Learned in 2008 that the more I pray, more ghosts appears to me and to begin 2009 with the left foot, I received an ISO e-mail on last week, through Brazilian NB, inviting Brazil to join the international effort to “collect OpenXML technical and editorial errors”.For those who don’t know, I’ll summarize the OpenXML history:

In 2006, ISO approved the ODF (OpenDocument Format - ISO 26.300) as an international standard and since then, ODF has been adopted worldwide, mainly by governments, as the standard for storage of editable electronic documents (spreadsheets, text documents and presentations).

The ODF approval at ISO and its growing adoption was a huge threat to the “office suite” market, as several software tools works with ODF documents and therefore the commoditization of this market is inevitable, ending the monopoly of the Paper Clips Office Suite.

Seeing that they couldn’t lose market that easy, Microsoft has developed in 12 months a standard “equivalent” to ODF, inside an entity named ECMA, who had the prowess to write, discuss, vote and approve more than 6,000 pages of technical specification in 12 months. At the end of this process, the standard (or text) was sent to ISO (the ECMA was chosen, because it is the entity that has a “special pass” to the ISO, the FastTrack).

The process used by ECMA to submit the specification to ISO is called FastTrack, and this process provides that in 6 months all countries (National Bodies - NBs) should consider and vote for approval or rejection of a standard.

The vote on the OpenXML occurred in mid-2007 and the result was the rejection, supported by more than 3,000 technical defects identified by the countries.

Strangely (given the voting result and the vast amount of errors found), the ISO insisted in the matter and scheduled a 5 days meeting in February 2008, to discuss and solve the technical problems reported (for those who don’t know, I attended this meeting as one of the three Brazilian delegates). This meeting was called BRM - Ballot Resolution Meeting and was realized on Geneva, Switzerland (If anyone thinks that we discussed and resolved the 3,000 technical problems in 5 days, please contact me because I have a beautiful land to sell on Pluto and Mars).

A month after the end of the meeting, the countries had the opportunity to change their vote and miraculously, there was a change of required votes and the standard was approved, even with all the shameful errors and technical problems existing in it.

Brazil voted NO on the first opportunity, maintained the vote in the second opportunity and after the final result, sent a formal appeal to ISO, asking for the annulment of the FastTrack process, but despite several violations to the ISO directives demonstrated at the appeal text, we were summarily ignored. South Africa, Venezuela and India has sent appeals too and were also summarily ignored (seems to me that the ISO hates the third world, isn’t it?).

Final result: OpenXML approved as ISO 29.500 in early April 2008, but the final text was only known in December 2008. (I forgot to tell this “small detail”: The countries have changed their vote without knowing the final text of the standard).

Late last year, after publication of what should be the text of the standard, ISO has created a group with a peculiar mission: “Fix OpenXML”!

The first task of this group is a collection of problems encountered in the world (a huge cleaning). It is a so big task, that even demanded the creation of a portal to help them to collect and organize the mess.

Last week, they’ve sent to all members of SC34 (National Bodies) an invitation asking them to sent to SC34 all editorial or technical errors found on OpenXML standard. Upon receipt of all errors, they will be organized and then a working group will work to resolve them, creating what will be a version “without editorial and technical errors” of the standard !!! And there isn’t any date set to get all this mess fixed !!!

This is the first time that I see a “reserve” standard, which was approved only for “reserving the space.” It is like a “traffic cone” standard, similar to the cone that some folks put on the street to reserve parking spaces.

Some questions that remain without a plausible answer about all this mess:

What is the usefulness of approving a standard with so many errors that now needs a website to help solve them?

The approval of a standard with so many problems can be considered a responsible attitude? Who is the major responsible for such irresponsibility ?

Are we entering on a new era of international standardization, an era where we first approve and after the approval we write the approved text?

What is the real value of an ISO standard in this situation? Is there anyone naive (or malicious) enough in the world to use the IS 29500 for something, before the standard is finally corrected (if possible) ?

How is the reputation of ISO after such mess ? For me, this story has surpassed Monty Python a long time ago !!!

It is just me, or anyone else already noticed the changes in careers (and employers) of various “experts” and “neutral” folks that worked hard for the approval of OpenXML worldwide?

After all this, I am horrified to see the lack of scruples of the group that, ignoring everything that I described here, still trying to push (or rush) OpenXML on governments around the world.

This group really make me sick