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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
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....
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.
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
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.
"open technology standards - the digital equivalent of a common gauge for railroad tracks - are not the same thing as open-source software."
Did you miss something here? This isn't about OSS.
If standard-compliant documents become a requirement for large purchases, it doesn't matter if the company wants to play nice or not...the only question is: do they want the sale? Customers can force the companies to play nice by making standards-compliant document formats a requirement.
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.
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.
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.
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.
It all falls apart in the second clause of your second sentence:
"especially one driven by the need for short term profits such as ours"
My favorite example is the Internet. Go back into the 80's, and we had TheSource, GEnie, Prodigy, CompuServe, AOL, etc, all vying to be THE online provider. They were ALL trying to own the whole pie.
Yet that very act of attempting exclusive ownership is what made each of those pies rather small. Then the Internet came along, the pie that couldn't be owned, and it GREW. The only one of those early ISPs that's still around in any significant way is AOL, the one who did the best job of embracing the idea of owning it's piece of a much bigger pie.
Even after that example, American business didn't learn. I swear that they all look at the big pie called the Internet, and say, "I want to OWN that pie," and just can't realize that non-ownership is an essential property. Witness instant messaging, streaming media, or any other Internet add-on.
So perhaps you're right, and Utopian ideals of open standards just won't happen in today's society. In that case NOTHING big will happen, we'll just have a collection of little pies.
Microsoft's ownership of the PC OS is/was an aberration, and they're trying like all get-out to extend that aberration into everything they can get their hands on. But it's still an aberration, a refusal to allow THEIR products to become commodities, while driving everything surrounding them in that direction.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
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.