Family Holloway

<GPLv2> I know my rights; I want my phone call!
<DRM> What use is a phone call… if you are unable to speak?

Over the years I’ve explained Open Source to many people and my favourite analogy is around doctors. People wouldn’t want someone operating on them that just came up with their ideas in isolation. They wouldn’t want a new operation performed on them that hadn’t been in a peer-reviewed journal. They would want someone who had been taught by a community of doctors throughout their career. For critical software, being Open Source allows analysis and feedback — it’s the scientific method applied to software. The fundamental (or bare minimum) meaning of Open Source is an openness and opportunity for review and feedback in order to foster improvement.

The spirit of the Open Source license was open, but unfortunately the wording of the license had some loopholes that could be used to keep software closed. One loophole allowed people to restrict it by using software patents. Another loophole allowed people to make hardware that prohibits changes to Open Source software. The TV recording device TiVo used hardware in this way and so this loophole was called TiVoisation. TiVo sell TV recording devices at below cost and they recover the losses by enforcing (through software) a $12.95 monthly subscription. At some later date they are able to recoup their costs and start making a profit. Removing TiVoisation would mean, to TiVo, that customers could change the software and avoid the monthly subscription cost. Openness of software was a threat to their business, so naturally they valued the loophole.

When some lawyers were helping draft a new version of the open source license they wanted to remove this loophole and one lawyer, Eben Moglen, received yet another phone call from TiVo pleading with him not to remove it. TiVo then tried to bargain with him. They offered to remove DRM from the recorded video if they could keep their TiVoisation. Strangely, Moglen responded by explaining their business model to them: he said that this was the real cause of their woes.

Moglen explained that by using Open Source they were benefiting from hundreds of thousands of developer-hours worth of work. It’s free software but it’s supposed to be open and that conflicts with their business model. Change the business model and solve the problem. TiVo could be up-front about it and get people to sign a 12-month contract, or they could charge what the hardware is worth.

What does this has to do with the ISO?

The strangest thing for me in the ISO process was part of the ISO’s business model, and how that conflicted with my technical review of OOXML. I never received a final specification to review and neither did anyone else in the world. For the ISO this was business as usual.

When any National Body is about to vote they have these two things for review:

1. A copy of the original specification (for OOXML, this was an old version from early 2007)
2. A list of editor instructions. These editor instructions are just like patches to software, except they’re patches to the text of the specification. Some patches might be exacting instructions such as “replace paragraph 15 on page 5874 with this text…” but others can be vague like “fix bad references” or “make features required as appropriate”. In the case of OOXML these patches were typically half-a-page in length. OOXML had over 1000 of these.

In order to review the quality of OOXML one would need to take the original specification and to understand the ramifications of 1000+ patches. By doing this you were supposed to be able to derive the final text and each person would do this individually to the best of their ability. This was a mammoth task, mostly due to the poor quality of the original specification and of the patches.

For example, patch 222 and 691 were in conflict with each other but both patches were to be applied. These two patches were about whether the text or the XML Schema have precedence. One patch reads:

“If discrepancies exist between the electronic version of a schema and its corresponding representation as published in this part, Part 2, the electronic version is the definitive version.”

…meaning that the XML Schema has precedence over the text, but patch 691 comes to an opposite conclusion. As a consequence reviewers don’t know whether the text or the XML Schemas (both normative) are to be followed in any part of the final specification. All national bodies in the world were expected to evaluate these two nonsensical patches, and they all faced this same dilemma.

Patch 1 (yes, the very first patch) says that there will be an “editorial pass” over the document to fix usage of the terms MAY, MUST, SHALL, SHOULD, etc. These words have a special meaning in standards because they distinguish between what’s required, what’s recommended, or what is merely suggested. This is not necessarily a straight-­forward fix that could go un­reviewed in an editorial pass because defining what’s required or not goes to the very heart of a standard. Again, this patch affects any review of OOXML in any part of the specification.

There are numerous other contradictory or nonsensical patches that were to be applied to the final specification. While I did my best to review OOXML I was stifled by a process that didn’t give me a final specification.

A core part of the ISO’s business model involves selling standards. If they gave away a final copy of the standard for nations (and their advisors, like me) to review before voting then a large portion of their market would already have the standard and wouldn’t need to buy it. Not revealing a final standard for review (and voting upon) is intentional — it’s their business model.

I don’t know how the ISO should sustain itself. Should participants pay up front to be involved? Should national bodies pay an annual fee? Should the organisation proposing the standard pay instead? Should the ISO sell pleather-bound paper copies but give away the files for free? I don’t know how to solve this but I do know that the current process must change because it conflicts with any analysis of a proposed standard.

That’s the blog post. I’ll leave you with the Standards Council of Canada’s Final Position Statement which reads:

“ISO/IEC DIS 29500 OOXML – Fast Track
Canadian Final Position Statement

Canada has carefully reviewed the results of the ISO/IEC DIS 29500 OOXML Fast Track Ballot Resolution Meeting and determined after detailed analysis that Canada will maintain its Disapprove vote.

Canada notes that major enhancements had been made to ISO/IEC 29500 during the Ballot Resolution Meeting, but the general quality of the standard was not yet what was expected of an ISO/IEC Standard, and that there were still too many unknowns.

Canada states that the inappropriate use of the fast track process for this DIS has rendered it impossible to ascertain whether in fact 29500 meets the standard of quality and correctness required in an International Standard.

Canada further recommends that the ISO/IEC JTC 1 Fast Track procedures and processes be reviewed and enhanced to ensure that this situation does not arise again in the future, and bring disrepute to the whole ISO and IEC International Standards process.

Finally, Canada recommends that the ISO/IEC DIS 29500 OOXML Fast Track documents and materials, plus the enhancements made at the Ballot Resolution Meeting be submitted to ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34 as a New Work Item for processing via the normal standards development processes.”

(emphasis mine)

Update (later that day): I said I’d write about the Standards New Zealand process that I was involved in for a year. Well, I’m very happy (proud, even) with how Standards NZ ran the process, and of course I agree with their final decision to vote No. But as for my fellow participants it’s actually quite hard to write about the meetings and the arguments without talking about them as individuals and their behaviour. Rather than writing a blog post about that I think I’ll just send some personal thank-you emails to a few of the people involved. Cheers

This entry was posted on Monday, April 7th, 2008 at 1:26 am and is filed under OOXML. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.