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An Arizona Strip Sketch Book – Day 1

3/18/2007

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.

New MA Governor Proposes New – and Smaller – IT Bond Bill

3/15/2007

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.

C’World’s ODF/OOXML Trifecta: A Gamble by MS, Gutierrez Shares More, and only a Few CIO’s Say “Maybe” to ODF

3/13/2007

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.

ICT Sandards, Accessibility and Self-Regulation

3/07/2007

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 OOXML Contradictions Disclosed

3/01/2007

Someone was kind enough to send me the package of materials distributed by JTC 1 earlier today to its members (I have authenticated these materials through a second knowledgeable source as well). The package contains each of the responses filed during the ISO Fast Track Contradictions period for Ecma 376, the specification based upon Microsoft's OOXML formats, as well as the responses prepared by Ecma to those responses.

As you'll recall, I had been told that the majority of these responses were critical, while Microsoft had downplayed them, suggesting that most or many were either neutral, or in fact "laudatory." As they are to be made public shortly, you will be able to perform your own comparison, but here are brief extracts from each of the 20 responses received by JTC 1 (the package confirms, as I had earlier reported, that a total of 20, and not 19, responses were received). While these are only extracts, I have reproduced short out takes that are sufficient to allow you to now see the actual mix between favorable, neutral and negative responses. As you will see, 14 of 20 responses were clearly negative, two indicated divisions of opinion, three were inconclusive or neutral, and one offered no objections. I think that it's fair to say that the over view that I had previously offered has proven to be accurate.

What happens next? The files sent to me also include the JTC1 transmittal note, which indicates that after internal consultation, next steps will be communicated to the National Bodies "in the very near future."

Here are the extracts, divided by category, taken directly from the original responses filed by the 20 national bodies.

Updated 10:50 EST 3/3/07: I have not felt comfortable posting the full documents that I have received. However, I will provide links to them as others get copies and post them on line. You can find the summary Ecma document, with Ecma's proposed actions, through the following link that appears in a March 1 article by Eric Lai at ComputerWorld, or in this link from a March 3 Groklaw article by Mathfox. The same article by Mathfox includes the full text of the French response.

And California Makes Four

2/28/2007

The big news of the day is that a legislator in California has decided that it is time to convince his colleagues that California should become the latest U.S. State to get on the open formats bandwagon. If the bill advances, it will the third such pieces of legislation to have been filed in recent weeks (the others are in Texas and Minnesota). A link to the California bill is here, and the full text appears at the end of this blog entry. As defined in the draft legislation, the bill would require that "all documents, including, but not limited to, text, spreadsheets, and presentations, produced by any state agency shall be created, exchanged, and preserved in an open extensible markup language-based, XML-based file format, as specified by the department." Significantly the bill continues:

When deciding how to implement this section, the department in its evaluation of open, XML-based file formats shall consider all of the following features:
(1) Interoperable among diverse internal and external platforms and applications.
(2) Fully published and available royalty-free.
(3) Implemented by multiple vendors.
(4) Controlled by an open industry organization with a well-defined inclusive process for evolution of the standard.

Denmark and Open Standards

2/27/2007

Those who are following government initiatives to mandate the use of open standards and/or open source will be aware that Europe has been a leading change agent in this area, joining the pioneering work in a similar vein of Massachusetts and Minnesota and, more recently, Texas. Those that have been following European initiatives closely will also be aware that Denmark has been in the legislative forefront, and that blogger John Gotze has been kind enough to provide English-language commentary and updates on what's been happening there.

A couple of days ago, John posted an update at his blog on open standards legislative action in Denmark, which you can find here. The following are a few excerpts to set the stage, and you can also find an English language summary of recent developments here in PDF form, and here in ODF format.

On Friday, the Danish Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation, Helge Sander, made a press announcement (Danish) about his plan for following up on the Parliament Resolution 8 months ago.

The implementation plan is presented in a report which suggests that “open standards should be implemented gradually by making it mandatory for the public sector to use a number of open standards when this becomes technically feasible”.

The report identifies an initial sets of open standards as candidates for mandatory use from 1 January 2008 “if an economic impact assessment shows that this will not involve additional costs to the public sector”.

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 Standards Blog