Re: [office] List Proposal Vote Deadline on Wednesday

[marbux <marbux@gmail.com>]

On 5/4/07, Bruce D'Arcus <bruce.darcus@opendocument.us> wrote:
>
> On May 4, 2007, at 6:03 PM, marbux wrote:
>
> >> This thread ends.
> >
> > Well, looking at Michael's post, I see that you and Sun are united on
> > that issue too. :-)
>
> For the record, so am I. I am affiliated with the OpenDocument
> Foundation, but I speak for myself. I hope you're not now going to
> question my motives or integrity.

No, I'm not, Bruce.  And like you, my affiliation is with the
Foundation but I speak for myself.

>
> > So from your perspective, you're now prepared to endure whatever
> > external pressure I can bring to bear and are ending any attempts to
> > find a compromise that meets the needs of all concerned developers,
> > right?
>
> I don't see what choice anyone on this committee really has. What
> you're asking is completely unreasonable. You're basically saying let's
> invalidate the vote we just had and spend another few months of time on
> still more unproductive conversation.

You've never heard of people changing their minds? :-)

Moreover, you are raising these
> concerns by impugning the integrity of the engineers involved (in fact,
> every single one of them as far as I can tell), which I think
> incredibly bad form.
>

I have been pointing out how much of the world will connect the dots
if this problem is forced into the court of public opinion. You're
certainly free to offer your own interpretation of how the dots
connect in rebuttal. But thus far, no one seems to want to talk about
the dots and how they connect. (Dots=facts that can not be
controverted in good faith.) And this TC does not have the final word
on what goes into the ODF 1.2 spec. There is still the OASIS vote, the
JTC-1 vote, and the ISO final ballot, with a few other stops along the
way. There is also the market's response to what this TC does. Given
that no one on this TC has objected to my considerable efforts to
raise public concerns with Microsoft's ISO submission and some on this
TC have lambasted Microsoft for creating interoperability barriers,
why should this TC's members consider themselves exempt from warnings
that they have just fallen into precisely the kind of behavior we
routinely criticize when it's Microsoft that creates the
interoperability barriers. Especially when it's the end users who will
pay the price of the non-interoperability?

Bruce, do you have a solution for the interop barrier with Microsoft
Office created by the list amendment that addresses the use case of
the wholly automated business process ODF app interaction with
Microsoft formats use case? Do you support the refusal of the list
amendment's protagonists to discuss that use case? Both Sun and
Thomas, whose amendment carried the day, have refused to discuss it.
Do me the favor of skimming this article and tell me how you would fit
an ODF app into it in light of the interop barrier just introduced by
the list amendment.
<http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/library/ws-migratesoa/>. Please
don't miss figure 1 and its identification of the top concern of CIOs.
Then please give me your solution to the interop barrier. And consider
that the major focus of my advocacy work has been trying to persuade
CIOs around the planet that ODF can fit into their Service Oriented
Architectures that virtually every government and enterprise on the
planet is now developing. Do you have any comprehension of just how
important full fidelity conversions of data is? Or are you stuck in
1995, still thinking in terms of software as an end point on a
non-networked computer rather than as only a way point in the routing
of information across networks?

The plain fact is that not everyone involved with ODF is an engineer.
Someone has to go out there and convince the world to use ODF. I'm one
of the people who has volunteered in that role. But I and others like
me who have been advocating for ODF have just been betrayed by this
TC's membership in the vote on the list proposals. We have been
telling the world that there is no inherent barrier to full fidelity
migrations to ODF and to ODF's participation in Microsoft-bound
business processes. Moreover, we've been offered no justification for
breaking round-trip interoperability with MS Office.

Munich had to spend over $3,000 per seat to migrate to ODF from
Microsoft formats. Now that the TC has removed my ability to say that
situation can be changed, how do **you** suggest I persuade
governments to migrate? Moreover, why should I bother if this TC's
membership is willing to sabotage my efforts? And why should I not cry
foul, particularly when all I get in response  to my posts is refusals
to discuss the issues and a request to shut up? What's in it for me to
bite my lips and just watch ODF being quick-stepped off the cliff?
What do I -- and software end users -- gain by me shutting up?


> We had a vote, and that vote is over. Differences happen all the time
> in (real) standards work, and that work marches on.
>
Like I said, this TC isn't the final arbiter.

> I really think you need to take a step back and ask yourself what you
> really hope to achieve here, and whether this is the right way to
> achieve it. You've succeeded in alienating virtually everyone here.
> What good can possibly come of that?
>

Based on decades of working out issues in and out of court and my
impression of folks on this list, I think everyone here is a mature
adult capable of resolving issues in a principled negotiation even if
they perceived me as their worst enemy. Do you believe otherwise?

Best regards,

Marbux