in070197
From: Karl O. Pinc [kop@meme.com]
Sent: Monday, January 29, 2007 12:54 PM
To: Garner, Jennifer
Cc: bryden@iso.org; ISOTeam-ANSI
Subject: Karl Pinc Contribution on Behalf of The Meme
Factory, Inc. in Response to JTC 1 N 8455 - 30 Day Review for Fast Track
Ballot ECMA-376 | ISO/IEC DIS 29500 Office Open XML File Formats
Jan 29, 2007
Karl O. Pinc
President,The Meme Factory, Inc.
5755 South Harper
Chicago, IL 60637
kop@meme.com
InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards Jennifer Garner
Associate Director, Standards Programs jgarner@itic.org
Dear Sirs and Madams,
Earlier this month ECMA International submitted a standard for "fast- track"
ISO approval. That is the "Ecma 376 Office Open XML" standard.
(ISO/IEC DIS 29500) As an individual who owns and operates an IT business,
I am very concerned about the possibility of this standard receiving ISOapproval.
Ecma-376 is a standard for "word-processing documents, presentations, and
spreadsheets" which overlaps completely with an existing, approved standard
ISO/IEC 26300:2006 (OpenDocument (ODF)). Therefore it conflicts directly
with ISO's goal of having one standard for any area.
Furthermore, this specification is so complex (>6,000 pages) and vendor-specific
that it can only be successfully implemented by Microsoft Office (the application
on which it is modelled).
Ecma 376 also violates section 2.14 of the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 1, in
that not all of what it takes to implement the standard is covered by the
licensing conditions offered by Microsoft.
The numerous concerns over Ecma 376, as pertaining to ISO approval, are summarized
on this page:
http://www.grokdoc.net/index.php/EOOXML_objections. The page lists many contradictions
in Ecma 376 as defined by the ISO rules.
The initial review period ends on February 5th. If none of the "P- Members"
of the ISO/IEC JTC1 (Joint Technical Commitee 1) raise a "contradiction",
the specification will go through the "fast-track"
process towards ISO approval.
I believe, and I hope that you will agree, that this standard should not
be allowed "fast-track" approval. Rather it should be remanded to Ecma International
for: (i) harmonization with ISO/IEC 26300:2006 and numerous other standards
and (ii) development of more suitable intellectual property documents.
Very truly yours,
Karl O. Pinc
President, The Meme Factory, Inc.
<kop@meme.com>
cc: Mr. Alan Bryden
ISO Secretary General
bryden@iso.org
cc: American National Standards Institute
isot@ansi.org
cc: Nancy George
President, Software Quality Management, Inc.
ACM Voting Member ISO JTC1
info@sqminc.com