Slashdot Mirror
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
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....
But standards *do* happen. There are just too many areas in life that would become totally inoperable if everyone did things differently. Like driving for example. But then having a standard doesn't necessarially mean 'everyone is uniform' - in this context it usually just means everyone can understand the interface or specification for your standard without needing the use of dowsing, divine revelation, mediums or perhaps reverse engineering to work with that interface of specification.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
You've completely missed the point. You seem to equate product with proprietary implementation of data storage. In the perfect world, open standards are conformed to and what is *actually* sold is the interface, the method of getting to and manipulating that data. If MS could keep it's monopoly in that scenario, it would be because they actually created the best product instead of holding your data hostage, threatening that if you move away from them you'll never be able to see your files again.
I stole this