Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Networking Communications IT Hardware

International Call for Open Standards 177

Posted by Zonk 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."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

International Call for Open Standards More

International Call for Open Standards

Comments Filter:

  • Was that... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Sfing_ter ( 99478 ) on Friday September 09, 2005 @09:29AM (#13518140) Homepage Journal
    The sound of a door slamming shut at Microsloth?
    No it was Balmer heaving his desk out the window... er... windows...
    • The sound of a door slamming shut at Microsloth?

      I was expecting the article to say, "this effort is being driven by [head of something] at Microsoft".
    • I doubt it. Anytime something pushes for open standards but not open source they are really pushing for technologies BASED on open standards. This means Microsoft has been there.

      For instance, Microsoft claims that because MSXML is based on XML it is using an open standard. Or because Active directory is based on LDAP and Kerberos that it is using open standards. The Microsoft version is entirely proprietary but politicians and CTO's miss that point.
    • Someone yelling "I'm going to fucking kill Harvard" was also heard echoing in the building...

  • The way it should be! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 09, 2005 @09:29AM (#13518144)
    One of the first things you learn at school is to play nice together, or else you don't play at all. The sooner "big business" learns this lesson, the better!

  • Standards just wont happen (Score:3, Insightful)

    by mbelly ( 827938 ) on Friday September 09, 2005 @09:30AM (#13518146)
    If the 'real world' is anything like the place I work. Standards are a dream, that will never come to be, because everyone likes do do things "their way".

    • Re:Standards just wont happen (Score:5, Insightful)

      by cyborg_zx ( 893396 ) on Friday September 09, 2005 @09:35AM (#13518184)
      But standards *do* happen. There are just too many areas in life that would become totally inoperable if everyone did things differently. Like driving for example. But then having a standard doesn't necessarially mean 'everyone is uniform' - in this context it usually just means everyone can understand the interface or specification for your standard without needing the use of dowsing, divine revelation, mediums or perhaps reverse engineering to work with that interface of specification.

      • EU standards (Score:5, Funny)

        by SomethingOrOther ( 521702 ) on Friday September 09, 2005 @10:25AM (#13518530) Homepage

        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.

      • It just makes life easier. All we need is:

        Syntax meta-language (EBNF)
        Consistent binary codes and endianness (EOF etc.)
        Plain text system (UTF)
        Compression/archive schemes (gzip/tar)
        Interpretable/compilable scripting language (Java/Javascript?)
        Behavioral framework (Flash/scripting)
        Network protocol (IPV6)
        Wireless and wired specifications
        Font system (TrueType) and common universal generic fonts (unicode serif, sans-serif, mono)
        Database/framework format (XML, SQLite, tar-directory)
        Reference system (UML and DOI)
        H
    • I think that this is a dream, because in the real life, pattents do exist.

      How can you create an open standard when pattents are designed to prevent the use of key design aspects in open projects?

      There should be a kind of coherency between political decisions (suggested by lobbies), and reality...

      • The new GPL will try to address that.
        It's not a bad idea to only play with people that play nice with you.
      • How can you create an open standard when pattents are designed to prevent the use of key design aspects in open projects?

        Well, we've seen proposals for patent encumbered standards rejected by some governing bodies before now. That's a good thing, and as awareness of the problem increases, I think we can expect to see it happen more and more.

        It doesn't help against submarine patents, but really, it is the patents that are unrealistic here and not the idea of open standards. It just means we have two se

    • So does your workplace not use ethernet?

      How about 19" racks? Surely you don't use 16" racks.

      Do you use PCI-based computers, or did your company want to make its own bus technology?

      SVGA or DVI-based monitors, or did you guys make your own display technology?

      Do your computers understand ASCII?

      Admittedly, those are all computer-based questions, so here's one that applies pretty much everywhere. Does nothing in your workplace use mass-manufactured bolts or screws?

      I don't know where you work, but if it has no
      • And just think about the ongoing waste for having metric and non-metric bolts and screws (and tools to work them).

        As an American- I wish we would get over it and go to metric. They were on the right track for a while (when street signs had Km as well as Miles) but they seem to be fading.

    • So you don't use TCP/IP to connect computers together or to connect to the Internet, you don't use standards like SMTP/POP3 to send/receive e-mail, you don't use standards like HTTP to access the Web, your networking hardware doesn't use 802.3 or 802.11 standards, your storage hardware doesn't use IDE/SATA/SCSI, your computer mouse doesn't connect to your computer with USB or PS/2, your sound card output, telephone etc. don't use standard jacks, your doors aren't a standard size, etc. etc.

      Standards are eve

    • If the 'real world' is anything like the place I work. Standards are a dream, that will never come to be, because everyone likes do do things "their way".

      In the hardware world, this doen't get you very far. There are a great many standards out there that are followed as well as any standard ever is. There are also a significant number of software standards, especially for languages.

      The big computer-related industry standards body in America is INCITS [incits.org], which has technical committees which define many inter

  • closed standards (Score:4, Insightful)

    by lanswitch ( 705539 ) on Friday September 09, 2005 @09:32AM (#13518163)
    Open standards have been the driving force behind the development of the PC. The only reason for closed standards is so that somebody can make money with them.
    • Well, telecom standards have been open for more than a century. That hasn't prevented the Bells of the world from making money. Confusing data stadards is plain schtooooopidttt.
      • Have you ever looked into the BellCore/Telecordia billing format "standard"? Expensive, closed and complicated...

      • That's a separate issue, that has to do with market regulation closing a market or keeping a market closed. Data standards also require a FREE MARKET to work their magic.

        • No, I'm referring to telecom standards - you cannot talk to someone in another country by phone if the communication protocols are secret. Similarly, you cannot exchange a word processor document with someone else if the file format is secret. We have had open telegraph, radio and phone standards for more than 100 years. It is time to open other data standards as well. MS is just being bloody minded about it.

  • Magic vs. Science (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Rob Carr ( 780861 ) on Friday September 09, 2005 @09:32AM (#13518165) Homepage Journal
    Before science became accepted, people we would now call magicians and alchemists actually made scientific progress. Unfortunately, their secrets were closely guarded and not always passed down. What someone learned by trial and error was lost to the regular community.

    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)

      by jurt1235 ( 834677 ) on Friday September 09, 2005 @09:43AM (#13518242) Homepage
      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.

      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.
      • 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.

        What you're describing was an important innovation, too. I'm looking a bit more back in time, say from ancien

      • Just take a reality check man, microsoft and IBM license and cross license technologies as much as anyone. what the 'big evil' companies have done is esentially akin to contractually forcing every city in the Us to buy Microsoft TM brand water. at $40 a gallon, and they simply dump toxic waste in any water Not Wholly owned by Microsoft TM and Sue anyone who dares dig a well, because they've patented that process for water extraction.

        Microsft is being headed by a guy who has a paranoid delusion that 'there
    • The failure to follow standards should be punished in some way..

      With so many standards out there, how would you define a 'failure'? I'd suggest failure to follow an 'open standard' should be punished. Or rather, failure to publish a standard, protocol, format, whatever.... not the implementation of these.
      • The nice thing about letting the market define "failure" is I don't have to!

        I may not know what failure looks like from somoene else's viewpoint.

        Of course, I do keep thinking of MS' IE and it's failure to follow standards. I used to design web pages to accomodate IE, but any more, I think that if IE doesn't work right, tough. That's their fault, and I shouldn't waste time correcting their mistakes.

  • A new trend? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Gargamell ( 716347 ) *


    It pleases me to see that the good intentions of open source standards are taking a more aggressive approach to defending the open source development method of software.

    As all of us /.-ers know, programming is much more of an art than its hard outer shell lets on. It is a shame when the work of an artist is hidden from another for profit, and at the loss of innovation!

    ~tim

    • Re:A new trend? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It pleases me to see that the good intentions of open source standards are taking a more aggressive approach to defending the open source development method of software.

      "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.
      • Well, we can infer:

        Open Standards != OSS.

        However,

        OSS uses Open Standards. Proprietary software rarely uses them *cough* MSWord *cough*. What this call does, is pushing companies to support open standards in their proprietary products. This means companies will have to actually compete and make better products instead of just keeping the market because the public has no other choice.

        Either they do that, or face extinction.

  • Open standards and competition (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ReformedExCon ( 897248 ) <reformed.excon@gmail.com> on Friday September 09, 2005 @09:35AM (#13518179)
    The key to competing successfully in business is to offer a better value to the customer than they can get somewhere else.

    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:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I think you're missing the point here. For widget making, if everyone on the planet has 2 inch widgets, that fit into standardised 2-inch widget holes.. and you come along with your super fantastic new 3 inch widgets... no-one will buy them, regardless of their superiority.

      You want a more real-world example, make a CD that is incompatible with current CD players. Sure, we will change and get better CDs (eg DVDs, and now high-capacity DVDs) but only by changing the standards. In the case of blu-ray v HD-DVD.

    • Re:Open standards and competition (Score:5, Insightful)

      by discordja ( 612393 ) on Friday September 09, 2005 @11:10AM (#13518892)
      You've completely missed the point. You seem to equate product with proprietary implementation of data storage. In the perfect world, open standards are conformed to and what is *actually* sold is the interface, the method of getting to and manipulating that data. If MS could keep it's monopoly in that scenario, it would be because they actually created the best product instead of holding your data hostage, threatening that if you move away from them you'll never be able to see your files again.
    • "The key to competing successfully in business is to offer a better value to the customer than they can get somewhere else."

      I'd disagree - that may be the key to doing business ethically, or nicely, but as other posters have noted, companies aren't "nice".

      For all too many companies these days the key is getting wide adoption using a proprietary standard - that way you don't have to spend time or money producing versions "to do everything the user wants", since they can't go anywhere else - you've got them o

    • I would argue that mitigating risk is a need. As a potential customer, I'm thinking what happens if you decide to discontinue the package that would meet my needs and leave me with no way to rescue the last 10 years of my data? Or nearly as bad (possigly worse) what if you realize my plight and start charging just slightly less money than it would cost me to hack your proprietary format and convert the data?

      Keep in mind, there is a BIG difference between being enslaved to an unchanging and restrictive sta

  • Non-IT Companies that Rely on IT (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Friday September 09, 2005 @09:41AM (#13518225) Homepage Journal
    During the last airline IT fiasco it struck me that the airline industry would benefit from some open platforms and standards. While the current diversity keeps everyone from crashing at the same time, it also leads to a lot of waste as everyone has to design their own thing. Seems like they could pool their money and hire a dev team to build an open source project. That'd give them a better chance of finding someone who knows how to fix it when it breaks, among other things.

  • This isn't about OSS (Score:4, Insightful)

    by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Friday September 09, 2005 @09:42AM (#13518230) Homepage Journal
    The point is that Open STANDARDS are important - not Open Source. All this fuss over OSS is ridiculous. What should remain is the idea that open standards provide the opportunity for growth in the industry. The actual implementation of the software is much less important.

    Open standards and Open Source have nothing to do with each other. There is plenty of closed source software that supports open standards.
    • Open standards and Open Source have nothing to do with each other. There is plenty of closed source software that supports open standards.

      Yes, but there is also plenty of closed source software that is unable to compete with open source projects on quality, and maintains an undeserved prominence within society solely on the basis of their closed standard, which creates a divide on the issue with a lot of the same players as in the OSS debate.

      MS and Office is a great example. They are a bunch of usele
    • Open standards and Open Source have nothing to do with each other.

      Actually, they bear a very close relationship.

      It's easiest to understand this by thinking of other industries. Standards arise out of a common consensus around design or implementation. In order to get to the point of developing a standard, the industry must therefore already have gained experience through open comparison of various designs and implementations.

      In most industries, these are fairly self-evident, and standardization is a

    • >There is plenty of closed source software that supports open standards.

      Support in why way?
      "Embrace and extend" way so that customers are locked in a specific implementation of the standard+? Or a real support?

      If we take perhaps the most used open standard: HTML. "Closed source software" support doesn't look so good..

  • India's been doing this for ages... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jkrise ( 535370 ) on Friday September 09, 2005 @09:43AM (#13518235) Journal
    There was an article a year ago - the Indian President inaugurating the Indian Institute of Information Technology.. and in his address, he asked for firms and govts. to stay away from proprietary standards, software and formats. He'd even mentioned his 'discussions with Bill Gates turned difficult' when Gates visited him. Incidentally, this was a short while after Richard Stallman visited the Indian President.

    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)

    by newandyh-r ( 724533 ) on Friday September 09, 2005 @09:44AM (#13518248)
    Internetworking in British higher education institutions was seriously set back in the 1980s by the insistence that only "international standards" (that is X25 and its derivatives rather than TCP/IP) were allowed to be used.
    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.

    • Ah, the coloured book protocols - I remember them well. Happy days...

      Dave.Mitchell@uk.ac.shef.dcs

    • Re:Be careful what you ask for ... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by gowen ( 141411 ) <gwowen@gmail.com> on Friday September 09, 2005 @10:01AM (#13518378) Homepage Journal
      That's a really good point. A distinction must be made between "standards" that are simply open specifications which anyone can use (such as TCP/IP, or some of the various IM protocols that have sprung up) and actual Standards -- specifications that have gone through actual standardisations.

      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.
      • Well, the FIRST distinction should be "practical, working software" and "we'll have to do a huge amount of work". Requiring someone to use open software, and that requirement forces them to do a lot of hacking on that software to get it up to snuff, doesn't make sense.

        If, on the other hand, you have two pieces of software that 99% meet your needs, then by all means, require that the more open one be used.

      • Of course, these days the IETF makes TCP/IP a formal standard - though the RFC system effectively accomplished that, having a formal standards body lends credibility for the most conservative decision makers. Requiring that a formal standard be used really doesn't add much of a burden - it's quite rare for de-facto standards such as TCP/IP to not have a formal standards body, and you don't want to use something that isn't at least a de-facto standard, as it's too easy for the specification to fork if there
    • The accent here is on open not on standards. What I mean by that is that with the technological pace it's going to be hard to use only technology that was standardized by I don't know what international agency, however if you chose to use a technology maybe it's better to use the one that has open specifications.

      So maybe the word we are looking for is specifications not standards. I mean of course it's better to use a standard but in case you have to chose between open specifications and closed specificatio
    • Internetworking in British higher education institutions was seriously set back in the 1980s by the insistence that only "international standards" (that is X25 and its derivatives rather than TCP/IP) were allowed to be used.

      While your story is very interesting, and very applicable to many situations, I think it is somewhat irrelevant here. What the report is calling for is the adoption of open standards, not international standards. Open standards are simply standards that are not legally encumbered - ie:

  • Much more important than open source (Score:5, Interesting)

    by atlep ( 36041 ) on Friday September 09, 2005 @09:44AM (#13518251)
    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. Absolutely. I've always thought that there's too much talk about open source, and not enough talk about open standards. Some governments, like the swedish, have already adopted a policy where all government information will be accessible through open standard formats. This guarantees that nobody needs to buy a certain platform in order to be able to get official information. In my oppinion this is much more important for free competition, and freedom to chose your own solutions, that open source will ever be.

  • We need clear definitions from the Media... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by LexNaturalis ( 895838 ) on Friday September 09, 2005 @09:45AM (#13518256)

    From TFA:

    The 33-page report is a road map for creating national policies on open technology standards, and comes at a time when several countries - and some state governments - are pursuing plans to reduce their dependence on proprietary software makers, notably Microsoft, by using more free, open-source software.
    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:

    Something, such as a practice or a product, that is widely recognized or employed, especially because of its excellence.
    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.

    • Your presumption (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      is thinking that MS is deployed because of its' excellence.

      It is because of network effects, where a pile of crap, if everyone has it, is still of more utility than perfection only a few people have.
    • Office might be a "standard", it is not an OPEN standard. As long as Microsoft controls it, it will never be open.
    • 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.

      Then your logic must be flawed. You know MS won't ever release full specs for any of its formats, it could be licensed to big clients (just like their Shared Source program) but NEVER there will be a 100% compliant free implementation. So I fail to see how it could be a standard, the definition you give from the dictionnary is the MAI
      • An open standard doesn't have to be free as in beer, it just has to be (a) not controlled by one company and (b) ful details are available to anyone who can pay the licensing fee. Almost all standards bodies charge a hefty fee for a copy of their standards (though draft versions are usually free). It's the giving up control part that would be a problem for Microsoft. Did Sun ever give up control of Java, or is that still a closed standard?
    • While *.doc may be common, it is in no way standard, since its closed specification has changed with every release of Word.

      Unless you can convince everybody to save their documents in *.rtf (Rich Text Format), which is an open standard. I have not had any luck persuading my employers to switch though...

    • Article: Everyone should use open standards, here's why and how.

      LexNaturalis: I read what a "standard" is in the dictionary. Did you know MS .doc is a stanadard?

      Slashdot: WTF? We're talking about open standards, not standards. Did you completely miss the entire point of this article and all the comments so far?

      To address one or two of your later points:

      I work at a government research lab and everything we do has to be compatible with MS Office.

      ...and you don't see anything wrong with that? So The

    • you missed the point. the push is not for standards, it's for open standards. microsoft's word .doc format (which one? 95, 97, 2000, xp?) may indeed be a standard, but it is not and probably never will be open. in fact, if you read anything about the massachusetts decision, they actually considered using the ms office xml document format, and may have accepted it, if it were open. i think it would be great if microsoft gave developers the information they needed to develop software around the microsoft
    • Does that not make it seem that Office "is" a standard?

      They key word missing here is open. The MS Office Word document format is not open - it is very difficult to impliment (you have to reverse engineer it) in external software. Their new XML format - while more easy to parse (being a plain text format) is stymied by a patent on the format! 'Standards' that are not open are not standards an outside developer can easily adopt.

      Furthermore, throughout the MS Word lifecycle their so-called 'standards' have
    • Yes, Microsoft Office formats are a standard. Microsoft Office formats are not an open standard, especially the new XML ones. If I can't implement the standard, due to legal reasons (i.e. patents), then the standard isn't really open.

      A point that a lot of folks seem to be missing here is that Microsoft sat on the standards commitee that came up with Open Document. Microsoft are the ones who are choosing not to implement the new standard the industry has adopted. If they loose out as a result, boo-hoo.

      • If I can't implement the standard, due to legal reasons (i.e. patents), then the standard isn't really open.

        Well, if you're a government that controls patent enforcement, you're less worried about this aspect. :) It's a good point, though, and the standards body I work with is absolutely obsessive about avoiding patent restrictions, especially submarine patents. You can get into a great deal of legal trouble by proposing a standard for which you have a secret patent application (at least, for any of the

  • This was begun in 1969 (Score:4, Funny)

    by GPLDAN ( 732269 ) on Friday September 09, 2005 @09:46AM (#13518263)
    Title: Host Software
    Author: Steve Crocker
    Installation: UCLA
    Date: 7 April 1969
    Network Working Group Request for Comment: 1
  • I submit that there has been progress made already on this front with TCP/IP for the Internet and Internet communications. What I should add is that what Massachusetts has done is a very good start in this direction. But with the enormous dependency on proprietary formats already with us, this call's success seems to be a pipe dream to me.

  • Why force the standards when these can evolve over a period of time out of the need. If those are't, we won't have needed them in the first place.

    I know I am going against popular opinion here at /., but historically, standards that are forced have slowed down the progress for a while. I am not against standards at all, but why force them?
    • The standards can evolve. If Microsoft wishes to add a new "feature" to an existing standard, it must a) not prevent the file from being used by programs designed to meet the current standard, and b) the new "feature" must be open for others to adopt, or not, as they wish.

      Microsoft has a history of twisting standards until only their software can open the files.

  • Microsoft will beat this .... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 09, 2005 @10:09AM (#13518432)
    Just another opportunity combine automated patching with embrace, extend, and extinguish. Microsoft will start supporting these open formats to keep their foot firmly in the door. Then they will start to poison them. People will soon be once again sending documents as (say) .doc files, because they need to get their work done. The 'open' format will seem too much of a nuisance, as it will be 'accidently' half-broken or otherwise made inferior. Similar programs won't be able to open the 'open-format' documents anyway because the standard will have been 'extended'. Microsoft will spin it as the fault of the format and competitors programs (and most managers and bureaucrats will no-doubt buy the spin .. they always do), but as long as Microsoft claims they support the open-format, then sales to government mandating openness will have the green-light.

    You can't force a company with an anti-competitive corporate culture to play nice. It just won't do it.

  • Patent Pools Threaten 'Open' Standards (Score:4, Interesting)

    by aldheorte ( 162967 ) on Friday September 09, 2005 @10:09AM (#13518439)
    From a purely technical standpoint, open standards seem quite attractive. However, until the patent system gets reworked so software patents get invalidated or have a high level of specificity required in comparing claims, even 'open' standards can become proprietary in a legal sense.

    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.
    • Do not forget that patents can be struck down. And if a standard is adopted by an official body with clout, especially a government department, then they probably will do exactly this; it is more important for the whole of society at large to be able to benefit from the existence of a standard, than for a corporation to be able to gouge money out of the rest of the population.
      • Do not forget that patents can be struck down. And if a standard is adopted by an official body with clout, especially a government department, then they probably will do exactly this;

        Also do not forget the software patents are an AMERICAN problem. Europe and most of the rest of the world have thankfully rejected this nonsense, despite the lobbying of Microsoft, IBM, Trading Technologies, and others.

  • Open source would eventually win (Score:4, Insightful)

    by MarkEst1973 ( 769601 ) on Friday September 09, 2005 @10:14AM (#13518468)
    Everyone has been bitching about open standards forever. It is what we need more than open source software.

    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)

    by kinglink ( 195330 ) on Friday September 09, 2005 @10:19AM (#13518487)
    We have a few standards now. TCP/IP is the Protocol for going on the internet for everyone. But it's not the only one because at times it's restrictive to some programs.

    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.

  • Open America First (Score:2, Interesting)

    by OctoberSky ( 888619 )
    As many a politician has said America is a "leader in [enter topic of discussoin]". Why don't we start the charge and maybe open up the FEMA site to other browsers.
    I know this is not exactly what this program is calling for but how do we expect other countries to follow our lead (this is an American University making the call) when we don't even open up our own doors to "standards"

  • No such thing as a "standard" (Score:3, Interesting)

    by xnot ( 824277 ) on Friday September 09, 2005 @10:23AM (#13518520)
    There is only "what's popular". Office file formats aren't a standard, but people view them that way because they are the most popular file formats being used. Similarly, companies call their thing a standard in an attempt to get it popular enough so that everyone will use it, which equals more money.

    Call something some way enough times, and you can convince people that it's so. Really, the whole idea of something being a "standard" is basically a fear tactic to say "if you don't use our stuff you won't get any customers, because everyone uses our stuff." Most people can be manipulated by that sort of thinking, which pushes home the idea of something being a standard.

    If you accept that "standard" = "popular", then it becomes pretty clear that organizations that attempt to get people to use "standards" are completely going about it the wrong way. Look: certain things (file formats, products, etc.) are popular. They just are. Mindshare exists, and it's set up in a certain way, and you can't change it. At least not without wasting a whole lot of unnecessary effort trying.

    The point is, if you waste all your time trying to fight what is, then you will get nowhere. This is what you do. You take what is (i.e. microsoft's popular file formats), and reverse-engineer them so that everyone can use it. You open up something that's ALREADY popular and call it a standard and work from there. That's the only way that actually makes some sense, and has the possiblity to work.

    You simply AREN'T going to suddenly change everyone's mind as to what they like to use in your attempt to drive home a new standard. Sorry, but it's not going to happen. People use what they like to use, not "the best" or based upon who developed it, where it came from, how clean the code is, what monkey's it saves, etc. So in other words, the standard you create has to be something that's ALREADY popular, and NOT something some organization likes based upon it's technical merit over something else. Trying to make some new thing a standard without first making sure it is popular with people is not only stupid, it's damn near impossible.

    Not using something that's already popular is the SOLE reason why "standards" hardly ever get off the ground. A standard is not a standard because some consortium weenies declare it to be, it's a standard when people actually use it (i.e. it's popular.)
  • If you have worked with Tier II of the HIPAA laws that govern EDI transaction processing, you can quickly discover how complex and involved open standards can be. It took YEARS to get from 5 different formats for electonic medical billing transactions down to two (ANSIX12 and NCPDP).

    Now...

    Who is going to set the standards and who will pay to keep them working on them?

    Who is going to make sure the standards support new technology, new ways of doing things?

    Who keeps tabs on the standard committies to make su

  • Railway tracks not a good example (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Viol8 ( 599362 ) on Friday September 09, 2005 @10:28AM (#13518544) Homepage
    "It also points out that open technology standards - the digital equivalent of a common gauge for railroad tracks - are "

    Lets hope the digital equivalent is a bit *more* standardised than railway track gauge or we'll end up with the virtual version of 2ft gauge, 2ft 6 , 3ft, meter gauge, standard gauge, irish gauge, soviet gauge etc etc etc

  • The Star Trek Magic (Score:2, Insightful)

    by vginders ( 521915 )
    Open Standards are what it takes to reroute energy from an Alien Ship to the Engine Room or reconfigure Energy Coils and adapt special Capacitors.
    OK, I'm no Trekkie, but you get the point. You'll need Open Standards (and adherence to them) to make things "Just Work (tm)."

  • .... And then Ballmer threw a Chair (Score:3, Funny)

    by putko ( 753330 ) on Friday September 09, 2005 @10:53AM (#13518742) Homepage Journal
    Really, if this picks up, Ballmer will need to have a stack of chairs to throw at people.

    Their only defense is to argue that M$ needs to be free to innovate, and not forced to stick to some crappy open standard.
  • Is he OK with a government adopting GPL licensed open source if that same government allows laws that respect software patents or applications of DRM? That does not seem to fit his social agenda as defined by his upcoming rewrite of the GPL. [msn.com]
  • Standards do not have to mean that everyone has to use Open Document or something. This is only a tool MA has used to begin to escape vendor lock-in. The whole point is that if you store data, you should be making public the way that you have formatted the data in order to allow it to be translated into another format if necessary. The reason people gravitate to XML is because it is a text-based file format that can be examined, rather than a proprietary binary format with the drawbridge firmly raised and t

  • USA (Score:3, Insightful)

    by OrthodonticJake ( 624565 ) <[[OrthodonticJak ... ail]}{[.][[com]]> on Friday September 09, 2005 @11:20AM (#13519005) Homepage Journal
    The USA can't even accept the metric system, so I don't understand how everyone keeps expecting it to embrace all this newfangled 'open source' stuff. Open source needs to get in line.
  • What would I do with all the time I'd have, that I currently devote to caressing Internet Explorer into rendering pages right? More slashdot!

  • What we really need are Free standards (free in a similar sense as Free software). GIF is/was an 'open' standard. The well known legal issues underline the importance of Free (as opposed to merely open) standards.

Slashdot Top Deals

He has not acquired a fortune; the fortune has acquired him. -- Bion

Close