I’m speaking in Geneva this morning at the Open Forum Europe Conference “Standards and the Future of the Internet.” Here are the slides I’m using: “Raising the Quality Threshold of Standards Development” in PDF format.
Update: This evening I’m on a panel and I’m going to use a few of the points from my industry priority lists for standards and open source (9 of the unique 19). The information is already online, but I would be happy to put the slides up here if anyone wants them.
On your spectrum of what makes a good and bad standard you do not mention IPR: whether or not the standard (or standards organisation) permits a company to contribute patented intellectual property to the standard and, if so, under what conditions. Not being able to contribute protected intellectual property to a standard makes some companies less willing to work with the standards bodies. Being able to contribute protected intellectual property makes other companies unwilling to use a standard. Do you not consider this a factor in whether a standard (or standards body) is good or bad?
Chris, on those two slides, I just chose some of the items from the longer list and rephrased them. I tried to word them as being “obviously bad” or “obviously good.” In the larger discussion during the actual talk, I stressed how a number of things were relative.
For example, a good regional standard might not work as a global standard, and could therefore might be considered a poor quality global standard. IP considerations vary by what part of the industry you are considering. There is no “one size fits all” policy. I was at a conference in Warsaw several weeks ago where a panelist from Philips asserted that most healthcare standards are royalty free, and RAND standards simply would not fly there (I am not an expert in that area and he was asserting this about a particular area). If you try to charge royalties in a standards area that is royalty-free, I think others could argue that the “IP quality” of that standard is not good.
There’s a built-in tension between “An established business, well-capitalised, and with an asset-backed business model”, and “A start-up business, with a service-based business model”.
The source code for OS/2, and the source code for Lotus SmartSuite, and a production line for IBM Personal Computers, are examples of ‘assets’. But they seem to be worth nothing any more to IBM.
Serenity Systems are selling copies of OS/2, and Lenovo now have control of the old IBM Personal Computer production line; the assets are worth something to those businesses. There will be a little more revenue to IBM from SmartSuite; but not much, now that http://symphony.lotus.com/ is in town, and IBM is putting its backing behind a standard that SmartSuite does not aspire to meet. Is there another business like Serenity Systems that might take Lotus SmartSuite off IBM’s hands ? Is there a price IBM would sell for, taking a capital sum to exit the business ?
So, IBM now sells Linux Services and Lotus Notes service. (I guess IBM remarkets Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office, but you’d only come to IBM for those as part of a larger solution.)
It comes down to a question of how a corporation may legitimately use its capital; bringing OOXML before ISO could be viewed as ’spending marketing dollars’, and Microsoft certainly has a lot of dollars that can be spent on marketing.
Is it legitimate, though ? Are Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office growable, or would it be better for the world if they passed into history along with IBM OS/2 and IBM Lotus SmartSuite ?
It’s not ‘competition from IBM products’ that will take them out. It’s ‘commoditisation and market saturation’.
It depends, Chris, on whether you think a standard creates a market or preserves one. Obviously, one can do both. In the case of ODF or OOXML, a market is being preserved, that of the exchange of print document-type content. Being displayable online isn’t of interest unless persistence and linking online are at issue as well. I think of both of those standards as dodo standards but worth preserving.
What is of interest is advancement. IOW, which of the standards would be creating market by advancing the technologies they standardize? I suspect that for some n of advancement, both and neither.
The longer the OOXML vs ODF dust up goes on, the less interesting it becomes except for the heat generated by the opponents sort of like watching high school football. Neither represents innovation or advancement. They are status quo standards for status quo markets. IOW, they are both already standards for commodity markets with one having a disproportionately larger share of the existing market. This is where the ‘all you need is ODF’ argument falls apart. If the commoditization is already a fact, then the logical choice is the standard with the greatest share of the market given there isn’t that much innovation coming for either of them.
IP does make a difference, IMO. The fact of citations for procurements levies costs, but in the case of these particular standards, IP is paid by the vendors and then passed on. Given roughly equal necessary features, the market will smooth that out into noise costs.
I think of OOXML as being rather like EBCDIC, the data representation on punch-cards. And ODF as being rather like ASCII, the data representation on paper-tape.
In order for the industry as a whole to make progress (about 30 years ago), it was necessary for ‘all the other players’ to gather together and decide that the IBM monopoly of punch-card-based data processing was unsuitable for a ‘consensus’ standard. As soon as that happened, the end was in sight for punch-cards.
We have moved on somewhat since then. The industry isn’t quite as US-centric; first Europe, then Japan, then China, have become rich enough markets to sell to (Saudi Arabia, Australia, and pretty much everywhere else too; but the important steps in data representation are USA-Europe-Japan-China); and we have lost paper tape as well as punch-cards.
Moving on would be good; but you do have to resolve the question of ‘moving on with OOXML as an ISO standard’ or ‘moving on without OOXML as an ISO standard’. The game of high-school football, as you call it, has to end with a win for one side or the other. For me, ISO26300 ODF XML is fine; I can work with it on mainframes, personal computers, and playstations; and I don’t have to buy any particular vendor’s tools to work with it. Google, Sun, IBM, and several universities are all willing to supply them at no charge.
It’s rather frustrating that governments, schools, and clients make documents available to me in Microsoft-only formats, and want that kind of document back ; ‘.doc’ at the moment, but likely to progress unthinkingly to ‘.docx’ . If I’m heads-down on an infrastructure machine running Linux, it can be a rather large gear-change to get myself to the point where I can do anything with a Microsoft-formatted document. Clients pay the bills, so I do it gladly if they want; governments and schools should at least offer ISO26300 (and a link to a no-charge document editor such as http://symphony.lotus.com/ ), like they offer PDF (and a link to Adobe Acrobat) and HTML (and a link to FireFox).
The game of Monopoly is over; we should now be watching the ‘list price’ of Microsoft Office rise steadily as it heads towards obsolescence. Risk, and Diplomacy, are the next games to play from the toy cupboard.
So what’s going on at the BRM ? Are they resolving anything, or just agreeing to differ ? I guess all will be revealed Friday evening.
We’re watching.
Hopefully the BRM is being run tight enough to do their work in peace without the catcalling. They seemed to have learned their lesson. Transparency in a mud fight doesn’t last long.
The monopoly argument is hard to treat as other than a distraction. With MS opening up the formats to a standard, they’ve done the best that a dominant competitor can do. I don’t expect anyone here to accept that, but I think in the larger market, it is accepted that MS is playing better with others and doing the right thing regards current and future customers.
In the medium term, both formats will continue to exist. Whether the one with less market share advances or not, the argument that the MS-originated format isn’t open enough or standard enough will evaporate from serious consideration in procurements. With the exception of the ODF community, everyone else will have gotten what they wanted. At that point, the arguments just sound shrill.
@Len : “the logical choice is the standard with the greatest share of the market”
The greatest share of the market is currently hold by the MS binary formats… Between ODF and OOXML, the greatest share of the market is hold by ODF.
MS-OOXML is progressing fast (thanks to the MS monopoly), but is far from being a standard yet (MS-OOXML is not ECMA-OOXML, and nobody knows yet what ISO-OOXML, if it exists a day, will look like).
This is where the ‘all you need is OOXML’ argument falls apart.
@Len “I think in the larger market, it is accepted that MS is playing better with others and doing the right thing”
Just ask to the EU Commission what they think about your statement… It is worth $1.3 billion.
@Luc:
I think you misread Len’s statement. I guess what he meant to say was “MS is playing better with others than they used to do”. ;)
There is not means to reason with mania. The anti-MS groups will be shrill and the pro-ODF groups will have to ‘denounce or reject’ them or live with it. The same is so except the pro-MS forces aren’t anti-ODF so they don’t tend to be shrill. Movements tend to work to the favor of a side until the time when the core of it is shown to be hollow. Then the mass turns on the core and eviscerates it. Caveat vendor.
The good news is from what I am reading at Tim Bray’s blog where he is reporting on the style of the BRM, the need to keep it orderly and professional seems to be working. Good for Alex Brown and ISO. As I said, I don’t care too much about these standards because they are dodo standards, but I care very much about the standards organizations and their ability to perform in the face of the various forms of mania that have been infesting technology markets since the rise of the web. The style of the BRM, if not the specific work items, indicate some maturity in some groups emerging. One hopes it takes root and spreads.
Len, I agree with your last post. But please don’t confuse anti-MS and anti-abusive monopoly groups.
I was ashamed by IBM’s behaviour in the 80’s, when they abused their monopoly, and applauded DoJ and Microsoft actions at this time, that managed to break the monopoly. Currently, the abusive monopoly company is MS, and I applaud actions from many other people, including EU, IBM and Google, to break this monopoly.
And I recommend that everybody remains awake and makes sure that Google does not become the next abusive monopoly.
There are laws to deal with abusive monopolies and yes it tends to be who can hire the most lawyers when it comes down to results. On the other hand, MS has been pushed pretty hard in the last decade to give up the pirate flag and join Her Majesty’s Royal Forces or whatever flag is flying. I suspect the EU may be overdriving their headlights with the last fine, but let’s see how that goes. The problem is not one of ‘following the rules’ but following different rules in different jurisdictions with a mob of “DIE MS SO WE CAN BE NUMBER ONE!” zealots on their tails. Well that is simply business on the web these days.
I am not a believer in the Wisdom of Mobs. Endorphin addiction is a real problem.
That said, my worry is damage done to ISO. It seems that they have handled this well, but until IBM starts opening all of its corporate board meetings to the mobs and their competitors, I think I can overlook the ‘transparency at any cost’ arguments. Sometimes the cost is too high and is paid as collateral damage. That is when shutting the doors and using the gavel is the right thing to do.
Oops, I just checked in my dictionary and noticed that I misused the word “ashamed” above (I’m not a native English speaker). I’ve never had any contractual relationship with IBM, so there is no reason to be personally ashamed.
I meant in fact “scandalised” (provided this is correct English) or “shocked”.
IBM’s eventual response to its ‘monopoly’ position was ‘keep all prices high enough that every business is profitable’; i.e. it limited the discounts it was willing to give.
And when no-one will buy at the IBM price, sell the business to someone else. Witness Personal Computers and OS/2.
IBM also eliminated a number of other practices; for example quoting a ‘discount for every’; now, it is a ‘discount for quantity’. If Microsoft were to move away from offering a discount if a school pays for every Personal Computer, to a discount based on the number of Personal Computers a school chose to licence, that would go a long way to allay my fears for the next generation of schoolkids. There are alternatives !
We’ll see.