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The Standards Battle is Joined
Friday, July 15 2005 @ 06:11 AM EDT

The open standards battle has been joined. David Berlind is doing some interesting blogging on the ZDnet website:

Apache falls victim to OASIS patent shelter - [don't miss the talkbacks, whatever you do, but if you only have time for one, this is the one, but it's better in context]

Open source: Are Microsoft and other holdouts about to crack?

Larry Rosen: 'Good time' not fast enough for open source/standards




  


The Standards Battle is Joined | 145 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
OT ('Off-Topic') here please
Authored by: AntiFUD on Friday, July 15 2005 @ 06:23 AM EDT

Please post links using Open standards (or use the clickable links on the Post a
Comment page.

Thanks


---
IANAL - But IAAAMotFSF(not related to Daniel Wallace) - Free to Fight FUD

[ Reply to This | # ]

Grab a bag of popcorn
Authored by: Benanov on Friday, July 15 2005 @ 08:26 AM EDT
This has me thinking about my company and some of the standards that we have
with other companies like us. I'm not sure what the agreements are and have no
voice in changing them, but it's still something I want to investigate.
Principles, and all.

At any rate, grab some popcorn, this one's going to be a fun one to watch.



---
That popping sound you hear is just a paradigm shifting without a clutch.

[ Reply to This | # ]

The Standards Battle is Joined
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, July 15 2005 @ 09:31 AM EDT
I find interesting that Mr. Updegrove accuses Mr. Rosen of attempting to hijack
the definition of "open" when his "standards" body is
already multilating it. He's like a child yelling 'no tag backs'. Until they
are free of all encumberances, their talk about "open standards" is
just an annoying attempt at dilution and confusion.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Which side you you think players are on?
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, July 15 2005 @ 10:31 AM EDT

One of the players consistently pushing against the royalty-free frameworks and towards standards they can patent is IBM. There is still a large amount of evil in that overgrown company, and this is one clear example. Their role is perhaps not significantly greater in this than Microsoft's, but it is also not less, and in that way, they oppose a good many other companies like Apple, Sun, HP and others with lessor patent portfolios, but still nothing to sneeze at, that you might be less inclined to think well of but who have supported very free standards in some venues at least, opposing the pair IBM and Microsoft.

While there are enough people doing different things at any company that I would not rule out finding someone at IBM who might support open standards, they have taken significant repeated actions against them in a variety of (usually closed) venues.

Perhaps someone from Groklaw should approach them and (using any good will Groklaw may have) try to get them to publicly endorse completely-unencumbered standards frameworks. But they don't get billions each year in royalties without it distorting them on the subject.

Such an exchange between Groklaw and IBM would likely come out quite badly for all involved, so I do not recommend it. Perhaps a less-direct proposal on completely- unencumbered standards that Groklaw asks all concerned companies to sign, as an easy litmus test.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Essay by Updegrove
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, July 15 2005 @ 10:35 AM EDT
Updegrove has written an interesting essay on this topic: http://www.consortiuminfo.org/ipr/

[ Reply to This | # ]

The Standards Battle is Joined
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, July 15 2005 @ 10:48 AM EDT
Well, actually, I'd cast the PJs of this world in the role of the mouse in the Gruffalo story, who can get past the owl, the smake, and the fox ... and back again ... without getting eaten. The only thing that gets eaten is the mouse's nut.

You'll have to figure out who the Gruffalo is. But actually, the Gruffalo can't afford for the mouse to be eaten. If there aren't any well-educated mice around, there will be nothing for the Gruffalo to do next year. And the Gruffalo thinks longer term than that.

[ Reply to This | # ]

The most insidious aspects of the new OASIS IPR policy
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, July 15 2005 @ 11:51 AM EDT

From a talkback on the ZD site:

You missed however one of the most insidious aspects of the new OASIS IPR policy. No matter which of three IPR licenses a TC (OASIS Technical Committee) might choose for a specification, the license can be changed at any time by a simple majority vote of the current TC to amend the charter.

The post continues.

Karl O. Pinc
<kop@meme.com>

P.S. In my readings of the talkbacks so far, it seems that there is not a general awareness that U.S. patent law is being changed to favor first to file over first to invent, which obviously favors those with the means to hire armies of lawyers to file first.

[ Reply to This | # ]

This is an S.O.S.
Authored by: dyfet on Friday, July 15 2005 @ 12:21 PM EDT
Please, let us try to Save Our Standards. These are where ideas and things that permit alternate and multiple products and services from many providers come into play in free and open markets. Standards are often things that are mandated. A good example of what happens when internationally mandated standards are locked away under patents by corrupt organizational structures formed by gangs of criminal monpolies is the ITU, and we are so very lucky they had no real involvement whatsoever in the Internet. Standards must be there for everyone to participate, and not to selfishly control who is allowed in the marketplace.

[ Reply to This | # ]

Corrections (if any) here
Authored by: artp on Friday, July 15 2005 @ 12:33 PM EDT
Thanks to anonymous for not starting this thread.

[ Catch 'em being good! ]

[ Reply to This | # ]

who'da thought...
Authored by: meshuggeneh on Friday, July 15 2005 @ 01:30 PM EDT
A really well-written, well-researched article from ZDNet.

David Berlind is to be congratulated.

[ Reply to This | # ]

No hidden patents in OpenDocument from OASIS
Authored by: dwheeler on Friday, July 15 2005 @ 03:59 PM EDT
Here is the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) statement for OpenDocument: Sun Microsystems, Inc. ("Sun") will offer a Royalty-Free License under its Essential Claims for the OpenOffice.org XML File Format Specification. One precondition of any such license granted to a party ("licensee") shall be the licensee's agreement to grant reciprocal Royalty-Free Licenses under its Essential Claims to Sun and other implementers of such specification. Sun expressly reserves all other rights it may have.

As such things go this is unrestrictive, and in fact, OpenOffice.org and KOffice both implement it already. In theory the text above would let someone do royalty-free "but you have to relicense individually" tricks, but to be fair there's no evidence that any OASIS partner is interested in requiring that. It's not clear to me that this would even be legal to add.

To be fair, it's not possible to write real software without "infringing" on several thousand registered patents. The PTO routinely grants patents that are not novel or are prior art, for example, even though they're not supposed to. And a non-OASIS member could sue any implementor. But this is the same risk for any software developer, so there's no increased risk.

The real problem with OASIS is that it even allows patented standards. I was interested in developing an extension of the standard for formulas; the new OASIS policies were one of the reasons I stopped working on it (posting my work so that others could build on it.)

[ Reply to This | # ]

Great assist PJ! - Goldmine of an Article from David Berlind!
Authored by: SilverWave on Friday, July 15 2005 @ 04:34 PM EDT



David Berlind is one of the good guys.

Just went through this hugely informative article, the talkback and the links in David's article, *wow*

Great article cannot believe its on "zdnet.com" :/


Links:
Web services in serious jeopardy
March 5, 2003
"When people ask me to define Web services, I tell them that it's primarily an idea hatched by IBM and Microsoft to steal customers from each other."
link http://techupdate.zdnet.com/techupdate/stories/main/0,14179,2912083, 00.html

Talkback - ZDNet Clarification on my statements about the WS-I
07/13/05
" I will concede though that the submissions to OASIS did not come from the WS-I, per se and that I would have been better off saying the "members of the WS-I" much the same way the press attributes certain congressional proposals to "Democrats" (members of the DNC) rather than the DNC itself."
Link http://www.zdnet.com/5208-10532-0.html?for umID=1&threadID=11752&messageID=235145&start=-9

Open source: Are Microsoft and other holdouts about to crack?
7/13/2005
"It was only a matter of time. Commercial software providers, including Microsoft, that have so far been steadfast in their resolve to preserve at least some of their old business models, are finding that the open standards card that they've so cunningly played as a part of those models could now have turned out to be a deal with the devil. The open source devil."
Link http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p =1597

The hidden toll of patents on standards
Published on ZDNet News: April 25, 2002, 4:00 AM PT
" COMMENTARY--My recent reports regarding how Microsoft and IBM's control of next-generation Internet protocols could lead to the two companies' control of the Internet itself have resulted in a flood of responses via e-mail and ZDNet's TalkBack forums."
Link http://news.zdnet .com/2100-9595_22-891852.html


Cheers!

- --
"They [each] put in one hour of work,
but because they share the end results
they get nine hours... for free"

Firstmonday 98 interview with Linus Torvalds

[ Reply to This | # ]

Open source licenses hold us back, too
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, July 15 2005 @ 08:30 PM EDT
On reading this article, it ooccurs to me that Groklaw readers might be
interested in an issue entirely within the opensource world.

In the past, Apache users needing database connectivity either had to do it
themselves, or use scripting languages such as Perl or PHP. More recently,
apache has acquired native SQL support (see
http://httpd.apache.org/docs-2.1/mod/mod_dbd.html ).

But - here's the rub - MySQL can't be fully integrated. There *is* a driver for
MySQL 4.1, but

* Because MySQL is GPL, the driver apr_dbd_mysql must also be GPL
* But the GPL imposes restrictions on users that are incompatible with ASF
(Apache) licensing
* So, apr_dbd_mysql can't be distributed with Apache.

Of course, third parties such as Linux distros can bundle these components
together, no problem (they already do bundle GPL modules with Apache). But not
packaging it with the canonical apache from apache.org is likely to hold back
deployment.

Now, there is more to this story. APR (Apache Portable Runtime) is a product
separate from Apache itself, and is used in other products such as subversion.
It's also, perfectly legitimately, used in proprietary software. ASF licensing
terms explicitly permit that. That means that APR provides a fully legal and
auditable route for incorporating MySQL without opening your code up.

Indeed, there was a somewhat similar issue before with PHP and MySQL, and PHP
was given a special exception to the GPL. That has since been generalised. But
APR is a different story again, because it supports closed-source compiled
programs, as against PHP scripts which are by definition at least technically
open.

This isn't just theory. There's already at least one closed-source application
that offers its users the option of using MySQL under this framework.

[ Reply to This | # ]

The Standards Battle is Joined
Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, July 16 2005 @ 06:18 PM EDT
Earlier this year, IBM's web site said 'IBM Recommends Microsoft Windows XP Profesional'

Now, IBM's web site points you to Lenovo's web site, and Lenovo Recommends Microsoft Windows XP Professional. By all accounts, IBM does not any more. IBM doesn't do PCs, there is no reason why it should.

But IBM does market OS/2. So, not being in a position to say anything about one vendor's software on another vendor's hardware ... none of IBM's business ... if you ask the IBM salemsman, the only thing he can do is sell you OS/2. He hasn't got anything else to sell.

Now, OS/2 is being pulled. And there is no IBM product replacement for it. None. Nothing to run on these 'IBM PCs' that do not exist any more.

"IBM suggests that OS/2 customers consider Linux as an alternative operating system for OS/2 client and server environments."

Suggests. Doesn't supply, or anything. Reckons that if you find one growing in the garden, or raining from the sky, or arriving in the mailbox, IBM will quote you to try and keep it working. But no promises.

The concerning thing is, OS/2 and Windows are blood brothers. Take one out, the other goes out with it. Knock OS/2 out by Christmas, I wouldn't give much for Windows' chances of surviving until New Year.

So where does that leave us ?

[ Reply to This | # ]

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