News

Standards Malaysia has now issued a statement [PDF] regarding the BRM. The title says it all, “Malaysian delegation at the ISO meeting in Geneva (25 - 29 Feb ‘08) finds the technical issues in the draft standard OOXML unresolved satisfactorily”.

They were there. And they contradict the stories being put out by those in charge and by Microsoft. They did *not* have the opportunity to have their concerns addressed totally. Malaysia voted to disapprove the undiscussed bulk dispositions, although they had earlier voted to approve some dispositions that were discussed. Most of their concerns were never discussed:

“Malaysia had submitted 23 comments and more than 70% of them were not addressed satisfactorily by Ecma’s proposed dispositions. We intended to resolve these technical issues at the BRM, but we could only raise 2 concerns due to the time constraints imposed,” Fadilah said.

The press release says that after three days of trying, it became clear that there was insufficient time to address all the dispositions, and so the idea was presented to just vote on items without discussion:

“Malaysia decided to vote ‘Disapprove’ to these undiscussed issues,” Fadilah elaborated, “The limitation of the BRM process clearly showed that such a task of approving this draft standard does not fit in the Fast Track process employed by Ecma International. Malaysia and other country delegations worked very hard which extended into evenings after the BRM sessions. All the technical experts from diverse backgrounds, including from Microsoft, the original proposer of the Draft, put their heads together to fix the specification. Malaysia approved the counter proposals by many National Bodies which were discussed during the BRM. Unfortunately there were just far too many to fix within the given time.”

I don’t think it took three days to figure out that there was insufficient time to discuss all the dispositions. I think the evidence indicates that it was anticipated and planned for. To fully comprehend the story, you need to read the rules. Here’s the page where you can find the rules regarding the Fast Track process. The one that I think is the right one is ISO/IEC JTC 1 Directives, 5th Edition, Version 3.0. When I read them, I read that only P-members can vote, and I also read that voting should ideally never happen at a BRM, that the preferred method is discussion leading to consensus. Only if consensus can’t be reached is voting contemplated, and then only P-members vote. If no consensus is possible, the convenor terminates the Fast Track process. The P-members didn’t reach consensus on the undiscussed dispositions. Yet, we do not see a shut down. What’s up with that? And now what? I looked into the appeals process, and I’ll show you what I found.