Category: Openization

It was all over the news last week, but the official word from ISO only just came out: ISO and IEC approve OpenDocument OASIS standard for data interoperability of office applications. A couple of quotes:

Alan Bryden, ISO Secretary-General:

“ISO/IEC 26300 is a shining example of what partnership in standardization can achieve for the business community. Its publication underscores the importance of partnership among ISO and IEC and standards developing organizations such as OASIS to craft a common set of standards, and reflects the international community’s recognition of the importance of open formats in enabling business interoperability.”

Patrick Gannon, president and CEO of OASIS:

“ISO/IEC JTC 1’s approval of OpenDocument as an International Standard is a major step forward in advancing the adoption of a format that gives all of us the flexibility to select the office application – commercial or open source – that best meets our needs. We are particularly gratified by the broad range of national ballots cast in favour of the standard. This action underscores the international support for the OASIS open standards process that produced OpenDocument and delivers an assurance of long-term viability that is particularly important to governments.”

Openization vs Deathstars: 1 – 0

The Washington-based Committee for Economic Development (CED), “an independent, nonpartisan organization of business and education leaders dedicated to policy research on the major economic and social issues of our time and the implementation of its recommendations by the public and private sectors”, has published a report called Open Standards, Open Source, and Open Innovation: Harnessing the Benefits of Openness. Also see the CED announcement and the summary., as well as this CIO Update.

The report is another must-read. The conclusion is worth quoting at length:

The benefits of openness are becoming more apparent and are likely to grow as we learn to utilize the new capabilities enabled by information and communications technologies. These benefits are challenging our conventional wisdom about innovation and the incentives needed to stimulate it. And, they are suggesting new ways of acting based on the special characteristics of the digital world, which are far different than those that developed based on what we knew of the physical world.

Years ago, the theory of the tragedy of the commons was developed in economic literature. It argued that users of a commons (such as a grazing field shared by an entire community), who had no particular or individual stake in the success of the commons, might act in such a way as to maximize their own short-term interests at the long-term expense of the commons and the community that used it. Thus, the actions of a few could harm the interests of many, and of society as a whole.

The digital world provides an opportunity to think of the commons differently. The use of the digital commons by everyone does not necessarily exclude its use by anyone. To the extent that new information and communications technologies allow more and more people to contribute their own genius, the digital world offers new opportunities from the commons and for the commons.

Openness is not an overriding moral value that must prevail in every circumstance. But, its extraordinary capability to harness the collective intelligence of our world requires us to consider its implications carefully, nurture it where possible, and avoid efforts to foreclose it without compelling reason. We should not miss the opportunity to harvest the benefits openness might bring.

If you have read our Roadmap for Open ICT Ecosystems and want more, the CED report is a good next step. I don’t know CED, but do recommend reading their report. It is great to have a solid and well-written argument for openization from a business perspective.

Linuxforum 2006 here in Copenhagen was great. There’s a report at Groklaw.

In my view, the highlight was Simon Phipps‘ presentation. My favorite quote: “If you don’t join the network, you don’t get the effects”. It’s exactly the network effects that counts, and what make open standards so valuable.

Phipps announced the launch of the ODF Alliance, less than four hours after the official press release was launched. For coverage of the alliance news, see my OpenDocument tag, where I have collected reactions in press and blogs. The alliance launch is (further, as if we need more) proof that ODF has crossed the chasm.

I chaired a jam session with Louis Suárez-Potts, where he talked about the community of and around OpenOffice.org. The more I learn about OOo, the more impressed I get. I’ve now used OOo for almost four months, and am very happy with it. Sure, Calc could be better, but it does just fine for almost everything. Writer and Impress are actually better than their Microsoft counter-parts, IMHO. But the really cool thing about OOo is that it uses ODF natively, so I can go somewhere else if I want to.

Peter Quinn, the former state CIO of Massachusetts, is on a European speaking tour. Today he spoke in Copenhagen at a public meeting arranged by Prosa. He gave a great presentation (similar to this presentation from last week) about the work of ITD and their Technical Reference Model (TRM) in particular. The Mass TRM is known mainly for adopting and enforcing the OASIS Open Document Format (for more about this, see Andy Updegrove’s extensive coverage).

Quinn’s story is compelling and his message is extremely important. The message is that opennes is the path to technological prophylaxis. Governments need to transform, do more with less, and open standards and technologies are essential for making this work.

Quinn quotes John F. Kennedy: “There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.”

Here in Denmark – where, once in a while, the old Viking strain shows through – standards have already become a political issue, and I hope Quinn can help stirring up political attention (he’s meeting politicians, journalists and bureaucrats on Monday).

James Governor: Is XForms the killer app for enterprise AJAX?
Bob Sutor: The pieces are falling into place

XForms and AJAX – of course. And ODFand web service are not unrelated at all. It’s when used together these standards become really powerful. eGovernment is an obvious area for this. Or rather, it should be. But where are the real-world examples?? I still see lots of dumb PDF-forms are …

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The Danish weekly called Ingeniøren (Engineering Weekly) has on Friday an article, Politisk flertal kræver Ã¥bne it-standarder (Political majority requires open standards”) by Kurt Westh Nielsen. Kurt of course writes about our conference, and the fact that there was wide agreement among politicians that open standards are a good thing.

I’m quoted twice – and swear in one of the quotes (sorry Mom!). It’s about the use – or lack of use – of open standards in government online services. Indignation seemed a good approach, and I wasn’t the only one “caught” swearing …

The best quote of the day goes to Morten Kjærsgaard from OSL who closed the conference with an Elvis quote: a little less conversation, a little more action.

Bonus link: Sam Hiser: What is OpenDocument … Again?

DR (Danish Broadcasting Corporation) has an excellent weekly programme called Harddisken (The harddisk). This coming weekend’s show will bring a feature about open standards. Jeff Kaplan was interviewed for the show, and I’ll be in the studio talking about the Danish context.

The show will also be availlabe online, although not in an open standard – DR uses Microsoft’s WMA-format. I’ll be sure to mock them on that, on the air 🙂 At last week’s conference in Parliament, I also hit on DR for not using open standards.

Update: The show aired twice this weekend, and is also available online in two parts: Interview with Jeff Kaplan and interview with me. The full show is also available as a 51MB MP3-podcast. In the host Anders Høgh Nissen’s Hardblog he comes out with a strong recommendation of Morten Helveg’s motion in Parliament.