[odf-discuss] OOXML: The next step

[marbux]

On Mon, Apr 14, 2008 at 6:49 AM, <robert_weir at us.ibm.com> wrote:

>
> <odf-discuss-bounces at opendocumentfellowship.com>I think if it this way.
>  If you came to me with an argument that said that the based on a deep
> reading of international trade law, you had determined that it was mandatory
> for all bald men to wear derby hats, and I then looked around and saw that
> no bald men where wearing derby hats at all, then I might come to one of
> several conclusions:
>
> 1)  Most bald men are in violation of the law.
> 2)  These men perhaps are not really bald, or at least not according to
> the appropriate definition
> 3)  These men actually do have a derby hat, but maybe it is skin-colored
> and I didn't notice it
> 4)  These men are bald, and do not have derby hats, but because they are
> on private property the law does not apply to them
> 5)  You have interpreted the law incorrectly and there is in fact no
> requirement for all bald men to wear derby hats
>
> You seem to be arguing #1.  I'm not convinced that the alternatives have
> been eliminated.  Generally, if I make a statement that is in opposition to
> all observable facts, I should give fair consideration to the possibility
> that my statement, and not reality, is the source of the incongruity.
>

Your hypothetical collapses in its conflation of the facts and the law. The
statement is that the *law* requires or prohibits certain behavior by bald
men. The fact that the law is generally ignored does not alter what the law
is. All that means in practical terms is that authorities have been lax in
enforcing the law or that massive number of bald men are engaging in civil
disobedience, etc. Widespread disobedience creates no legal defense to later
enforcement of the law, nor does it transform the status of unlawful
behavior to lawful behavior.

Your hypothetical state of affairs attempts to transform lack of knowledge
into logical alternate and largely mutually exclusive conclusions that are
in fact no more than postulates requiring  research to determine which among
them is true.


Your hypothetical also founders on the reasoning that multiple valid
*conclusions* can be drawn from admittedly inadequate knowledge. What you
pose are not in truth conclusions. They are untested postulates. If one
doubts another's conclusion as to what the law requires or prohibits, one
researches the law, not the facts.

The fact that there is widespread disobedience to the law may arguably
provide a basis for a policy argument that the law should be changed. But
disobedience provides no basis under any legal philosophy I have studied
that adheres to the Rule of Law for arguing that the law is different from
what it is.

I have laid out my points and authorities as to how I arrived at my
conclusion in regard to what the law prohibits/requires. One may in a
principled fashion argue in response that: [i] I err as to my identification
or interpretation of the applicable law; [ii] the law does not apply to the
particular facts at issue because the facts are other than what I claim them
to be. But widespread disobedience to the law has no relevance to what the
law is.

Leaving the hypothetical situation you raise to return to the topic of
discussion, it really requires no deep dive into the international law to
arrive at the conclusion I did. A lawful standard allows no differentiation
among product characteristics. Standard goods must be substitutable
regardless of manufacturer. That is the very purpose of standardization. The
unavoidable corollary is that standards may not lawfully confer conformant
status on goods that  differ. To do so destroys the substitutability of
goods.

We have standards precisely to accomplish the benefits of uniformity. We
want, e.g., a millimeter to be the same length regardless of who
manufactures the product. If it is, then an 8 mm hex-headed wrench will work
with any 8 mm hex-headed bolt and any manufacturer's 8 mm hex-headed bolt of
a specified length and thread width will work to manufacture a good whose
standard requires such a bolt be used. But if we define a millimeter as only
an approximate length that can vary, a millimeter is a far less useful
measure. We no longer can have confidence that multiple vendors' 8 mm-hex
headed bolt will interoperate with the threaded seating hole for a bolt and
we also lose confidence that our 8 mm hex-headed wrench will interoperate
with the bolt. In short, we have a millimeter standard that is not really a
standard.

Whether tolerances are close enough for workable
interoperability/substitutability is the real issue. You said earlier in
this thread that "If you use extensions you know you will not be
interoperable." <
http://lists.opendocumentfellowship.com/pipermail/odf-discuss/2008-April/007285.html
>

How then you propose that ODF v. 1.2 grant conformant status to  vendor
extensions? JTC 1 Directives command that international standards "clearly
and unambiguously specify the conformance requirements essential to achieve
the interoperability." They also require that interoperability between
different IT systems using the standard be demonstrable and that the consent
of the Secretaries-General must be obtained to deviate from the requirements
of the Directives.

Does the fact that ODF 1.0 and OOXML slid through JTC 1 without complying
with those requirements change what the Directives require? You seem to
argue that it does. But the law is indifferent to previous violations and
often compels unpopular results.

"Our individual appraisal of the wisdom or unwisdom of a particular course
consciously selected by the Congress is to be put aside in the process of
interpreting a statute. Once the meaning of an enactment is discerned and
its constitutionality determined, the judicial process comes to an end. We
do not   sit as a committee of review, nor are we vested with the power of
veto. The lines ascribed to Sir Thomas More by Robert Bolt are not without
relevance here:


   'The law, Roper, the law. I know what's legal, not what's right. And
      I'll stick to what's legal. . . . I'm not God. The currents and eddies of
      right and wrong, which you find such plain-sailing, I can't
navigate, I'm no
      voyager. But in the thickets of the law, oh there I'm a
forester. . . . What
      would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the
Devil? . . .
      And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you - where
      would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? . . . This
country's planted
      thick with laws from coast to coast - Man's laws, not God's -
and if you cut
      them down . . . d'you really think you could stand upright in
the winds that
      would blow them? . . . Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own
      safety's sake." R. Bolt, A Man for All Seasons, Act I, p. 147
(Three Plays,
      Heinemann ed. 1967).'


"We agree with the Court of Appeals that in our constitutional system the
commitment to the separation of powers is too fundamental for us to pre-empt
congressional action by judicially decreeing what accords with "common sense
and the public weal." Our Constitution vests such responsibilities in the
political branches."

Tennessee Valley Authority v. Hill, 437 U.S. 153, 195-196 (1978).
<http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=US&vol=437&invol=153>
(Tellico Dam snail darter Endangered Species Act decision).

Does the fact that federal agencies routinely violate the Endangered Species
Act or the National Environmental Policy Act and that compliance is
difficult and expensive mean that those Acts have acquired a different
meaning or are wrong? The answer is no; if you don't like the law, your task
is to get it changed, not to ignore it.

That is, unless you are willing to risk the consequences of unlawful
behavior. Those who violate the law do so at their own risk of the law's
enforcement. In the context of the TVA v. Hill, that decision compelled TVA
to stop construction of a nearly completed dam and to dismantle it. The
halls of justice are littered with the bodies of legal arguments that sought
dispensation from the law, resulting in enormous inconvenience and expense.

IBM is now embarking on a campaign to reform the international
standardization process. Would IBM accomplish its reform by means other than
by establishing or amending rules and insisting on their enforcement? I
think not. I also think IBM would at least hope that its new rules would be
honored. Has it not occurred to IBM management that they undermine the
effect of their reform measures if IBM does not itself adhere to existing
rules? Or does IBM perceive the rules as applying only to others?

At the Ecma 376 contradiction stage, one corporate insider closely involved
in the opposition described the international standardization process to me
thusly in an email:

Never forget that we're doing something new here.  In ISO it has
traditionally worked like this:  A company proposes a standard, and those
NB's that had an interest examined the standard and voted, and all those who
had no interest just voted "yes" automatically.  The feeling was that
someday it would be your standard on the ballot, so no one wanted to rock
the vote.   It was also highly stacked in favor of vendors.  The US NB for
voting in JTC1 has no individual membership category, and even the "User
Group" membership starts at $10,000 per year.  This all leads to groups like
Ecma having way too much power.  There have been something like 250 Fast
Track's through JTC1 since 1990, and 80% of them have been through Ecma.

My observation is that NB representatives are not used to talking to anyone
in the public.  No one.  There are not politicians.  They are not elected.
They are generally not doing this for the money or power or influence.  So
they are likely not going to be motivated by the same thing politicians are
influenced by.  In fact most of them are going to vote according to the
inter-corporation politics, i.e., Oracle reps vote with IBM against
Microsoft.  Sun abstains for fear of Microsoft.  RedHat votes with IBM,  HP
votes with Microsoft.    When they receive large numbers of emails
complaining about something, they may not react the same way a politician
does who is out to preserve their reelection chances.

Or in other words, one might grant a degree of credence to the statement by
Microsoft's Jean Paoli  in regard to the opposition to DIS-29500 that "If it
was not for IBM it would have been business as usual for this standard." <
http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/Microsoft-accuses-IBM-of-OOXML-smear-campaign/0,130061733,339285485,00.htm>.
To be sure, it was not just IBM's resistance, but my experience teaches that
"business as usual" at JTC 1 does not pay a lot of heed to applicable law
and the rules.

In that context, does it seem unlikely that many standards were adopted that
do not comply with the law? I think not.

Both ODF and OOXML are only one WTO Dispute Resolution Process complaint
away from losing their international standard,   national technical
regulation, and government procurement specification status. They do not
meet the minimum requirements of international law. Both are unnecessary
obstacles to international trade; neither specify a uniform and
substitutable product. That does not sound like a sound business plan to me.

So I return to my question posed in an earlier post: Will ODF v. 1.2 under
your leadership attempt to "clearly and unambiguously specify that
conformance requirements essential to achieve the interoperability" and will
the standards-based interoperability between *different* IT systems be
"demonstrable," as required by JTC 1 Directives?

That is not a complicated question and it requires no deep dive into
international law  to answer. International law requires what the quoted JTC
1 Directives require in this regard, but for purposes of the point under
discussion we need go no further than the Directives' plain language.


One either adheres to the rules or one forfeits the moral high ground to
complain when others ignore the rules. Where does Rob Weir stand on
complying with the rules?

Best regards,

Paul
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