Pre-announcement about joining ECMA

[Jeff Waugh <jdub perkypants org>]

<quote who="John (J5) Palmieri">

> The fault lies with the Foundation for not communicating it decisions when
> they happened in a format that is easily digested.

Hey,

I don't want this to sound like rationalisation for the mistake we made (we
did say we were going to do an announcement when it happened, and it slipped
through the cracks), but it is going to sound a bit like post-game analysis:

I'm not so sure that an announcement about it back in July would have had a
better result than what we've been stuck with after that open letter. I did
and do agree that we should've done that, but I think the results would have
been much the same, with a very slim chance of being worse.

What I've seen of the very-harshly-against-us sections of the community, we
would not have changed any minds in the first place. Any kind of association
with Microsoft, OOXML or TC45-M is VERBOTEN and evidence of evil, financial
incentive, and/or conspiracies. It wouldn't matter how easily digested or
how rational our views would have been. (Some will use my comments here to
argue that we were very clearly wrong, because our decision was unpopular. I
disagree, and think the rest of the Board would too.)

The slim chance of it being worse is that by actively promoting that we'd
done it, perhaps it would have been seen with even more suspicion, ie. GNOME
proudly trumpeting that it was getting involved with the great evils, OOXML
and Microsoft.

I'm hypothesising here, and it's probably pointless post-game analysis, but
I think it's an accurate rendering of what we're dealing with. I've had some
folks who I regard as level-headed (who don't have a boat to row in this
debate) thank us for being balanced, not being extreme, and "keeping our
friends close, but our enemies closer".

Anyway... Just to reiterate: Yes, we made a mistake, and didn't do what we
said we'd do.

Thanks,

- Jeff

-- 
GNOME.conf.au 2008: Melbourne, Australia http://live.gnome.org/Melbourne2008
 
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