[Wylug-discuss] 'Pathetic' FLOSS Advocacy - Put it to the test?

[Mark P. Conmy]

On Wed, 24 Jan 2007, Roger Greenwood wrote:
> On Wednesday 24 January 2007 21:25, Dave Fisher wrote:
>
>> Well, today Phil Driscoll's post urging people to object to fast
>> tracking ECMA 376 into an ISO standard gives me the opportunity to put a
>> *very small* part of my argument to the test.
>
> I, for one, haven't the faintest idea what you both are talking about.
>
> You are therefore quite correct that wylug is an ineffective lobbying group.
> Is that what wylug is about ?

I think WYLUG is pretty much anything that (the majority) of its users
want it to be.  Could be a lobbying group but doesn't have to be.

I would say, however, that educating and promoting open source issues has
always been a feature of WYLUG, and that may lead people to lobby as a
result...

> If anyone would care to enlighten those of us still in the dark on this I
> would be interested. Keep it simple please, this is not my day job just a
> hobby.
>
> (I have had some contact with BSI/CENELEC/IEC standards committees)

As I understand it...

Basically, there was a push to create an open document standard that has
led to the creation of an ISO standard (ISO/IEC 26300:2006).  This
standard defines an XML schema along with its semantics required to
describe office application contents.  Whilst it has it origins in the
OpenDocument format (used by OpenOffice et al.), it was further
developed by the OASIS industry consortium and is supported by a large
number of applications as well as OpenOffice...but not by Microsoft.

MS explicitly rejected the OpenDocument standard claiming it couldn't
handle some of the content it required for backwards compatibility with
its earlier products or some additional features it had (or planned to
have).  Rather than participate in the OpenDocument format, it proposed
a new format which it submitted to ECMA (another standards committee)
who adopted it as ECMA 376.  As a result of this, ECMA is able to
fast-track this format to becoming an ISO standard too because of its
relationship with ISO (via the ISO JTC 1 process).  This one's called
the Microsoft Office Open XML format (OOXML).

There is widespread suspicion surrounding this format partly because of
history and partly because the standard itself (and I say this from
second hand knowledge) references other standards that are not
complete/open and/or standardised in a meaningful sense.  There is a
suspicion that licensing issues* or missing information might pose
difficulties for those wishing to develop compatible applications
despite it being an open standard.

Of course, IANAL and much of this is opinion and rumour. ;-)

There is now an opportunity for national bodies to object to this being
rushed through.  It is argued that it shouldn't be fast tracked as it's
clearly very complex and still has questions surrounding it.  Without
objections, it will certainly be ratified.

Mark

* MS has granted free and perpetual license for use of the format as
   specified in the standard.  Further, they have proposed a covenant not
   to sue over issues arising from use of the format.  Suspicion
   surrounds the question of what happens if you don't fully implement
   the standard (e.g. when your OSS is in development) and are, therefore
   not using it as specified.  Further, it's not clear whether the
   license or covenant to sue covers standards only referenced by the
   ECMA standard and not, therefore, directly part of it.