[ODFPlugtest] Chatham House Rule

[robert_weir at us.ibm.com]

Uhh.. Doug... you do know that this mailing list has a public archive: 

http://lists.opendocsociety.org/pipermail/plugtest/2009-November/thread.html

So now you are implicated in spreading these statements publicly as well.

But you make a fair point, and we should be more diligent in following 
Chatham House Rules, if that is what participants want.  We should also be 
sure that we actually articulate this expectation at the start of each 
plugfest, or maybe even in the invitation note itself.  This is especially 
important since not every one who attended in Orvieto (say Thomas Zander) 
also attended the Hague Plugfest, and was familiar with its application 
there.

-Rob

plugtest-bounces at opendocsociety.org wrote on 11/19/2009 03:24:40 PM:
> 
> I'd like to hear some clarification regarding the purpose and rules 
> of the ODF plugfests.  Based on the many email threads and phone 
> conversations that have gone into planning these events, I thought 
> we had agreed to conduct ourselves in accordance with the Chatham 
> House Rule, which states that "... participants are free to use the 
> information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation 
> of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed."
> 
> Some of you may recall that I was opposed to that rule, because I 
> felt that we should all be free to speak about the details of what 
> took place at these plugfests.  Michiel Leenaars and Rob Weir were 
> the people I recall being most vocal in support of the Chatham House
> Rule, and they argued that it was needed to protect smaller 
> implementers from being publicly criticized by larger implementers.
> 
> But in the two weeks since the Orvieto plugfest, I have seen public 
> comments from other participants that clearly violate the Chatham 
> House Rule.  For example:
> 
> "This is a unique workshop where commercial vendors, governments and
> open source developers discuss updates to their implementations of 
> ODF. For example, we showed Microsoft that it could improve how it 
> stores illustrations and graphics in ODF", commented Michiel 
> Leenaars, director of the Dutch Internet Society and one of the 
> organisers of the plugfest.  http://www.osor.eu/news/european-
> governments-help-increase-odf-interoperability 
> 
> "I showed an interoperability issue with right-to-left languages. 
> Several bugs were found in OpenOffice.org and MSOffice ... MS said 
> several times that for optimum interoperability they choose a 
> solution that works better with OOo and not what the specification 
> says it should do." - Thomas Zander http://labs.trolltech.com/blogs/
> 2009/11/19/two-conferences-about-odf/ (Re-tweeted by Rob Weir: 
> http://twitter.com/rcweir/status/5860051161) 
> 
> I have two concerns with these statements. One is that they violate 
> the rules we agreed to follow. The other is that they are not 
> accurate statements.
> 
> In the case of Michiel's quote, I think he may be confusing a 
> discussion at the DII Brussels workshop or a discussion at my OOoCon
> session with conversations at the plugfest.  In any event, Michiel's
> repeated urging for Microsoft to support SVG gradients, which were 
> not supported by any ODF implementation prior to May of this year, 
> could just as accurately be applied to OpenOffice.org, Symphony, or 
> many other implementations. Why is Microsoft singled out in this 
> way? And why has Michiel not followed the Chatham House prohibition 
> on stating the identity or affiliation of speakers and participants?
> 
> In the case of Thomas's blog post, I'm not aware of any bug in 
> Office's approach to RTL documents that has been identified 
> (certainly none was identified at the plugfest itself), and there is
> nothing in the ODF standard that says an implementation "should" use
> SVG for gradients, so that statement is false.  Why has Thomas not 
> followed the Chatham House Rule? And why is Rob Weir directing 
> additional public attention to this violation of the Chatham House 
> Rule, which he felt so strongly was needed for these events?
> 
> If these plugfests are actually intended as an opportunity to beat 
> up on a particular vendor (Microsoft, in this case) then that needs 
> to be made more clear up front, and the official statement of 
> purpose of the plug fest needs to reflect that.  On the other hand, 
> if we are indeed working together to try to improve ODF 
> interoperability, and using the protection of the Chatham House rule
> to assure a safe environment for such work, then I would expect to 
> see other plugfest attendees condemn the kinds of statements that 
> Michiel and Thomas are making publicly, rather than drawing 
> additional attention to them through Twitter and other means.
> 
> Can somebody please clarify for me what's going on?
> 
> Thanks,
> Doug
> 
> Doug Mahugh    |    Lead Standards Professional   |   Office 
> Interoperability    |   425-707-1182   |   blogs.msdn.com/dmahugh
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