BRM Trip Report March 1, 2007

As you may know, in response to the ISO (International Standards Organization) adoption of
the Open Document Format (ODF) in 2006 and in an attempt to protect its desktop franchise,
Microsoft created its own version of an open XML file format which they named Office Open XML
(OOXML), derived from Microsoft's Office 2007 program . Over the past 9 months they have been
involved in an effort to achieve ISO approval of OOXML through "fast track authority" which is
rarely, if ever, used to approve lengthy standards such as this one. OOXML contains over 6000 pages
compared to ODF which contains about 700 pages. When the vote to approve OOXML was taken last
September among the 87 nation bodies which participate in ISO, Microsoft was not successful in
achieving the required number of votes for approval. If a proposed standards does not receive the
required number of votes for approval, the ISO rules allow the proposed standard to be sent to a "Ballot
Resolution Meeting" which is held to address any comments raised by participating nation bodies
which may have caused them to vote "no" or "abstain". This week I represented Red Hat at the Ballot
Resolution Meeting (BRM) in Geneva Switzerland for the purpose of "fixing" OOXML.
Although the actual BRM session itself was closed to the public and the media, Open Forum
Europe ( http://www.openforumeurope.org ) a European based organization whose mission is to
promote open technologies sponsored three days of informational sessions to coincide with the BRM
in the Geneva Convention Center, the same building where the BRM was held. These sessions under
the general topic of Standards and the Future of the Internet covered a wide range of topics such as
standards issues related to IP, Patents, Innovation and Standards Development. I participated on a
panel at the conference entitled "Raising the Quality Thresholds on Standards Development" along
with Dr. Bob Suitor IBM's Open Standards advocate, Andy Updegrove, a noted a standards expert and
blogger on OSS IP related issues and Pieter Hintjens of the Digital Standards Organization. The
highlight of the conference was a keynote by Dr. Vint Cerf of Google who is regarded as "the Father of
the Internet". Open Forum Europe also helped to coordinate the lobbying activities with BRM
delegates during breaks, lunch and in the evenings.
After five long days of meetings the BRM approved OOXML, but not without considerable
dissent, heated deliberations and vocal calls for reform of the ISO standards process. Of the 3,522
comments submitted by national bodies, whittled down to approximately 1,100 on the BRM agenda,
only 20 or so were actually discussed and resolutions agreed upon by the delegates. Unfortunately, the
BRM did not address many of the fundamental concerns such as IP rights, accessibility, feature
incompatibility with MS Office 2007 and others raised by national bodies when they rejected OOXML
in a vote last September. In order to complete the agenda a decision was made to approve all of the
remaining resolutions (which were never discussed) in a single vote in which delegations were given
the choices for the purpose of voting: 1) Approve 2) Disapprove or 3) abstain. When the votes were
counted 6 delegations voted to approve, 4 voted to disapprove and 16 delegations abstained (most of
the abstains were attributed to frustrations on the part of delegations that all of the comments were not
discussed at all) A total of 4 delegations refused to register and vote, partially as a formal protest to the
entire BRM process. The convenor of the BRM decided that votes to abstain (and refusals to vote)
would not count in the final vote. Consequently, OOXML was approved by a margin of 6 votes to 4
votes.
So, what does all of this mean? Who won and who lost? Well, it depends on who you listen to.
Microsoft would say that 98% of the dispositions were approved by a 3 to 2 margin. Meanwhile, our
side would say that we won because only 6 out of 32 delegations voted to approve all of the suggested
changes to OOXML. The correct answer is that the BRM did not actually approve or even
recommend approval of OOXML. The primary task of the BRM was to make necessary changes to the
proposed OOXML standard that would allow national standards bodies to vote for approval. Some
national standards bodies will never vote for OOXML, while others will vote to approve OOXML
regardless of any changes made at the BRM. According to ISO rules, the nation bodies now have 30
days in which to change their votes from the September ballot if they choose to do so. In other words, if
the BRM addressed certain problems raised which prevented them from voting for OOXML they are
free to change their votes over the next 30 days. Although our side would have preferred to have the
BRM disapprove any changes to the proposed standard, we are optimistic that we created enough noise
in the BRM process to well position us for the battle ahead.
Those of us who oppose approval of OOXML will be mounting a major lobbying effort over
the next 30 days with national standards bodies around the world. Our efforts will center around
protecting the votes which we received in September and persuading those countries that voted yes for
approval to no and abstains to yes. In addition to working with the ODF Alliance, Red Hat will be
working directly with IBM and Google to coordinate the lobbying effort to defeat OOXML. RH
Corporate Affairs has already started promoting Document Freedom Day (March 26th) within the
company to raise the importance of open documents to our company in conjunction with our lobbying
activities on OOXML. We will be calling upon RH associates in targeted countries to communicate
our views to their respective national standards bodies. We expect Microsoft, to do the same through
their employees, partners and others who they may be able to influence those who will ultimately make
the decision on whether or not to approve OOXML. Like us, they know what is at stake.

Tom