Tomasz Bednarski, Mandriva Poland(*), wrote a letter to PKN president, Tomasz Schweitzer, in which he expressed his concerns about the Polish OOXML ratification process which Bednarski took part of, as a member of the technical committee 182. We publish the translation of his letter and the response from Schweitzer.

Probably you remember that the KT 182 chairman, Elżbieta Andrukiewicz, was accused of manipulating the OOXML process by a committee member representing IBM. She was said to purposely misinform the other committee members about the outcome of the Ballot Resolution Meeting in Geneva and also not passing the letter from Tomasz Schweitzer, the president of PKN, in which he instructs the committee to abstain from voting if no compromise is achieved between the committee members.

Here we present the translated (thanks to Lukasz Sokół, here is the original in Polish) letter from Bednarski to Schweitzer:

Concerns : the standardization process of ISO/IEC DIS29500 and the lack
of consensus

Mister President,

Thank you for appealing to the (Technical Commitee) KT182 members, asking them to change their stand on acceptation of the ISO/IEC DIS29500 draft. This appeal in my opinion reflects the facts, that is, the lack of consensus around the ISO/IEC DIS29500 draft. Nevertheless, I must state very angrily, that I became aware of its existence only on 20.03.2008, while attending the [TC]KT meeting. Your letter, dated 26 February 2008, despite being addressed clearly to all [TC]KT182 members, has not been passed to me by Elzbieta Andrukiewicz, the Ms Head Chair.

The fact of existence of this letter has been uncovered by the representative of IBM, Mr Jakub Manikowski. Only after his clear question, it has been revealed, that the letter has indeed reached Ms Head Chair, who, however, has not passed it to other addressees. I recognize this situation as unacceptable, because of its crucial meaning for normalization process. [The letter] being undelivered resulted in lack of full knowledge of the TC members on the current situation and diversity of opinions regarding ISO/IEC DIS29500. This in turn could have had an influence on the final stand of Poland regarding
this draft, during the ISO ballot.

I do not understand Ms Head Chair’s motives leading her to decide not to deliver the letter to the TC members. I want to express, however, that this decision has imposed a substantial, negative, impact on the standardization process. I am deeply concerned with this fact, because it negates the primal rules governing the standardization process, that is, openness, transparency and quality assurance. Hiding information or revealing it selectively to the TC members, makes the existence of consensus on the matter in question highly questionable. This is not the only sign of Ms Elzbieta Andrukiewicz ignoring the rules and the supreme goal of process of standardization, which is the quality of the standards.

I would like to put the ISO/IEC DIS29500 normalization process onto your attention, especially the recent Ballot Resolution Meeting in Geneva. According to Ms Elzbieta Andrukiewicz’ report, during that meeting over 800 answers from ECMA were accepted without detailed discussion. The answers were accepted by poll-voting. In this poll every member country had a chance to vote on each ECMA answer for the registered comments. The members of KT182 have stated their opinions regarding selected comments before the meeting in question. Most of them were negative. Regardless, during the voting, Poland has accepted all the ECMA answers. To my question to Ms Head Chair, asking her for the base of voting without considering our opinions, the answer from her was, that she has decided so, because the [TC] KT182 has authorized her to be representing Poland, but has not expressed any constraints to direct her decisions. Thus she has decided of accepting the ECMA answers, despite the opinions of the TC members.

I have no direct evidence to accuse Ms Head Chair acting contrary to law, rules and procedures, but I am asking questions as follows:

1. Is the normalization process only a stiff-railed procedure, which is
   to be run with no view of the real goal of the process ?
2. Is the agreement to bulk-acceptance of the answers without analyzing
   in detail, compatible with the spirit of lifting the norm’s quality up?
3. Is it appropriate to ignore many opinions of [TC]KT182 members
   during the preparation of Poland’s stand ?

Finishing my letter, I would like to express my concern regarding the whole standardization process of ISO/IEC DIS29500. The Fast Track decision path used for it is, in my opinion, inappropriate and doesn’t allow to reach the expected high quality of the standard. The fast-track procedure has forced the member countries’ standardization bodies to use simplified methods of judging the draft standard, and to adopt the minimal criteria in this process. This is clearly contrary to the spirit of standardization and high quality of standards. I acknowledge, that TC’s are independent bodies and that they undertake independent decisions. It is not my intention to influence the independence of [TC]KT182 in any way. Please read my letter as a sign of concern of the quality of the standard in question. Also I look forward to your answers to my questions.

And this is the response (here is the original in Polish) from Tomasz Schweitzer, the President od PKN:

Dear Sir,

I have received your letter regarding the draft ISO 29500 standard. I regret to inform you, that the fault of having my letter not delivered to the PKN members, is PKN’s own fault, not of Ms Elzbieta Andrukiewicz.

My opinion is, that the [TC]KT182 member’s knowledge of Polish situation around the draft ISO 29500 was far larger than my own. Therefore I do not share your view, that my letter could have had a serious impact on the final vote of Poland in case of the project in question.

I will try however to reply to your uneasy questions.

First : on one hand, you’re right (my personal opinion is similar), that one needs to act rationally, but, regrettably, such cases as the one in question, show that clear procedures and rules are required. Everything works fine, when there is no criticism. This is similar to petitions asking for loosening the ties on procedures regarding standard’s creation. Usually then I do not acknowledge these, stating, that any loosening of rules will cause the level of expectancy to go lower and lower. This would lead to lack of agreement in long term.

Second : It is not compatible with the spirit of lifting up the standard’s quality, but in this case I do not know the agreements of the Editorial Group. If the other opinions, according to the Group, had no weight needing to agree during meeting, and I know that the Group has qualified the opinions, then the agreement like this is acceptable. It is not a rare practice of some collective group delegating a smaller committee to overview the less-important matters.

Third : to a question stated this way, there is only one answer and it should be obvious. The matter should be resolved in [TC]KT182, but, because you have stated a serious accusation, then I need to pass it to the vice-president responsible for standardization. In this case I need to pass your letter to Ms Elzbieta Andrukiewicz. For Attention of : Ms Jolanta Kochanska, vice-president of PKN Ms Elzbieta Andrukiewicz, president of [TC] KT182

So, it seems that the OOXML saga in Poland is far from over and there will be more proceedings in the nearest future, which we will pass to you as soon as we hear about them. Thank you for now.

*Actually Amazis.net, the Mandriva’a bussines partner