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.
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.
Returning from my first Linux Foundation board meeting ten days ago required a flight change in Las Vegas, and this gave me an excuse to invest a few dollars renting a Jeep Wrangler and a few days exploring northwest Arizona. My favorite pastime is poking around the parts of the US whose maps reveal neither towns, nor even paved roads. This is one of the last such areas I haven't already explored, and it goes by the name of the "Arizona Strip."
The first part of the name explains itself, given that most of the area lies in Arizona, although in fact the Strip extends up into southern Utah, and a bit west into Nevada as well. The feature that explains its emptiness is the nature of its border to the west and the south: the Grand Canyon – a gulf that along this lengthy stretch has not as yet been (and I hope will never be) violated by a bridge or adjacent highway. In consequence, you can only reach the Strip from the north and east, and only then via one of a small number of dirt roads. For that matter, there's not much to be found to the east, either. Only to the north are there any towns at all.
The emptiness of the Arizona Strip is also due to the fact that it is almost exclusively public land in all of the popular western flavors (National Park, National Monument, State Park, and the balance under the supervision of the Bureau of Land Management). At its greatest extent, the Strip is 150 miles wide, and almost as many again from north to south, and nowhere in that vast expanse can you find a single paved road. No paved roads, and no towns, gas stations or even running water, either – but a great deal of quietly (and often spectacularly) beautiful country can be enjoyed wherever you go.
Deval Patrick, the Commonwealth's new governor, yesterday introduced a $1.47 billion "emergency" bonding bill, intended to cover a broad range of local and statewide projects, including a measure of funding for the upgrading of the state's IT infrastructure. Details regarding the IT funding portion of the bill appeared today in the on-line version of MHT, a New England print journal dedicated to regional high tech news, in a story written by MHT reporter Catherine Williams. Regular readers may recall that it was concern over this funding that led in part to the resignation of State CIO Peter Quinn in late December of 2005 – and to the subsequent resignation in protest of his successor, Louis Gutierrez in November of last year, when the state legislature adjourned without approving a prior IT funding bill.
Unfortunately for the Information Technology Division (ITD) in particular, and state government in general, the new bill would provide only a fraction of the funding that would have been provided under last year's legislation. As proposed by Patrick, the bond would offer only $95 million, rather than the $250 million originally proposed. According to MHT, $75 million would be dedicated to planning and procurement, a further $15 million would fund a statewide system to mange performance and measure efficiency of agency databases, and $4.9 million would be given to the state attorney general's offices for IT projects.
Last Friday I thought I could sneak a few days of backcountry hiking in over a weekend without neglecting the news and my site too badly. But as soon as I was able to connect my laptop again late today, I learned how wrong I could be. So here goes with my effort to catch up.
The first item that broke over the weekend was the not wholly unanticipated news that ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1 (JTC1) has approved ECMA 376 (a/k/a the format formerly known as Microsoft OOXML) to progress into the five month second phase of the Fast Track process. That story appears to have been first reported by Eric Lai, at ComputerWorld. And the second and third stories that I've noticed (so far) are by Carol Sliwa, also of ComputerWorld. In the first, Carol once again interviews Louis Gutierrez, the former Massachusetts CIO. And in the second, she reports on a poll of CIO's in which she asked whether they would consider implementing ODF.
Both of these journalists have provided excellent coverage to the ODF/OOXML story. It always pays to pay special attention when they have something to say, because each has provided some of the most carefully researched stories. Lately, Eric has been first to break several stories, while Carol went to the trouble last summer of filing the Massachusetts' equivalent of Freedom of Information Act requests that uncovered the real facts regarding Microsoft's lobbying (and more) in Massachusetts. And in the "welcome back" department, PJ at Groklaw (who has also followed ODF and OOXML tirelessly) weighs in with her own insights on several of these stories here.
I'll take a look at Eric's story first, and see if I can provide any additional context. Eric reports that Lisa Rajchel, of ISO's JTC1, made the announcement Saturday in an email that OOXML would proceed on schedule, despite the unusual level of commentary received from qualified ISO/IEC members, many of whom had objected to the brief time (30 days) allowed to digest the over 6,000 page specification.
Citizens of modern societies lead highly regulated lives. Whether as individuals we agree or disagree with the degree to which governments control our existence, we nevertheless benefit from a myriad of laws and regulations that seek to ensure our safety and welfare. The range of regulation is breath taking, encompassing the purity of air and water, the quality of food, the sanitation of towns and cities, the safety of transportation systems, and the delivery of utilities and other essential services, to name just a few.
To date, however, the provision and usage of information and communications technologies (ICT) are largely unregulated at the technical level, despite the increasingly profound impact that ICT has on our lives. True, the communications side of the equation continues to be subject to significant government control. Radio, television, and a rapidly increasing range of wireless frequencies are the subject of treaties internationally, while the allocation, sale and usage of the bandwidth thus defined remains the province of national regulation. In the United States, Congress occasionally passes a law to accomplish a particular data-related purpose, such as preventing the unauthorized sale of consumer information. But most aspects of the modern networked world are controlled primarily by commercial forces, and to the extent that they are regulated on a de facto basis, it is through the adoption and use of consensus (and sometimes proprietary) standards.
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.