[odf-discuss] Documenting support for ODF 1.1?

[Daniel]

marbux wrote:
> For a year? I am told that the Foundation received the first email on the
> subject from OASIS on March 9, 2007.

Ok. My understanding of what the OASIS staffer said is that it's been a 
fair bit longer than that. I might have mis-read, but see the next 
paragraph.

> You omit that at all relevant times OASIS knew that the Foundation was 
> doing so and in fact encouraged the Foundation to continue doing so.

I'm not aware of any encouragement, but unless I severely mis-read Scott 
from OASIS said that the Foundation knew the rules before signing up 
initially and that they've been asking the Foundation to comply for a 
long time.

> Indeed, when
> Gary renewed the Foundation membership the last time he specifically asked
> if switching to the small corporation membership as OASIS requested would
> cause any change in the number of members the Foundation could sponsor. He
> was told no,

How many members can the Foundation sponsor with each membership? Did 
OASIS say "no, either way you have to reduce the number of members"?

> that OASIS truly appreciated all the fine work that all of the
> Foundation members were doing.

Saying that they appreciate your work does not imply "it's ok to break 
the rules". When they told me that they were going to remove my 
membership they told me they very much appreciated my work. So what? If 
someone says "I appreciate your work but you have to follow the rules" 
that is not a conflicting statement, it's really just trying to be less 
rude.

>> I also feel I should say that OASIS has moved to offer free membership
>> to the Foundation-sponsored members who contributed to ODF through their
>> fee-waiver program.
> 
> Yes, under the OASIS sponsored membership plan for those with financial
> "hardships." Can I in good faith claim that I can not afford to pay for an
> OASIS membership? No. I cannot.

I'm not aware of any "hardships" issue. I am not in economic hardship 
and didn't claim to be; same for all the other people who received an 
invitation. And the invitation never said anything about hardships. The 
fee waiver was being offered on the basis of getting an independent 
outside expert to contribute his or her expertise to the TC. That's the 
basis under which I was offered fee waiver, based on my existing 
contributions to the spec.

> No, I
> do not believe I should have to pay to contribute my work. I have no hopes
> of receiving any financial gain for my contributions.

Excluding the other comments you said in this paragraph, this is a point 
where we agree, and I believe most do. Many of us feel that we shouldn't 
pay to contribute our time to something we have no financial stake on. 
And a fee waived membership seems like an a reasonable solution for 
individuals with expertise who are in that situation.

>> Well, if you can't reach a concensus you have to have a vote. What else
>> would you do? You can't keep up a discussion forever.
> 
> You can do as the law requires.

I find it hard to believe that the law requires that this particular 
issue never see a vote.

> Industry standard-setting consortia can not lawfully
> be used to break competitors' apps. That applies in spades because Sun 
> has a monopoly position in the market for ODF applications.

The other major implementors (KDE and IBM) agreed with the proposal. The 
proposal was written mostly by KDE, who is arguably the implementor in 
the weakest position (lacks a large company behind it).

> And the situation was ludicrous from the beginning because Sun never had an
> explanation for what these supposed groovy new features are

Quote: "Lists in ODF 1.0 are underspecified". It's not always about 
adding a shiny new feature. Some times it's about removing ambiguity 
because ambiguity can lead to incompatible implementations. It is good 
for a standard to remove ambiguity. AFAICT Florian agrees with that 
point. He had a different proposal for removing ambiguity.

> In my opinion you err if you view this situation as being just about a 
> minor list numbering feature.

No. I think it is sour grapes from an implementor who doesn't have a 
product out complaining that all the biggest implementors who do have 
products out didn't bend over to change the standard the way it suited 
them. You've been advertising for some time how the Foundation plugin 
will be fantastic in ODF 1.2. I pointed out that ODF 1.2 doesn't exist 
but you were adamant that the changes you wanted would go in. You are 
now upset that everyone else disagreed with your changes.

> It is about the question of whether ODF is to be an
> interopreable standard for the world or Sun's de facto file format standard
> for its own products dressed in the clothing of an international standard.

I wonder what David Faure and Thomas Zander think about that statement.

Daniel.