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International Call for Open Standards
Posted by
Zonk
on Fri Sep 09, 2005 08:26 AM
from the tools-for-everybody dept.
from the tools-for-everybody dept.
tengu1sd writes "The New York Times is carrying a report urging nations to adopt open-information technology standards as 'a vital step to accelerate economic growth, efficiency and innovation'. Sponsored by The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, it also points out that 'open technology standards - the digital equivalent of a common gauge for railroad tracks - are not the same thing as open-source software. Open source is a development model for software in which code is freely shared and improved by a cooperative network of programmers'. This leaves room for companies willing to accept standards, but closes the door to companies unwilling to play nice."
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Was that... (Score:5, Funny)
No it was Balmer heaving his desk out the window... er... windows...
Re:Was that... (Score:3, Funny)
I was expecting the article to say, "this effort is being driven by [head of something] at Microsoft".
The way it should be! (Score:3, Insightful)
Standards just wont happen (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Standards just wont happen (Score:5, Insightful)
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EU standards (Score:5, Funny)
Not sure about your driving example.
The EU was suposed to bring about many common standards for trade, but dispite EU harmonisation
The British still drive on the left,
the French still drive on the right, and
the Italians still drive on both.
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closed standards (Score:4, Insightful)
Magic vs. Science (Score:5, Insightful)
The big change that permitted science to flourish was the willingness to share information. Because the information was shared, progress was not limited to what one person could create.
The failure to use Open Standards won't send us back to the dark ages. But it will slow progress down as each proprietary standard sets up a roadblock.
The failure to follow standards should be punished in some way. Using basic economics isn't fast, but it will work in the long run.
Re:Magic vs. Science (Score:5, Interesting)
Not really, the big change came mainly out of stealing information & ignoring patents (The last one because of differences in laws between countries and some wars). Those two inspired more companies to license their inventions to others so that they at least would earn some money, and set a minimum productprice which due to the license was hopefully equal or higher to what they sold themselves.
I think reforms in the educational system of basic science (Darwin, math, economics) made the changes possible. At this moment there are still limits on information causing lots of reinventions just to get were a company or country wants to go, for example nuclear technology.
So far the economics of closed standards worked pretty good, but only for companies which license their standards to others. The ones who did not and became to powerful, have been hit by lawsuits (IBM, Microsoft ea). Still those are the ones who set industry standards with their closed products. Licensing it in a more fair way would most likely have prevented the MS lawsuits, while they could (they still can at this moment) control the standards, and stay ahead of the curve.
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Open standards and competition (Score:3, Insightful)
If you run a small grocery, you will typically be outpriced by the large grocery chain down the block, but can keep business by offering your customers other services that keep them coming back. If you make widgets, it's better to be either the cheapest widget provider or the widget provider with the highest quality. In a competition where price and quality are the deciding features, it's best to pick one extreme and go for it.
So what happens with software? If everyone implements open standards, it limits the implementation to the limits of the standard. Ideally, you'd have a flexible enough standard that implementing cool ideas is no more of a break from the standard than implementing the standard verbatim. But for a company that leads the field by a large margin, it doesn't make sense to open up to standards and thus open the doors for your customers to leave the barn. Keep them locked in, and keep providing them with superior product. They will never have the need to switch to another product so long as their needs are met, and they would have a tough time switching anyway as their current data isn't easily transferrable to a new system, no matter how open that new system may be.
I'm of the opinion that companies ought to do what they want with regards to standards. It doesn't matter what package you are using, if the one you are using satisfies your needs. Open standards hardly ever make or break a deal.
Re:Open standards and competition (Score:5, Insightful)
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Non-IT Companies that Rely on IT (Score:4, Interesting)
This isn't about OSS (Score:4, Insightful)
Open standards and Open Source have nothing to do with each other. There is plenty of closed source software that supports open standards.
India's been doing this for ages... (Score:4, Interesting)
Methinks after Massachusets, very slowly people in the 'First World' are waking up to this fact.
Be careful what you ask for ... (Score:5, Interesting)
The ARPA internet suite was not then recognised as a standard because no accepted international standards body (essentially ISO or CCITT) had published the standards. Eventually some of us* managed to convince the Joint Network Team of the Computer Board that TCP/IP would do what was required and the "coloured book" standards wouldn't and then within 2 years almost all the universities were in line with the rest of the world. (and we could get networking standard that didn't have to be custom written for the UK).
* Some claim that it was a document that I wrote for our JNT contact that finally forced the change.
Re:Be careful what you ask for ... (Score:5, Interesting)
In short, the important distinction is between "open" and "closed", not between "standards" and "non-standards".
So implementing open specifications is good. Insistence on Standards, as you say, can be a mixed blessing.
Parent
Much more important than open source (Score:5, Interesting)
We need clear definitions from the Media... (Score:3, Insightful)
From TFA:
An ignorant reader who was reading this article might assume that all open-source software was "free as in beer", whereas we all (should) know that not all open-source software falls into that niche. I would hazard a guess and say that most governments would probably be using OSS that included tech support, ergo not free as in beer. While OSS is a good thing (in my mind), I don't want everyone thinking they can get it without any cost, because then they'll be disappointed.Likewise, what is the definition of "standard"? From dictionary.com:
Now, I know this may cause a potential flame war, but isn't it pretty clear that Microsoft (mostly) fits that bill? Obviously many will hit me with "Yeah, except for the excellence part..." and I'll concede that Microsoft Office does not always work propertly. However, it is the most widely recognized and employed office software. Does that not make it seem that Office "is" a standard? I work at a government research lab and everything we do has to be compatible with MS Office.Sure, everyone wants to crush Microsoft into the ground, but realistically (if I can be so bold as to actually talk realistically), does anyone think we can actually get ENOUGH people to stop using Office that *.doc files will cease to be the standard? I honestly think we're better off trying to find a way to get Microsoft to give developers the information they need to develop software based on the Microsoft standard. Oh yes, I know, that's blasphemy and my karma is now lower than Lucifer's, but if you stop and think for a moment you'll realize that it's the logical and realistic choice.
This was begun in 1969 (Score:4, Funny)
Author: Steve Crocker
Installation: UCLA
Date: 7 April 1969
Network Working Group Request for Comment: 1
Patent Pools Threaten 'Open' Standards (Score:4, Interesting)
Some 'licensing' companies (e.g. Via Licensing [vialicensing.com] and MPEG LA [mpegla.com]) will, if a standard looks like it will get some significant use in the market, make a 'call for patents', which means they ask anyone with a patent who thinks their patent would have some 'essentiality' to any implementation that used the standard to submit their patent for review. If one of these 'licensing' companies thinks the patent would apply generally to any system or application implementation that would make use of the standard, they add that patent with others of like merits to a 'patent pool' and then go after anyone using the standard to demand license fees for the pool. In this fashion, any open standard becomes a candidate for such companies to essentially leech off the standard and thereby prevent open, as in fee-less, use of the standard.
Open standards, then, face two hurdles beyond the technical ones. First, the well-known business interest some companies have in keeping their formats proprietary so you will not stop using their systems or software. Second, the less well-known, but growing legal problems with those who want to profit from the patent system without adding any real value in terms of standard creation or implementations. Open standards remain a good technical goal and we should pursue them, but this underscores some of the challenges to keep in mind.
Open source would eventually win (Score:4, Insightful)
That said, open standards means open source will eventually win. As word processing formats (a la what's happen in MA) become standard, then the software will become commoditized. It's the end of MS Office's reign. OpenOffice can and will quickly implement the standard, and no one would have a reason to use MS Office anymore.
Open standards are the death knell for MS's monopoly, and they know it. Expect MS to fight tooth and nail every step of the way.
Once we have open standards and everyone is coding to that standard, the consume will win. The consumer will have choice and competition will make the software smaller, faster, more secure, and more plentiful.
Good idea, but hard to apply. (Score:5, Interesting)
Mp3s have become the standard because of increased compression, but it also loses some quality in some people's minds but for the most part almost everyone can use them.
The problem with these standards is they were lucky. How many formats have been moved out of the way for Mp3s? (wav, ogg, aac just to name a couple) How many Movie Formats have come out after AVI? (ASF, WMV, OGG, MKV, and others)
See the problem is this. How do we establish a standard? The fact is standards are adopted, not created. It's great that you want to standardize the interoperability of goverments or coporations, but if the standards arn't up to snuff the standards arn't worth the time it takes to think about it.
The problem is thus, we need standards but open source standards arn't always as efficent, or even work. Standards NEED to be made by how useful the program or the protocol is, not how cheap it is to get. It's great to try to use them when we can, but there's some areas where it's not ready for prime time.
And then there's the other problem open standards tell everyone who wants to know how it works, this is a double edged sword. It's great everyone can link up with it, but someone who wants to create trouble can read it and figure out a way to get into the system itself.
I'm sorta glad we don't have certain groups relying on open formats for this reason. The groups that protect our finances, and our country. But the fact is that I've yet to see a national industry go and use only Open Source options and continue to thrive, and there's obviously reasons for that.
Re:A new trend? (Score:3, Insightful)
"open technology standards - the digital equivalent of a common gauge for railroad tracks - are not the same thing as open-source software."
Did you miss something here? This isn't about OSS.
Re:Play nice? (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re:Play nice? (Score:4, Interesting)
"especially one driven by the need for short term profits such as ours"
My favorite example is the Internet. Go back into the 80's, and we had TheSource, GEnie, Prodigy, CompuServe, AOL, etc, all vying to be THE online provider. They were ALL trying to own the whole pie.
Yet that very act of attempting exclusive ownership is what made each of those pies rather small. Then the Internet came along, the pie that couldn't be owned, and it GREW. The only one of those early ISPs that's still around in any significant way is AOL, the one who did the best job of embracing the idea of owning it's piece of a much bigger pie.
Even after that example, American business didn't learn. I swear that they all look at the big pie called the Internet, and say, "I want to OWN that pie," and just can't realize that non-ownership is an essential property. Witness instant messaging, streaming media, or any other Internet add-on.
So perhaps you're right, and Utopian ideals of open standards just won't happen in today's society. In that case NOTHING big will happen, we'll just have a collection of little pies.
Microsoft's ownership of the PC OS is/was an aberration, and they're trying like all get-out to extend that aberration into everything they can get their hands on. But it's still an aberration, a refusal to allow THEIR products to become commodities, while driving everything surrounding them in that direction.
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