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OOXML Fails to Get Majority Approval at BRM (Groklaw)
Groklaw reports
that OOXML failed to get majority approval at the Ballot Resolution Meeting
(BRM) in Geneva. "Now it's the 30-day voting period, but Updegrove
asks, if they never could discuss all the issues, which is the purpose of a
BRM, what's the basis for a vote? And with the vast majority either voting
to abstain or even refusing to vote as a protest, I think one may conclude
this proposal didn't belong on the fast track, and it isn't getting the
kind of support you would have thought it might, given all the muscle that
has gone into the push to get OOXML approved."
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Andy Updegrove interview Posted Mar 1, 2008 0:30 UTC (Sat) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] There's also an interview with Andy Updegrove which I found interesting. It's from before the result was announced but it's just gone online now.
links to more reports Posted Mar 4, 2008 13:03 UTC (Tue) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] I've been collecting and commenting good reports in my blog. FWIW:
OOXML Fails to Get Majority Approval at BRM (Groklaw) Posted Mar 1, 2008 0:32 UTC (Sat) by jd (guest, #26381) [Link] The update talks about there being overwhelming support for the proposed standard. The only way this can make sense is if you look only at the accept/reject votes AND use the Congressional definition of an overwhelming majority (60%). Indeed, Microsoft got 60% of the accept/reject votes, giving it an overwhelming majority by that particular standard. For an international standard, I wouldn't use such a low number (a 10% margin over a simple majority) or use that particular ratio. But, then, I don't have an international corporation's image to maintain.
OOXML Fails to Get Majority Approval at BRM (Groklaw) Posted Mar 1, 2008 3:01 UTC (Sat) by jamienk (guest, #1144) [Link]
It was MS who called it "overwhelming support."
There were 25 P countries, and 32 voting if you add in the non P countries. The breakdown for
the P countries worked like this:
Approve = 4
Disapprove = 4
Refuse to Vote = 2
Abstain = 15
Even if you add in the non P countries, which may or may not be legitimate under Directive
9.1.4, Updegrove tells us, it goes like this:
Approve = 6
Disapprove = 4
Refuse to Vote = 4
Abstain = 18
OOXML Fails to Get Majority Approval at BRM (Groklaw) Posted Mar 3, 2008 6:30 UTC (Mon) by daniel (subscriber, #3181) [Link] In addition, only a few tens of the thousand or so comments were actually addressed at the five day meeting, the rest were all batched up together for a single vote "as is". A perversion of process indeed, but Microsoft now crows about how an overwhelming majority the comments were accepted without comment. As if there was ever a chance.
OOXML Fails to Get Majority Approval at BRM (Groklaw) Posted Mar 6, 2008 12:24 UTC (Thu) by wookey (subscriber, #5501) [Link] It's more complicated than this simple analysis. I spent half of monday reading about this, so let me try and save some of you some time :-) I have no particular expertise in the ISO process or XML document standards, and am not involved at all except being an interested observer. All the info below is gleaned from reports and comments published since the event, many by participants. Some of those reports are utterly contradictory, and below is the best sense I can make of it all. Firstly remember that the BRM votes are not about accepting the standard; they are about whether to accept amendments to it. Those amendments are new text proposed by ECMA in response to the many comments received as part of the initial september vote on whether to accept the ECMA standard as an ISO standard 'as -is'. It was not accepted because many countries voted 'No, with comments' - i.e. We don't accept it as is, but we might if these things are fixed'. There were thousands of comments/objections, merged down into about 1100 for this BRM. It was always clear that discussing 1100 (or 900) items in 5 days with 30 countries was never going to allow proper consideration of all the comments, but the process was fixed by the ISO rules. The problem was really caused by trying to fast-track a huge, contentious standard, and that's a problem caused by ECMA(/Microsoft) for attempting this. Discussion of that aspect is 'politics' as opposed to 'technology standards', so I'll skip that. The convener and all the participants did their best under these unsatisfactory circumstances. 200-odd comments were minor editorial items and were dealt with quickly. 30 of the most substantive comments were discussed (countries got to choose which points to bring up first so one presumes they did the ones they cared about most) - those comments nearly all got modified before being accepted into the text. When it was clear that little time was left the remaining 900 were just voted on in their existing form. A delegation could vote on each individual one and set a 'default' vote for any they didn't express an opinion on (This is the overall vote for which numbers are given above). We don't have good info yet on how many were explicitly voted on verses what the default votes were, (although there are some figures floating about in blog comments). Whether the default applied to 5 or 900 items matters significantly when considering the importance of the default vote. This process was agreed by those present at the BRM, although some were not happy about it. Proper standards people are not impressed because the whole point is that a standard should be properly scrutinised and discussed, not voted on 'this text or nothing' in a tearing hurry. So, the net result seems to be that nearly all of the suggested changes have gone through, by a narrow margin. Whether this is a good thing or not depends on your point of view. The changes generally make the standard better, given that they are attempts to fix objection to it, but obviously as most had no discussion they may well be less than ideal, or even contradictory. And of course if you don't believe this _should_ be a ISO standard then having these improvements made gives countries which voted 'no, with comments' in September the chance to change their vote to 'Yes' next month, and that's bad. The microsofties spinning this as a huge love-in and massive consensus success astonish me. So far as I can tell that's pretty close to bare-faced lies, but that Jason Matusow guy really does give the impression he actually believes it. They live in a strange world.
"isn't getting support" != "will lose the vote" Posted Mar 1, 2008 3:51 UTC (Sat) by bignose (subscriber, #40) [Link] > this proposal [...] isn't getting the kind of support you would have thought it might, given all the muscle that has gone into the push to get OOXML approved. Perhaps the aforementioned muscle isn't interested in showing support, but in garnering votes during the 30-day voting period -- which is, after all, the only support that counts for approval by ISO. I think we may be disappointed at the number of "approve" votes that come from those who are currently listed as "abstain" or "refuse to vote".
OOXML Fails to Get Majority Approval at BRM (Groklaw) Posted Mar 4, 2008 10:11 UTC (Tue) by ber (subscriber, #2142) [Link] Here is an interesting writeup: www.robweir.com/blog/2008/03/art-of-being-mugged.html.
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