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Subject: Fwd: Where things stand on the OASIS membership issue


For your information:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: marbux <marbux@gmail.com>
Date: Jun 13, 2007 6:02 AM
Subject: Where things stand on the OASIS membership issue
To: Ben Langhinrichs <Ben.Langhinrichs@opendocument.us>, Bruce D'Arcus < bruce.darcusoldacct@opendocument.us>, Buck Martin <marbux@opendocument.us>, Daniel Bricklin <dan.bricklin@opendocument.us >, Daniel Carrera <daniel.carrera@opendocument.us>, "David A. Wheeler" <david.wheeler@opendocument.us >, "Dr. Andreas J. Guelzow" <Andreas.Guelzow@opendocument.us>, "Dr. Thomas Metcalf" <tom.metcalf@opendocument.us >, Gary Edwards <gary.edwards@opendocument.us>, Ian Davis <ian.davis@opendocument.us>, J David Eisenberg < jdavid.eisenberg@gmail.com>, Richard Kernick <richard.kernick@opendocument.us>, Stefan Nikolaus < stefan.nikolaus@opendocument.us>, Thomas Zander <thomas.zander@opendocument.us>, Tomas Mecir <tomas.mecir@opendocument.us >

Hello, all,

This is to update you on the OpenDocument Foundation's continuing conversation with OASIS in regard to your right to participate on the OpenDocument (Office) TC and subcomittees. I have been acting in the role of the Foundation's negotiator with OASIS.

We have prepared three documents that aggregate the key communications, several of them private emails you will not have seen before. The Foundation's two major position statements and the last OASIS communication are extracted in < http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dghfk5w9_50c3vdxb>. It contains navigation links to the rest of the emails, consolidated in documents titled Goodbye and Good Luck I and II.

Beyond the Foundation position on the membership issue, the documents also announce the Foundation's intent to largely abandon work on ODF within the OASIS framework.  The Foundation has reluctantly concluded that ODF can not be salvaged within the OASIS framework because of big vendor hostility to application interoperability.

So a further clarification here about the Foundation's announced expectation to lobby against ISO approval of ODF v. 1.2 in the form we expect it to take when released by OASIS: That effort would be aimed at forcing the improvement of ODF 1.2 with interoperability features, not at wasting all of your fine work, along the lines summarized in the IDABC's set of eight slides here, < http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/servlets/Doc?id=27956 >.

That set of slides is the summation of an extraordinary conference convened by 21 European nations' government IT establishments on April 28 and March 1, 2007.  Further presentations from that conference may be found here, < http://ec.europa.eu/idabc/en/document/6474/5935 >. We believe that conference was a watershed moment in the file format wars, signaling European intention to use the government procurement processes to force convergence of ODF and MOOXML. The Foundation believes its MS Office interop tools are Europe's best hope of achieving its interoperability goals, goals shared by other Big Users with which the Foundation is communicating.

The Foundation's goal in negotiations with OASIS has been obtaining the right for you to continue your work on the TC without applying for individual sponsored OASIS memberships, during the remainder of this year. In that regard, it is noteworthy that the May 16 OASIS deadline has come and gone without the threatened evictions occurring. It is, of course, up to you whether you wish to participate on OASIS' terms or wait to see what OASIS will do now that the Foundation has taken a final position in negotiation.

Finally, please note that I informed OASIS on May 16 that the Foundation would not agree to treat relevant communications as confidential. Please feel free to share them with others as you see fit.

Best regards,

Marbux
 


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