I am helping coordinate the first ever Australian event to really delve into the technical and legal practical feasibility of OOXML. It will be on December 14th, and will include experts from Australia and around the world. The schedule is currently up, however all the speakers names will be published in the coming week. There will also be participation from Microsoft, so if you have outstanding technical or legal questions about OOXML, you should come along and participate! The attendees will be a combination of the general public, academia, standards people and our course domain experts.
It will not be a political event, as there are enough of those around 🙂 The aim here is to have a calm and open discussion about the technical and legal feasibility of OOXML. The top 10 or 20 technical comments of concern brought up from the ISO process will be analysed and industry players will be able to have a say. The end result will be a better understanding about OOXML to help inform those making the final decision on the Australian response to the ISO processing of OOXML in February 2008.
Now to my heading! I have found many people linking to the summary of ISO comments from around the world on OOXML, however it appears that the document is now protected by a password (see document 904, which I would like), as are several other documents that could be helpful for this event. If anyone has a copy of the summary of comments, I would really appreciate a copy so I can pull together the comments of most global concern for this event.
“It will not be a political event” – that may be a bit difficult to avoid – good luck! As Jeff knows, there is no easy road through this conversation, and I fear this may be perceived as assisting MS in their quest for ISO certification. I’ve been following the discussions on the ODF list and on the Web, so please don’t feel like you have to defend yourself to me – I see both sides (yes it CAN be painful on the fence!) and am happy to see some constructive dialogue … I’m just concerned you may not get it.
Hi Ric,
I’m going to run the technical event (I’m not running the legal event) in a very strict fashion such that discussion is limited to technical points. Using the core 10 or 20 points raised through the ISO process from the comments around the world will be a good starting point. I will be working really hard to keep the event on track, so wish me luck 🙂 The political rhetoric (some of which is quite important, but not central to the decision making process of ISO) has muddied the waters, so I just want to clarify things a bit 🙂 OOXML ultimately should be beaten on legal and technical grounds, not political grounds, so let’s see if it stands up on these grounds.
I think anyone who really believes that OOXML is not good enough for a yes vote should also feel confident enough to have MS participate in an event discussing this. Having several companies and also non-political technical experts such as Matthew Cruickshank participate, should help show exactly where OOXML is at. Stay posted 🙂
I wouldn’t be worried about a political event…
You have messaged and framed this as a religious event so I would expect brick bats to be thrown at MS no matter what the messages, especially if they dare to have a different opinion and method of achieving their aims.
Fred, you are an idiot.
We always recognise ourselves in others