ecma
ISO Fantasy
There has been much rejoicing recently at the process whereby, apparently, an ISO committee takes full control of OOXML. But you know, that story is entirely irrelevant. It will have no effect on what implementors of OOXML, including Microsoft, should or will actually do. The story’s ending will I think be mostly tawdry.
Standard Deviation
Another corker here from Rob Weir on ISO's rather pathetic OOXML FAQ:
To put it in more approachable terms, observe that Ecma-376, OOXML, at 6,045 pages in length, was 58 standard deviations above the mean for Ecma Fast Tracks. Consider also that the average adult American male is 5' 9" (175 cm) tall, with a standard deviation of 3" (8 cm). For a man to be as tall, relative to the average height, as OOXML is to the average Fast Track, he would need to be 20' 3" (6.2 m) tall !
What Really Happened at the BRM for OOXML & Who Attended
The details are out now. Jomar Silva, a delegate from Brazil, which voted No, has now done what he said he would do and has posted what he saw and heard at the BRM.
OOXML v 2.0: things only get worse
OOXML, or the infamous ISO/IEC DIS 29500, is crawling towards the Ballot Resolution Meeting to see whether it can make the status of International Standard. Now ECMA, the body which hastily (to say the least) decided to make it an industry standard and presented it to ISO with a "fast track" procedure, has reviewed the comments of the national bodies, made a proposal for addressing them.
On timing and developers’ethic
"...I am aware that I’m making a very long story short here. But I’m doing this on purpose: the conspiracy that Bruce refers could be summarized as Novell engineers hijacking Gnome to serve their own corporate needs, and the problem is, these needs are aligned with the ones of Microsoft. [...] The most important lesson of this is that what matters is the format, not the application. The format creates the network effect and captures users, unless it is open and standard. [...] Apparently some would still like us to believe OOXML is an open standard. Make no mistake, OOXML is not an open standard, just like Christmas is not Easter."
GNOME: the cowboy project
"What is the relationship between the GNU Project and the GNOME desktop suite? GNOME itself claims to be a part of the GNU Project. But its relationship with the organisation is not the same as that of other software projects which are part of GNU..."
Low standards
I’m surprised there hasn’t been more attention in the press today on the comments made by Martin Bryan, outgoing convenor of the ISO JTC1/SC34 WG1 (the working group overseeing the progress of ECMA 376 - Microsoft Office Open XML - through the ISO standardization process).
