Something in the Air

For those readers (assuming I still have any) who wonder why I witter on about topics that seem distant from that exciting free software stuff, here's someone else doing it. Andy Updegrove is the best writer about standards, bar none. He's particularly sharp on the subtleties of the ODF vs OOXML ding-dong. But here he's on about something else:

Our modern shelters, it seems, are becoming more seductive than ever. Not only are on-line and other electronic entertainments negatively impacting television and print journalism, but use of public parks in the US is falling off as well, even as population continues to rise. Apparently, our affinity for the out of doors is fighting a losing battle against the delights of our electronically-enabled cocoons.

It strikes me that this is an especially inauspicious time for mankind to become less connected to the natural world. That world is increasingly under attack – by us. The more insulated we are from it, the more abstract that impact will seem. Already we know that the opportunity to brake global warming before it has catastrophic effects is rapidly slipping away. And yet we know that we are doing too little to avoid such consequences.

What we do to the earth will certainly have profound effects on humanity. But the earth is ancient and patient, and able to recover in the fullness of time – without us - from the worst that we can inflict upon it. What would be at most a slight fever for Gaia would be at best disastrous, and at worst fatal for modern civilization. There is no doubt who the winner and loser in this conflict will be.

It’s easy to think such thoughts, gazing at the stars on a windy night in the high desert. Perhaps the earth does us a favor when it holds us in the unseen grip of the wind, reminding us of our proper place in the natural order of things.

What's interesting about this for me - aside from the fact that it's beatifully written - is that it is cognate to my tangential stuff. Coincidence? I don't think so.

Geneva BRM Vote Result: It's Clearly "Zlthoy"

If anyone can make sense of what happened this week in Geneva during the BRM process it's Andy Updegrove. He has an unrivalled grasp of both standards in general and the specific background to the whole sorry business. So the fact that I don't really understand his post of what exactly the final result of the meeting was is a worrying indication that my brain has started to rot.

Here's the summary:

There are two ways in which you may hear the results of the BRM summarized by those that issue statements and press releases in the days to come. Perhaps inevitably, they are diametrically opposed, as has so often happened in the ODF - OOXML saga to date. Those results are as follows:

98.4% of the OOXML Proposed Dispositions were approved by a two to one majority at the BRM, validating OOXML

The OOXML Proposed Dispositions OOXML were overwhelmingly rejected by the delegations in attendance at the BRM, indicating the inability of OOXML to be adequately addressed within the "Fast Track" process

Oh, thanks, Andy. I think what I'm looking for here is a kind of Hegelian synthesis of those two contradictory statements.....

Get a Life? - Get a Clue

I came across the following at the weekend:

Speaking at a Microsoft-hosted event, analyst David Mitchell revealed he used to lecture police on riot control, before eventually becoming the senior vice president of IT research at Ovum. "I thought I would never come back to talking about riot control until I got into the Open XML debate," he claimed.

Mitchell said that people involved in riots fell into two camps: "decent orderly protestors and nutters", and claims that both are participating in the OOXML process. "There are a number of comments that are decent technical debate," he said. "There's also a fair amount of radical activists who are protesting just to cause disruption."

"I feel like getting hold of people and saying 'get a life'," he adds. "It's only a document format. It's just got too silly."

Only a document format?!? How can someone who's supposed to be an analyst be unaware of the larger issues? Document formats are the offline equivalent of HTML, and openness is just as critical off as on the Web. To say that "it's only a document format" misses the point entirely.

Having boiled up a nice vat of invective, I was going to lay into this wrong-headed thinking at some length, when I came across this post by Andy Updegrove, which is not only one of his best, but I would venture that it is also one of his most important. It says more less exactly what I was going to say, only rather better:

It should not go unmentioned that the stakes for society are even higher than I have thus far suggested, because the questions raised above extend beyond the field of ITC [information technology and communications]. Standards of equal importance are urgently needed in other areas as well. These will have as profound an impact on commerce and the human condition in areas such as global warming, and will tell us what we can and cannot do except at our peril, how we will determine whether we are winning or losing that battle, and how we can police ourselves from subjecting ourselves to further environmental degradation.

So it is we see that what happens in Geneva this week is about far more than whether Microsoft wins and IBM and its allies lose or vis-versa, even if that will be the superficial result. It is about fundamental human rights, about not only seizing but also securing the opportunities of the future for the benefit of all. Only by thinking clearly and deeply about these larger issues will we be able to adapt the practices of the past to meet the challenges of a future that has already arrived, whether we realize it or not.

What's Up, UOF Doc?

The battle for the soul of the document is usually presented as a two-horse race between ODF and OOXML. But that's a very parochially Western view of things - there is, after, a third format available: UOF, China's "Uniform Office Document Format", which I've written about several times before. If, like me, you were wondering what's happening in that world, he's a short update from Andy Updegrove.

Andy Updegrove on the War of the Words

The ODF/OOXML struggle has been one of the pivotal stories for the world of open source, open data and open standards. I've written about here and elsewhere many times. But the person best placed to analysis it fully from a standards viewpoint - which is what it is all about, at heart - is undoubtedly Andy Updegrove, who is one of those fine individuals obsessed with an area most people find slightly, er, soporific, and capable of making it thrilling stuff.

News that he's embarked on an e-book about this continuing saga is therefore extremely welcome: I can't imagine anyone doing a finer job. You can read the first instalment now, with the rest following in tantalising dribs and drabs, following highly-successful precedents set by Dickens and others. With the difference, of course, that this book - entitled ODF vs. OOXML: War of the Words - is about fact, not fiction, and that the events it describes have not even finished yet.

A Question of Standards

Andy Updegrove's Standards Blog is one of my favourites, because he clearly knows what he is talking about, and this means his analyses in the area of standards are highly insightful. But here's an interesting move:

In my case, this blog is the tool that I control that can project my voice the farthest. And unlike so many media channels today, its audience is not self-selected to be conservative or liberal politically. What this tells me is that I have the opportunity, and perhaps the responsibility, to use this platform when appropriate not to tell people what to think, but to raise questions that need to be thought about, and perhaps encourage others to do the same as well.

Accordingly, this is the first in a series of pieces that you can expect to appear on Mondays on an irregular basis, each introduced with the name "The Monday Witness." The topics will vary, but the common theme will be to highlight instances of action and inaction in the world today that violate widely held standards of human decency.

I think this is absolutely right: as blogs grow in importance and stature, they become an important new way of communicating with people that cut across traditional - and usually unhelpful - political lines. This doesn't mean that all bloggers should immediately starting ranting on random subjects close to their heart (besides, I already do that...), but it does open up interesting possibilities for engaging in a wider discourse.

Has Microsoft Blinked on Office formats?

Microsoft Corp's director of corporate standards has conceded that 'legitimate concerns' have been raised in response to its attempt to fast-track the approval of its Open XML format by ISO.

The level of criticism targeted at Microsoft's XML-based office productivity file formats is significant, raising the potential that Open XML might not gain ISO approval, but Microsoft's Jason Matusow insisted there is still a long way to go.

This is interesting: it's the first time that I've come across Microsoft expressing any kind of doubts about OOXML, its rival to ODF, romping home to become an ISO standard. I can only assume that there was a presumption on the company's part that for all the free software world's whingeing, the national bodies who have the right to object, wouldn't.

But they did. As Andy Updegrove explains:

14 of 20 responses were clearly negative, two indicated divisions of opinion, three were inconclusive or neutral, and one offered no objections.

This is very different from Microsoft's own summary:

"Of the 19 submissions, some are very supportive of XML and the process, some are neutral, and some had legitimate concerns that were raised."

Clearly, this is stretching the truth to breaking point. I get the impression the company's really getting worried over this one, as it begins to spin totally out of its control.

The Middle Kingdom Moves Up the Pack

I mentioned the intriguing Uniform Office Format (UOF), from China, a little while back. Here's a presentation on the subject. As well as the information about the format, two other things are worth noting from this.

First, are Chinese views on openness and intellectual monopolies. And secondly - and more importantly - is the fact that the creation of the UOF shows that China is no long content to follow its Western counterparts in this area: it has started to take the initiative - and not for the last time, we can be sure. (Via ConsortiumInfo.org.)

MA ODF: Drawing a Balance

Following his rather downbeat piece about the musical chairs in Massachusetts over bringing in ODF, Andy Updegrove has now complemented this with a nicely upbeat one detailing the net effect of all these political games. The final verdict:

ODF has had, and continues to have, a vital impact on the marketplace that is highly beneficial to all stakeholders. It's important to remember that the greatest single event that has resulted in this state of affairs was the courage of a few public servants in Massachusetts that had a vision of what the future should be, and had the courage to commit to it and follow through.

We owe them a debt of gratitude, and I think that they will be remembered long after their more pedestrian peers in state government have been forgotten.

Amen to that.

An Ode to Unicode 5.0

Andy Updegrove has a short but justified paean to the wonder that is Unicode, one of the unsung heroes/heroines of the computer revolution. Apparently version 5.0 is now available. Don't all rush to buy a copy at once.

IBM's Open Patent Policy

IBM's announcement of a new patent policy is obviously important, if only because Big Blue has a big collection of the critters. Whether it will do much to help fix a deeply broken system is another matter:

The worldwide policy, built on IBM's long-standing practices of high quality patents and transparency of ownership, is designed to foster integrity, a healthier environment for innovation, and mutual respect for intellectual property rights. IBM encouraged others in the patent community to adopt similar policies and practices, more stringent than currently required by law.

For a good first analysis, see Andy Updegrove's blog.

Update 1: And here's a salutary reminder from Andy on why it's best to get all the facts before you express your enthusiasm.

Update 2: Richard Poynder also makes some good points about the move.

Emoticonatronic

I'd have expected this news about a new Emotion Incubator Group at the W3C to have been released on the 1st April:

Emotion-oriented (or "affective") computing is gaining importance as interactive technological systems become more sophisticated. Representing the emotional states of a user or the emotional states to be simulated by a user interface requires a suitable representation format. Although several non-standard markup languages containing elements of emotion annotation have been proposed, none of these languages have undergone thorough scrutiny by emotion researchers, nor have they been designed for generality of use in a broad range of application areas.

Well done Andy Updegrove for spotting this: quiet day at the office, Andy?

Anti-ODF Stuff Turns Nasty

With his customary sharpness, Andy Updegrove skewers a particularly nasty piece of lobbyist punditry. The statement in question manages to twist the news that Massachusetts is calling for an ODF plug-in for Microsoft Office - an eminently sensible thing to do, which the open source world is keen to support - into some kind of act of desperation.

It then goes on:

the Massachusetts ODF policy ... is a biased, open source only preference policy. We believe such preference policies exclude choice, needlessly marginalize successful marketplace options, and curtail merit-based selections for state procurements. In short, they disserve citizens who demand cost-effective solutions for their hard-earned tax dollars.

This is rich. It is factually incorrect - there is no open source only preference policy; it is hyperbolic - the idea of Microsoft Office being "marginalised" is droll, to say the least, as is the idea that "successful marketplace options" deserve to have their near-monopolies preserved; and ultimately (wilfully) misses the point, which is that a truly open standard is the only way to guarantee future access to files, the only way to allow competition among software manufacturers, and so the only way to provide "choice" and the "merit-based", "cost-effective" solution the statement purports to espouse.

A Question of Standards

Good to see Andy Updegrove's blog getting Slashdotted. This is good news not just for him, but also for his argument, which is that open source ideas are expanding into new domains (no surprise there to readers of this blog), and that traditional intellectual property (IP) models are being re-evaluated as a result.

Actually, this piece is rather atypical, since most of the posts are to do with standards, rather than open source or IP (though these are inevitably bound up with standards). Andy's blog is simply the best place to go for up-to-the-minute information on this area; in particular, he is following the ODF saga more closely - and hence better - than anyone. In other words, he's not just reporting on standards, but setting them, too.

ODF Gets Interestinger

Who would have thought file formats could be such fun?

The great battle over whether the OpenDocument format should be adopted in Massachusetts has taken another dramatic turn with the appointment of a successor to Peter Quinn, the man who took most of the flak for introducing the policy in the first place.

What's most striking is that the press release announcing the new CIO goes out of its way to emphasise that he will be "responsible for overseeing the final stages of implementation of the state's new Open Document format proposal, to go into effect in January 2007" (via Andy Updegrove's Standards Blog). In other words, all the talk about how the ODF decision was being rolled back was premature, to say the least.

Microsoft is unlikely to take this lying down - too much is at stake. If it loses Massachusetts in this way, it will create a terrible precedent for the company. It will reveal that that there is, in fact, life after Microsoft Office. And once users start to experience the huge benefits of employing open formats - freedom from vendor lock-in, the ability to deploy a range of different applications on several platforms, easy archiving etc. - the trickle of defections will soon become positively Amazonian.

Expect things to get even more interestinger.