Why Open Standards Matter

Tina Gasperson over at Newsforge (Also owned by VA Software) has an interesting writeup about her experience at the Government Day sub-conference at LinuxWorld Boston. Government Day addressed some interesting issues including some of the more tangible reasons behind supporting open standards. From the article: "Speaking to the audience of government workers, Villa said, 'Maybe 2006 is not the year that Linux ends up on your desktops.' But, he encouraged them, if they begin using software that supports open standards now, such as Firefox and OpenOffice.org, then when Linux is ready it will be that much easier to make a switch. 'And maybe you'll decide not to make that switch,' Villa said. 'But at least the choice will be yours.'"

Comments

Getting the point across

[bloobloo]

If you want to describe the importance to a non-techie audience, the best idea is to use the simile of describing closed formats like betamax. Although it had its advantages there are problems getting the information back out. Yet "open standards" such as cine film can still be viewed or transcribed more easily. The closest people can usually get to understanding in terms of computer programs are the problems in moving from Access 98 to 2000.

Re:Getting the point across

[MichaelSmith]

If you want to describe the importance to a non-techie audience, the best idea is to use the simile of describing closed formats like betamax

Imagine if you had to go to the maker of your car for servicing no matter how old it gets, and independent mechanics could not exist.

Re:Getting the point across

[arendjr]

A very good illustration was made by David Wheeler at LinuxWorld about the importance of open standards, and it's probably even easier to understand for non-techies:

[...] He went on to show the audience, through another word picture describing a 1904 fire in Baltimore, how open standards can prevent unhealthy dependence on one vendor. "Firefighters were called in from all the surrounding states," Wheeler said. "But all they could do was stand and watch the building burn, because their firehoses would not fit on the fire hydrants." A standard fire hose coupler could have prevented much of the destruction. [...]

Re:Getting the point across

[houghi]

While DSL is fine for the regular hacker, I dont know if a 10 year old will be confortable with it...

OK, I asume you are refering how Betamax was better the VHS technically. First they are both closed standards, so no matter who won, the closed standard would win.

There are plenty of closed standards that are accepted. Look at the music CD. I believe it was Philips that collected the benefits for that for a long time. Not sure if they still do.

There is a difference between closed standards that you let nobody else use (like *.doc), closed standards that you control, but let others use (like *.pdf) or open ones that are made by a commity (like *.html)

Naturaly the public must accept these standards and the governement must enforce the use of these standards.(meter, celcius, gram, liter, ...)

Re:Getting the point across

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

"If you want to describe the importance to a non-techie audience, the best idea is to use the simile of describing closed formats like betamax. Although it had its advantages there are problems getting the information back out. Yet "open standards" such as cine film can still be viewed or transcribed more easily"

Your heart is in the right place, but this doesn't strike me as a great example just on the grounds that somebody (like me..) would go "huh? Betamax works on all betamax players!" A better example would be one that most people would have dealt with at one time or another. "Have you ever tried to get your check-engine diagnosed outside of your dealer?" Or: "Have you ever tried to use your old cell phone with your new provider?" Okay, admittedly I haven't hit the PERFECT example, but in those cases anybody who has answered yes to those questions would have a lightbulb appear over their heads.

Anyway, this isn't a rebuttal, just a suggestion of a better example. I was a little lost the first time I read your post.

Re:Getting the point across

[jyda]

I'd argue that that example does more to illustrate the importance of standards, generally, rather than open standards. But if it's getting the point through, why not?

why it takes time...

[joe 155]

It is always going to be hard to get people to start using linux on their home computers, people like what they know... I've been using windows since 3.1 and the change to linux is certainly taking a long time and small steps is what is on order... in a government/business sense linux would be easier to adopt... when you're at work you don't need to install things (the one thing I think windows makes so much easier than linux) as the IT dept can handle that the same is true of installing hardware... for home computers though, well, it would be easier to adopt if I had friends who also used and so we could help each other and figure things out...

author mistaken?

[phreakv6]

Has the author mistaken Open standards to Open source ?
We use Open standards very much in our everyday life dont
we?
HTML, TCP/IP, GSM, PCI , XMPP ( jabber, google talk ).. etc. etc.

Re:author mistaken?

[MichaelSmith]

We use Open standards very much in our everyday life dont we?

Word, ppt, excel, smb, quicken, asf, wmv

Re:author mistaken?

[babbling]

DOC, iTunes, SWF, MOV, etc, etc.

Re:author mistaken?

[Fanboy Troy]

HTML, TCP/IP, GSM, PCI , XMPP ( jabber, google talk ).. etc. etc.

We use Open standards very much in our everyday life dont we?

Word, ppt, excel, smb, quicken, asf, wmv


Even more interesting: compare which of the above said standards actually fostered growth in technology and paved new ways of doing business:

The first set brought everyone the web, the internet, mobile phones, a plethora of choices for expansion cards, etc... all going down price-wise. Alot of opportunities of doing business also.

The second ones, well... made us have to pick certain platforms/vendors to be relevant... I don't know about everyone else, but over here the price of windows or Office is not going down! Magic food indeed.

Re:author mistaken?

[Fanboy Troy]

wmv is open standard . Microsoft has submitted it to standards body inorder to get it as one of the codecs in Blue Ray disc standard, and HD-Disc standard.

It is A standard. Not an open one with the full meaning of the word open. Can I make a GPL application that will legally play wmv files? Can I make a closed source freeware application that can play wmv files without paying a royality to microsoft? I would happily admit I am wrong if you provide me links to the opposite...

Re:author mistaken?

[TheRaven64]

DOC

Not open.

iTunes

Not a file format. iTunes does, however, work with standards such as MP3 and MP4. Neither of these are quite open, since you need to pay a small royalty to implement them. AIFF, also supported by iTunes, is open, however.

SWF

Probably counts as half-open. You are free to download the spec and implement things that write SWF files, but not things that read them.

MOV

This is an open standard, and is the official container format for MP4 bytestreams. Not all of the bytestreams embedded in MOV containers are open, however, but it is possible to put something like a Vorbis/Theora stream in one.

Re:author mistaken?

[jocknerd]

This leads to a reason why we need a new definition of what open standards mean. AAC is an open standard, because it was agreed upon by a committee and its specs were submitted. But its not free. A license for the encoder will set you back about $15K. Not open by my definition. To me, an open standard should be free of patents and licensing fees in addition to having documented specs.

Re:About Open standards

[advocate_one]

erm... we're talking about Open Standards here, NOT Open Source Software... if your software, (whether OSS or CSS) supports Open Standards, then your data cannot be locked in.

If the standard is Closed (ie proprietary), then the owner of the standard can change it and you are stuffed unless you stick with the software provided by the owner of the standard... this, of course, leaves you open to your data being held hostage subject to you remaining on the upgrade treadmill...

if you are using Open Standards and the supplier of your closed source software software goes belly up, then your data isn't held hostage or lost because someone else is highly likely to already support that same Open Standard

When you're ahead...

[Anonymous MadCoe]

I once had a standards seminar where soemone made the interresing remark that open standards only matter to companies that are behind in marketshare. Once a company is dominant they want closed standards.

Of course "open source" can hardly be defined as a company.

Re:When you're ahead...

[CRCulver]

I once had a standards seminar where soemone made the interresing remark that open standards only matter to companies that are behind in marketshare. Once a company is dominant they want closed standards.

Perhaps that can be true, but I'm inclined to think that this is no longer so sure now that ESR's thoughts in The Cathedral and the Bazaar have spread throughout the IT world. The more a company supports "open" ideas, such as open standards and open source, the more support it will get from the open source developer community. When a company is supported by open source developers, they can get a lot of unpaid labour that can push their products ahead of the crowd. Sure, certain licenses may require that the developers' contributions be available to all, but by the time competing companies implement the ideas, the first company should already have some new advantage.

If corporations want to profit from this community spirit, then they need to avoid pissing off their labour force, and so supporting open standards is a good idea.

Re:When you're ahead...

[Anonymous MadCoe]

I think there is something to say for both points of view. In some ways the "free labour" sounds tempting, on the other hand having a closed shop with "your own" developers can be much more predictable (mark the can be != is ;-) ). And in that way it is harder to profit from your investment.

And of course there are branches (like where I'm in) where things are mostly secret and the actual cost of internal development is lower than the cost of leaking information (which could just be a way of doing things).

I think in the end it mostly depends on the type of business you're in.

Starts with DRM

[Neo-Rio-101]

People are only going to awake to open standards when they realise that the digital movie or tune that they bought suddenly doesn't work anymore because the format is old, closed, and the company went bankrupt. I.e., people will only care about open standards when they run into lovely DRM more often in their daily lives.

Now, from a business point of view.... open standards is actually much harder for IT outsourcing companies to handle. Most of the employees of such companies (who are cheap) are low skill, MCSE people, and even if they aren't, they couldn't write a PERL script to save their hides. Problems start when IT head management wants to try and get these people to help troubleshoot hardware issues with FreeBSD, hack the Linux kernel, and develop and deploy untested beta software for critical systems all at MCSE skills and prices.

Not only is it hard to find people to be Open Source nuts and support open standards, but they cost more. This is where Microsoft wins out with PHBs, because at they pick cheap and fast out of the (Cheap/Fast/Quality) trinity... then they end up accepting locked standards.

Re:Starts with DRM

[Tim C]

people would be forced to either give up their library of songs from iTunes, or upgrade from WinXP to OSX rather than Vista.

You seem to be forgetting option C), namely "or not upgrade their OS at all".

Re:Starts with DRM

[VGPowerlord]

Since there is a good chance the current version of iTunes won't work on the final version of Vista, people would be forced to either give up their library of songs from iTunes, or upgrade from WinXP to OSX rather than Vista.

I can run Windows programs all the way down to ones made for Windows 3.1 on XP. Microsoft puts a lot of stock into backwards compatibility. Perhaps you should rethink that statement?

Nope!

[babbling]

No. Ordinary people still won't care, no matter which way you explain it to them. The only example they will understand is when they get burnt by it, and even then most of them probably won't realise why things are so difficult, or that they could be easier.

Open Standards

[dueyfinster]

My uncle is so non-technical, he struggles to play solitare, but I managed to get Ubuntu on to his machine, and he uses it occassionly..........for solitare.......ah well Anyway moral of the story is that I explained Open Source to him using his work: "Hey Tommy I want to tell you about Open Source, Ubuntu and why Microsoft is wrong" First I told him about Mass. Debacle.......he started to lose interest...... Then I started "Think of it as fittings, what if everyone used different ones, it would be impossible to have the right tool (He is a welder/fitter)" Then he totally got it, and went on ranting about how Americans don't use the biggest standard of them all (Metric System, that is) and why Microsoft are no differet......

You missed one...

[PinkyDead]

You're right, of course about personal usage and business usage.

But another hugely significant factor is Government/Public Sector usage. Most Governments see themselves as in it for the long term - maybe not in the form of the current administration, or even the current socioeconomic model - however, even through major changes the survival of the information is paramount. Even to the extent of a ridiculous waste of resources.

To this end, they will probably see (e.g.) Microsoft as a threat to their knowledge base - envisioning that their bureaucratic empires will long see off the demise of such structures (they have a point, as most bureaucracies are far older than any other organisation currently in existance). For this reason we are seeing more and more public sector organisations leaning towards open standards (the most prominent example of late being Massachusetts).

It is worth remembering the importance of public sector contracts to the world's economies - they have a lot of influence.

Neo: "What are you trying to tell me?" ...

[atrocious cowpat]

Neo: "What are you trying to tell me? That I can run Linux?"
Morpheus: "No, Neo. I'm trying to tell you that when you're ready, you won't have to."

Re:Maybe not this year...

[ajs318]

XML is not necessarily open. After all, it's extensible, and extensions can be proprietary. Microsoft could have a container like

<SecretProprietaryExtension>
..... loads of weirdy characters .....
</SecretProprietaryExtension>

and as long as their schema mentioned <SecretProprietaryExtension> as a valid container, then it would be valid XML. If they really wanted to arse it up for their competitors, they could describe the document entirely within the secret proprietary extension; but put in some valid-looking markup that would actually create a less-than-perfect rendering In Real Life.

Microsoft's entire business model revolves around making new versions of Office that are incompatible with previous versions, giving a few copies away for free, and thereby forcing everyone else to upgrade in order to read the files their friends have sent them. Really, it's just a form of built-in obsolescence ..... unlike hardware, you can't make software fail after a certain amount of use.