[odf-discuss] Gnome, Ecma, and what governments (and FOSS?) should have done

[robert_weir at us.ibm.com]

As you say, that is the mechanics of what will occur in the comment 
resolution phase.  However, I believe that NB's have proposed more changes 
and more substantive changes than I suspect Microsoft is willing to make. 
Take AFNOR's suggestion to split OOXML into core and legacy extension 
pieces and then to harmonize the core with ODF?   Do you think Microsoft 
will easily accept this?  So I'd expect that Microsoft will try the same 
sorts of things that the did in the 5 month ballot:

1) Try to bargain with the NB's.  "We'll fix it in release 2.0" or "We'll 
harmonize with ODF, but only once we're approved".

2) Try to take over the NB by signing up more MS partners. When February 
comes along and NB's decide whether to change their vote, what prevents 
another herd of partners from joining the NB's on the last day to vote? It 
almost worked before and there has been no rebuke by ISO.   Microsoft just 
needs to repeat that approach and they are guaranteed to win.  Main thing 
is to avoid their memo's becoming public, as in Sweden.

3) Escalate the decision.  Most ISO NB's are run by the government.  What 
we see in the industrial west with independent vendor forums is the 
exception.  So Microsoft can directly appeal in most of the world to the 
administrations, where offers of discount enterprise agreements or free 
software for schools have been effective ways of molding behavior in the 
past.  Even in the US we saw such direct appeals from Microsoft to the 
Commerce Dept, and these were effective, getting the government members of 
our NB to flip their vote from No to Yes.

So when you consider the above, I think you'll agree that this is about as 
political as it gets.  If you mix the need to change people's opinions 
with billions of dollars at stake, and the complete absence of effective 
rules, it is hard to avoid.

-Rob


"Daniel Carrera" <daniel at zmsl.com>  wrote on 11/02/2007 09:49:53 AM:
> From: Pamela Jones <pj at groklaw.net>
> 
> > Please do not say that the ISO process is not political.  It very much 
is.
> 
> Don't confuse the issue by using vaguer terms like "the ISO 
> process". Some ISO processes may be political, but the ballot 
> resolution process is strictly a matter of going through a list of 
> conflicts that have already been submitting, and making a 
> substantive change to the spec as a response.
> 
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