odd_parity

Since my article ended up on Groklaw and quite a bit of eyes turned this way, I'd just take a chance to clarify the situation.

Yes, I am going to sue CSI ( Croatian Standards Institute )and force them (if I win, of course) to disclose information I requested.

Am I going to win? I don't know. The law seem to be on my side, but in our courts everything's possible.

Why have I decided to do that?

It did start with unconditional Yes for OOXML, voted by TO Z1, CSI body that's in charge for this voting process. I have asked CSI to provide me with just this data: who the members of TO Z1 are, and how each of them voted.

But, CSI replied with the statement that they can not disclose that information, because of the law that forbids disclosing personal information of citizen of Croatia (btw, this is quite novel and well intended law, one of those we have to have if we want to join EU). The problem is that members of TO Z1 are companies, and they send their representatives. I don't care who representatives are, I'm interested in who those companies are.

My point here is that I suspect conflict of interest: if the majority of members are Microsoft partners, they are more inclined to vote not for what is the best for Croatians, but what is best for their powerful partner.

But then again, CSI denied the information, this time raising an issue with their own statute; in this case, a statute is not a written, formal law of a country, but sort of “internal” law – just a paper that regulates internal code of conduct (I really miss a good explanation here!). What is important is that such paper can never be above any law.

Oh, and there's another interesting thing – as soon as I have pushed them to disclose information, they responded by organizing internal board meeting, where they seem to have introduced more formal lock-ups to prevent disclosing information to the outside world!

It was really difficult to get their written answers, but this is known delay tactics. As they could not cling to the law that protects personal privacy (as members are companies, not people), they are now clinging to their internal regulatory papers. On my side are two things: one is the law that enforces my right to ask for an information from any government body, and another paper, just a statement, but from an government agency for protection of personal data; their position is quite interesting: even if there is a law that protect privacy, if the person is doing service in a government body, the body can not deny disclosing some of personal data (such as name of that person) if requested by any citizen.

Therefore, I should not just be able to get the data of members of TO Z1, but even the names of their representatives; but that is not needed. I just want to know who are members of TO Z1. CSI is still refusing to let me know that, this time even using incredibly weak point: since OOXML voting is not over, disclosing their names would put them under pressure and lobbying would influence their decision.

Now, would you believe that? It's like telling that we should turn off the street lights because if people walk on the street late in the evening, someone could see them and think their neighbor is a thug.

I would rather think that knowing who those people are would actually protect them from lobbying and influence, for simple reason: interested parties really have no trouble finding out who those companies are, and in such secrecy some real deals could be made, and the world would never know.

If those companies are exposed, it would be harder to reach them with secret agenda, and it would be harder for them to accept such offer, knowing that they're in the limelight.

Just as turning off the lamp posts would actually increase the number of thugs on the street, keeping members in a shadow makes the job for jolly lobbyist simpler.

There's still more to that. In recent weeks we have witnessed quite a number of failures on construction sites, the biggest resulting in whole street and some houses collapsing into a construction site cavity. Luckily, not a single accident had casualties. This was not unexpected, as building companies keep using cheap materials and cheap labor. It seems that we're bound to repeat the infamous 1999. Izmit earthquake (and Zagreb is on an unfavorable position regarding regular earthquakes - yet even overdue for up to 9 on Mercalli scale – not a shaker, a blender.

If the building collapse, and people die, who is going to be responsible? The company would say – we have done everything by the standard; then, we would look closely at the standard and perhaps find out that – indeed – it has been made to conform to money-saving requests of building companies. We might want to know who made such bad standard – but CSI would not disclose it, protecting its members from prosecution.

This is, of course, just an overblown example, but it does reflect my point: if CSI accept OOXML instead of ODF as a standard, there will be quite a bit of economic stress on already over-debted country: not just the government, but all the companies and a lot of people would have to buy MS Office licenses just to be able to exchange documents with the government bodies. And people responsible for that situation are exactly those sitting in TO Z1. I want to know who they are. I want to know why they voted the way they did. I want to hold them responsible for huge expenses that might arise from their support of a foreign company interests in a place where they should think about the country's welfare.

So, yes, I have to sue CSI, because they are not going to let me know that. They are completely opaque, and since they are government agency, they are against the law. I want to change that.

My initial proposal for them was quite simple two step process:

1. assure that if a company propose a standard, that company and it's partners can not be part of committee that's going to vote about it;

2. put names of all members on the Internet, and make sure that each member give a short explanation of his vote – and put that on the Internet, too.

    

    

This is fairly simple, isn't it? Yet, this is so disruptive that it's never going to be implemented, unless some greater force push this from above.

Now, as a former journalist, I have connections in quite a lot of interesting places. But I did not push information I've collected because none of it is official. Here's a short list of some of those; be aware that they might not be true at all:

Microsoft has a seat in TO Z1, and enough of their partners became members in order to push whatever Microsoft wants, and enough power to stall acceptance of PDF and ODF as national standards, until the OOXML is passed as an ISO standard; then, they're going to push OOXML as national standard, discarding proposals for PDF and ODF. The very first voting process was flawed, because it was not committed by voting process, but consensus (this is confirmed by CSI) was made between just few members, and some members even didn't know what the vote was until ISO published it. There were objections to the standard, but the final vote was unconditional yes. There were rumors of hard lobbying on both sides – pro- and anti-OOXML. And even an intervention from a foreign embassy.

Those, as I said, are unconfirmed rumors (would you believe that a foreign embassy would lobby?). They might be true, they might not be.

But! They would never exist if the voting process was transparent!

Alas, it wasn't. And there seem to be no intention from CSI to make any of their processes transparent. They want to keep their black-box status, churning out decisions that the rest of the country is to accept without a question. This is wrong. So I'm going to sue – but this really isn't about OOXML any more, it's about transparency and democracy, about people controlling the state, and not vice versa.

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