PIKOM meeting in Malaysia

editorial

editorial — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 12:52:01 GMT

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re: PIKOM meeting in Malaysia

Ian Easson — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 16:23:51 GMT

The other shoe just dropped.

The Malaysian Public Sector (MAMPU) just announced (Mar 19) that they are dropping Microsoft Office, in favour of ODF-based solutions. The announcement is at:

http://www.oscc.org.my/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=189&Itemid=128

One does not have to be conspiracy-minded to see a connection between this and the odd behaviour of the Malaysian NB (suddenly voting against acceptance of their own comments re OOXML; organizing the PIKOM meeting and then having one of the primary people fail to turn up, etc.).

re: PIKOM meeting in Malaysia

orlando — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 17:24:54 GMT

Leave countries alone, if they want to use ODF just support it in Office.

As a recent lady said ( European Commission ): talk is cheap.

We wan't facts !

re: PIKOM meeting in Malaysia

Ditesh Gathani — Thu, 20 Mar 2008 20:40:29 GMT

Doug,

The very least you could do is contact PIKOM and find out whether it was indeed true that they restricted participation to members only. It sounds as if you are accusing YK of lying. In addition, you could have also checked whether they invited YK officially - he couldn't just turn up uninvited, could he? Did Microsoft bother invite YK to the event?

Secondly, the technical debate can be carried out by many means. If you wished to engage YK, email works fine, as does voice conferencing or even meeting face-to-face (considering Microsoft flew you in all the way from the States, might as well use the opportunity for something constructive). I'd personally have been happy to meet up with you had you given sufficient notice, as I would YK would have been too. Nobody knew you were going to be in Malaysia, until you turned up at PIKOM.

Finally, it's disingenuous for you to claim that most of the discussion at the Malaysian NB has revolved around process over technical details. I've spent countless hours going through Malaysia's (and other countries) dispositions trying to improve the specification. YK has done the same. We have presented our findings to the TC and the findings were appreciated and well received. Were you there at the Malaysian NB meetings to be able to say that we did not focus on the technical issues? Was any Microsoft employee there? Was any Microsoft affliated member present (eg CompTIA, IASA etc)? Nil, null and zilch. You are hearing your information second hand at best and it completely does not do justice to the effort we have put in. Ask your Microsoft Malaysia counterparts for the presentations that the Malaysia NB has circulated to the committee members, then try commenting on the quality of our effort.

re: PIKOM meeting in Malaysia

Alice — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:03:22 GMT

Since "OpenOffice.org 3 will offer native read and write support" of Open XML http://www.oooninja.com/2008/03/openofficeorg-30-new-features.html

you have to ask the question what is really behind all the opposition to a new industry standard the world is adopting anyway.

re: PIKOM meeting in Malaysia

dmahugh — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:36:14 GMT

Good grief, Ditesh. You sound so angry and bitter, and I really have no idea why.

My apologies for not giving you advance notice of my travel schedule, but we've never even met so it hadn't occurred to me. I was invited to come talk to PIKOM about Malaysia's comments, which I had never studied before, so I hopped on a plane, spent a few hours studying them, and showed up at the meeting and talked about them. Calmy and respectfully, much as Yusseri and Dinesh conducted themselves calmly and respectfully.

I felt that WAS doing "something constructive." Sorry we don't agree on that.

re: PIKOM meeting in Malaysia

dmahugh — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 00:42:15 GMT

Oh, one other thing ...regarding your suggestion I should have contacted PIKOM to "find out whether it was indeed true that they restricted participation to members only." I met PIKOM members for the first time at a meeting attended mostly by people who weren't PIKOM members. I think it would have been rather odd for me to ask "is it true you're restricting attendance here to PIKOM members?" :-)

re: PIKOM meeting in Malaysia

Phil — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 01:12:03 GMT

> I met PIKOM members for the first time at a meeting

> attended mostly by people who weren't PIKOM

> members. I think it would have been rather odd for

> me to ask "is it true you're restricting attendance here

> to PIKOM members?" :-)

That is rather a convenient way to phrase it.

In the post you appear sad that Yoon Kit was not at the event. A really concerned person would have asked the organizers (who invited you) when you would be meeting him.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocodile_tears

Was it incompetence or malice?

re: PIKOM meeting in Malaysia

Pieter Hintjens — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 01:12:35 GMT

Dough, thanks the the nice report from PIKOM. I'm kind of confused what the status of this meeting was. Smoke-filled room kind of thing? I guess YK either did or did not get an invite, but hey, what's the point of a discussion in KL on the Malaysian view of OOXML when the room is filled with rowdy Malaysians who persistently raise technical issues. Much better to keep the talking space for large US corporations. (I'm not impressed that you report that IBM and Google and Microsoft dominate such meetings. This is not a fight between US corporations but a fight between a global monopolist and the rest of the world.)

Anyhow, reading Yusseri's post in which he reminds us that "Microsoft loves you very much.", which I know to be true because they have blessed us over the decades, I want to return the favour.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcxBvrDysiU

re: PIKOM meeting in Malaysia

dmahugh — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 01:26:34 GMT

Sorry, Phil, but I'm really busy today so you're going to have to do better than that to get a response from me.

Pieter, OTOH, despite the fact you've called me Dough (http://chilco.textdrive.com/~dmahugh/2008/01/18/dough/), I feel we're musical peers (you just wait), so I'll respond ...

Yes, it's not a fight between US corporations, and that's why I carefully followed the instructions from PIKOM about what they wanted us to discuss. Microsoft was the only one of the four US corporations present to do so.

OK guys, I'm checking out of this beautiful hotel and have a taxi waiting and a rather long trek back to Seattle ahead of me, so I may not get back to the fun for a while.

re: PIKOM meeting in Malaysia

Pieter Hintjens — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 01:41:38 GMT

Doug. sorry for the mistype. I think my brain just did word completion on your name. Looking forward to your musical response. Have a nice flight.

re: PIKOM meeting in Malaysia

carlos — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 02:29:02 GMT

" I was invited to come talk to PIKOM about Malaysia's comments, which I had never studied before, so I hopped on a plane, spent a few hours studying them, and showed up at the meeting and talked about them. "

a perfect sketch of this DIS 29500 process: rushed work and pure lobbying ( technical quality? Microsoft/ECMA: no thanks, but we answered "agreed" to most comments ! )

re: PIKOM meeting in Malaysia

orlando — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 02:32:23 GMT

"OK guys, I'm checking out of this beautiful hotel "

ok, just do what you know: beautiful hotel visiting ( http://blogs.msdn.com/dmahugh/archive/2008/02/27/relaxing-in-geneva.aspx ) and almost 0 productive ( technical ) work

but please, let countries do his standardization work and judgemente ALONE and stop the lobbying tour !

orlando

re: PIKOM meeting in Malaysia

Ditesh Gathani — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 03:27:04 GMT

Doug,

Sorry, I posted that late at night and I was very tired.

I believe PIKOM changed the rules very late to allow non-members to attend the meeting. Too bad really, we would liked to discuss the issues with you.

Cheers.

re: PIKOM meeting in Malaysia

dmahugh — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 08:35:51 GMT

No problem, Ditesh, I know the feeling. Great to see you this morning; enjoy the laptop stickers. :-)

Carlos, based on the caliber of the technical debate at that meeting, I think I over-prepared, actually.

Orlando, if your point is that you're jealous of that massage, you should be -- it was great!

An "open standards" meeting in Malaysia

Doug Mahugh — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 08:39:11 GMT

Man, what does a guy have to do to find a technical debate in Malaysia? I've spent 72 hours trying to

re: PIKOM meeting in Malaysia

Dinesh Nair — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 09:49:09 GMT

Hi Doug,

I'd like to correct a couple of misconceptions you seem to make in this blog post.

Firstly, my presence there (and I believe Yusseri's, Shane's and Jeremy's) wasn't for IBM. We were all representing our own companies being OmniLogic (Yusseri), Google (Jeremy), Oracle (Shane) and QubeConnect (me). Only Hasan represented IBM. As such, to say that we were IBM representatives is a little far from the truth.

Secondly, to suggest that there were no PIKOM members there is also not entirely true. QubeConnect, IBM and Oracle are full fledged PIKOM members, just as Microsoft is. Clearly, there were more PIKOM members on our side of the table then there was on the other.

As to YK's lack of presence, and as Ditesh noted, the rules to allow non-PIKOM members in were only changed at the last minute, and by then YK had already other engagements to honour, hence his lack of attendance.

re: PIKOM meeting in Malaysia

dmahugh — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 15:08:54 GMT

Dinesh, some things don't add up here. For one thing, Google isn't a PIKOM member, as you seem to know -- so why were they there?

I'll tell you why I think they were there: because both IBM and Microsoft were told (by CJ) that they could bring a delegation of any five people of their choosing to attend the meeting, to present opposiing sides of the debate around DIS29500. Are you saying that this is not true?

As for YK's attendance and other details of the IBM delegation, I won't bother to recount all the things we heard in the hours before the meeting, but suffice to say that the IBM delegation changed several times and Hassan himself seems to have been in two or three countries at the same time, if all of the things we were told Wednesday afternoon are true.

As I said, some things don't add up. I'd be very interested in your thoughts on the above.

re: PIKOM meeting in Malaysia

anonymous — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 21:58:33 GMT

Typical big company/country arrogance

*We are better than everybody.. because we are somewhat of a monopoly*

*Other countries should bow down to the big daddy of the software world because there is no other alternative software*

*Other countries do it wrong ours does really well*

re: PIKOM meeting in Malaysia

Dinesh Nair — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 08:41:47 GMT

Doug,

At the onset, it was communicated to me (at least!) that only PIKOM members were to be allowed, hence the reason why YK was not able to come in. Apparently this was relaxed somewhat later on, by which time it was too late for folk like YK to change other plans made.

And please, as I have stated above, calling it an IBM delegation does show some measure of disrespect to the other companies there, mine included, for we are not and neither have we ever had any commercial dealings with IBM.

QubeConnect attended as a PIKOM member and as a company which is strongly involved in standards development, both globally and in Malaysia.

As it was, the opposing side to DIS29500 consisted of disparate companies, 3 of whom were PIKOM members and 2 of whom were Malaysian companies. Comparatively, the supporting side of DIS29500 consisted of 4 representatives from one company (Microsoft) and an ex-(bang on table !)-ECMA official, none of whom were representing a Malaysian company.

I would term it a diverse group of companies, local and MNC, against a single delegation from Microsoft.

re: PIKOM meeting in Malaysia

dmahugh — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 10:41:50 GMT

Hi Dinesh,

My understanding is that we were informed by PIKOM that IBM and Microsoft could each bring a group of 5 to present the case for or against DIS29500. That's what I heard beforehand, and there were 5 of you sitting together and expressing the same side of many issues, so I though that's what was going on.

Were you invited by the PIKOM people who set up the meeting with IBM and Microsoft, or by IBM directly?