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Thursday 25 September 2008, 12:40 PM
Ecma: So why is our process suddenly broken?
Essentially, people objecting to Ecma's fast track standard process are actually complaining about a particular standard, not the process that made it, says Istvan Sebestyen, secretary general of Ecma International.
The "PAS" process by which Ecma submits standards to ISO for fast-track approval has been working well since 1961, he says in an email. Given that, why is it suddenly broken in 2008?
Also, he says the process is continually up for review and improvement.
The obvious response to this will be that, if the result is bad, we must check the process out (and I believe there have been previous incidents where ECMA's been seriously criticised).
I won't add more - I'll just post his comments below, after I mention in passing that as far as I know, ISO has not yet made any public response to IBM's comments.
Over to Dr Sebestyen:
Two things:
Generally, on the rules and procedures in every standards body (Ecma, ISO, ITU,...) there is a constant refinement that is going on. So in that spirit lessons learned, changes, modifications on the ISO/IEC Fast Track and PAS process can of course also be expected sometimes in the future. The JTC 1 SWG on Directives has several proposals for such modifications on the table, also on the above subject and will discuss those and if needed make proposals to JTC 1 for changes. When that will exactly happen I do not know.
Second: I hear critics regarding Fast Track only vis-a-vis IS 29500, but not vis-a-vis the other Fast Tracks that have been and are being completed (Ecma had at least other 20 since the ECMA-376 Fast Track, though I have not counted them concretely one by one). So, my feeling is that the problem is with this standard rather than the entire Fast-Track process. If you go to our website, and look into the old Ecma yearbooks e.g. from 1962, so will find that even at that time this practice was followed. So, the generalization of the problem is not appropriate. So, suddenly what has worked since 1961 well, why does not work suddenly in 2008 any more? Now, as soon as you look into the approval of this particular OOXML standard you find that the problems are more political than technical. The technical comments (such as lenght of the standard) if you go into the depth of them are most also of political nature. E.g. that the standard is long... Well true, but 4000 pages are for computer consumption and not for human; "time for review too short", well SC34 got the first version for info and comments mid 2006, Ecma has published the drafts publicly on the web site etc....
Kind regards,
Dr. Istvan Sebestyen - Secretary General
Ecma International
PreviousComments on this post
In my opinion, the process is now "broken" because it is being subjected to an amount of pressure, and an abuse, which it has never seen before. Microsoft was dragged, kicking and screaming, to the conclusion that they absolutely had to have some kind of "standard" seal of approval for OOXML in order to stop a continuing erosion of their user base. Either that, or they would have to accept someone else's standard (ODF), and we all know that is totally unacceptable at Microsoft.
So they set about applying whatever pressure was necessary, in whatever way was possible, to get the result they wanted. The process had little or nothing to do with the proposed standard - the objective was the certification, regardless of what was or was not in the actual standard document. You have seen the same reports that I have, of packing the committee with Microsoft employees, sympathizers and puppets, veiled coercion and threats to various members, and attempts to confuse the process with sheer quantity rather than quality. The culmination of it all was the now infamous mass-vote in Geneva to accept however many hundred changes and fixes without discussion or verification.
The end result was that Microsoft got the standard certification they wanted, at the cost of bringing the entire process and the certifying bodies into disrepute. It is refreshing to see someone stand up and say that this isn't right, and they don't want to be associated with such a process, and such a standard, in the future. For Ecma to say "there hasn't been anything wrong with this process before" is rather like the farmer whose mule fell over dead in the field, and he then said "strange, he's never done that before"...
jw 25/9/2008
That's a good point.
ECMA has said the process was not bought, because it "did not receive a penny". That doesn't mean it wasn't bought - just that the costs went elsewhere.
