Andy Updegrove, Author at ConsortiumInfo.org - Page 48 of 75ConsortiumInfo.org

South Africa and the PAS Process: A Plague o’ Both Your Standards

2/20/2007

There's an old saying that pops up in a number of cultures that begins something like this: "When the elephants dance…"

In Africa, the proverb ends, "it is the grass that gets crushed." Down Texas way, it starts and ends a bit differently, and goes as follows: "When the elephants dance in the hen yard, the chickens get out of the way." Either way, it means the same thing: when the big guys start mixing it up, the quality of life for the smaller folk starts to deteriorate. And so it has proven lately for the traditionally technical, mostly quiet, world of ISO/IEC standards adoption.

Usually, but not always, representatives of national bodies can go about their business without too much fear of being molested, much less trampled. But when the economic stakes are high enough, standards committee members can become the subject of more attention than they wish, and start to feel like citizens of Iowa during a presidential year.

How bad can it get? Apparently pretty bad, according to the South African national body, which thinks that the Publicly Available Specification (PAS) avenue to ISO/IEC adoption is being abused. After being apparently subjected to the lobbying efforts of camps pro and con through both the ODF and now the OOXML adoption process, they have become down right testy.

Microsoft’s Love Letter to IBM and the Shape of Things to Come

2/15/2007

Microsoft has determined that it is important to shine a bright light on IBM's activities that will have a negative impact on the IT industry and customers, including taking concrete steps to prevent customer choice, engaging in hypocrisy, and working against the industry and against customer needs. Microsoft will continue to be public in identifying the ways that IBM is trying to prevent customer choice.
-- Statement by a Microsoft spokesman on February 14, 2007

Back on January 25, I wrote a blog entry called OOXML v. ODF: What a Week! At that time, I thought that events of increasing importance were happening incredibly quickly, but it seems that both the frequency as well as the amplitude of this competition continue to increase. In this blog entry, I'll try to place one of this week's major events in context, while continuing to flag all news as it happens in the right hand column of this page.

Perhaps the most significant news this week was Micorosoft's decision to escalate the air wars by sending IBM a valentine, in the form of an open letter posted on February 14 at the Microsoft Interoperability Web page. In that letter, titled Interoperability, Choice and Open XML, Microsoft summarizes its position on the importance of the specification, it's passive role in the adoption by ISO/IEC of ODF, and most forcefully, it's contention that IBM is waging a global, hypocritical campaign to thwart the approval of OOXML in JTC 1. The letter is signed by Tom Robertson, GM Interoperability & Standards and Jean Paoli, GM Interoperability & XML Architecture. Paoli has been part of the public face of the ODF/OOXML debate for quite a while, while Robertson appears to have replaced Alan Yates in just the last two weeks as the most public spokesperson for Microsoft on OOXML.

OOXML and ISO: Fact and Fancy

2/13/2007

Given that there has been a fair amount of information, disinformation, and supposition flying around, I thought that I should share some additional details that I've learned relating to the contradictions received by JTC 1 regarding Ecma 376 (nee Microsoft OOXML).

In doing so, I'll borrow Stephen O'Grady's trademark Q&A approach again, albeit not as skillfully as he does. Here we go, starting with Stephen's traditional conflicts disclosure, which I try to remember to include from time to time for the benefit of new readers.

Q: I hear you do work for OASIS, and that IBM is behind all of the contradictions activity. Are these conflicts, and are there any others to report?

A: Yes, I am counsel of record to OASIS, the developer of ODF, although in fact I do very little work for them. Also, I've had no involvement with ODF at OASIS, nor been consulted in any way by OASIS regarding ODF, ever. Neither IBM nor Sun, another ODF proponent, is a client, although each is a member of many consortia that I represent – as are thousands of other companies, governmental agencies, universities, NGOs and individuals. Sun did fund the creation of the Standards MetaLibrary section of this site, but that was four years ago.

Q: Got it. So let's get down to business. I hear that Microsoft's Tom Robertson was quoted in eWeek saying that 103 nations have standards bodies "with the authority to act at the ISO on behalf of that country," and that ,"What we see is that only a small handful have submitted comments." MS' Brian Jones also says at his blog that " It sounds like about 18 of the 100+ countries reviewing the standard came back with comments."

So just how big a deal is that, anyway?

The Contradictory Nature of OOXML (Part III) – Mea Culpa

2/08/2007

One of the things that you learn early when you blog is to ignore the flames, or at least try to. Lots of people will assume that you're a jerk (a/k/a you think something they don't), or that you have all of your facts wrong. They can often get pretty harsh about it, too. Still, you have to keep in mind that you're not going to always be right, and own up and take it in the chops like a grownup when you get called out. Assuming, of course, that the one calling you out has their facts right.

For example: yesterday I noticed that someone had posted a trackback to this entry of mine to one of theirs that they titled Andy Updegrove's Indian Fancy. That post, at a Microsoft site, and written by self-described "Open XML Technical Evangelist" Doug Mahugh (I see from this entry that he's also the person who wanted to hire Rick Jelliffe to edit the ODF/OOXML entry at Wikipedia) , included the following, beginning with an out take from my blog entry:

"According to one story, at least one of these countries (India) was considering responding by abstaining from voting, in protest over the extremely short amount of time provided to review the voluminous specification. Instead, it appears that it opted to knuckle down, finish its review, and submit contradictions instead."

…Well, maybe Andy knows something I don't, or maybe he's just quoting somebody who got the facts wrong. There's been rather a lot of that getting-the-facts wrong stuff lately when it comes to file formats, you know. :-)

And Now There are Two: Sun Announces its ODF Plug-in

2/07/2007

Sun announced today that it would make a "preview" version of its Office to ODF plugin in "mid February," with the full version to follow "later this spring." Plugins will be available for use with both Sun's StarOffice as well as the open source OpenOffice.org office suite. The announcement comes five days after Microsoft announced the immediate availability of its Office to ODF plugin at SourceForge.

At this time, neither plugin will work with all versions of Office. According to the press release issued by Sun just now (the full text appears below), the Sun plugin will only work with Office 2003 text documents, while the Microsoft plugin will (according to Martin LaMonica) apparently be usable in connection with Office 2003, Office XP and Office 2007 (Elizabeth Montalbano, on the other hand, says that it will only assist users that upgrade to Microsoft Office 2007; I'll give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt, and go with Martin's report). Initially, that means that most Office users will be able to use either one, the other, or both alternatives.

Similarly, both plugins will initially only convert Word documents, although the developers on each version team are working on enabling conversion of spreadsheets and presentations (the Sun version will be available in April; I do not know the expected delivery date for the Microsoft version). Again, the Microsoft plugin will only work with Office 2007.

Rambus Narrowly Avoids Zero Royalty Penalty in 3 – 2 Decision; FTC Caps Royalties Instead

2/07/2007

Monday morning's voicemail included a courtesy call from FTC Complaint Counsel Geoffrey Oliver, letting me know that the Federal Trade Commission had just issued its ruling in the penalty phase of its prosecution of memory technology company Rambus, Inc. (the reason for the call is that I had previously filed pro bono amicus curiae – or "friend of the court" – briefs with the Commission during both the trial and the penalty phases). The full Board of Commissioners had earlier found, on appeal from a holding in favor of Rambus by an FTC Administrative Law Judge in 2004, that Rambus had illegally created a monopoly in certain technology by abusing the JEDEC standard setting process in the early 1990s.

That opinion was handed down last summer, together with the announcement by the Commissioners that they would hold further hearings with FTC Complaint Counsel and Rambus, and would welcome industry input, before determining what penalties would be appropriate to levy against Rambus on account of its conduct. Several industry groups filed amicus briefs as well, urging the Commissioners to impose stiff penalties. My own brief urged the FTC to include a punitive element, in order to emphasize that abuse of the standard setting process would result in dire results. Most obviously, such an element would be to bar Rambus from charging any royalties at all from those that wished to implement the standard at issue.

For Rambus, the stakes were high, and would go beyond the direct economic impact of whatever the FTC would impose, due to the multiple private cases that are ongoing between Rambus and various semiconductor companies that have refused to pay royalties to Rambus. These royalties relate to patents that the FTC has held were illegally hidden by Rambus from its fellow working group members in JEDEC who created the SDRAM standard at issue. At least one judge has delayed further action in one of these cases, in order to learn what penalty the FTC would conclude would be appropriate under the circumstances.

Meanwhile, Deep Down in Texas: An Open Format Bill is Filed

2/06/2007

Most of the attention this week relating to open document standards is focused on what responses ISO/IEC JTC 1 will have received before the February 5 deadline for submission of "contradictions" involving the Microsoft OOXML formats. I just posted this entry on that score, reporting that a total of nineteen national bodies have filed contradictions, complaints or other comments as part of the contradictions process.

But while this global drama has been playing out, I've learned that a third US state is considering requiring use of open document formats by government agencies (Massachusetts and Minnesota are the other two to date). That state is Texas, where a bill has been introduced to require that only "open document formats" should be permitted. The bill is designated SB 446, and was filed on February 5 (the full text is reproduced at the end of this blog entry).

How does the Texas bill define an open document format? As stated in the bill, such a format would need to be based upon Extensible Markup Language, would need to have been previously approved, and would be required to meet the following criteria:

The Contradictory Nature of OOXML (Part II) – 19 Nations [make that 20] Respond

2/06/2007

Last week I reported that the United States body reviewing OOXML had decided to take a conservative approach to defining what "contradiction" should mean under the ISO/IEC process. Since then, a few stories have appeared indicating that Great Britain and Malaysia would each identify at least one contradiction in their response. The actual results would only become known after the deadline had passed on February 5.

In that first blog entry, I concluded that Microsoft had won the first point in the contest over whether its document format would become a global standard or not. With the deadline past, who would be found to have won the next?

Well the results are in, and an unprecedented nineteen* countries have responded during the contradictions phase - most or all lodging formal contradictions with Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC), the ISO/IEC body that is managing the Fast Track process under which OOXML (now Ecma 376) has been submitted. This may not only be the largest number of countries that have ever submitted contradictions in the ISO/IEC process, but nineteen responses is greater than the total number of national bodies that often bother to vote on a proposed standard at all.

[*Update: make that twenty]

When it is recalled that any national body responding would first have had to wade through the entire 6,039 pages of the specification itself, and then compose, debate and approve its response in only 30 days, this result is nothing less than astonishing. Truly, I think that this demonstrates the degree to which the world has come to appreciate the importance of ensuring the long-term accessibility of its historical record, as well as the inadvisability of entrusting that heritage to a single vendor or software program.

The countries that chose to respond on this expedited schedule are as follows:

Australia
Canada
Czech Republic
Denmark
Finland
France
Germany
Hungary
India
Italy [later added]
Japan
Kenya
Malaysia
Netherlands
New Zealand
Norway
Romania
Singapore
Sweden
UK

In all (to quote Monty Python once again), "Rather a lot, actually."

It’s 2007 – Do You Know Where Your Cybersecurity is?

2/02/2007

Three and a half years after 9/11, I remain astonished at how few of the comparatively easy and essential defensive tasks we've accomplished, in comparison to the vastly expensive (and often unsuccessful) initiatives that we have mounted. One shining example is the failure to create and deploy a suite of effective first responder standards to enable those whose peak performance would be most essential in the case of a new disaster to even communicate effectively with each other. Another is to put in place the necessary technical, procedural and regulatory controls needed to protect sensitive personal information.

I have two consortium clients dedicated to information security, and both have found it necessary to issue statements recently to highlight gaps in our cyber defenses. The first was a terse statement issued on January 18 by PCI Security Standards Council, LLC, an organization formed by the major credit card payment brands (American Express, Discover Financial Services, JCB, MasterCard Worldwide and Visa International) to create and administer global security standards up and down the credit card payment chain. The statement was occasioned by news of the latest in an ongoing series of breaches of consumer financial records, in this case involving millions of customer records maintained by retialer Target Corporation.

A story that aired on the NBC evening news recently highlighted an even more appalling situation – focusing on county and other governments that had placed records on their Websites that included the social security numbers, names and birth dates of individuals. These sites, of course, provide a gold mine for identity theft.

And then there is a press release issued two days ago by the Cybersecurity Industry Alliance (CSIA), whose top-level membership includes all of the major and anti-virus and other security vendors. It's sober reading.

How Many Contradictions Can Dance on the Head of a Pin?

1/31/2007

As those who are following Microsoft's OOXML formats through the standardization process will know, those formats (now officially known as Ecma 376, following the favorable adoption vote in Ecma on December 7 of last year) are now in the "contradiction" phase in JTC 1 at ISO/IEC. Or, so it would seem, they are in the "so, what is a contradiction, anyway?" phase.

Microsoft has won the first point in this match (on which more below), as national bodies around the world wrestle with this question. But first, some context on what's going on, and why it matters.

The question of what a "contradiction" may be under the ISO/IEC rules is of more than passing interest. On the most basic level, the question is legitimate, since ISO/IEC apparently do not supply a precise definition, even though one out of the six months in the ISO/IEC Fast Track process is allocated to the submission of contradictions by the 60-odd Principal and Observer members of these global standards organizations that are entitled to respond during this phase.

How does a national body submit what one must first define? And why should ISO/IEC ask its members to submit contractions until ISO/IEC has taken the trouble to define what they are? Or perhaps ISO/IEC in fact have provided adequate guidance, and the battle between ODF and OOXML has simply escalated to the point where anything and everything will be taken to the barricades, regardless?

The answer to that last question, it appears, is "yes - regardless."