An "open standards" meeting in Malaysia

Man, what does a guy have to do to find a technical debate in Malaysia? I've spent 72 hours trying to do exactly that, and am now at the airport headed for home, having never found anyone who actually wanted to discuss any technical details of DIS29500 in general, or Malaysia's submitted comments in particular.

I already blogged about the PIKOM meeting earlier in the week, and then this morning I tried to fit in a stop at the TC4 technical committee meeting where Yoon Kit would be presenting the results of the BRM. My friend Yuk Wai from IASA was attending the meeting, and since I'm an IASA member he asked me to come along and provide some perspective on the details of what happened at the BRM. I've also heard from Ditesh and YK in the last couple of days that they'd like a chance to debate the technical details from the BRM while I'm here, so it seemed like a great chance to do all of the above.

But ... they threw me out before the meeting started. So I'm at the airport a little earlier than expected, and will record what happened while it's very fresh in my mind.

There were about 15 people or so present at 9:00AM, when the meeting was scheduled to start. YK and Ditesh were missing, and for some reason the chair decided to wait for them to arrive. I guess we're just uptight in the US, because I can't imagine waiting 30 minutes for a couple of missing members to show up when you already have most members present, but that's what we did.

When YK and Ditesh showed up, we exchanged pleasantries and I thought the meeting would finally start. But they took the chair out in the hall, and another 20-30 minutes passed before the meeting started. I don't know what was going on in the hall, but the next time the door opened after they returned to the meeting, Hassan Saidin of IBM was out in the hall a few feet from the door. Draw your own conclusions there.

Anyway, when the chair returned he had an interesting bit of business to take care of. He wanted to go around the room and identify the "primary" and "alternate" attendee for each organization present, and ask any others present to leave the room. I've heard several times in the past about my colleagues who have attended TC4 meetings, and about the guest experts who sometimes attend from the member organizations, but suddenly today (after a conference out in the hall) the chair felt there was a need to enforce a rule that only allowed previously designated "primary/alternate" members to attend.

This was confusing to the members, and many questions were asked by them. Interestingly, the questions were often answered by Tan King Ing of MAMPU instead of the chair himself. (Gee, Ian, maybe you're not paranoid after all. :-)) One member asked whether this rule had been enforced in the past, and the MAMPU lady answered for the chair and said "that's not a fair question."

The gist of the long torturous conversation was that there is some rule which had never come up before in TC4, which required that anyone not a designated "primary/alternate" must leave the room when the chair asks them to do so. Kamarul Zaman of RosettaNet pointed out that he had attended previous meetings as an observer when he worked for Intel. No luck -- he had to leave the room "while we conduct business not appropriate for an observer." The representative from PIKOM said that he felt it wasn't fair to call somebody an "observer" if they had to leave at certain times; the lady from MAMPU tried to explain that this was a very reasonable thing to do.

Yuk Wai asked why I couldn't stay, since IASA had sent notification to SIRIM that both he and I would be attending. The chair and secretary eventually decided (in a rambling conversation where they seemed to be making up the rules as they went) that the problem was that the notification didn't say "alternate" before my name. Yuk Wai asked if a fax from IASA that included the word "alternate" would resolve the problem. They said it would, and I left the room while Yuk Wai made a call to try to get a fax sent over with the magical word added.

Stepping out into the hall, I ran into Hassan from IBM, who apparently had decided to bring his laptop to SIRIM's building 3 to get some work done on the 3rd floor right outside the TC4 meeting room this morning. Perhaps this is some sort of hoteling concept IBM uses in Malaysia, I'm not sure.

Anyway, the upshot was that I was left standing out in the hall with a couple of other guys who were forced to leave the room, hanging out with the local IBM rep while top-secret work was going on in the meeting room. "Open" indeed!

I decided to head for the airport, rather than wait to see what procedural tricks they'd dream up next. I went back into the room to get my stuff, and the MAMPU lady was talking, but stopped while I grabbed my laptop and said goodbye. I raced off to the airport, and here I am.

As I said, draw your own conclusions. Mine is that cooler heads have not prevailed in Malaysia. As I type these words, YK is giving a presentation on "what really happened in the BRM" to TC4, with nobody else there to corroborate (or contradict) his version. I won't divulge the top-secret handout he had prepared for everyone in the meeting unless he says it's OK, but it's full of interesting interpretations of obscure issues raised by one or two countries, and characterizations of things that "many countries" or "many NBs" said at the BRM. It seems that the word "many," like the word "open," has a special meaning in TC4's deliberations, since these are things that were raised by maybe 10% of the countries present.

I would not have believed this morning if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes. It made me miss debating Rob Weir in V1, to be honest. YK, if you're really so concerned about openness and procedural consistency (as you've said so many times regarding the BRM), you might want to focus that zeal a little closer to home.

• Anonymous
  March 20, 2008
  Dude, Unfortunately, because of this act of desperation, the only parties looking bad from the meeting was your company. Please stop burning your bridges: http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/2008/03/the-elephant-in.html yk.

• Anonymous
  March 21, 2008
  Doug, why you need to "defend" so much this beast ( DIS 29500 )? if it is OK ( in terms of technical quality and technical merits ) to be fast-tracked as an ISO standard ... then let each NBs around the world to do their work IN PEACE. Why do you need to go to each NB around the world  ( bringing with you Jan van den Beld and other Microsoft staff)  to speak in favor of the specification? Do you think that NBs members are not qualified to has his own technical opinion and judge it themselves? Stop the lobby tour, do you think that this is V1 where you can call 10 Microsoft partners and stuff a committee to get a unconditional yes vote?   http://www.noooxml.org/forum/t-46044/committee-stuffing-also-in-the-united-states:11-microsoft-business-partners ????

• Anonymous
  March 21, 2008
  YK, I do not know what you are referring to by your phrase "act of desperation". Was it:

• Doug turning up at a meeting he was invited to?
• Doug leaving the room when he was told to?
• Doug leaving the meeting after it became clear that he was not going to be allowed to attend? Please clarify.

• Anonymous
  March 21, 2008
  Doug - Do you realize how utterly arrogant your actions were? Coming in, to a meeting to which IASA was specifically not invited, with a hastily laserprinted business card presenting you as a VP of IASA ... you expected tea and cookies? Were you trying to straighten out the thinking of the little brown brothers in Malaysia, showing them the error of their ways for not acccepting ECMA whatever as the new path to salvation? Maybe the LBBs have other plans, plans that don't include being a satellite o fRedmond.

• Anonymous
  March 21, 2008
  Doug, It probably should not come as such a surprise to you that you were unwelcome at the meeting. You have no credible link to Malaysia that would give you standing there. You offer only a partisan opinion that reflects the desire of your employer to push this standard. Your employer is a convicted monopolist using underhanded methods to attempt to influence an international standards body. The format you propose is riddled with problems and should not be on the fast track. Plus, no one likes a bully. Is it really that hard to understand? Your presence in the meeting was undesirable. Rather than wax vitriolic about it, perhaps you (and you employer) should take some time to think about how these attitudes towards you have come about, and how you can make your presence at such meetings in the future more useful/welcome. That might even lead to some technical progress and a standard that addresses the technical needs of the international community almost  as well as ODF. (Hint - try googling "ooxml" and reading links 2,3 & 4). Jon

• Anonymous
  March 21, 2008
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• Anonymous
  March 21, 2008
  As a Microsoft employee, your objectivity is essentially zero and has no place in that forum. We know who pays your salary.

• Anonymous
  March 21, 2008
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• Anonymous
  March 21, 2008
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• Anonymous
  March 21, 2008
  Hey Doug, stop acting like a cry baby !!  

• Anonymous
  March 22, 2008
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  March 22, 2008
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• Anonymous
  March 23, 2008
  Hello Professor Zaki, thanks for taking the time to comment here.  I'm sure people will find it interesting to see your comments, which will help people reach informed conclusions about the standards process in Malaysia.  I see that you also provided Yoon Kit a copy of your comment so that he could write a blog post around it (http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/2008/03/how-to-royally.html) before I could respond here. You mention that the delayed start to Friday's meeting was because members of TC4 complained that a vendor was present.  I'd be very interested to know which members complained, if that's information you're willing to share.  From my perspective in the room, it seemed that your conversation was with Ditesh and Yoon Kit and an IBM representative: is that the group that had complained?  The reason I  ask is that Yoon Kit was the person who had suggested Microsoft might be allowed to attend, so I'd be very surprised if he then complained when we did what he suggested. You shared the story of the time last year when Microsoft sent two representatives to a TC4 meeting who were IP experts and therefore not prepared to answer technical questions, and how ISC-G revamped the process to avoid such situations in the future.  I had hoped that my presence would provide such a technical resource for TC4 on Friday, so it seems we're both interested in solving the  same problem. You mention that "Yuk Wai might not know the TC4 committee governance has changed and we did not invite co-opted members."  It seems that other members of TC4 were not aware of this change either.  For example, Yoon Kit had suggested the day before the meeting that Microsoft could attend with IASA.  Indeed, that was the only reason I was present on Friday: because a TC4 member had said that Microsoft could attend through our relationship with IASA.  (I see that he has since said on his blog that there was a "1 in a million chance" of us being allowed in the room, but unfortunately he didn't say that when he invited our participation, or I wouldn't have bothered to attend.) I couldn't agree more with your sentiment that "I sincerely hope this matter be put to rest and all members uphold their dignity and decorum in future meetings."  I wish the same for TC4, and if there's anything I have done which isn't consistent with that I hope you'll let me know. By the way, Yoon Kit continues to publicly disagree with my characterization of the "Review of BRM Issues" report that you passed out to all of the attendees of Friday's meeting before Yoon Kit arrived.  It seems to me that these disagreements about the nature of the report could be clarified by simply sharing the report -- may I have your permission to post a copy here? Thanks again for your comments, and I look forward to your response.

• Anonymous
  March 23, 2008
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• Anonymous
  March 23, 2008
  Hi Doug - please can you inidicate whether you intend to represent IASA Malaysia at the next TC4 meeting or if not, why not?

• Anonymous
  March 24, 2008
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• Anonymous
  March 24, 2008
  @ Stephen Peront You didn't provide a disclaimer but at least you listed Xinnovation, Inc. as your company.  Is there any service your company provides that doesn't directly involve a Microsoft product?  Your point of view as a commenter on the OOXML is nearly worthless.  Your dependence on Microsoft makes it so.  This conflict is about a standard.  No, not Microsoft's standard.  The ODF was created by disparate corporate, institutional and governmental interests.  It was born out of the need for an unattached and unfettered communication with documents no matter who or what created them.  Your standard, yes, I'm calling it yours because you have insinuated yourself so thoroughly with Microsoft as to take ownership of it, is intended to shatter that fledgling environment.  This not a conflict between corporations.  This conflict is between the World, creating a true standard where none existed before, and one company, Microsoft. I have not seen one unbiased opinion, not one unbiased technical evaluation that has shown the OOXML to be anything but a complete disaster.  If Microsoft is successful in paying for this standard's approval, then document creation and archiving will remain a tower of babel with one King.

• Anonymous
  March 24, 2008
  Day by day Microsoft are running out of people to bully and threaten. Every action like this mounts up and only results in doors being shut to Microsoft. They've not yet grasped the concept of karma. 10 years from now Microsoft will be bankrupt, buried under an avalanche of lawsuits with an exodus of weary consumers desperate for a decent product which Microsoft have yet to produce.

• Anonymous
  March 24, 2008
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• Anonymous
  March 24, 2008
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• Anonymous
  March 24, 2008
  Hi Stephen - Xinnovation wouldn't happen to be a Microsoft Business Partner with a business model built on MS Office would it? This suggests that you are hardly likely to be viewing the proposed standard objectively.      

• Anonymous
  March 24, 2008
  Unbaised?  Read both sides. http://www.openmalaysiablog.com/2008/03/how-to-royally.html

• Anonymous
  March 24, 2008
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• Anonymous
  March 24, 2008
  Doug, where can i get this beautiful IASA cards? I want one ! :-))  --orlando ( from Argentina )

• Anonymous
  March 24, 2008
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  March 24, 2008
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• Anonymous
  March 24, 2008
  Gopi, Thanks for your comments.  You may be surprised to find I agree with much of what you've said.  The concept of a "true standard" as "something carefully planned with correctness and long term goals in mind" makes a lot of sense to me, and I agree that certain aspects of DIS29500 could fairly be characterized as "a description of the way that Microsoft chose to do certain things." One thing to keep in mind, though, is that DIS29500 had a pretty specific scope: it was designed to represent a large number of existing documents that have all sorts of messy details in them.  So it had to allow for those details, even the ones that are artifacts of design decisions and market factors from long ago that are no longer relevant to most documents.  I think that explains many of the things you've mentioned. A few specific responses to issues you've raised: Developing a custom hashing function -- I agree that's not appropriate in a standard, and I'm pleased to see that the approved disposition on this issue allows for forward migration of documents that used the old algorithm but requires use of newer more secure/standardized algorithms going forward, such as SHA-256 and Whirlpool.  Some people have suggested that existing passwords hashed with the old algorithm should simply be removed, but I think that's going to far because it would cause a lot of inconvenience for users without a clear payback.  Those passwords are already encrypted in a weak way, so that's not a new problem created by converting them. Separating compatibility considerations from the baseline spec -- this is handled by the transitional features annex, a structure agreed upon at the BRM. Reverse engineering -- I don't think there's anywhere this is needed, actually.  There were all those settings like AutoSpaceLikeWord95 that people complained about in the comments submitted last September, and those are now thoroughly defined in the spec.  So if somebody wants to implement them, they can now.  I'm not sure I'd bother if I were writing an implementation, since those are only used in a very small number of old documents, but the approved disposition on that issue provides implementers will all of the information they need.

• Anonymous
  March 24, 2008
  @dmahugh "DIS29500 had a pretty specific scope: it was designed to represent a large number of existing documents that have all sorts of messy details in them." Would you say, then, that OOXML is ONLY meant for representing old documents, and that ALL newly created documents should be created using ODF? If that is you claim, I can actually see a point in accepting OOXML as an ISO standard, with two very important caveats: All old behavior support must be fully documented, and the fact it is not meant for newly created documents must be recorded as its purpose. OOXML, at the moment, lives up to neither of these. The old documents support are exactly the areas that remain undocumented, and MS, in neither actions nor statement of intent, claim that ODF should be used for new documents. As such, OOXML is useless in its current form, except for confusing the document format market space. Even if both of the above were the case, wouldn't you say that a better path to tread was to add old format support as an extension to the ODF standard, rather than push a parallel whole-file format from scratch? This way the new standard could focus only on the areas that do not overlap. Shachar

• Anonymous
  March 24, 2008
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  March 24, 2008
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• Anonymous
  March 25, 2008
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  March 25, 2008
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• Anonymous
  March 25, 2008
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• Anonymous
  March 25, 2008
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• Anonymous
  March 25, 2008
  So, Dough, are you, or are you not, an official of the IASA Malaysia (and, more specifically, are you the "VP - Interoperability and Integration Standards, IASA Malaysia")? Thanks.

• Anonymous
  March 25, 2008
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• Anonymous
  March 25, 2008
  Oh come on.  What's disgusting about Stephen observing that a majority of V1 approved of DIS29500?  And he was defending the US against Prof. Zali's insinuation that Malaysia's process is "more open." And think about exactly what was being discussed: I pointed out that the chair of TC4 allowed a member to answer questions of process for him, and he said that's because Malaysia's process is more open than I'm used to. I think it's hilarious to see Stephen speak up here, clearly identifying his name, his employer, and his role on V1, and then be attacked by a pack of anonymous commenters.  Rich stuff.

• Anonymous
  March 25, 2008
  Thank you for confirming that Stephen Peront's company "has created dozens of new jobs doing this work".  I wish him well in his work and I can completely understand why, with a vested interest, he would wish to promote the format that is bringing in his bread and butter.  As I said, "political". Most people give more credence to a disinterested* party's opinion. Benbow

• (Lest anyone should be confused, I do mean disinterested and not uninterested.)

• Anonymous
  March 25, 2008
  "then be attacked by a pack of anonymous commenters" Unlike yourself, I am a nobody. I don't represent a multi-billlion dollar corporation, neither as a lobbiest nor as a member of a standards committee. As such my identity is irrelevant and carries absolutely no weight, and never will. The fact that you can't fathom why an average person who uses (and pathologically depends on) Microsoft software every day distrusts your (and Mr. Peront's) motives underscores the level of your hubris and denial. There is a reason everything you say is met with distrust and derision by the average anonymous peon like myself. Stop blaming the messenger, and work on building trust. Until then, you have zero credibility, and raising the tired "distrust anonymous posters!" strawman simply makes you look foolish and short sighted.

• Anonymous
  March 26, 2008
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• Anonymous
  March 26, 2008
  @ Stephen Peront You didn't comment on my "Which formats?" question. As to the part that confused you, I'll repeat it, but leaving out some of the quote and see whether you can parse it more easily: "and if this standard becomes an international standard, it will open the channel for these US and Malaysia based companies ..." (1) Do you mean to imply that if DIS29500 does not get approved, Malaysian based companies will be unable to exchange documents with US companies?   To invert the question, if DIS29500 is ratified as a standard what will Malaysians be able to do vis a vis US companies that they cannot already do? I'm taking it as read that Malaysian and US companies already exchange documents, many of them in Microsoft formats, and that since Microsoft released the details of the Office 2007 formats they are already able to do more things with them.  What more will they be able to do if DIS29500 is passed immediately without being corrected? Useful as the Office formats are, a new international standard should be carefully planned, without rushing;  and it should not simply be based upon the diverse formats used by a number of applications from a single dominant company*. Benbow

• I know I've introduced an additional element into the conversation here - I refer to the various different ways in which the same entities are encoded into OOXML by different parts of Office 2007.

• Anonymous
  March 29, 2008
  This seems to be the place to meet while we are waiting for the final vote! Thank you Doug and Microsoft for providing this forum! I would simply like to make one comment to those asking why OOXML shouldn't be a standard yet. In my experience, it is quite simply unusable for most Linux users (like myself) at the present time. Occasionally people send me OOXML files. I have been unable to view a single one of the five or so! Even though I'm biased, I did try for some hours using every plugin, converter or online-tool I could find (including the viewer from Microsoft), without success. I can of course open the files with a text editor and at least extract some text - so an improvement on the old binary formats - but not by any means get any of the formatting or tables to show! Although I'm sure OOXML works well with MS Office 2007 and quite a few other Windows or Mac programs, to try to get ISO approval for something which isn't really useable yet by the public is simply premature. I am thankful that the people in Malaysia seem to agree on this, because my own government in Switzerland is convinced by Microsoft's arguments.

• Anonymous
  March 29, 2008
  I've been busy the last few days and haven't comment here, but now that I have a little time on the weekend here are a few replies.  I know we're not shifting one another's perspectives much here, but it's good to share our opinions. Benbow, I don't see Stephen's creation of new hi-tech jobs as reflecting a vested interest in anything.  I think that's a goal of most technology policy decisions (including those relating to approval of proposed standards), and so I think such decisions should include the job-creator perspective. A nobody, I think anonymous comments are fine (and that's why I've always allowed them), but I think comments that question another (non-anonymous) person's motivations or character should be held to a higher standard.  When a persons says anonymously, with no way for readers to verify it, "I'm an impartial disinterested observer, but Mr. Peront is obviously biased," I think most reasonable people will think "if he's truly impartial he would share his real name and employer just like Mr. Peront has done, so that we can reach our own conclusions about what his biases might be." Theo, if you'd care to share a specific example of a document or document fragment that can't be opened with our viewer, I'd be glad to dig into the details for you and figure out what's going on.  I haven't seen an example of this problem.

• Anonymous
  March 29, 2008
  @ Doug: sorry, I should have been more precise. Word Viewer 2003 (in Crossover Office) works fine with old formats but won't show OOXML files, whereas the newest program from Microsoft called FileFormatsConverters.exe won't install with the newest version of Crossover Office (propietary, costs), let alone Wine (free, free). If Microsoft wants to let Linux users use these programs, they should be tested to run with Wine.