Advice to the Youth: if you want your standard, destroy the ISO

Sad farewell letter from Mr. Martin Bryan, now former convenor of the WG1 of the JTC-1 SC 34 (the ISO group working on OOXML and ODF). Alan Lord published it in extenso for fear that it would not stay long online, and since it’s rather short, I’ll publish as well for the same reasons:

”  The second half of 2007 has been an extremely trying time for WG1. I am more than a little glad my 3 year term is up, and must commiserate with my successor on taking over an almost impossible task.

WG1 has been struggling against the rules laid down ISO for a number of years, trying to prepare a complex multipart standard that needs to take account of work being done in OASIS, W3C and IETF within the extremely limited timescales laid down by ISO for completion of standards. While these rules make sense when you have a single standard, or sufficient members to multi-task, they make it impossible for a small group to produce a multipart standard. WG1 have frequently had to ask for extensions to our time limits, and must continue to do so while trying to produce an integrated suite of standards.

This year WG1 have had another major development that has made it almost impossible to continue with our work within ISO. The influx of P members whose only interest is the fast-tracking of ECMA 376 as ISO 29500 has led to the failure of a number of key ballots. Though P members are required to vote, 50% of our current members, and some 66% of our new members, blatantly ignore this rule despite weekly email reminders and reminders on our website. As ISO require at least 50% of P members to vote before they start to count the votes we have had to reballot standards that should have been passed and completed their publication stages at Kyoto. This delay will mean that these standards will appear on the list of WG1 standards that have not been produced within the time limits set by ISO, despite our best efforts.

Unless ISO tightens up on its rules, and removes or demotes, P members who do not vote as required by ISO rules I would recommend my successor that it is perhaps time to pass WG1’s outstanding standards over to OASIS, where they can get approval in less than a year and then do a PAS submission to ISO, which will get a lot more attention and be approved much faster than standards currently can be within WG1. The disparity of rules for PAS, Fast-Track and ISO committee generated standards is fast making ISO a laughing stock in IT circles. The days of open standards development are fast disappearing. Instead we are getting “standardization by corporation”, something I have been fighting against for the 20 years I have served on ISO committees. I am glad to be retiring before the situation becomes impossible. I wish my colleagues every success for their future efforts, which I sincerely hope will not prove to be as wasted as I fear they could be.

Martin Bryan
Convenor, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC34 WG1 “

What a shame.  Watch out, dear reader! If you want a standard, your standard, at all costs, follow the track of OOXML. An edifying tale on how to disrupt international processes just for your own sake.

And nice try, Brian, but this time you got it wrong as well:  The OASIS never turned the maintenance of ODF to the ISO, and was never asked to. Nice try, really, but please, do try to publish the Ecma answers and put them online. That would really help us and show your company does not fear transparency.

Have a great week-end!