Let My Standards Go

It has always seemed something of irony to me that many key standards, essential pre-requisites for open technology, have often required payment before you can access them. Well, it seems that those produced by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) will now be freely available:

Offering standards for free is a significant step for the standards community as well as the wider information and communication technologies (ICT) industry. Now, anyone with Internet access will be able to download one of over 3000 ITU-T Recommendations that underpin most of the world's ICT. The move further demonstrates ITU's commitment to bridging the digital divide by extending the results of its work to the global community.

(Via James Governor's Monkchips.)

The Answer to Microsoft's Wrong Question

Here's an interesting question, posed by a Microsoft lawyer called Horatio Gutierrez to James Governor:

“If Microsoft can’t bundle an audio player with Windows, why can Nokia bundle a camera with a phone?”

It's interesting because it lays bare the fallacy at the heart of Microsoft's arguments against the current EU anti-trust action, which it claims are a brake on "innovation". It treats the addition of the Windows Media Player as if it were just another feature, like a camera added to a mobile. But it's not.

When Microsoft bundles WMP, it effectively establishes its own proprietary multimedia standards, because of Windows' dominance. When Nokia adds a camera, it is simply offering the same as everyone else - there are no new standards involved. This is what Microsoft conveniently forgets: that everything it produces is proprietary - and that this is problem here, just as it was with Internet Explorer.

To see this, consider the case of Microsoft bundling a standards-based media player - supporting MP3, and OGG, say. See? There's no problem - it's like adding, say, a standards-based camera to a phone. Just like Nokia does.

SOPERA: Beyond the SOA Soap Opera

I'm not the biggest fan of the SOA idea, which I find rather modish and ripe for being replaced by the next buzzword du jour, but I can hardly disagree with the second part of this statement:

„SOA und Open Source sind zwei der wichtigsten Trends in der IT. Die Verbindung von beiden bringt Unternehmen mehr Flexibilität bei geringeren Kosten“, sagt Ricco Deutscher.

["SOA and open source are two of the most important trends in IT. Bringing them together offers businesses more flexibility for lower costs," says Ricco Deutscher.]

Herr Deutscher is the CEO of the new company Sopera GmbH, which has just done something rather fine:

Deutsche Post World Net places SOA platform with Eclipse

IT service provider SOPERA will drive forward development of the platform at Eclipse

Bonn, 15 May 2007: After already announcing in April that it plans to make its SOA platform also available to other companies by the end of the year, Deutsche Post World Net has now secured a key basis for development with the Eclipse Foundation .

...

Deutsche Post’s IT service provider, SOPERA GmbH, will play a leading role in further development of the platform as a board member of the Eclipse Foundation. SOPERA managing director Dr. Ricco Deutscher describes the development perspectives: “It’s all about establishing an open-source, modular and standard-based SOA platform as part of a future open source stack.

This is good news for everyone, and emphasises how pivotal Eclipse is becoming - not just for open source, but computing in general. (Via James Governor's Monkchips.)

Not One God: No God

A strange post here from the usually perceptive James Governor:

One of my current hobby horses is that we the industry needs to move beyond good vs evil, manichaen black vs white, beyond the single answer to a problem. Our monoetheism does us no favours. A more polytheistic sense, of using the right tools for the job, and being in mastery, bringing a more distributed spirituality into our technology saturated lives. And document formats seems an obvious place for that kind of thinking. One true format? What do we need that for and what god are we worshipping? What are the problems we’re trying to solve?

Well, how about breaking lock-in in the Office market? How about trying to create a level playing-field so there are lots of solutions - not just one, as now (that's monotheism)? How about creating a truly open standard that is not controlled by one company, and that can grow according to the needs and desires of users?

And saying, well, let's have two standards, doesn't cut it for purely pragmatic reasons. Unless Microsoft's monopoly on the desktop is broken, it will continue; unless ODF becomes the single, global, open standard, Microsoft's pretend open standards will continue to exert their vice-like grip on the market, sustained through sheer inertia from a time when there was no alternative. Now there is.

ODF in itself is nothing special, except that it is truly open, and backed now by enough users and companies to be viable. Its main function is to create the conditions for competition and network effects to kick in. It is not so much a god that has to be worshipped, as a landscape in which things can be built.

Not one god, not two gods, but no gods.

An Open Letter to Our Tone

Yup.