Gotze.eu

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  • Good Enough Standards? No Way

    Two of my students (Michael and Søren) did an interesting small project about the “document format war” in december, and we had a good discussion at the exam here this week. They’d interviewed three key actors in the Danish OpenXML/ODF-debate, and presented a very decent, if slightly biased, analysis.

    But bias seem to be the menu of the day everywhere in the document debates. Burton Group’s What’s Up, .DOC? ODF, OOXML, and the Revolutionary Implications of XML in Productivity Applications was bashed for being biased.

    And of course, there are all the biased bloggers. Take Stephen McGibbon’s IBM’s Director of Strategy comes clean on OpenXML or Rob Weir’s What every engineer knows or Russell Ossendryver’s ISO should kick OOXML off the standards bus. Biased, biased, biased. More biased than ever, if possible. And now also in Danish.

    BTW, this made me laugh: Note the Google ads on Russell Ossendryver’s blog. On top is this link, hardly endorsed by Ossendryver, one would imagine …

    In the debates about document formats, let’s not forget that most people and organisations still use the old binary documents. And now there may be hope. See Brian Jones: Mapping documents in the binary format (.doc; .xls; .ppt) to the Open XML format. Microsoft will release a Binary Format-to-OpenXML translator project on SourceForge, and not least, publish the binary format documentation under their Open Specification Promise. I’m pretty sure someone will finds things to complain about regardless of how “open” the binary formats are. But Microsoft has indeed just bought themselves some goodwill.

    So what happens next? OpenXML’s ISO fast track process is about to hit an important milestone. In late February, some 120 ISO-delegates from 40 countries will meet in Geneva to review Ecma’s proposed resolution of 3,522 comments on OpenXML. After this meeting, the national bodies will have 30 days to reconsider their original vote. Andy Updegrove’s ODF vs. OOXML on the Eve of the BRM is a great analysis of the process so far. Of course Andy is also biased, but he does some pretty solid research, and provides a compelling argument for how the standardisation system is broken.

    I live in Denmark, a country that said No in September. It was one of those “with comments” no’s, and I’m pretty sure my country is one of those that Microsoft hope will change its vote at or after the Geneva meeting.

    Jasper Bojsen, CTO in Microsoft Denmark, yesterday wrote (in Danish) about myths about Microsoft and ODF. He argues that there are differences between ODF and OpenXML, and that both standards should be ISO approved so that ISO can take charge of making them more interoperable.

    Hmmm. That almost makes sense. No, wait, it doesn’t. It’s not ISO’s job to make standards interoperable. To become an ISO standard in the first place, a standard must be “a good citizen” which includes being interoperable.

    It may well be that Ecma’s proposed resolution has made OpenXML a better standard, but as far as I can tell, nearly nothing has been done about enabling interoperability with existing ISO-standards. But unless they twist the words, thankfully some improvements have been done, for example it does seem that VML is out of the spec.

    So if ISO now goes ahead and approves OpenXML’s fast track, what will be the motivation for Ecma and Microsoft to work for interoperability with other standards? As quoted here, Microsoft intends to stick to OpenXML regardless of what ISO decides, because it’s what their product uses.

    At the end of the day, we are talking about standards, not markets, and not products. ISO makes standards, or, Standards, the real thing, not those pesky consortium standards! The market uses the standards when creating competitive products, and the standards are what makes the markets “work”. Only when standards are truly open and interoperable across ecosystems will their markets work. This is why standards bodies should only accept standards that can demonstrate truly independent and “complete” implementations in products by competing market actors. Is this enough? I don’t think so.

  • My iPhone

    I just had to have one …
    iPhone

    On my recent trip to the US, I couldn’t resist dropping by an Apple Store to buy an iPhone. Of course, it had to be hacked and jailbreaked to work here in Denmark. But thanks to Ulrik and a TurboSIM-card, it now works with my Danish SIM-card, so whenever you call me, you call my iPhone.

    And what a cool gadget it is! Stunningly great design.

    It works seamlessly with my wifi (something my other mobil phones never managed to; the iPhone just plugged in…), and the Safari browser experience is not too bad at all. Of course many webpages are unreadable, but the zoom function is great. There are some but not many websites that offer special iPhone versions, that the browser jumps into. An example of a site optimsed for iPhone users is this one. Oh, and Google Apps rock! My own blog also now servers iPhone users, who get a completely customised theme (thanks to this plugin). Expect to find more iPhone services here soon 🙂

    So far, I have just installed one application. I chose the Book application. And then got Lessig’s book. I’m not sure I’m gonna read it in this environment, but I do see a potential for lighter reading. Could see myself checking news and blogs here, and must check some of the iPhone applications out there. Any recommendations?

  • Democracy and XML

    I’m in the US (Washington, Boston, Washington) from 26 Nov to 7 Dec.

    I have been invited to come over to Washington, DC, to attend a researchers and practioners meeting in the Deliberative Democracy Consortium, which will be held Thu-Sat this coming week.

    After that, I go to Boston for the XML 2007 conference.

    Pop quiz: At which of these events will there be discussions about erosion of trust? (hint)

  • Airlines and EA

    If anyone out there has experience with enterprise architecture in the airline business, I would really like to hear from you.

    I can offer a chief architect or CIO/CTO in an airline some intensive sparring with 15 skilled architects during the week of 8-12 October. Need review of your target architecture? Sequencing plan? Particular artifacts? Or just want to share some of your stories and experiences?

    If you happen to be in Northeren Europe (esp. Belgium or Netherlands), and can come to Antwerp, you’d be invited to join us in person. Or if you’d like to help via phone or email, we can also work with that.

    I would also appreciate comments, stories, links etc to anything of interest to EA in the airline industry (air transport and aerospace in general too).

    I personally only know the airline business as a customer (frequent traveller), but judging from that, I can easily imagine EA being not just neceassy but indeed also challenging in an airline. In other words, same situation as in most other industries, but maybe even more so than most other places.

    EA necessary?
    Well, yeah, with all those standards, requirements and controls the business needs, and all the prescribed processes, data exhanges, and system interoperability/connectivity, of course EA is needed.

    EA challenges?
    Well, yeah for sure! With hub-locks, safety concerns, e-ticketing, traveller convenience demands, green house gasses, service valuation and process elimination, and many more drivers from the strategic level (what’s our mission?) all the way down to the technology and infrastucture level (99,9% uptime not good enough on mission-critical systems, etc.). Oh, and the VLJs and the fourth platform.

  • Netherlands Picks ODF

    (Updated 20 September) 

    Just heard this news from the Netherlands: On behalf of the Dutch government, Frank Heemskerk, Minister State Secretary of Economic Affairs, announced today that ODF will be the standard for reading, publishing and the exchange of information for all governmental organisations. The deadline is January 2009. Heemskerk’s announcement is just one of several initiatives about the use of open standards and open source software in Dutch government.

    Dutch announcement: Ministerie van Economische Zaken – Verplicht gebruik open standaarden bij overheid

    More in Dutch: The Action Plan,  About Action Plan, Background article

    Actually, I don’t speak Dutch (and for those who think Danes speak Dutch: No, we speak Danish!), but it’s close enough in writing that I almost can make sense of it. So big discaimer on the accuracy of the information above. See comments to this post.

    I’m not sure what the exact difference between a minister and a state secretary in the Netherlands is, but assume both represent the sitting government.
    I’m also not sure what they mean by an Action Plan, and what legal status such plan has.

  • OOXML has not achieved the required number of votes for approval

    Moments ago, ISO issues a press release: Vote closes on draft ISO/IEC DIS 29500 standard:

    A ballot on whether to publish the draft standard ISO/IEC DIS 29500, Information technology – Office Open XML file formats, as an International Standard by ISO (International Organization for Standardization) and IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission) has not achieved the required number of votes for approval.

    The five-month ballot process ended on 2 September and was open to the IEC and ISO national member bodies from 104 countries, including 41 that are participating members of the joint ISO/IEC technical committee, JTC 1, Information technology.

    Approval requires at least 2/3 (i.e. 66.66 %) of the votes cast by national bodies participating in ISO/IEC JTC 1 to be positive; and no more than 1/4 (i.e. 25 %) of the total number of national body votes cast negative. Neither of these criteria were achieved, with 53 % of votes cast by national bodies participating in ISO/IEC JTC 1 being positive and 26 % of national votes cast being negative.

    Full announcement

  • Denmark Says No With Comments

    It’s official: Denmark has voted No with Comments to ISO/IEC DIS 29500 OOXML. See Danish Standards’ press release (in Danish). They are submitting 64 pages of comments, and state that Denmark will work for an approval assuming the comments will be addressed.

    I’ve read through the comments, and find them balanced and thorough. It will require some substantial changes to EOOXML for it to address these comments. However, addressing the comments will also require changes to OpenDocument, because the gist of the comments is to ensure interoperability between the ISO document standards.

    Good thing so many companies have recently joined the various standards committees, because if ISO follows the Danish recommendations, lots of work is yet to be done.

  • Interoperability, Change and Architecture

    Have you noticed how relatively little is written about enterprise architecture in government? Time to change that …

    We started writing this report as a final deliverable from the ICA Study Group on Enterprise Architecture in Government, which we co-founded back in 2003. Having done that, we then thought, why not keep writing. So we did.

    The result is, we hope, a report that anyone concerned with transformational government will find worthwhile reading.

    Our concern is government enterprise architecture, which in our view is far from “a big fat joke”1. Having said that, we also find a gap between what we see in government EA around the world and what we would like to see.

    That’s how Olov Östberg and I start off our report, Interoperability, Change and Architecture (PDF, 1,2MB), to the International Council for Information Technology in Government Administration, ICA, and the EA world at large.

    We would love to get comments on the report.

  • Gartner and the European Interoperability Framework 2.0

    Recently, the European Commission’s IDABC published a document written on contract by Gartner initiating the revision of the European Interoperability Framework (EIF) and the Architecture Guidelines (AG). Check out the EIF v2.0 Gartner-report.

    I represented Denmark in the comittee that created the EIF and maintained the AG, so of course I read the Gartner-report with a biased view. Then again, I always tend to read documents from Gartner with a biased view.

    These days I also read a lot of masters theses and other reports by my students, and I can’t help comparing the Gartner report to a student report.

    The Commission asked Gartner inc. to “make a study, situating the European Interoperability Framework in relation to the current practices in the Member States and elsewhere and to give an independent view on the revision process and on its desired outcome.”

    If the Gartner consultants were my students, they should fear the exam, because I would confront their problem understanding, their methods, their empirical depths/shallowness, and not least their pseudo-theoretical analysis and model-amok. Having said that, I admit to finding some of their proposals pretty interesting, for example, their Generic Public Services Framework is conceptually interesting, but not very well explained and motivated.

    Researchwise, the Gartner report does not go into much if any detail with respect to the national interoperability frameworks that have been established in several member states: Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Ireland, Malta, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and United Kingdom.

    EIF presented a pretty clear definition of open standards. EIF 2.0 will, Gartner suggests, “allow open standards and other recognized standards to coexist”, and Gartner recommends not to focus on the use of open standards per se.

    That calls for a campaign, someone decided. See openstandards.eu:

    On the content of EIF v2.0, I ask

    1. that EIF v2.0 recommends the use of open standards, as defined in the definition given by EIF v1.0 for all exchanges by public institutions and states, as did the EIF v1.0 document,
    2. that recommends the use of open source software, by public institutions and states, as did the EIF v1.0 document,
    3. that EIF v2.0 recommends the use of open standards for all communications eg. documents, videos, sounds … they publish, to and with the public for example on their websites, by the public institutions in Europe, at the European Commission and all the member states, and conform to open standards for the tools they provide,

    On the elaboration process of EIF v2.0, I ask

    1. for the explicite public consultation during a sufficiently long time, for the redaction of such an important report as EIF v2.0,
    2. for the explicite participation of SMEs and a majority of members states for such a consultation and document redaction.

    I signed it. Go sign it too!

  • OpenID disabled

    I have upgraded the WordPress installation running gotze.eu to its most recent version. Little did I realise that this would mean I broke the OpenID service I had running here, allowing commenters to login using their OpenID. And now I can’t get it to work again :-(  I also think I messed up some of the feeds.

    Then I decided to try out the new Movable Type 4, which claims to have OpenID support by default. I decided to make it my Danish blog, which is now up and running. But lo and behold, the OpenID support doesn’t seem to work!

    Hmmm. Is there something wrong with my server?