Matusow's Blog

Vacation Time

jasonmatusow — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 00:44:02 GMT

I’ll be away from the blog for a spell. I’ll get online and approve comments etc, when I can.

Real Interoperability Projects and Documentation

jasonmatusow — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 16:47:00 GMT

It’s been a while since I was part of the core team doing the broader interop work at Microsoft. I have become increasingly focused on global standards issues which is only a part of the bigger picture on interop.

That said, I was just kicking around the Interoperability Bridges & Labs Center and was impressed with how far a number of those projects have come. I have been hearing many people pontificate on the future of standards for cloud computing, and was doing some searching online which ironically brought me back to a MS site. There is a section here about PHP on Azure if you’re into that kind of stuff. Turns out they built SDKs for Java and Ruby on Azure as well.

I was involved with the team when they were first working on a bunch of the identity OOXML/ODF translator stuff. But the number of projects has been expanded and I like what they’ve done.

The think I like most about this site is it is about real projects and do stuff – not just talk about it. Kudos to Jean and his team. Great stuff in my book.

A Simplified Discussion of “Open Standards” – Welcome to the Warehouse

jasonmatusow — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:33:14 GMT

My last post has driven some great discussion around what an open standard means. Heck, I think I was writing about “open” issues back in March of 2005. One could almost say it has become thematic.

Given the comments from my last post, I thought it would be useful to write out the analogy that was used to help my over-ripe grapefruit of a brain to understand the basics on standards. That way we’re all talking about the same thing. Here is how a very, very, very smart lady (thanks Michele) made a complex system into a simple analogy (paraphrasing of course).

The Warehouse

Think of standards organizations like a warehouse. There is a front door, interior workspace with many tables distributed around, and a loading doc at the back. People who want to work in this warehouse walk in the front door and find the table that interests them. Some of the people walking in the door have buckets full of ideas. Those buckets get brought in and dumped on the appropriate table and the people at that table use the contents of the bucket, plus their own ideas, as the basis for a discussion that ultimately ends up in a specification…a stack of paper that describes a technology. Once the spec is ready, it gets sent to the loading doc where anyone can drive up to the loading doc, pick up the spec and drive away to go build the technology (finally resulting in some software).

In this picture, the “warehouse” is really a legal framework that protects all parties in the process. The people walking in the door who want to participate, the people bringing contributions, the parties involved with the creation of the spec, and the people coming to the loading doc who want to implement. The framework creates a trust model that encourages contribution, participation, implementation, and long-term improvement of the specification. The warehouse allows competitors to work together and to feel comfortable that they are protected from the ideas shared being used against them, enables them to work together without running afoul of anti-trust laws, and creates the mechanisms of trust that encourage the implementers to implement as they are dealt within a uniform and consistent way by the contributors.

Every warehouse is different (lots and lots of standards orgs out there), some have strict rules, some more lax. But they all (in theory) have rules and restrictions designed to foster an environment where standards work happens.

Yeah?–So What

The point I was making in my last post is that this idealized “warehouse” works best when in balance. People seem to be very wrapped up in the discussion of royalties, but they make up only a part of this discussion. The analogy I used in my last post about limitation of scope is critical to this. The same is true for defensive suspension.

To dig deeper on that point, (I’m not a lawyer), my understanding of defensive suspension is that it creates a disincentive for litigation. Which is a good thing. But it is also a mechanism where the contributor (if sued) can revoke rights to the covered IP. So that breaks the idea of “open standards” = no limitations on IP.

The warehouse will work best when it is full of people, rather than when the front door is only opened to a few people. As I said in my last post, I think Rick was right to argue for the fact that standards orgs are better off with more participation. More people around the table, more interested parties willing to put their resources toward working on interoperability. More opportunities for people to go build great solutions thus leading to those standards having greater marketplace relevance.

The “so what” here is that the structure of the warehouses we all work in matter. If you only look through the lens of implementers, the system becomes hostile to contributors. If you only look through the lens of contributors, you end up with standards that no one uses, and the implementers will find other ways to solve their problems (probably with a good deal less interoperability). Microsoft is both contributor to and implementer of hundreds and hundreds of standards. The same is true for many software firms. It is better for everyone if both sides are considered when thinking about the future of standardization.

For the past 8 years the entire software industry has been moving to the middle on the hybridization of business and development models as everyone continues to look for the…dare I say…balance…between core assets, complementary assets, services, and the advantages of community. One of the more interesting (for industry wonks like me) by-products of that process is a clash between traditional standardization models and the modern meme of collaborative development.

Balance of Contributors & Implementers: A Blog Answer to Rick Jelliffe’s Post

jasonmatusow — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 14:00:44 GMT

I love reading smart people’s blogs – and Rick is definitely among that group. I have really enjoyed reading his post, “Standards media formats and licensing: JPEG vs. MPEG” and then the associated post, “Balance of Interest.” In the first one, Rick referred to my recent post “Contribution, Collaboration, & Implementation” and has spurred me to comment further.

First let me say that I agree with Rick’s essential premise that having greater representation in standards working groups is a good thing. There is no question that vendors tend to dominate most working groups quite simply because standards are an expensive game. Between travel costs and time that equates to opportunity costs, staying engaged with a standards working group can be…well…costly. In fact there are some interesting solutions out there (if I’m not mistaken, the Australia national standards body had a fund set up from the coal industry that they manage in a neutral way for ISO participation by smaller interested parties).

If you look at many orgs, the rules are structured so that the more participants one org may send, the more votes they have. Of course, the rules may say that the individual is a member rather than their company – but who is paying their travel? their salaries? I’m not saying this in a pejorative fashion – just pointing out the reality of the environment in which many standards are created.

So – onto the point that Rick was questioning me about. He and I are using “balance” in different ways. He is speaking of balance on committees for the standards-setting process. No disagreement from me there. I’m speaking of the balance in respect to the discussion of “open standards” meaning that there should be no IP restrictions in the standard in order for it to be open. This is different.

The vast majority of ICT standards are created based upon some original contribution from a commercial entity. These submissions are done in order to lay the foundation for a standard, and that decision to contribute is based on the idea of getting some return on the contribution. The return is NOT necessarily about royalties. The return may be that a product that includes the standard as part of it will do better in the marketplace because of the broader adoption of the baseline technology as a standard. The return might be in improved interoperability of a given product or service due to the adoption of that standard. There are competitive reasons for contributions – the hope may be to displace a competitor who is using a non-standardized solution. There are many, many reasons. And yes – some seek royalties from the IP included in standards. (For Microsoft, this is very, very rarely the case. There have been a few examples, but we almost never seek royalties from IP in standards. Historically we have primarily earned our money based on packaged products.)

The balance issue I speak of stems from the idea that many in the “open standards” discussion have placed an over-emphasis on implementers of standards – particularly those who want to implement under licensing that conflicts with patent terms. Essentially the simplified argument is that because those licensing models are not compatible with patent terms, then there should be no IP protections in the standards process so those implementers can implement. That is not balance – that is imbalance.

As a society, we want contributions to standards to continue. If you make the standards environment hostile to contributors…they will contribute less. I don’t think anyone who supports the current “open standards” arguments I have suggested above would like the idea that the contributors start relying more on SIGs than formalized orgs. Probably sub-optimal.

I have no problem with the concept of royalty-free patent licensing. In fact, nor does my employer (MS). I favor the idea the the organizations themselves, and their members, have the ability to choose which model makes sense. I think that things like defensive suspension are really important. Those terms have a dampening effect on litigation in a given sphere – that is a good thing. I think that limitation of scope is reasonable. If my contribution is about a given protocol, but it turns out that same technology is also the world’s greatest aphrodisiac (going for the over-the-top example here to make a point), then my royalty-free contribution should reasonably be limited to the protocol. I may well want to keep the super love-stuff (sorry – this is a really tortured analogy) to myself, or release it as a completely proprietary invention. I fundamentally still believe that innovations are opportunities…and that is a good thing (for the inventor and for society). But the “no IP restrictions” concept of “open standards” does away with too much. Out of balance.

Two final points: 1) There is no evidence to date that a GPL product can’t implement a standard with IP restrictions. There are many, many RAND standards implemented in GPL-licensed products today. 2) I need to write more about this, but I am all for the idea of “open standards,” but to me it is all about process and participation. I like Rick’s points about balance on committees, and am actively working on methods with my team to figure out how we can facilitate brining more voices to the table in a neutral context.

Thanks for the thoughtful posts, Rick. I really enjoyed reading them.

Project Tuva – Physics for People Like Me

jasonmatusow — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 21:41:58 GMT

I read on CNET today that Bill Gates and Microsoft Research had collaborated to release a series of lectures by Dr. Richard Feynman in the mid-1960s. You should take a moment to watch the first lecture. Aside from the cheesy opening, it is really worth the time. The whole thing is released under the name of “Project Tuva.”

Contribution, Collaboration, & Implementation – Standards Need Balance

jasonmatusow — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 02:33:21 GMT

Over the past few months, my passport has received more than its fair-share of stamps. I have spoken with people representing a broad swath of interests about standards and interoperability. A few of these meetings have touched on the role of “openness” in standards.

I think the discussion of openness is hugely important, but incredibly challenged. That magical word comes loaded with so many misconceptions that it should have a warning label attached to it.

In the world of interoperability standards, there is an order of operations. In horrifyingly simple terms, the most common steps are.

Someone comes up with a technology that they want to use as the basis for a standard. They contribute the technology to a specific working group in a standards organization.
The working group will have certain rules of the road so that the many parties involved consider the contribution as part of a specification, and collaborate on the details until there is a written specification. (Important – this is not the technology itself, it is a description of the technology.)
Following the publication of the specification, individuals and organizations who would like to build the standard use the specification to implement it. This one requires a few secondary statements. A) sometimes implementations are done on drafts of the spec vs. final versions. B) Some implementations are partial, others are whole, others still may extend beyond the spec. C) There is generally no mandate as to the method used to create the implementation – just that the end result behaves in the manner detailed by the specification.

So why the standards 101 discussion? Because if you are going to have any debates on what makes an “open standard,” or whether or not a given standards organization is open, or what the role of OSS is in standards, or….well you get the picture. Then we should all be talking about the same basic things.

More importantly, when anyone is considering the implications of their desire to see “openness” in a specific direction – then they need to take into consideration all three steps. This is too often lost in the conversation.

Standards have been so important to the software industry because there has been balance between the needs of contributors, collaborators, and implementers. Because there has been competitive pressures on each that both spur on new activity and keep unwanted activity in check.

After years of working on standards issues daily, it is clear that little happens due to legal mandate. Rather most things work because of the industry "norms” of behavior which are reinforced by the legal framework that supports standards work.

So my point for today – let’s keep all three elements in balance as we consider what “open” should be. The idea that “open” = no IP in a standard is an overbalance in favor of implementers just as the idea that a single party has unequal say in a working group can overbalance in favor of a contributor.

Balance may well be a harder concept than openness.

A Community of Standards Professionals @ Microsoft

jasonmatusow — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 02:23:10 GMT

The past year of work for me (since I was regularly blogging) has been all about follow through on lessons learned during OOXML. In short, the leadership of many national standards bodies and more than a few industry players requested that we maintain our engagement on international standardization over the long-term.

It may be surprising to some, especially considering the oft-stated sentiment that MS doesn’t “do” standards, that we are among the world’s largest contributors to, and participants in, standards organizations. We are active in more than 400 standards working groups at any given time which equates to approximately 150 standards organizations. But the vast majority of that work is focused on industry consortia rather than the more formalized international standardization organizations.

To put things in context, the company had a rather ad hoc approach to contributing to standards. Each product group was responsible for its own contributions to, and/or support of, standards related to its products. Like any large organization, we had groups that were good at it and others that needed help. Overall, participation has steadily increased year over year – which is a good thing.

About a decade ago, the company formed a corporate standards function and has been steadily maturing in its standards work since then. But there has always been a lack of depth in terms of international standardization (ISO or ISO/IEC JTC 1 as opposed to IETF, OASIS, DMTF, etc.). Document formats showed that the discussion with governments is shifting to a greater emphasis on international standards.

Yet there is a huge spectrum of possible participation.We are taking a conservative approach. in a few countries we have put in place dedicated standards professionals and dedicated a few other individuals to cover some broader regions. The charter for my team is to quite simply participate with national, regional, and international standards organizations in a professional, sustained manner.

This is going to be a journey – one which I intent to document in my blog. There are some really important topics to discuss, some fundamental disagreements of approach by different players. The more I learn about standards, the more I come to grips with how important they are to society as a whole. It seems overly-dramatic to say that, but it’s true.

Hello World…Again

jasonmatusow — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 02:52:35 GMT

It is time to start blogging again. I have received many emails asking where I went. The simple answer is…I’ve been working. I know that sounds lame, but the truth is that I have been heavily engaged in some internal projects at Microsoft and it was enough to keep me from staying with my blog.

I just went and checked and my first “Hello World” was on March 9, 2005. So, 4 years later it is time to start all over again. Back then I was writing about Open Source Software. Somewhere along the way I shifted over to working on industry standards, and there I have remained.

When I last posted in 2008, my blog had completely given over to document format discussions. While interesting in and of themselves, it is important to keep our eyes on the broader context.

Over the past year, the continued growth in interest around eGovernment, the increased attention being paid to Health Care IT, e-Learning, and a continuation of global interest in interoperability as a concept have made standards all the more important.

Looks like there is tons to talk about, so hello world…again.

A Macro Question About Microsoft And Standards - Oh Yeah - And Is Microsoft Really Committed to Open XML?

jasonmatusow — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 04:35:29 GMT

A colleague of mine, Stuart McKee, sat on a panel recently during a Red Hat event. His comments have drawn some attention, and now some FUD that I really feel needs to be addressed.

First of all, you can see the coverage here, here, here, and here. But the one I most want to comment is this one from ZDNet in the UK.

This really is the case of a tempest in a tea pot that has boiled out into the general discussion. Stuart is a great guy, very bright, and was on a panel that was demanding. Okay, no big deal. However the inaccuracies came about, either through misconstrued comments and/or simply misspeaking on something, they are none-the-less inaccurate.

The first set of stories focused on whether or not MS is still committed to Open XML. It is - it will be - and we have never said anything different from that. Check out Gray Knowlton's blog as he is in the product team, and the group, that is working on this exact issue. We have always advocated choice in the marketplace, and yes - recently we announced that we would support ODF in Office. That does not mean we are stepping away from Open XML in the least. In fact, it is more of a statement of a deeper commitment to XML-based document formats...but that is a discussion for a different day. I'll leave the rest of this discussion to Gray.

The bigger issues come from the ZDNet article. Has Microsoft been working on standards before Open XML? Has the company done work on standards in the past? Will we work on more standards in the future? The answers are yes, yes, and yes.

Every big software producer works on standards as they relate to the products they are producing. There are essentially three scenarios on a given product. First, to implement a standard. Second, to work on a specification that is in process of becoming a standard. Third, to contribute a technology specification to a standards body so that it may become a standard. Microsoft has been doing all three of these across THOUSANDS of standards for decades.

More than eight years ago, a corporate standards organization was formed in the company to help product teams be better participants in standards orgs, to make more strategic decisions about what and where to contribute specifications, and how to deal with the legal issues surrounding standards bodies (there is an entire specialization in the legal field for this kind of work believe it or not).

Currently, the standards organization at Microsoft has more than 25 full-time employees in it and is focused not only on standards, but how the company thinks about interoperability and standards as a whole. What's more, because we are active in more than 150 standards orgs at any one time, and more than 400 overall - we have more than 600 product team and field employees who have been internally certified for standards work (and most of them are active in some committee or other). Our products have supported literally more than 10,000 standards and we have contributed specifications in the areas of development languages, runtimes, networking protocols, systems management, hardware, mobility, document formats, security,...the list goes on.

Anyone close to the industry knows that Sun, Apple, Microsoft, IBM, SAP, Adobe...any of the big players have people sitting in dozens to hundreds of standards organizations at any time. Companies in the hardware space like Toshiba, Sony, Intel, Samsung, Nokia, Phillips, Siemens...they have even greater standards engagement. There is a reason they are known as industry standards...it is because industry is the major factor in behind the investment of engineering resources to work on these issues. There is often close communication/collaboration with academia on standards-setting as well, but the big money and people investments are from industry.

I think it is very important that we take a step back from the self-perpetuating cycle of reporters and bloggers quoting each other to really think through what is being said. There are big differences in opinions about the role of standards, about the future of certain technologies, about the balance between IP protection and "openness," about the types of technologies that should be contributed...and more...but to work under the assumption that Microsoft (or any other big software company) is not committed to long-term investment in standardization is simply incorrect.

Strategic Use of Collaborative Development in South Africa - Follow Up

jasonmatusow — Wed, 28 May 2008 10:06:36 GMT

Last week I wrote a blog entry stemming from my experience in South Africa and my impressions about the way the OSS preference policy is being considered. What has come of it is a string of rather pointed comments questioning my intelligence and calling me quite the assortment of names - I though xenophobe was a particular low-point in the comments. Given the comments, it is worth clarifying my thinking and making a few points.

1) I think collaborative development can be extremely beneficial to South Africa. In fact, I think it should be a key aspect to their IT strategy for their eGovernment strategy. I simply don't think that discussion is limited to being about platforms. There is absolutely no reason that the agencies using any platform are precluded from using collaborative development to drive greater value from the existing ICT investments. To the extent that an agency is in the process of considering making new platform investments, then they should be free to look at all options and choose the one that provides best value for money over the long run.

2) I think technology mandates are not good policy in any country. In fact, I remember speaking at George Washington University a few years back and making this same statement. At the time, the Executive Director of the Free Software Foundation and the CTO of Red Hat both expressed support of that comment and that their organization's held the same view. Technology providers want their current and future technologies considered on the merits of the technology and the value those technologies bring to those who choose to consume it. If a government mandates a specific technology and/or class of technologies, they are unnecessarily restricting their own choices. Inevitably statue moves more slowly than technology, and mandates subsequently lead to sub-optimal choices.

3) My comments about the education of developers is a macro point and has absolutely nothing to do with whether those developers are in South Africa or any other country. I have no doubt that there are very talented Linux kernel developers in South Africa. Great - good for them, I think that is awesome. But it still doesn't answer the macro question about the types of projects that will both create high-value solutions and attract local participation leading to the in-country skills development that the policy is seeking to do. While I'm sure there is a subset of folks deeply interested in the core OS functions, there is a reason that a very small percentage of developers work on core OS development. I'd guess this is the same reason that there are relatively few operating systems compared to the literally millions of applications out there. Skills development is a good thing - I'm simply advocating that people look to the possibility that there is far more to collaborative development than OS coding.

4) I made a point in my last post on this subject regarding the opportunities for the creation of local software businesses based on OSS. Many, many governments are eager to see the growth of local software businesses. I am fully supportive of that intent, but don't happen to believe that OSS is necessarily the best model to bring that about. Economic opportunity is bolstered by having something unique. The most successful OSS companies have found a way to "hybridize" their solutions to in some way secure the uniqueness of their work while still tapping into the collaborative development community. Comparing the number of companies that have been commercially successful using that model with the tens of thousands of software providers using other development/commercialization approaches suggests to me that an OSS mandate is not likely to lead to the growth of local commercial software firms.

I was impressed with the people I met in South Africa. But I was also struck by the political realities of a technology mandate vs. the real-world opportunities open to them through a broader approach to collaborative development.

I was deeply involved with a series of projects that demonstrated a wide range of possible approaches to collaborative development (using non-OSS, OSS, and Free Software licensing models; using various approaches to tools, project types, funding models, etc.). Furthermore, I went through dozens of scenarios of thinking about core assets vs. complimentary assets and how OSS dev methodologies could be applied. There is so much more to the conversation than Linux vs. Windows. In fact, given the world of interoperability opportunities today, I'd argue that enterprise-scale environments are far better off thinking about "and" compared to "vs." and really looking at where the value to them from collaborative development is. Commercial implementations of enterprise-class operating systems are not free of cost. So - again, to me, the question is about how collaborative development can be used to extend the value of any platform decision.

Open XML, ODF, PDF, and XPS in Office

jasonmatusow — Wed, 21 May 2008 22:04:00 GMT

Clearly the Press Announcement today from Microsoft will bring about another wave of discourse on the future of document formats. The really short version of this announcement is that Office is going to support ODF, PDF, and XPS in the product directly and Microsoft engineers are going to join the OASIS working group on ODF, participate in the future of PDF in AIIM, stay active in the Ecma working group for XPS, and of course, remain active in JTC 1 SC34 where Open XML (and hopefully ODF) will be maintained over time. Also, when released, Office 14 will update the already substantial support for IS29500 in Office 2007.

While this is a big deal announcement for the Office product team (check out Doug Mahugh's blog), my take on it is predictably focused on the longer-term interoperability factors. Each aspect of the actions being taken by Microsoft fit into a very logical progression.

For years, I have vocally disagreed with the notion of a single document format as being the answer – the oft quoted Highlander line, “there can be only one.” My reason for this is very simple – document formats are representative of the innovation in the applications that use them. If you mandate a single document format – or even worse, a single version of a document format – you are effectively saying that you want to constrain application innovation to the limitations of a given format. I think this is bad news for consumers and producers of technology alike.

There is a continuum of thought related to interoperability reaching back many years based on the growth of Microsoft’s enterprise business, all of which has been affected by the regulatory activity in the U.S. and Europe. This is overlaying the real-world issues customers face as the world continues to progress toward network ubiquity and the desire to exchange an ever-increasing range of data electronically. In particular, governments are pressing hard to realize eGOV scenarios where they are seeking to effectively connect just about every type of information processing technology ever created. Thus, we end up in an ongoing conversation about interoperability.

There are some points to keep in mind when considering the news about the expanded set of document formats in Office.

This is not about any one document format “winning” – it is about enabling customers to evaluate and use document formats that make the most sense for them. Just as the MS deal with JBOSS didn’t mean we were saying that J2 was better than .NET – it is that we want our customers to have the most positive experience possible when using our product.
Nothing in this announcement removes existing commitments regarding document formats. Microsoft will continue to support the open source translator projects. Why? Because we started them in good faith with customers looking to use that mechanism to achieve interop, because other developers are picking up the platform agnostic projects and implementing them, because the collaborative development in the OSS projects has been educational for people on all sides of the interop issue. (Witness the work of DIN – the German national standards body – and their move to have those translation technologies become ongoing work in JTC 1 SC 34 WG6).
The Data Portability aspects to the Interop Principles will continue to move forward. For example, the API that will allow ANY document format to register itself with Office and be set as the default will be made available as planned. Additionally, the work with DAISY and other specialized document formats will move forward as well.
The documentation of client/server protocols for Office-related technologies (such as SharePoint and Exchange/Outlook communications) will remain available to the public.
Microsoft will continue to listen to customers about specifications’ version numbers and look at the practical nature of software implementation as we make decisions about what to implement. Office is NOT implementing ODF 1.0 from ISO. That spec is not representative of the marketplace today, it is not what is implemented in OpenOffice, it is not what IBM is using for Symphony, and it is not referenced in the Massachusetts ETRM policy. We are looking carefully at the business, customers, marketplace and competitive issues for each of the specifications and the MS implementation work will depend on those considerations.
Participating with quality engineering capacity in Open XML, ODF, PDF, and XPS working groups will pay dividends for our customers over time. I know that the skeptics are going to spin theories about MS participation in these groups – but the reality is that we want the specs to continue to improve over time and facilitate interop so that our customers are happy with the value they receive from our solutions. Clearly product competition is always a factor in this discussion, but that is the exact reason standards bodies exist – so all parties (even direct competitors) have a neutral forum in which to work on specifications.

The next 12 to 24 months are going to be extremely telling in the world of document formats. The myopia around the standardization process of Open XML will fade as software producers continue to invest their development budgets in the creation of solutions. The specification itself is only the start; it is the implementations, and the competition in the marketplace of broader solutions that will continue to matter more. In my opinion, the continued interest in innovation presented by those solutions will speak much louder than the formats themselves.

The Politics of OSS Still Overshadow The Benefits of Collaborative Development

jasonmatusow — Tue, 20 May 2008 01:33:14 GMT

It has now been almost three years since I stepped away from working daily on open source opportunities for Microsoft. I've watched the team that took on Shared Source morph it into some extremely positive collaborative work that is exactly what OSS is all about. The paltry few projects that were in place in 2006 have blossomed into thousands of projects, and some of the core source release programs for flagship technologies are still operational today. All good.

Unfortunately, I can't say that I'm seeing the same understanding about collaborative development when I go out and meet with customers, governments, partners...whomever.

I haven't been blogging much due to a great deal of travel, and the huge backlog of other work catching up to me following the close of the Open XML process. One of my most interesting trips was down to South Africa to talk interop, document formats, and yes...open source software.

South Africa has taken a most unfortunate position of late - the government has sought to put a political mandate in place for the adoption of open source software. I am against all technology mandates, and this one is no different. Ultimately, it constrains decision-making away from technology, solution quality, ROI on existing investments, people issues...in short value-for-money - all in the name of a political position. Worse, it is pushing CIOs into decisions that they don't want to make - essentially taking working environments representing huge investments and moving to untested, more expensive solutions.

But, the most serious issue to me is that they are not looking at the real benefits that OSS can bring them. Politically, every conversation about the OSS mandate is really a Windows vs. Linux discussion. This is in no small part assisted by the local presence of Ubuntu. There is absolutely no comprehension that the Linux they will deploy on an enterprise scale will be completely locked down by commercial services agreements and version controls by the apps vendors (e.g. SAP). This is absolutely fine from a decision point of view for enterprise systems, but it is most certainly not any gain due to open source.

The real value of OSS to a government that is looking to:

save money
bring development skills in-country
address local issues with home-grown, customized solutions
gain operational as well as financial efficiencies across government agencies
foster local services and ISV opportunities
etc. etc.

is to apply OSS development and licensing methodologies at the app-dev and tools layers, rather than thinking of the core OS as an OSS opportunity for them. Deep dev of the core OS is not likely to happen in South Africa today on any large scale. Students at the university still grappling with coding skills are not going to dive into the inner-working of Linux. Any innovation on Linux that is broadly applicable will immediately be picked up by Red Hat or Novell and commercialized globally with little economic benefit coming back to SA.

Yet, if they looked instead at the existing investments in infrastructure, and thought about the use of OSS against the custom needs of their government activities. Or for intra-government projects. Or for building key bridges to enable eGovernment solutions. Or any of a number of projects - they could bring in academics, local ISVs, local services providers, engage existing government developers, etc.

All of that could happen regardless of whether the platform is Windows, Linux, AS/400, OS/X...whatever.

The developing world still views OSS as "free as in no money," and that is widely known to not be the case. Technology solutions are expensive no matter what the development and/or philosophical model are underlying them.

I heard this same point of view for 5 years all over Asia, parts of Europe, and Latin America. I saw governments try to incubate OSS businesses solely because "OSS" was in the title and mandate. Then, those businesses failed, and the mandated solutions turned out to be far more expensive than other commercial alternatives. Almost uniformly this came about through a misunderstand (in my humble opinion) of what OSS can do for organizations.

There is a reason that Harvard Business School found that more than 95% of all OSS venture funding went into fewer than 20 projects. Those heavily commercialized projects are just another way to deliver high-value, mass-consumed, supported technology. Finding the value of OSS beyond those projects for the average organization is all about applying collaborative development against real-world problem sets in small, efficient projects.

Ahhh...it feels good to blog again. :-)

Participation in standards...

jasonmatusow — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 10:18:25 GMT

Just a quick note today. I am on the road meeting with MS people and later this week doing a bunch of external outreach work in South Africa as well. During the last few months there has been a good deal of rumblings about participation in committees, about countries moving from o- to p- status, etc. The more I ruminate on this, the more I think people are missing the point.

Standards are supposed to be inclusive rather than exclusive in nature. The increase in participation during the past 12-18 months is positive overall. Even more so that some countries with emerging economies chose to elevate their status in either SC 34 or JTC 1.

I've been spending some time talking to folks in some of these countries and have found examples of places where the political decision to move to p-membership was to amplify a yes vote and elsewhere to amplify a no vote. While certainly within the constructs of the rules, my personal take is that is not a great reason for the elevation of status.

But, in every other case I've looked into, the governments are genuinely looking to increase the footprint of ICT work in their countries. They are looking for opportunities to be more involved in the international ICT discussion. I think that is extremely encouraging.

As many people continue to ruminate on the state of standards following the adoption of Open XML, this topic should take a prominent position. The fact that so many people had opinions on the standard, and were willing to participate to even the most minor level (letters sent in, vs. attending meetings etc.) all the way up through attending committee meetings and traveling to the BRM etc. had a real impact on the process.

Many of the most developed nations' national standards bodies have dedicated at least some resource to capacity building for emerging countries. Furthermore, finding a way to address the idea that international standards take such heavy financial and people resources has merit as well. For example, I found out that in Australia the coal industry uses a blind trust mechanism from industry to enable participants to work on ISO standards - even if they are from smaller firms or academia where travel budgets can be very hard to come by.

Food for thought for sure.

IP, RAND, Standards, OSP, ISP - the conversation continues...

jasonmatusow — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 06:14:00 GMT

There have been numerous comments to my last blog posting, as well as a long response from Groklaw. Overall I am encouraged by the conversation as a whole because I think it is touching on some foundational issues.

One of the most challenging aspects to the threads I've been reading in the responses to my post (and I see this in the Groklaw post as well) is that many issues are getting squashed together - and that is the very basis of misunderstanding these issues. One more thing, there are a few people who put some really excellent stuff in the comments to my last blog post, and I recommend them as reading. Andy Updegrove’s comment is probably the most thoughtful and thought provoking of the lot.

I’m going to try to pull out some of the most commonly touched on points and themes. This is long...sorry.

Standards and business models

At the core of the discussion both on this blog and over at Groklaw is the question of how evolving business and licensing models blend with the existing standards world. The fact that Free Software as a concept has been around since the mid-late ‘80s (if I remember correctly) is not particularly germane. It was really only following the massive commercial investments of the early 2000s that we see the growth of some very fundamental issues in software business models. (I know there was significant dev work happening in the 1990s – but this is a meta point about the industry.) The hockey stick effect of OSS adoption and real business momentum has brought about the discussions about RAND, GPL, covenants not to sue, etc.

You will get no argument from me on the point that the adoption of FLOSS in big business and small are changing the face of the software industry. But by the same rational point of view, the growth of the overall software industry continued to be fantastic during that same period of time. My concern has always been with people who argue that because the Free Software approach is predicated on certain beliefs, and that it is being used, that everyone should have the same beliefs. I think it is ultimately unhealthy for the industry for everything to shift to a single approach – we are all better off with choice of business models, choice of licensing models, and choice of solutions to acquire for addressing business needs.

(Caution – major simplification here) Standards bodies are meant to be the place where all parties come together in an environment that is safe and beneficial for all participants. And where even those who were not involved in the process, may utilize the output from the process in a safe and beneficial way. Additionally, it is in all parties’ best interests to see sustained contribution of innovations into the various standards orgs (no matter what model they were developed under). Moreover, it has been considered highly desirable to have both standards and solutions compete in the marketplace which pushes innovation and opportunity even further.

So in the discussion of RAND and GPL and even in the case of Open XML and the OSP – I think it is worth considering how it is that GPL implementations may be done. But I disagree if the argument is that they should be done regardless of any consequences to those who do not share the same model. There are ways of building bridges between models – to me, that is the most important place to start.

Free Software Licensing and RAND

I do not want to belabor this point. Groklaw pointed out, as have many others, that Free Software licensing conflicts with RAND. Not just on royalty terms, but on sub-licensing and limitation of scope as well. This is not the end of the world, nor is it a show-stopper (obviously – Unicode, for example, is shipped in Linux I believe). So the question then becomes how do software producers who have an interest in seeing their technologies broadly adopted (even in Free Software implementations) find ways to bridge the gap. Of course, it would be good to see the Free Software community seek to meet in the middle with all parties – consensus helps (IMHO).

ISO and RAND vs. Terms From Vendors

Throughout the comments people are still saying that the JTC 1 RANDz declaration for Open XML is somehow different than other JTC 1 RANDz declarations. It is not. The same rules apply to all specifications – uniformly. ODF and PDF and others are under the same terms. The assertion that Microsoft could somehow “wield” the JTC 1 declaration in a means different from any other contributor to an ISO spec is false. What’s more, the Open Specification Promise goes significantly further than the JTC 1 RANDz declaration and was created to enable the full spectrum of implementations. (Notice Gnumeric has included Open XML support even though it is GPL licensed.)

Vendor Promises – OSP/ISP/CNS

The vendors who are making promises, or covenants, on their IP separate from the terms directly associated with the specification are doing so to build the bridge I spoke of earlier between the traditional IP-holder structures and the Free Software model. We can (and probably should) debate the merits and drawbacks of each of these, but you should first take a step back and recognize that these promises are a positive step in the direction of enabling the highly divergent licensing models to coexist. It is also important to note that while a few of the big players have taken this step (logical because they are the ones holding more patents or who have more directly involved product interests), it is not common practice in the software industry. There are thousands of rights holders who participate in standards, whose contributions merit great respect, and who wish to maintain control of their intellectual property. For smaller software vendors whose business model is dependent upon the direct commercialization of their software, a mandate to exhaust their patent(s) (forget royalties – there are other issues worth considering here) will act as a disincentive for contribution.

Is the OSP from Microsoft global?

I saw this questioned a bunch of times so I think it is worth clarifying. The OSP is a global promise – to everyone, in every country, and in every line of business or personal interest. People are confusing whether or not there is legal recognition of software patents with the reach of something like the OSP. Those are different concepts and worth separating in your thinking.

Should standards orgs change their policies to accommodate free software?

This is a decision that each and every one of the hundreds of standards organizations who handle software standardization will need to consider. There is absolutely nothing inherently bad about working with it or not – it is a choice based upon the charter and membership of that organization.

In many ways, my answer there is a punt, but it is true. My opinion is that effective bridges need to be found, and done in such a way that things remain fair for all parties. Companies that sell software directly must clear their product for patent royalties and other IP considerations before selling it into the marketplace. The standards bodies have IP policies so that their output too is copasetic in regards to IP before people begin to use the specifications (thus the concern about trolls). There is no reason that orgs commercializing Free Software should not respect other’s IP as well.

I think an interesting way to consider this is to take a logical extreme of the argument – what if every standards body mandated Free Software-compliant (not MPL, not EPL, not MsPL...only GPL) licensing terms. What would happen? Some might say we would be one step closer to nirvana as a race. Some might choose to drop completely out of the standards game and seek individual licensing agreements and/or cross-payments etc. to bring their product to market with interop features. Certainly there would be those who would be forced to fracture their product (again, good/bad...all depends) and ship some components separate from others to stay compliant with the source license. Others might pursue a whole raft of SIGs (special interest groups) that are exclusionary and outside of the standards world. Still others...I could go on. To me, that is not a good outcome. I think we are in a better state if standard bodies continue to serve their purpose and be a place with highly competitive parties can come to the table to collaborate on specifications even if they have diametrically opposed business/licensing models. Ultimately, the marketplace will speak louder than licensing mandates.

Should there be multiple licensing schemes?

This is an extrapolation on my part from what I’ve been reading in the comments of my last blog. I’ll first say that it is a moot question because there are and will be multiple licensing schemes. How many OSI licenses are there? And why is that? Because IP holders all have strong opinions about how their IP should be handled. Secondly, I am always a fan of choice...and am nervous when zealotry begins to suggest that any alternate choice is heresy. This leads to a very scary place.

Conflict of reciprocal licenses – was I speaking correctly?

I spoke of the fact that Linux ships with code that has conflicting licensing agreements. And many people asked me to “prove” it. I’ll let you all tell me if I’m nuts. All reciprocal licenses by definition conflict with each other. The GPL claims to cover the “aggregate” product, the CPL/EPL the “component,” and the MPL the “file.” In all cases though, if there are conflicting terms they all say you can’t distribute. So – is there any mingling of GPL, MPL, EPL code in Linux? How about the rest of the licenses purported to conflict with the GPL?

By the way, this is also true for the point that I made about RAND terms on code shipped with Linux today – how about Unicode for example? Last I check, IEEE 1394 Firewire was similarly licensed. There are literally THOUSANDS of RAND-covered specs out there used commonly in operating systems throughout the industry.

Now, on to the leap of faith on the part of my critics – I did not raise this point to spread FUD about Linux. Why can I say that? Because this point has been raised in public events in the past...and it continues to not matter. So my point is something else entirely.

Legal snags like the ones I mentioned only matter if someone presses it in a court case. No one can say if these issues will ever become an issue but that has never stopped a single person from using Linux. So, when people then say that the MS OSP, or IBM’s ISP, or RAND terms, or whatever means that Free Software developers can’t develop something, I find it hard to take seriously when the intent, and all of the materials surrounding these actions speak of building bridges and enabling...not shutting down or threatening. Those same developers are willing to take those exact same issues as no concern on one hand and then scream foul on the other. It’s worth thinking about a bit.

Ending this long post...

Too much here already – thanks again folks for the good comments. We are at an inflection point in the industry...and that is exciting to be a part of. If you are going to comment – let’s shy away from the zealotry, and stay focused on lucid arguments.

More Open XML Discussion - more misunderstandings about standards and IP

jasonmatusow — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 08:28:58 GMT

There is much to talk about based on what has been happening in the discussion of Open XML these days. First, ISO has posted a FAQ about 29500. The approach taken in the FAQ is both direct and simplified. The rabbit hole on standards goes deep indeed, and any such FAQ must simplify to make it digestible for the layman reader.

An example of someone misunderstanding standards and IP issues would be Groklaw in this post. The post displays many of the misunderstandings about IP in standards that I see echoed around the blogosphere.

I will say that the author of the Groklaw post got it right when they wrote that, "Patents and Linux and FOSS don't mix." But the author jumps off the tracks completely when the observation is followed up with, "So RAND terms in Microsoft's hands are discriminatory."

I think it is important that anyone offing an opinion on the OSP should first ask him or herself a question: do I really understand IP licensing in the world of standards? I'd suggest that the author the Groklaw post didn't ask this question up front and would benefit from some boning up - it would help get the story straight.

Here are some things I think may be helpful in this discussion. By the way, my answer to the question I just posed in the previous paragraph is, "sort of."

1) RAND (reasonable and non-discriminatory) did not originate with software. It is a commonly used acronym but has different meanings in different standards bodies. It has many parts - more than just patent rights, more than royalty terms...my understanding is that it is a framework designed to provide both incentive for contribution and implementation. The reason I agree with the statement about patents and Free Software not mixing is that there have been terms written into GPL licenses that explicitly conflict with software patents. Okay, that is the choice of the authors and users of those licenses. But the fact that those licenses were written does not mean that the RAND terms that have evolved over the past century of standardization are suddenly invalid.

2) The ISO/IEC JTC 1 patent policy is applied uniformly to all standards in the ISO/IEC JTC 1 arena. The idea that the RAND declaration regarding Open XML is any different than a RAND declaration for ODF or for any other ISO Standard (such as...oh I don't know...how about PDF just for fun. Remember the huge list of patents that Adobe used to put on the welcome screen of the Acrobat reader alone?). The terms provided for the Microsoft patents in Open XML are legally irrevocable. They are global. Since they are broader than the RAND declaration for JTC 1, the attempt at FUD by the Groklaw post should be recognized for what it is...FUD.

3) The various covenants not to sue or similar promises from a few (mind you, this is hardly common practice in the software industry today) of the big vendors are all born of the same desire - to help bridge the gap between Free Software and software patents used in specifications. Forget the philosophical and ontological debates about software patenting for a moment and just deal with the fact that the law in a number of countries recognizes software patents as valid IP today. And, judging by the continued pace of patent filings, it would seem that more than a few people out there are seeking to use software patents as a legitimate means for protecting their innovations. Heck, even some of the long-time Free Software advocates are looking at the positive implications of patenting software as a means to encourage greater innovation. Yet all of these bridges run into some snag or another on various points. So the question that comes to mind is how important are those snags?

Before you get your hair in a knot over this, consider for a moment that all Linux distributions come with code licensed under reciprocal licenses that conflict and (in theory) should block the distribution of the software. Oops, no one seems to care about that snag. Okay, Linux also ships with code that implements standards specifications covered by RAND terms from many parts of the industry that should block the distribution of the software. Oops, no one seems to care about that snag either. Hmmm - I'm wondering if those complaining about the OSP understand the nature of IP terms in standards to begin with, since they don't seem to mind these other, potentially more-serious issues.

4) Many of the terms included in standards IP licensing are there for a rainy day vs. for any practical use. In many cases, IP holders will provide RAND terms that include royalty terms yet never, ever collect a penny in royalties. Why, you might ask? Those terms are there as a defensive mechanism. This is true for the entire concept of defensive suspension and to a large degree the concepts around limitation of scope as well.

5) The concept of "discrimination" in the standards world of RAND is another one where you really need a lawyer to talk you through what it means and/or doesn't mean. I am not a lawyer, but to my understanding it has a great deal more to do with the uniformity of your application of terms to like parties than it has to do with any one party being able to take those terms or not. If there are lawyers reading this thread I'd love the input. Everyone should have the choice of what license they use - but there may be implications for the use of those particular terms as they will interact with the rest of the world.

Concluding this too-long blog post...

As you can see, looking at the real issues on the table about IP and standards is a good thing to do. I am on board with the idea that the established world of IP in standards needs to be looked at carefully in context with the amount of work happening under the concepts of reciprocal licenses. It would be helpful if folks who speak with a loud voice also seek to do so in an educated fashion.

I am a serious proponent of participation in the process - but that needs to be for all parties, large and small alike. But that means keeping an open mind while you are also advocating open standards.