[Wylug-discuss] MS Office Open XML ISO standard fast track

[Dave Fisher]

On Wed, Jan 24, 2007 at 04:33:02PM +0000, Dave Fisher wrote:
> I'm not certain that I've made the right arguments, or even set the
> right tone, but I figure that part of the purpose of writing to the BSI
> IST/41 committee is to draw it's attention to the shere quantity/depth
> of our objection ... *in time*! 
<snip> 
> I've only quoted it to illustrate what I think may be useful tactics and
> priorities, i.e.
> 
>   1. Get as many objections in as possible in as soon as possible.
> 
>   2. Object to fast tracking above all.
> 
>   3. Remind the committee that a rushed job on a bad proposal will have
>   serious negative consequences for real people.
> 
>   4. Make our initial objections seem as minimal, moderate and
>      reasonable as possible.

Well, I'm still not certain that I got it right, but Francis Cave's
response gives me some grounds for hope:
 
    ============================================================
    
    Dear Dave
    
    Thank you for your email. I shall forward it to members of IST/41
    and to the Chairman of ICT/-/1, the committee responsible for
    responding for the UK position on the initial review of ECMA-376.
    
    I should add that, although I have received a fair number of emails
    of this kind, you have injected some thoughtful new points into
    yours that will be very useful to share with committee members -
    thank you.
    
    Regards
    
    Francis Cave Chairman, IST/41
    
    ============================================================

This response leads me to suggest additional tactics which other wyluggers
might use in their own lobbying:

    1.  Impress readers with the fact that reasonable objections come
    from many sources and not just the 'usual (open source) suspects'
    ... e.g. quote critical articles other than the groklaw piece cited
    by me and Phil.

    N.B. I've tried googling for such alternative sources and found it
    difficult ... perhaps the FLOSS community is as isolated as I
    sometimes fear :-)

    2. Try to come up with original and personalised arguments ... I
    suspect that additional arguments about data/document polution may
    have legs.

    3. You don't need to mention open source in any way ... this
    argument is about standards, their quality, and their usability, not
    about source code per se.

Dave