Open Sauce Software
Tasty titbits from people using Linux and other open source software in business.
Tuesday 7 October 2008, 10:45 AM
ISO's SC34: the Large Standard Collider
Like that other Swiss science project, standards maker ISO has accelerated ODF and OOXML on two separate paths, and now it is colliding them, in a small space: the SC34 committee. What unknown particles will emerge?
ISO's "takeover" of ODF, it turns out, isn't unwelcome, even to ODF editor, Patrick Durusau. There will surely be more viewpoints, but at the moment, what I'm hearing is that ISO SC34 just wants to treat the standards equally, so neither Ecma (which submitted Microsoft's OOXML), or Oasis (which submitted ODF) gets a free ride. ISO says this ensures standards users - including national governments - get standards that are stable, and have defects dealt with promptly.
There's a question begged there, of course. Stability is not the same thing as quality. ISO got off to a shaky start and a blaze of poor publicity (to say the least) with OOXML, but even if it nails it all down to make something solid, will it be practical, will it be implemented, and will it be used? I can't help remembering the very stable - and little-implemented - OSI network protocols of years ago.
At least fifteen countries have adopted ODF as a Government standard, according to the ODF Alliance, and we're coming up to the second International ODF Workshop in South Africa. On one level at least, I wonder why ODF people need to worry.
The answer to that is - this is politics. Alex Brown, for instance, seems to speak for both standards (at least within the ISO world) but is slated as an OOXML booster. Patrick Durusau is editing ODF, but widely criticised as an OOXML supporter.
On the other side, IBM has plenty of people promoting ODF - and, we're told, its criticism of standards bodies is spite against OOXML. IBM's threat to absent itself from standards bodies is apparently more than a threat, with empty seats at the Korean meeting of SC34.
ISO's "takeover" of ODF, it turns out, isn't unwelcome, even to ODF editor, Patrick Durusau. There will surely be more viewpoints, but at the moment, what I'm hearing is that ISO SC34 just wants to treat the standards equally, so neither Ecma (which submitted Microsoft's OOXML), or Oasis (which submitted ODF) gets a free ride. ISO says this ensures standards users - including national governments - get standards that are stable, and have defects dealt with promptly.
There's a question begged there, of course. Stability is not the same thing as quality. ISO got off to a shaky start and a blaze of poor publicity (to say the least) with OOXML, but even if it nails it all down to make something solid, will it be practical, will it be implemented, and will it be used? I can't help remembering the very stable - and little-implemented - OSI network protocols of years ago.
At least fifteen countries have adopted ODF as a Government standard, according to the ODF Alliance, and we're coming up to the second International ODF Workshop in South Africa. On one level at least, I wonder why ODF people need to worry.
The answer to that is - this is politics. Alex Brown, for instance, seems to speak for both standards (at least within the ISO world) but is slated as an OOXML booster. Patrick Durusau is editing ODF, but widely criticised as an OOXML supporter.
On the other side, IBM has plenty of people promoting ODF - and, we're told, its criticism of standards bodies is spite against OOXML. IBM's threat to absent itself from standards bodies is apparently more than a threat, with empty seats at the Korean meeting of SC34.
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