Compliance and interoperability

I've done a little to help out with ODF accessibility. I like ODF insomuch as I like any Office suite. I have some experience of software and systems testing. I have some experience of compliance (ISO 9000). So when Oasis announced it was to form a group to look at ODF compliance I immediately joined. This is the initial call.

Started June 2, has 90 days to run. So it has run 12 days. In that time there have been around 300 emails. So there is interest, of one sort and another.

Looking back, most of the points raised have been genuine points related to compliance or interoperability (interop). Possibly due to lack of experience in Oasis procedure, much has been said that is out of scope. I'm probably as guilty as anyone on this count. This is the process document. Seems this group are set to deliver a scoping class of document for a later group to work within. That gives 3 levels. Hey, I've had a good idea (two others support the originator). New group forms, are given a steer (List leader took this as gospel, not to be queried, clarified etc). Discussion list comes up with a charter. Main group form and work to the charter. Complex? Shouldn't be. Seems to be

One of the list members suggested a scratchpad. Oasis wiki was out of the question (only TC members can post. Silly?), so someone suggested Googledocs. I started one. Objection, may be seen as biassed. OK. Someone suggested open wiki. I set one up, wikidot. No response. One guy suggested google sites which is somewhere between Google docs and a wiki. He set it up, and that seems to have stuck, though the 'discussion list leader' has barely acknowledged it and not used it AFAIK.

That's the state of play at the moment. Various suggestions, rumours about politics imply that solid compliance tests wouldn't be appreciated by some of the bigger players. I don't know. What I do know is that nothing much is happening other than lots of hot air and little forward progress.

One thing that seems to be required on the compliance side is a good look at ODF (1.1 is public domain, 1.2 is inside Oasis, under development) with respect to testability. Seems that much of it is wide open, few 'shall' statements, lots of may, can etc. This leaves it open to 'implementation dependent', which is something I'm not keen on. I'm very tempted to spend the remaining days of the 90 starting that work.

Going back to the call I see

1. To publish test suites of ODF for applications of ODF to check their conformance with the Standard and to confirm their interoperability;
2. To provide feedback, where necessary, to the ODF TC on ways in which the standard could improve interoperability;
3. To produce a set of implementation guidelines;
4. To define interoperability with related standards by the creation of profiles or technical reports;
5. To coordinate, in conjunction with the ODF Adoption TC, OASIS InterOp demos related to ODF;

How would you interpret the third item, Implementation guidelines.? A guy from Sun suggested this means guidelines for people implementing ODF. I was kind of shocked when I read this. I'd read this to mean guidelines on implementing tests? Remember this is the first group specifying the TOR of the main working group (technical committee in Oasis jargon). To ask this group to provide guidelines for Sun or IBM or the OSS crowd, is quite impractical as I see it, unless you want to stall the group so it bogs down forever (which has been hinted at). The really laughable bit? When I asked the lead to go back to the original authors of the call, he responded with this, which did nothing to clarify anything.