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Internet Standards Groups Unite Behind Open Processes
alphadogg writes in with an excerpt from Network World:"Five leading Internet standards bodies have joined together to articulate a set of guidelines for the creation of open standards that they say will foster continued innovation, competition and interoperability in the Internet industry. The IEEE, the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), the IETF, the Internet Society and the World Wide Web Consortium hammered out the language for their five basic principles for standards development over the course of the last few months. Dubbed 'OpenStand,' these lofty principles are envisioned as a modern paradigm for global, open standards development processes. The OpenStand principles are in sharp contrast to the more formal, government-driven efforts of rival standards bodies such as the International Telecommunication Union, which is an arm of the United Nations, and the International Organization for Standardization, a group of national standards bodies."
Although the principles generally seem reasonable, they made no stand against patents in standards: "Standards specifications are made accessible to all for implementation and deployment. Affirming standards organizations have defined procedures to develop specifications that can be implemented under fair terms. Given market diversity, fair terms may vary from royalty-free to fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory terms (FRAND)."
But maybe some one could send a copy to ISO and let them know how it is done.
http://xkcd.com/927/
But seriously, so, now we're defining metastandards? Could somebody please explain the implications of this?
So long as there are proprietary strings attached to the implementation of a "standard", it (in my view) can in no way be described as "open".
this debate serves no purpose.
Why is Slashdot posting so many comedy articles lately ?
Apparently nobody reads Padlipsky anymore.
"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." -- Donald Knuth
"Don't be a douchebag."
If the internet were based on this very simple notion of resolving our differences in a civilized fashion, and having honest and intelligent debate, 98% of this kind of crap would go away. Now if you'll excuse me, there's a single mother getting uppity about her uterus rights on Facebook, and I have a three o'clock with some mormons on a website to ask how magnets work.
*puffs up chest* *whoosh* *flies away*
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Of course they made no stand against patents. That would do nothing but alienate the very companies they want adopting and helping to develop the standards. Otherwise they'll just go to ITU, ISO or roll their own which makes things even worse. These groups do not care about the GNU manifesto or furthering your war against patents.
Considering I have to pay for IEEE standards I would not consider them open and their involvement makes this group a
joke.
(F)RAND standards cannot deliver a level playing field for participants in the software market. Most (F)RAND standards require a royalty fee to be paid for each copy of a program that is distributed. This is eminently impossible for Free Software, which anyone may copy and distribute as they choose. It also clashes with the prohibition on additional restrictions imposed by the GNU General Public License, the most widely used Free Software license. (F)RAND standards also discriminate against Free Software distributed under "permissive" licenses that allow proprietary implementations, since they often lack a central body which could successfully negotiate for a patent license. This is likely to pit small implementers against large, well-resourced patent holders, resulting anti-competitive terms.
Looking on the bright side, though, I've patented /dev/zero. I'm going to sell your own zeroes back to you, at 1p per megabyte. I'm offering a discount if you buy a gigabyte of zeroes all at once.
That'd be a savings from ten pounds of naughts.
Oh, I'm sorry sir, I thought you were referring to me, Mr. Wensleydale.
Don't miss the forest for the trees. Yes, it would be nice if we did not have to worry about patents, but this is not the fight we are in today. The enemy is censorship and state control, and that's what countries like China and Russia are pushing through the ITU. They want the ITU to take control of the Internet, and they want to make the ITU standards mandatory. You see how this can lead to mandatory to implement surveillance functions, censorship and the like.The ITU standards are approved through a "one country one vote" process.
If you think ISO is corrupt, you have not met the ITU -- lavish offices, sinecures for bureaucrats, political intrigue, secret processes, pay-to-read standards, you name it. And they of course allow for all kinds of patent fees, as seen for example in H.264.
Let's please focus on liberty for now, not be randomized by the patent issue.
Here is an "open" IEEE wifi standard hidden behind a paywall not to mention the nasty patents attached to it. If they really care about openness, licence their existing standards under CC.
One standard to rule them all, One index to find them,
One group to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
As far as I can tell, the whole point of this "OpenStand" posturing is to oppose Russian and Chinese posturing that the ITU ought to handle Internet governance issues and standards (see here for example). So, yeah, it's not aimed at ISO specifically, but it is aimed in that sort of general direction.
Unless there is inherently a barrier to entry (there is non in developing software for the internet), FRAND is self contradictory, since if it has *any* payment or can be blocked (see WoW and Iran) or requires specific agreements (if each router has to ask the copyright owner if they can copy this packet, the internet WILL NOT WORK and the copyright owners will never get any work done for all the requests), then it WILL be unfair and discriminate against the member of the public who wishes to write their own software to interoperate.
FRAND for internet standards are self-contradictory.
Why, precisely, is that wrong?
And don't give me this crap about how you have to pay for food. Why is it wrong for internet standards to be REQUIRED free of all encumberance?
And, given that the internet industry is based off FOSS and patent free standards, "the industry" is telling you twats that you can't have your patents in our internet.
Anything that says "lofty principles are envisioned as a modern paradigm" has fail written all over it.
Here is your big chance to go your own way again.