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International Call for Open Standards
tengu1sd writes "The New York Times is carrying a report urging nations to adopt open-information technology standards as 'a vital step to accelerate economic growth, efficiency and innovation'. Sponsored by The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, it also points out that 'open technology standards - the digital equivalent of a common gauge for railroad tracks - are not the same thing as open-source software. Open source is a development model for software in which code is freely shared and improved by a cooperative network of programmers'. This leaves room for companies willing to accept standards, but closes the door to companies unwilling to play nice."
The sound of a door slamming shut at Microsloth?
No it was Balmer heaving his desk out the window... er... windows...
A computer once beat me at chess, but it was no match for me at kick boxing. Emo Philips
One of the first things you learn at school is to play nice together, or else you don't play at all. The sooner "big business" learns this lesson, the better!
If the 'real world' is anything like the place I work. Standards are a dream, that will never come to be, because everyone likes do do things "their way".
~Belly
High time nations are looking at this seriously!
Say yes
Open standards have been the driving force behind the development of the PC. The only reason for closed standards is so that somebody can make money with them.
The big change that permitted science to flourish was the willingness to share information. Because the information was shared, progress was not limited to what one person could create.
The failure to use Open Standards won't send us back to the dark ages. But it will slow progress down as each proprietary standard sets up a roadblock.
The failure to follow standards should be punished in some way. Using basic economics isn't fast, but it will work in the long run.
This sig seemed like a good idea at the time....
It pleases me to see that the good intentions of open source standards are taking a more aggressive approach to defending the open source development method of software.
As all of us
~tim
The key to competing successfully in business is to offer a better value to the customer than they can get somewhere else.
If you run a small grocery, you will typically be outpriced by the large grocery chain down the block, but can keep business by offering your customers other services that keep them coming back. If you make widgets, it's better to be either the cheapest widget provider or the widget provider with the highest quality. In a competition where price and quality are the deciding features, it's best to pick one extreme and go for it.
So what happens with software? If everyone implements open standards, it limits the implementation to the limits of the standard. Ideally, you'd have a flexible enough standard that implementing cool ideas is no more of a break from the standard than implementing the standard verbatim. But for a company that leads the field by a large margin, it doesn't make sense to open up to standards and thus open the doors for your customers to leave the barn. Keep them locked in, and keep providing them with superior product. They will never have the need to switch to another product so long as their needs are met, and they would have a tough time switching anyway as their current data isn't easily transferrable to a new system, no matter how open that new system may be.
I'm of the opinion that companies ought to do what they want with regards to standards. It doesn't matter what package you are using, if the one you are using satisfies your needs. Open standards hardly ever make or break a deal.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
Since when do companies want to play nice? In a capatalistic free market economy, especially one driven by the need for short term profits such as ours, playing nice is corporate suicide. Open source standards will only be pushed by the large industry movers when it is in their immediate best interest to exploit the efforts of other, smaller companies. I don't see that as being realistic today.
The utopian ideals of open source standards is a wonderful fiction, and I wish society valued long term profits and communal gain over individual engrandizement, but it's not realistic, at least not here and not now. For this reason, I suspect open source will remain a small anomoly and not a standard or some time to come.
In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.
You mean like TCP, IP, SMTP, HTTP, FTP, PDF, the hated Word document, XML-app-du-jour, and the x86 instruction set?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
During the last airline IT fiasco it struck me that the airline industry would benefit from some open platforms and standards. While the current diversity keeps everyone from crashing at the same time, it also leads to a lot of waste as everyone has to design their own thing. Seems like they could pool their money and hire a dev team to build an open source project. That'd give them a better chance of finding someone who knows how to fix it when it breaks, among other things.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The point is that Open STANDARDS are important - not Open Source. All this fuss over OSS is ridiculous. What should remain is the idea that open standards provide the opportunity for growth in the industry. The actual implementation of the software is much less important.
Open standards and Open Source have nothing to do with each other. There is plenty of closed source software that supports open standards.
There was an article a year ago - the Indian President inaugurating the Indian Institute of Information Technology.. and in his address, he asked for firms and govts. to stay away from proprietary standards, software and formats. He'd even mentioned his 'discussions with Bill Gates turned difficult' when Gates visited him. Incidentally, this was a short while after Richard Stallman visited the Indian President.
Methinks after Massachusets, very slowly people in the 'First World' are waking up to this fact.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
The ARPA internet suite was not then recognised as a standard because no accepted international standards body (essentially ISO or CCITT) had published the standards. Eventually some of us* managed to convince the Joint Network Team of the Computer Board that TCP/IP would do what was required and the "coloured book" standards wouldn't and then within 2 years almost all the universities were in line with the rest of the world. (and we could get networking standard that didn't have to be custom written for the UK).
* Some claim that it was a document that I wrote for our JNT contact that finally forced the change.
it also points out that 'open technology standards - the digital equivalent of a common gauge for railroad tracks - are not the same thing as open-source software. Absolutely. I've always thought that there's too much talk about open source, and not enough talk about open standards. Some governments, like the swedish, have already adopted a policy where all government information will be accessible through open standard formats. This guarantees that nobody needs to buy a certain platform in order to be able to get official information. In my oppinion this is much more important for free competition, and freedom to chose your own solutions, that open source will ever be.
From TFA:
An ignorant reader who was reading this article might assume that all open-source software was "free as in beer", whereas we all (should) know that not all open-source software falls into that niche. I would hazard a guess and say that most governments would probably be using OSS that included tech support, ergo not free as in beer. While OSS is a good thing (in my mind), I don't want everyone thinking they can get it without any cost, because then they'll be disappointed.Likewise, what is the definition of "standard"? From dictionary.com:
Now, I know this may cause a potential flame war, but isn't it pretty clear that Microsoft (mostly) fits that bill? Obviously many will hit me with "Yeah, except for the excellence part..." and I'll concede that Microsoft Office does not always work propertly. However, it is the most widely recognized and employed office software. Does that not make it seem that Office "is" a standard? I work at a government research lab and everything we do has to be compatible with MS Office.Sure, everyone wants to crush Microsoft into the ground, but realistically (if I can be so bold as to actually talk realistically), does anyone think we can actually get ENOUGH people to stop using Office that *.doc files will cease to be the standard? I honestly think we're better off trying to find a way to get Microsoft to give developers the information they need to develop software based on the Microsoft standard. Oh yes, I know, that's blasphemy and my karma is now lower than Lucifer's, but if you stop and think for a moment you'll realize that it's the logical and realistic choice.
Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened.
Title: Host Software
Author: Steve Crocker
Installation: UCLA
Date: 7 April 1969
Network Working Group Request for Comment: 1
I submit that there has been progress made already on this front with TCP/IP for the Internet and Internet communications. What I should add is that what Massachusetts has done is a very good start in this direction. But with the enormous dependency on proprietary formats already with us, this call's success seems to be a pipe dream to me.
Open Standards is a great idea... The problem is all those companies and organizations that are not at all willing to drop the profits they make by maintaining and selling standards. This also holds for the organizations that maintain the standards and selling them is the only way to cover their expenses and functional costs.
Of course W3C is a bright exception to the above example. But then again its only an exception.
How to Destroy Angels II
Why force the standards when these can evolve over a period of time out of the need. If those are't, we won't have needed them in the first place.
I know I am going against popular opinion here at
95% of all sigs are made up.
is thinking that MS is deployed because of its' excellence.
It is because of network effects, where a pile of crap, if everyone has it, is still of more utility than perfection only a few people have.
"... but closes the door to companies unwilling to play nice." *coughMicrosoftcough*
Does this mean it's only down for microsoft and up for other operating systems? A world without microsoft...mmm, no i'm only dreaming.
I call for an open source tea standard. BS 6008 and ISO 3103 restrict my acess to tea. (Yes. They actually exsist.) Here is a pdf of the actually standard http://ftp.ee.surrey.ac.uk/papers/AI/L.Gillam/bs_t ea.pdf#search='BS6008' and a place where you can buy it. http://www.iso.ch/iso/en/CatalogueDetailPage.Catal ogueDetail?CSNUMBER=8250
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
Just another opportunity combine automated patching with embrace, extend, and extinguish. Microsoft will start supporting these open formats to keep their foot firmly in the door. Then they will start to poison them. People will soon be once again sending documents as (say) .doc files, because they need to get their work done. The 'open' format will seem too much of a nuisance, as it will be 'accidently' half-broken or otherwise made inferior. Similar programs won't be able to open the 'open-format' documents anyway because the standard will have been 'extended'. Microsoft will spin it as the fault of the format and competitors programs (and most managers and bureaucrats will no-doubt buy the spin .. they always do), but as long as Microsoft claims they support the open-format, then sales to government mandating openness will have the green-light.
You can't force a company with an anti-competitive corporate culture to play nice. It just won't do it.
From a purely technical standpoint, open standards seem quite attractive. However, until the patent system gets reworked so software patents get invalidated or have a high level of specificity required in comparing claims, even 'open' standards can become proprietary in a legal sense.
Some 'licensing' companies (e.g. Via Licensing and MPEG LA) will, if a standard looks like it will get some significant use in the market, make a 'call for patents', which means they ask anyone with a patent who thinks their patent would have some 'essentiality' to any implementation that used the standard to submit their patent for review. If one of these 'licensing' companies thinks the patent would apply generally to any system or application implementation that would make use of the standard, they add that patent with others of like merits to a 'patent pool' and then go after anyone using the standard to demand license fees for the pool. In this fashion, any open standard becomes a candidate for such companies to essentially leech off the standard and thereby prevent open, as in fee-less, use of the standard.
Open standards, then, face two hurdles beyond the technical ones. First, the well-known business interest some companies have in keeping their formats proprietary so you will not stop using their systems or software. Second, the less well-known, but growing legal problems with those who want to profit from the patent system without adding any real value in terms of standard creation or implementations. Open standards remain a good technical goal and we should pursue them, but this underscores some of the challenges to keep in mind.
That said, open standards means open source will eventually win. As word processing formats (a la what's happen in MA) become standard, then the software will become commoditized. It's the end of MS Office's reign. OpenOffice can and will quickly implement the standard, and no one would have a reason to use MS Office anymore.
Open standards are the death knell for MS's monopoly, and they know it. Expect MS to fight tooth and nail every step of the way.
Once we have open standards and everyone is coding to that standard, the consume will win. The consumer will have choice and competition will make the software smaller, faster, more secure, and more plentiful.
Sungeth Afroman: "I was gonna make a standard, but then I got high..."
We have a few standards now. TCP/IP is the Protocol for going on the internet for everyone. But it's not the only one because at times it's restrictive to some programs.
Mp3s have become the standard because of increased compression, but it also loses some quality in some people's minds but for the most part almost everyone can use them.
The problem with these standards is they were lucky. How many formats have been moved out of the way for Mp3s? (wav, ogg, aac just to name a couple) How many Movie Formats have come out after AVI? (ASF, WMV, OGG, MKV, and others)
See the problem is this. How do we establish a standard? The fact is standards are adopted, not created. It's great that you want to standardize the interoperability of goverments or coporations, but if the standards arn't up to snuff the standards arn't worth the time it takes to think about it.
The problem is thus, we need standards but open source standards arn't always as efficent, or even work. Standards NEED to be made by how useful the program or the protocol is, not how cheap it is to get. It's great to try to use them when we can, but there's some areas where it's not ready for prime time.
And then there's the other problem open standards tell everyone who wants to know how it works, this is a double edged sword. It's great everyone can link up with it, but someone who wants to create trouble can read it and figure out a way to get into the system itself.
I'm sorta glad we don't have certain groups relying on open formats for this reason. The groups that protect our finances, and our country. But the fact is that I've yet to see a national industry go and use only Open Source options and continue to thrive, and there's obviously reasons for that.
Maybe they should concentrate on opening up their news archive for free before their editors jump on this particular band wagon.
;)
BTW the title of this post: Their left hand doesn't know what the right hand it doing. ya know..... just in case.
What's the last time someone actually listened to a call for something? Remember in grade school when your teacher made a call for playing nice? What happened? Exactly.
As many a politician has said America is a "leader in [enter topic of discussoin]". Why don't we start the charge and maybe open up the FEMA site to other browsers.
I know this is not exactly what this program is calling for but how do we expect other countries to follow our lead (this is an American University making the call) when we don't even open up our own doors to "standards"
There is only "what's popular". Office file formats aren't a standard, but people view them that way because they are the most popular file formats being used. Similarly, companies call their thing a standard in an attempt to get it popular enough so that everyone will use it, which equals more money.
Call something some way enough times, and you can convince people that it's so. Really, the whole idea of something being a "standard" is basically a fear tactic to say "if you don't use our stuff you won't get any customers, because everyone uses our stuff." Most people can be manipulated by that sort of thinking, which pushes home the idea of something being a standard.
If you accept that "standard" = "popular", then it becomes pretty clear that organizations that attempt to get people to use "standards" are completely going about it the wrong way. Look: certain things (file formats, products, etc.) are popular. They just are. Mindshare exists, and it's set up in a certain way, and you can't change it. At least not without wasting a whole lot of unnecessary effort trying.
The point is, if you waste all your time trying to fight what is, then you will get nowhere. This is what you do. You take what is (i.e. microsoft's popular file formats), and reverse-engineer them so that everyone can use it. You open up something that's ALREADY popular and call it a standard and work from there. That's the only way that actually makes some sense, and has the possiblity to work.
You simply AREN'T going to suddenly change everyone's mind as to what they like to use in your attempt to drive home a new standard. Sorry, but it's not going to happen. People use what they like to use, not "the best" or based upon who developed it, where it came from, how clean the code is, what monkey's it saves, etc. So in other words, the standard you create has to be something that's ALREADY popular, and NOT something some organization likes based upon it's technical merit over something else. Trying to make some new thing a standard without first making sure it is popular with people is not only stupid, it's damn near impossible.
Not using something that's already popular is the SOLE reason why "standards" hardly ever get off the ground. A standard is not a standard because some consortium weenies declare it to be, it's a standard when people actually use it (i.e. it's popular.)
Not sure about your driving example.
The EU was suposed to bring about many common standards for trade, but dispite EU harmonisation
The British still drive on the left,
the French still drive on the right, and
the Italians still drive on both.
Anyone quoted by a reporter knows how little they understand
Don't believe what you read is the truth.
If you have worked with Tier II of the HIPAA laws that govern EDI transaction processing, you can quickly discover how complex and involved open standards can be. It took YEARS to get from 5 different formats for electonic medical billing transactions down to two (ANSIX12 and NCPDP).
Now...
Who is going to set the standards and who will pay to keep them working on them?
Who is going to make sure the standards support new technology, new ways of doing things?
Who keeps tabs on the standard committies to make sure they are looking out for the users and not for special corporate interests?
Open standards are a LOT of work if everyone drags their heels. Aren't most standards industry-derived, anyway?
"It also points out that open technology standards - the digital equivalent of a common gauge for railroad tracks - are "
Lets hope the digital equivalent is a bit *more* standardised than railway track gauge or we'll end up with the virtual version of 2ft gauge, 2ft 6 , 3ft, meter gauge, standard gauge, irish gauge, soviet gauge etc etc etc
Open Standards are what it takes to reroute energy from an Alien Ship to the Engine Room or reconfigure Energy Coils and adapt special Capacitors.
OK, I'm no Trekkie, but you get the point. You'll need Open Standards (and adherence to them) to make things "Just Work (tm)."
Serge
..by that definition.
.. widely .. employed
Something
I submit that only MS (and a few favoured partners) "employ" their "standards" - because they are secret. The "employment" of document standards is by software writers, not end users.
Pointy Haired Manager typing on Word is not "employing the standard" any more then Joe Sixpack is "employing" the ISO standards for the screw threads that hold his Ford together. ISO screw thread standards are nevertheless widely employed because they are open and are employed by the majority of car makers and other engineers.
You can mostly cut and paste this letter for sending to your local government leaders regarding web standards.
http://narnia.dnsalias.org/freegovernment/
One way or another, politely bring up the issue and mention the benefits from the government's point of view: serving people, long-term savings, etc.
i think it could work.
Well, we can infer:
Open Standards != OSS.
However,
OSS uses Open Standards. Proprietary software rarely uses them *cough* MSWord *cough*. What this call does, is pushing companies to support open standards in their proprietary products. This means companies will have to actually compete and make better products instead of just keeping the market because the public has no other choice.
Either they do that, or face extinction.
Really, if this picks up, Ballmer will need to have a stack of chairs to throw at people.
Their only defense is to argue that M$ needs to be free to innovate, and not forced to stick to some crappy open standard.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_law/when_to_
Is he OK with a government adopting GPL licensed open source if that same government allows laws that respect software patents or applications of DRM? That does not seem to fit his social agenda as defined by his upcoming rewrite of the GPL.
I am in the process of writing my response to the Norwegian Government's hearing on use of open source and open standards in public sector with deadline September 15. (Hearing documents in English here.) I have two suggestions that could be implemented, that potentially would significantly reduce the market dominance of Microsoft:
This will speed up the spread of standards compliant browsers significantly, as every business or individual will have a need to communicate with the public sector and Goverment over the web.
Full background for suggestion here.
_
This will force Microsoft to participate in the competition and/or adapt support for the chosen open format, or basically loose a significant chunk of business in the EU. Again, everyone will have to communicate with the Government and exchange documents with the public sector.
The future is in beta
I was a member of several X/Open working committees a number of years ago and what amazed me was Microsoft's presence in introducing "standards" so that they could claim compliance with X/Open standards, likely for their "compliance" PR campaign with the US Government. What made it worse was they first patented the technologies (covertly of course) and then introduced the Microsoft centric concepts into the committee for ratification. Yea, Right, Like I want to administer/patch/update all my "Unix" machines like Microsoft's model of the world, and then pay Microsoft royalties to use an "Open Standard"? What scared me was the working Committee for some odd reason, perhaps money, actually took them seriously!
Isn't this basically just emphasing what groups have been trying to do for years?
/me carries on RTFA.
RFC's for example:
http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1730.txt being the IMAP4 Protocol.
That is of course assuming that Protocols can be defined as Standards.
Or is this just people trying get get other systems such as the MSN Protocol in the open? Rather than people trying to work it out http://www.hypothetic.org/docs/msn/index.php?
Back on track:
I always feel "cleaner" when I follow standards. Building websites with the proper usage of CSS for example.
Android Software Engineer
Standards do not have to mean that everyone has to use Open Document or something. This is only a tool MA has used to begin to escape vendor lock-in. The whole point is that if you store data, you should be making public the way that you have formatted the data in order to allow it to be translated into another format if necessary. The reason people gravitate to XML is because it is a text-based file format that can be examined, rather than a proprietary binary format with the drawbridge firmly raised and the archers searching for targets.
how the f can the first post EVER be redundant??? off-topic, flamebait, troll or over-rated YES... redundant NO...
I suggest respectfully to you that you surrender your mod points at the door and go off and read the moderation guide...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
The USA can't even accept the metric system, so I don't understand how everyone keeps expecting it to embrace all this newfangled 'open source' stuff. Open source needs to get in line.
I regularly report MSN spam to the Hotmail admins.
Not that this is the case, but, if a FP says something already said on summary, then it could be considered Redundant - at least it's what I think...
So Long and Thanks for All the Fish!
The way to get science, engineer and economic progress is not just to agree on open standards but to invalidate or license the patents (for free for all to use without prejudice) that are sneaked into the standards.
The next thing to do is to kick out any party that tries to patent the standard or subvert the standard in any way (which defeats the spirit of the standard).
You may define whatever you want as the open standard. Big Bill's company will see that
and say: "Oh, crap".
Then they define their own open standard.
Wich one do you think will be adopted your standard or the M$ one ? I bet the corporate sealed one.
So you don't use TCP/IP to connect computers together or to connect to the Internet, you don't use standards like SMTP/POP3 to send/receive e-mail, you don't use standards like HTTP to access the Web, your networking hardware doesn't use 802.3 or 802.11 standards, your storage hardware doesn't use IDE/SATA/SCSI, your computer mouse doesn't connect to your computer with USB or PS/2, your sound card output, telephone etc. don't use standard jacks, your doors aren't a standard size, etc. etc.
Standards are everywhere, in all the things you take for granted because you aren't paying a premium for them.
If the market forces vendors to build things to standards, then the vendors are forced to differentiate their products on the basis of useful things like price, quality etc. rather than lock-in.
And don't give me that 'But, But, But...WINDOWS!!!1!!one!!won!' jive, either. Gates has failed us!^H^H^H to demonstrate an ability to leverage his so-called monopoly into global domination. Linux is just five years away from mainstream acceptance...does that sound like a Windows takeover to you? We^H^H I didn't think so.
Of course, the tin-foil hatters will tell you that we^H^H^H the $cabal_of_choice is fostering the growth and adoption of Linux and open file formats as part of our^H^H^H^H their fiendish master plan. Don't listen to any of it!
Let's not forget the greatest standard of them all!
EDI is a standard, but everyone's version is differant, so it costs you more then $4000 to set up one additional customer every stinking time!
Standards are great, but what about a standard for using the standard?
See: http://www.answers.com/spelled&r=67
What would I do with all the time I'd have, that I currently devote to caressing Internet Explorer into rendering pages right? More slashdot!
What we really need are Free standards (free in a similar sense as Free software). GIF is/was an 'open' standard. The well known legal issues underline the importance of Free (as opposed to merely open) standards.
Open standards would mean the death of the world's largest software company and they know it. They will do everything they can to prevent the adoption of standards.
It just makes life easier. All we need is:
Syntax meta-language (EBNF)
Consistent binary codes and endianness (EOF etc.)
Plain text system (UTF)
Compression/archive schemes (gzip/tar)
Interpretable/compilable scripting language (Java/Javascript?)
Behavioral framework (Flash/scripting)
Network protocol (IPV6)
Wireless and wired specifications
Font system (TrueType) and common universal generic fonts (unicode serif, sans-serif, mono)
Database/framework format (XML, SQLite, tar-directory)
Reference system (UML and DOI)
Hypertext format (XHTML)
Word processing format (RTFD, XML, enhanced PDF, or XHTML)
Spreadsheet format (XML+CSV/fixedLengthFields, SQLite)
Printable/page layout format (enhanced PDF)
Vector format (SVG)
Image formats (various codec schemes, lossy and not) (PNG)
Timed action standard
Video formats (various codec schemes, lossy and not) (MPG4)
3D-object/scene format (GL/SVG?)
Am I missing any?
In fact, most of those things could be combined with a common XML framework to produce many different formats with universal behaviors and interpretation. Files would be optimized for a specific purpose (like word processing) but interpretable through others (XML browser) and
However, even for specialized file formats, if file format, syntax, and encoding/decoding schemes are a matter of public record then no files should be lost to the fog of time. As XML can get pretty bloated, it is not suitable for all purposes - but all programs should include a way to translate to a common XML-based format if not a specific type of format for exchange.
XML could probably use some sort of standard "hint" tag that has the offsets of key points in the document (and/or annotates the length of a tagged part) and fails gracefully if incorrect. Combined with a common archiving (portable directory) and compression scheme and things are dramatically simpler.
Beyond that, behaviors and formats can be tested extensively and then released as a whole every few years, as a compromise between common standards and technological improvement.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
However, I suspect that OpenDocument may have been meant instead, which is OASIS' Open Document Format for Office Applications. OpenDocument is the work of a consortium of companies and organizations and not the sole work of a single project as implied in the comment above. Microsoft is the only member taking a "wait-and-see" approach to the format. Everyone else, is moving ahead.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
This is a train going full steam ahead. The same thing will happen to you know who (the monopolist company)as did to the HAL (before company name in 2001)in the early 90s.
Steve Douglas