As I reported recently, the Massachusetts ITD has announced its intention to add Microsoft's OfficeOpen XML specification (now Ecma 376) to its list of approved "open standards," subject to a very short comment period that will expire on July 20. I have great concern that such a decision may be as influential outside of Massachusetts as was the original decision by the ITD in August of 2005 to include ODF, and exclude OOXML. That first decision raised the credibility and visibility of ODF dramatically, and it is fair to say that all of the later successes of ODF were made possible by that decision.
While the ITD has now announced that it believes that Ecma 376 has met its requirements, it is important to note that two years ago it reversed a similar conclusion as a result of energetic public input. That can happen again, and interim CIO Bethan Pepoli has stated as much in a widely reported quote.
Whether the ITD truly believes that Ecma 376 meets its requirements, or whether it has finally folded to the significant and ongoing pressure to which it has long been subjected cannot be known. But what is clear to me is that if enough people provide carefully considered and persuasive comments to the ITD prior to the expiration of the comment period, the ITD will be given an opportunity and the "cover" to reverse its position if it so wishes.
Preparing such comments is time consuming, but it is also important. I took several hours to do so yesterday, and have just sent them to the ITD. You can to, and I hope that you will. The ITD's comment address is standards@state.ma.us, and the deadline is next Friday. If you're a believer in open standards, please don't let that deadline pass without making your thoughts known.
Here are the comments that I sent in:
As you can imagine, yesterday's news that the Massachusetts Information Technology Division (ITD) may endorse Microsoft's OOXML (now Ecma 376) spread like wild fire among the journalists that have been covering the ODF/OOXML competition. As of nightfall the same day, a Google News search turned up 59 articles (many of which were reprints of the same, syndicated text). As many of these are short pieces that add only a paragraph or two of new material on top of the usual stack of text or factual background pulled from prior stories, I've selected and linked to a few of the more informative, interesting and controversial ones and pasted excerpts below. Not surprisingly, they are from journalists that have been following the ODF/OOXML story from the beginning, or not long thereafter, who could quickly round up the usual suspects and pull a quote or two for context.
Let's start with Andy Oram, from O'Reilly's OnLamp.com, who saw the Massachusetts decision as a blow, but not one to be taken lying down. He wrote a piece called How a standard can kill a standard that reads in part as follows:
As the U.S. Independence Day approaches, we can honor the shot heard around the world when the IT department of the state of Massachusetts declared a couple years ago they would adopt the Open Document Format….The standards process has clearly been turned against standards….If you live in Massachusetts, read Updegrove’s blog and the Massachusetts draft, and let the state know what you think by July 20.
True to his own advice, he's already sent his comments to the ITD, urging them to reverse their decision. You can read Andy's input here.
The Massachusetts Information Technology Division (ITD), the state agency that effectively launched the voyage of ODF around the world in August of 2005, has released a new version of its Enterprise Technical Reference Model. And this new draft includes Microsoft's OOXML formats as an acceptable "open format." The new draft was posted today >here, and the very brief comment period will end on July 20. The header to the announcement at the ITD Web site reads as follows:
A review draft of ETRM v. 4.0 is available for review and comment from July 2nd through July 20th, 2007. Comments should be submitted to standards@state.ma.us. This major release of the ETRM updates content published in version 3.6, introduces the new Management Domain, enhances the ETRM's format for accessibility and usability as well as provides additions and updates to existing language and technical specifications. For a detailed outline of major revisions made in this version please consult the document.
The announcement is not a surprise to me, as I've been following the progress of the ITD's internal reviews over the past six months. I've not been commenting on this publicly in order to try to give Bethann Pepoli (once again the interim CTO, since the departure of Louis Gutierrez) and her team the space to do their internal evaluations with less pressure than Peter Quinn experienced the first time around. However, and as you can imagine, the ITD has been under as much pressure behind the scenes (and perhaps more) as the legislators of those states that have recently tried, and failed, to pass laws that would mandate open formats in government.
The OOXML-related changes to the text of the ETRM are deceptively insignificant. By my word search, there are only three references: the inclusion of the name of the standard in the introductory summary of changes, a brief description and migration section in the Domain: Information part of the draft (scroll down and look for the "Open Formats" section), and the listing of Ecma among the other standards bodies on a list of "Relevant Standards Organizations." But the potential impact of these change if retained will be great.
My blog entry from last Friday has sparked some commentary (a few examples are here, and here). One by Mary Foley particularly caught my eye, and moved me to respond to her. Here's the part of Mary's story that I thought merited a response:
Andrew Updegrove, cofounder of Gesmer Updegrove LLP and editor of the ConsortiumInfo.Org blog — as well as one of the leading opponents to Microsoft’s Open XML standardization effort — issued a dire prediction:
“If OOXML (Office Open XML), and now Microsoft XML Paper Specification, each sail through Ecma and are then adopted by ISO/IEC JTC1, then I think that we might as well declare ‘game over’ for open standards.”
I’ve been no fan of Microsoft’s methods for drumming up support for its standardization effort around Open XML. But I don’t see how the existence of multiple standards portends the end of open standards … even if a company that has abused its monopoly power is one of the players. Doesn’t “open standards” mean they should be open to the inclusion of technologies from anyone, even Microsoft?
Microsoft, like IBM, Sun and every other open-source and closed-source tech vendor needs to have its technologies designated as “open standards” in order to qualify for many requests for proposals, especially from government customers. That’s what’s behind Microsoft’s attempts to get standard status for Open XML and XPS.
I agree that there's nothing wrong with multiple contenders for "standardship," if you will. Mostly, though, it's a matter of timing. You might find this piece that I wrote last year interesting, where I try to distinguish between "standards competitions" and "standards wars:" It's part of an entire issue of the Consortium Standards Bulletin dedicated to standards wars.
It was not so long ago that most kids in school experienced a predictable "Oh Wow!" moment when they learned about atomic structure (that's "Oh Wow!" as in, "What if our solar system is, like, you know, just an 'atom' in this, like, really big 'molecule' thing called a galaxy and…").
Today, of course, that Oh Wow! moment is more likely to be sparked by a video game or, more recently, a visit to a virtual world. And after all, it was time for a change anyway, what with the discovery of subatomic particles, and the assumption that there's no physical "there" there at all – just electronic charges. Or whatever. Personally, I've always found the video game day dream more appealing and amusing than the atomic theory in any case. After all – how much difference is there between energizing a monitor and the Big Bang? Oh Wow!
The old concept of life as being something other than what we suppose returned to me just now while checking in at Bob Sutor's Open Blog, where I read about a Virtual Worlds Conference held at MIT on June 15 and find a live blog entry at Virtual Worlds News on a panel that Bob moderate. And yes, there's (of course) a standards hook in here somewhere.
Updated 7:40 AM June 22: Dan Bricklin has now posted his own blog entry on the event here, which includes not only multiple audio podcast segments for the entire event, but also his 1 hour and 10 minute video podcast of the OLPC demo (follow the URL at Dan's blog).
Open source summits seem to be all the rage these days, so I'm blogging from another one this week. In this case, it’s the second somewhat similar event staged by the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council, the largest and oldest technology membership association in the Commonwealth. Rather than repeat the dance card, you can see my prior entry on the program here. Dan Bricklin is taping the event, so I'll add a link to the podcast here when he posts that. Interestingly (or incongruously) enough, the event is being hosted by Microsoft, consistent with its somewhat schizophrenic strategy of both moving cautiously into the open source marketplace while at the same time seeking to protect its core products from erosion. (Dan is also doing his usual Happy Feet routine, dashing around the room with a microphone to capture every question.)
I arrived somewhat late, due to the even more than usually villainous traffic this morning on Route 128, but caught most of the first panel (the legal one) which overviewed events of note over the past year, as well as first-hand accounts from members of some of the GPL3 committees of what it's been like in those venues as the parlous process of consensus building proceeded in the run up to the imminent release of the final version of GPL3. Karen Copenhaver did a great job chairing the panel, and the presentations were interesting and informative, but didn't inspire any particularly provocative comments or questions from the floor. The good news here is that the emotional stage of GPL3 creation is over, and consensus has been reached. The fact that there are no new suprises to be learned and no arm waving to be engaged in means we should be able to look forward to a smooth release and roll out of the final text of the new license.
Things are picking up now, with vendor panel, chaired by a puckish Jay Batson, a VC from Northbridge Ventures, and one of the event organizers.
I'm attending the Linux Foundations' first annual Linux Collaboration Summit from the Google campus in Mountainview California today and tomorrow, and will add periodically to this post as the day goes along. 
We're set up in one of the many Google buildings in what used to be the Silicon Graphics campus. As a result of its reinhabiting someone else's space, it's not quite as opulent as you might think from the reports one hears. There are plenty of accoutrements around to make the point, though, from what appear to be communal fleets of bikes that you can take from building to building, electric scooters, and the occasional corporate Segway tootling along or plugged into a wall socket. Strangely, though, it seemed as if a malign presence was always just outside, like some horrible monster from a cold and damp northwestern state. We could feel in our bones that it did not wish Linux well.
Be that as it may, at the Linux Foundation board meeting the day before all was quite cozy – we had Kobi steak garnished with lobster tail, so I assume that Google provided us with a typical recruiting lunch. Later, our collective mob will descend on one of the Google cafeterias, to sample the sushi bar and other selections. Together with the spectacular Silicon Valley weather and the funky accommodations at the Wild Palms Hotel where many of us are staying, it makes the East Coast scene feel pretty drab in comparison because, uh, well, I guess in comparison it's pretty drab.
To begin with, it was disappointing to hear legislators complaining that taking responsibility for the long-term availability of public documents should not be their concern. In Minnesota, Don Betzold, the Democratic state senator who was the original sponsor of the
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For those of you in the Boston area, or not too far away, there's an event that I've helped plan that I think you'd find quite worthwhile. It's even cheap, as such things go, at $20 a head for members of the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council, and $40 for non members. It's titled the Open Source Summit, and will feature quite a few excellent panelists, including the following folks that I've known for quite a while and respect greatly:
- Karen Copenhaver, an open source licensing expert who's also a member of one of the GPL3 committees. Karen was formerly the General Counsel of Black Duck Software, before returning to private practice at local law firm Choate, Hall & Stewart
- Scott Peterson, the Senior Counsel, Intellectual Property, Hewlett-Packard Company / Andover, MA. Scott is an "expert's expert" on both open standards as well as open source, and the guy I call when I want the opinion of someone I can rely upon
- Bob Sutor, VP Standards & Open Source, IBM, who regular readers of this blog will know is the top guy at IBM on ODF strategy, as well as much more formidible blogger.
One of the principle topics will be the latest on GPL3 and What it All Means, which is to say what it all means up to that minute in the unfolding story, as told by quite a few folks that are very much in the middle of things, not only on the drafting side, but on the market side as well, such as (in addition to Bob Sutor):
- Larry Alston, VP of Corporate Strategy, Iona
- Don Fisher, VP of Online Services, Red Hat
- Justin Steinman, Director of Linux Marketing, Novell