Human beings have an astonishing capacity to take the most incredible innovations for granted almost as soon as they begin to enjoy them. A less attractive feature of human nature is our ability to forget (and even not care) that others may not be able to enjoy those same advantages. Sometimes, those that are disadvantaged in this way may even lose ground as we gain new conveniences and privileges, because those that are less fortunate may lose access to traditional services as they migrate to the Web.
As a result, I have tried to do my part to focus attention on a regular basis on Web and IT accessibility issues, in all their many forms (a recent example is here). Happily, the media in general are paying closer attention to equal IT access, if only because advocates of the rights of (for example) those with physical abilities have sought to make accessibility issues more visible. A recent example of such public attention was the focus in Massachusetts on accessibility in connection with the adoption of ODF. More broadly, the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), a multi-year initiative under the auspices of the United Nations, has sought to promote Internet and Web accessibility on a global basis.
To the general public, hardware and software economic roadblocks to Third World equality of access are easy to understand, and thus the worthwhile work of the One Laptop Per Child initiative justifiably receive wide attention. But there are many other initiatives that have been, and continue to be, pursued largely outside public notice. These projects address much more basic infrastructural challenges, and therefore appear less "interesting" to the general public. Yet without this important work, true global equality of Internet and Web access would not only be economically challenging to achieve, but technically impossible as well.
Now that news of the merger of the Free Standards Group and OSDL has settled in, folks are entitled to be curious to see what the Linux Foundation – the name adopted by the new organization – will do. As I was elected last month as an At Large board member, I'll take it as part of my job to let people know what happens as it happens – beginning with this blog entry.
Last week, LF announced three new members of interest, as they illustrate the broadening relevance of Linux to diverse constituencies, as well as to the increasing importance of Linux on mobile devices. Those new members are Marvell, a vendor of storage, communications and consumer silicon solutions; Nokia, the mobile communications giant; and VirtualLogix, a developer of real-time virtualization technology for connected devices.
And tomorrow, LF will issue another press release [Updated: here it is], this time announcing the latest update of FSG's flagship specification, the Linux Standards Base (LSB), as well as a new testing toolkit. The testkit is the first product of a multi-million dollar development partnership between lf and the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Taken together, these two press releases illustrate the many dimensions of the "Linux ecosystem," as well as the role that the LF plays in supporting, protecting and empowering it. More familiarly, that ecosystem includes direct participants (individual, for-profit and non-profit); developers (both ISVs as well as Linux developers); and end-users of all types. But it also includes not only platform and application software, but also the standards, test kits, and certification programs that are needed to permit the two to together to create an interoperable environment that is rich with choices, and free from lock-in.
One canard that is occasionally thrown out by a vendor in a corner is that "standards stifle innovation." In fact, of course, nothing could be farther from the truth, because when vendors agree upon a standard at an appropriate level of detail, they help create a larger market. This increases the profit opportunity, and provides a growing incentive for more vendors to enter that market. Since all products must be identical at the level of the standard, vendors can only compete by adding additional desirable features, improving quality, and competing on price. The result is what is often referred to as a "virtuous circle" of incentives and results.
If that sounds like standards spin, consider your car, which implements thousands of standards, covering virtually every one of its parts, from the tires to the radio. And yet competition is relentless to upgrade the basic product ("car") by adding new features, and improving old ones, despite the fact that profit margins on most cars are quite slim.
The reality is that the great majority of standards help create meaningful choices, rather than limit them. True, some standards can restrict choice, and sometimes even in an arbitrary fashion, due to practical or economic reasons. But then again, you've probably never been heartbroken over your inability to buy a 42 watt light bulb (the standard wattages, of course, are 40, 60, 75, and so on).
In what is beginning to seem like a legislative drumbeat, Oregon has become the fourth US state this year to see an open document format bill introduced in its legislature (the others, in order of bill introduction, are Minnesota, Texas and California). Taken together with pioneer Massachusetts, which led the way with an administrative rule adopted in 2005, this means that individual legislators in10% of all US States have thus far taken steps to require that governments must be responsible stewards of public records. The text of the bill is here. As usual, I am also including the complete text of the bill, in its current form, at the end of this entry for long term-archival reference and ease of word-search based research using this site.
While the Oregon bill falls into a current trend, it is in some ways less similar to the bills introduced earlier this year than they are to each other. Most notably, it would establish a clear preference for open formats that are deployed in the greatest variety of programs and services that are available as "free ware," which it defines as " computer software made available or distributed to the public for use free of charge for an unlimited time." Through this and other provisions, it is clear that only ODF, and not OOXML, would pass muster for the foreseeable future in Oregon. The bill was introduced by State Representative Peter Buckley as House Bill 2920.
Looking first to the central definition of an "open format," we see that the Oregon definition is more detailed than that which is found in most of the other bills. For example, while the California formulation is very high level and would provide more flexibility in interpretation, the Oregon text is more precise, and often provides examples of what would be required in order to comply with the bill. Here is a direct comparison of the definitions found in these two bills:
A Federal Court sitting in San Diego, California has upheld a jury's unanimous verdict that QUALCOMM Incorporated abused the standards process by failing to make timely patent disclosures during a standard setting process. The litigation arose when Qualcomm filed suit against Broadcom Corporation, an implementer of the standard. The decision follows on the heels of a unanimous verdict by the Federal Trade Commission against memory technology company Rambus, inc. under similar factual circumstances.
Cases involving standards abuse are infrequent, but Qualcomm and Broadcom are currently involved in as many separate pieces of standards-related litigation as the entire industry usually indulges in over a period of years. In one suit (in which I helped draft and file a friend of the court brief on behalf of several standards organizations), Broadcom alleges that Qualcomm refused to honor its pledge to license its "essential claims" under a standard on "reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms." Other suits are continuing in multiple courts in several countries, including an antitrust suit that Broadcom lost –but perhaps not permanently – before the FTC issued it's verdict in Rambus. Ironically, the flurry of legal action is helping develop judicial guidelines for standards development and licensing on a more rapid basis than usual.
The current case was brought by Qualcomm in October 2005, and involved two patents that it later alleged would be infringed by implementing H.264, a video compression standard developed by the Joint Video Team (JVT), an effort supported by two global standard setting bodies, ITU-T, acting through its Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG)and the ISO/IEC, acting through its Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG). The jury concluded that implementing the H/264standard would not result in infringement, but also indicated that it believed that Qualcomm had acted improperly before the United States Patent Office in obtaining the patents in question.
From time to time I take a break from technology blogging and write about backcountry hiking and camping. This is one such entry, and you can find others at the Not Here but There: a Wilderness Journal.
The next day, I walked across a loop of the canyon to watch the sun probe in its depths to find the river, and this time could listened to the twittering of swallows plunging and soaring against the northern wall of the canyon, riding the updraft formed as it warmed in the sun. Again and again, a bird would suddenly wheel and dive, catching a meal as a hapless insect was wafted upwards from the safety of the shadows, and betrayed when its sparkling wings caught the sun.
Along this section of the North Rim, the land for some miles back is protected as a National Park, and therefore off limits to grazing, and protected from resource extraction. Almost all of the few dirt roads that once branched out to stock tanks and corrals are now slowly returning to some semblance of natural vegetation, unlike the land to the north, where only those plants that are sufficiently unappetizing to cattle can thrive.
The single dirt track that branches off the road in from the north leads to the Lava Falls trailhead, which zigzags drops precipitously from the edge of the canyon, and drops rapidly down to the river, a half a mile below. The name of the trail derives from what must have been a spectacular event of only a few thousand years ago, when a lava flow cascaded in a flood of fire over the brink, presumably damning the Colorado far below in a cloud of steam. Over time, the force of the backed up river would have worn the dam away, or perhaps more cataclysmically torn it apart.
Memory technology developer Rambus, Inc. secured an important, but not unexpected tactical victory on Friday, when the Federal Trade Commission released an order partially staying the sanctions that it imposed on February 2, 2007. In the earlier order, the FTC prohibited Rambus from charging royalties to implement two standards in excess of those the Commissioners determined Rambus could have charged, absent its abuse of the standards process that created those standards. Under the new order, Rambus will be permitted to continue to charge the rates it demanded prior to the FTC's intervention – but only if it places the excess amounts in a court-approved escrow. The order is conditional, and will not become effective, unless Rambus files its anticipated appeal of the original decision in a Court of Appeals prior to April 12, the effective date of the February 2 decision.
The Commissioners' latest Order will be welcomed by Rambus' stockholders, because Rambus would otherwise have required to either drop its rates on April 12, or seek to renegotiate all of its licenses in such a way as to require make-up payments from its licensees, should it ultimately succeed on appeal.
But the new Order will not be good news for Rambus licensees, which will be deprived of the near-term use of funds that the FTC had already held to be excessive, and illegally obtained. Those funds would be returned to them – with interest, but minus the fees of the escrow agent – if Rambus loses its appeal at some yet to be determined point in the future.
The next morning, the dawn sun shone obliquely through last season's dead grass, igniting the silica in the dried stems, making the dry slope above my campsite gleam like a meadow after an ice storm. The welter of needles worn by Cholla cacti blazed more brightly, as if invested with St. Elmo's Fire rather than simply catching the brilliant light of the rising sun.