Microsoft hopes that they can change votes from the headlines only.