Matusow's Blog : Open Source Software

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.

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.

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. :-)

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.

Interop & Open XML Grab Bag

jasonmatusow — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 09:50:00 GMT

Busy, busy, busy. So many things going on at once. I have been meaning to write about a few items all week and just haven't gotten to them. In the middle of all the excitement around the BRM, there have been some very positive steps taken on the interop front.

I wrote a simple news blog post about the basics of the interoperability principles announcement. There was a good deal of press coverage and most of what I saw had reserved optimism in it. In other words, Microsoft said the right thing but words are just words. Even Linus Torvalds seemed to express that sentiment.

So, the question becomes one of walking the talk. The scope and reach of the interop principles represents significant work to be done over the period of years, not days or weeks. There are some good steps being taken now - but these principles are extensions of more than 2 years of focused work on interop, and they will reach well into the future. But - rather than waiting a few years, there are a few immediate items worth looking at.

The beta for Internet Explorer 8 has undergone a change based upon the interop principles. The default mode for the rendering engine will be based on a strict implementation of current Web standards applicable to the IE8 product. The other two modes support rendering of web standards and methods of the past (IE 7 implementation of web standards in 2006 and older methods).
In Cambridge, MA today, MS hosted Novell, Mark Logic, Quickoffice, DataViz, and Nuance Communications in the first of a series of document interop labs. Data Portability and Open Engagement were two of the four interop principles and this event was based upon both of them. The lab will be testing interop between existing implementations of Open XML and ODF on platforms and devices including Mac OS X Leopard, iPhone, Palm OS, Symbian OS, Linux, and Windows Mobile. The labs also serve as a format for roundtable discussions among the vendors to start digging at technical interop problems. This will inform future lab targets. ***updated*** Craig Kitterman just put up a good blog post on this.
Throughout the past 2 years of talking about greater openness in document formats, the theme of translation has continued to play an important role. Massachusetts put out a request for information asking about translation that put a very fine point on the fact that the real interop question was not one of uniformity, but of effective translation. So, if you are interested, the 1.1 release of the Excel and PowerPoint translators for ODF<-->Open XML are soon to be available on SourceForge (code is complete, but there is a delay in getting it posted to the main project page). To emphasize what I said about about the trajectory of the work on interop - this project was started back in July of 2006.

The principles provide an overall set of guidelines that will drive specific tactical actions over an extended period of time. Each individual action represents a building block in the bridge that organizations need to see the effects of interoperability in the real world.

Any software company considering the future of ICT for its customers must take into account the changes coming about through the constant move toward ubiquitous connectivity coupled with the opportunities opened up by the inexorable increase in processing power. Neil Macehiter of MWD Advisors (blog) provided me with some real insight on interop from the customer's perspective a while back. He cautioned that the perspective of a commercial software producer and that of a customer are very different regarding interop. Producers think about products and the boundaries of those products. Customers look at solutions and within that context interop is necessarily ignorant of product boundaries. So an underlying truth of interop is one of balanced friction.

Isolated innovation tends to be interesting but ultimately of relatively limited value. Innovation smoothly integrated into a larger set of complementary technologies and packaged for easy implementation, support, etc. has real value. (Why have Linux distributors vs. just downloading all of your own components? Why does MS Office as a product suite do better than any one app alone?)

Overlay these two things (Neil's insight and my observation on innovation value) and you start to see where interop becomes challenging. A basic precept of commercialization is that uniqueness increases value. In other words, competitive differentiation happens for a reason. But the need for interop is one where customers are looking to connect their people, or their data, or their diverse systems - and that is where they want those barriers of "uniqueness" brought down.

The interop principles from Microsoft fundamentally are about establishing the sign posts on the road for high volume products (think Windows, SQL Server, Office), each with the defined barriers of a commercialized product, so that interoperability may coexist with the commercial interests of the producer of the product.

Personal note - it was so nice writing a blog posting about something other than the ballot resolution meeting. :-)

Just Sittin' - Pickin' A DAISY: translation and doc formats

jasonmatusow — Wed, 14 Nov 2007 15:31:00 GMT

In case you missed the news on this yesterday - Microsoft and the DAISY (Digital Accessible Information SYstem) consortia announced that Microsoft Office will support "Save As" DAISY using Open XML files in Office XP, Office 2003, and Office 2007. This is going to be done via a translation project hosted on SourceForge (yes, that makes it an open source project).

Before I share my take on the news as it applies to the Open XML discussion in general - let me say that this is just a rock solid thing to do because it is going to have such broad, positive implications for delivering value to citizens with disabilities. It is going to improve access for uses beyond the traditional view of someone who is sight-impaired. This can help with illiteracy, or with richer text-to-audio use for any use.

So, how does this tie into the discussions around the JTC1 process under way today.

1) TRANSLATION is fundamentally where interop happens for document formats. I can't emphasize enough how bogus I think the one document format discussion is. In the "there can be only one" arguments I have heard over the past 18 months for ODF - where exactly does the DAISY XML format fit in? Should the DAISY folks abandon their work on DAISY XML and just roll it all into ODF? Or, should the community working on ODF work to create translation to DAISY XML? I'm in favor the translation option. Software is fundamentally more flexible than any other medium - there is NO requirement for uniformity in order to offer the value of interop along with the value of unique innovation.

2) The open source project for this translator will be picked up for INDEPENDENT IMPLEMENTATION. Application vendors, non-commercial developers, etc. are going to be able to pick up this translator and create solutions that have nothing to do with Microsoft Office. I have written on the fact that Open XML is already seeing broad pickup by implementers - and this is going to only emphasize the value of doing that even further.

3) DOCUMENT FORMAT OPENNESS is valuable. No one is doubting this and it is just as true for Open XML as it is for ODF. The long-term outcomes from this collab with DAISY are going to simply prove that further.

The work on the ballot resolution process continues to move along towards February. Great, fine, good. Clearly, for the sake of the specification, the improvements made through the comments will be of value. But, the realities of the marketplace are showing both the adoption of the specification (which is the single most important measure of the quality of technology and specification) and the flexibility it has made available to all vendors.

In case you are interested...here is some of the coverage:

OSI Approves MS Licenses

jasonmatusow — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 07:38:40 GMT

Today the news hit that two licenses from Microsoft were approved by the Open Source Initiative as official open source licenses. The licenses were submitted back in early August and a good deal of discussion and work has been going on since then.

Jon Rosenberg, who is a really sharp guy and was a colleague of mine when I was working on source licensing issues, has been driving the effort. You can read some comments from him up on Port 25 today. I know

I think this is a very positive thing, and am glad to see it come to fruition. In 2001 we started down the path of learning from open source, and thinking deeply about what it meant to work with open source development for Microsoft. In retrospect, we were kind of dumb in that we decided to tackle the most complex issue first. We immediately looked at Windows source code. It showed our inexperience in thinking about source code licensing issues. The code base was so big, and took so much time for devs to ramp up on even small sections of it, that it had limited utility to see the code. It was not until we had tools, and all sorts of additional elements in place that such a large code base became useful. Even then, it was not open source - it was Shared Source. We were very careful about what language we used.

But then we looked at all sort of models - reference code, full mod rights/full distribution rights but don't take anything back, fully collaborative development, reciprocal licensing and grant-back assignments...all then coupled with differing investments in associated developer support, headcount, tools, etc. etc. Over time, a pattern formed and now our product teams have a full set of choices about how to work with source licensing that best works with community and still meets the needs of the business.

I think the guys in our OSS labs, up on Port 25, out on Codeplex, and the teams working on licensing issues are doing great things. We have well over 2000 OSS projects to date, and more than a few have strong communities with great project leads.

I think this news today is a really good step. Congrats Jon - and thank you to the OSI for the considered discussion and substantive feedback over the years (and particularly in this final stage of the process).

The Benefit of Interop for Novell's Business

jasonmatusow — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 22:35:23 GMT

The past two weeks have been crazy for me, and blogging has taken a back seat. Just to get myself back into it I thought I would comment on a news item I saw concerning Novell's business.

This comes from ZDNet UK:

Novell has claimed its Linux business has grown by 243 percent over the last three quarters, and it has credited its deal with Microsoft as a big factor.

The article focuses mostly on the fact that the investments in the joint engineering to improve interoperability between Windows and Linux that has made the difference. Customer are interested in Novell's products because of the collaboration with Microsoft.

There is no better endorsement of why interoperability is so important than when the market speaks through its purchasing choices.

I have made a number of blog posts about what we view the underpinnings of interoperability to be, and that standards do not make up the sum-total of interoperability. The work around the standardization of Open XML and document formats is hugely important, but without implementations being done in real products, without business relationships being setup to drive testing, support, services, etc, without IP being addressed as a mechanism for collaboration - without these items, standard are not going to deliver interop. It is the combination of all of these elements that is so important.

This is good stuff, and is real evidence of the quality of the interop work we have been doing for the past 2 years. I'm really pleased to see this.

As for all of the great threads about Open XML that have been going on while I have been doing my day job at Microsoft...I'll get to them, I promise.

Locked-Up Data for Web 2.0?

jasonmatusow — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 08:39:00 GMT

I have not poked at a blog posting of Matt Asay's in quite some time, so no time like the present. This morning I ended up reading a post he wrote for CNET on August 20, "GPL is the new BSD in Web2.0, and why this matters." As always Matt is pulling at the threads that tie together the big picture elements - him being extremely smart and whatnot. The target of his comments was really about source code licensing and how that applies to the world of Web 2.0 (and beyond).

I agree that the web is driving outrageously cool technology resulting in new business models all the time. And, I agree that these changes are going to adjust the way we think about what "unique value" really means in an environment dominated by the network effect. And, I agree that the legal constructs under which we have been functioning for so long are going to be challenged and stretched. And, most importantly, I agree that in the world of Web 2.0 data is king thus making the network effect so powerful. Ok - I got all the agreeing out of the way with that.

Here is where we fundamentally part ways. The reason people don't get over the "software fetish" is because that is still a huge asset - and it tends to be the really expensive part of creating any services offering. Data is the other massive asset - but you don't get that without high value software underneath. People will continue to value their hard work in producing that software.

Open source projects with bad code...are still bad. Proprietary projects with bad code...well, you get the picture. I have had this conversation with Matt in the past, and we will continue to see this issue differently. Fine.

The thing that really surprised me in the posting though was these two simple sentences, "Lock us in through data. Fine."

Wow.

I have been talking with executives, government officials, academics, etc. all over the world for the past 2 years about data. If there is one thing that people REALLY do not want locked up by vendors it is their data. Online, enterprise apps, consumer devices...nope - don't lock up my data. In fact, this concept has catapulted the rather arcane world of data formats to the top of the industry news heap lately.

If I had to choose between buying a service online from a single vendor who believes their value is in their software, but get to control my data vs. using an open technology where my data is locked up unless I pay for it...I think I want my data thanks.

As I sit and write this my own hypocrisy comes filtering into my thoughts. I have been paying a subscription service for music lately - and don't own a song. Hmmm...so there is a place where I am tolerant of someone else controlling my data. But, I don't think I would feel the same way if I was creating the music vs. just consuming songs created by others.

I don't think we are going to wake up in 20 years and think about how goofy we were about software. I think in 20 years the development tools, and environments in which apps (or their future analogs) will run are still going to prove that he who is able to build the best code (innovation) that delivers a great service (business model), is going to be making some good money.

What I think we will find in 20 years is how much more people value their data. So much more of our lives will become digitized and that will lead to greater awareness of what data is ours, and how important it is. Just think about the progression of the privacy issue over the past 15 years. People want to control their data, they expect the companies building solutions that they use to enable that control while still offering powerful, compelling technology qua software.

****

I deleted a paragraph that I had been drafting and decided not to pursue - I goofed up by having it still on this post...

Silverlight / Moonlight - Innovation and Interop

jasonmatusow — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 23:31:31 GMT

Last week Microsoft announced that Silverlight 1.0 was being released. For those of you who may not be aware of what Silverlight is, you should go check it out at Microsoft.com. To quote the marketing pitch - Silverlight is, "a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering richer user experiences on the web."

In other words, think kick-butt graphics, video, and audio for websites and/or web-based applications. The dev team did a bunch of work to make the use of Silverlight by other developers easy, fast, and powerful. If you want to get a feel for what is possible with the tool, look at the "Whirlything." While I don't know that I would classify the Whirlything as the coolest thing since sliced bread, it sure helped me understand how tools like this can start to influence user interfaces. So, from a tech perspective Silverlight has some depth and power and for consumers it will add to the progression of what is possible for new applications.

But, I'm a nerd in that I don't focus on the "wow" factor of this stuff from the tech front. I have a different take on it.

As you may have noticed, my blog has been rather myopic on Open XML of late. That is fine given the intensity of that issue, but it is by no means my only focus. Interoperability remains my top-level focus, and standards are only way of many to get there.

Silverlight is interesting to me in that it deals with the spectrum of elements that foster interoperability. The one that I will focus on here is the business relationship with Novell. In case you did not see this in the release, Microsoft is also going to work with Novell on a project called "Moonlight" which is the idea of Silverlight on Linux.

Why is this interesting to me? Because at the heart of Silverlight is the desire to drive innovation forward. Yes, there is competition with Flash - and that pushes both technologies forward. But success for innovators is in seeing adoption, and hopefully having that positively affect their business overall.

X-plat is all about interoperability. And here we see a case where the building of the bridge between the two platforms (Windows and Linux) is important and significantly driven through the business relationship between two firms. That relationship addresses both technology and business requirements (business including legal considerations as well).

My point is that the interoperability users will ultimately experience will not have come from a standard . It will come from the idea that innovation is driving forward the technology, and the businesses involved are finding ways to achieve interoperability via implementations, business arrangements, and IP agreements. It is too easy to fall into the myopia of interop=open standards. Real-world interop is going to come by keeping the full spectrum of possibilities in mind.

Silverlight is really cool stuff, and this announcement absolutely highlights the thinking behind our Interoperability By Design approach.

Open XML - US Vote Progress Continues

jasonmatusow — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 07:50:20 GMT

I have spent the past 2 weeks looking at really big trees and getting my perspective reset as it applies to scale and time. Yet, as I come back to email and industry news, things are still moving along with Open XML. I have been in touch with a bunch of people over the past 24 hours and here are some thoughts on the US vote and the status of a few things in general.

US INCITS Vote

Even though there were early predictions of doom for Open XML from Andy Updegrove and Rob Weir (and others), the US vote is likely to be either a “Yes with comments” or “Abstain” – not a ”No” vote. While the parties opposed to ISO adoption of Open XML have gone quiet on the US vote in the blogosphere, I think it is worth taking a close look at this key vote. In order to clarify my opinion – here are the details as I understand them.

The INCITS Executive Board voted on July 19 to distribute a ballot on Open XML with “Yes with Comments” as the US position. This was not the final vote of the US National Body for submission to ISO, only one step in the procedure to get to the US position. Votes were submitted and reviewed in another meeting of the EB on Wed, August 15. The first round of voting had resulted in 8 “yes,” 7 “no,” and 1 “abstain” vote (the only three options on the motion before the EB). The individuals who voted “No” discussed the basis for their votes, and the meeting progressed as the group worked on resolving some of these issues. By the end of the meeting enough of those who originally cast a “No” vote indicated likely support for a second “Yes with Comments” ballot to begin on Thursday August 16. Thus, the ballot will move to the next phase as “Yes with Comments” heading into a Resolution Meeting on August 29. At that meeting, if Open XML gets 10 supporting votes, the US position on Open XML will be “Yes with Comments.” If it does not get the 10 needed votes, the EB is being asked to consider “Abstain with Comments” as its fall-back position. At this point, it seems a “No with Comments” is off the table.

IBM’s Motivations

If it has been unclear as to why IBM is so interested in keeping Open XML from being an ISO standard, the recent release of IBM Notes and Domino 8 continue to underline the fact that IBM has development investment, product sales, and consulting practice interests in the success of ODF. (I find it interesting that in their press release for Notes 8 they talk about ODF but NOT ISO ODF - why then so much concern about ISO Open XML from them?)

OK, that is fine – they should be interested in the success of their products, but this interest also drives the desire to have ODF / Open XML and ISO/IEC standardization as a differentiator. Given this self-interest, the irony is not lost on me that they are generating numerous technical comments for Open XML and advocating to National Bodies that these issues warrant a “No” vote even as IBM and Sun are working hard at OASIS on ODF to fix its many technical issues. Should ODF 1.0 not have been approved as an ISO standard because it was submitted prematurely in order for the interested parties to get a market competitive differentiator? (Keep in mind, the Massachusetts ETRM policy does NOT specify the ISO spec for ODF – they specify the OASIS spec because the ISO version is no longer current.)

The Standard Works

Even more important than the clash of the titans I keep referring to with IBM and Microsoft is the number of Open XML implementations already being delivered to market. Open XML is being widely adopted on Linux, Mac, and other platforms for office productivity products:

OpenOffice Novell Edition
OpenOffice Linspire edition
open-source spreadsheet project Gnumeric
Xandros has announced its intent to implement Open XML on desktop Linux solutions
Neo-Office 2.1 (based on OpenOffice.org) for the Mac platform
Apple’s support in iWork ’08, as well as on the iPhone
Palm ‘Documents to Go’ from Dataviz

A big question raised by the detractors of Open XML has been about only one vendor doing an implementation of the specification. There are HUNDREDS of organizations doing this already and the specification has been and Ecma standard for less than a year. The process of opening the doc format through the standards process is doing what it is supposed to do – the standard works.

Accusations Will Fly

The rhetoric is going to heat up as we move through the beginning of September. There will be wrangling over process, over technical changes, over business strategy, etc., etc. Keep in mind, the actual outcome of this standardization effort will not be known until after the formal ISO/IEC JTC 1 Ballot Resolution Meeting sometime in early 2008. Everyone with a vested interest in this – both pro and con – are working with all of the tools available to them. No matter what people argue about, though – at the heart of this remains the idea that making document formats more open is a good thing.

Microsoft OSS Web Site

jasonmatusow — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 20:01:23 GMT

Today Microsoft launched its new open source web site. Starting in 2001, we began thinking long and hard about open source from the perspective of it as a dev model, a business model, a licensing model, and a philosophical approach to software. Like anything - you look at it through your own perspective and we realized that there were things we agreed with and others that we did not.

Working with developer communities was something that we had done for a long time, and fairly well. But there was clearly so much more to learn and opportunities for us to experiment with different approaches. Looking back on it, it seems a bit odd that we chose to tackle the hardest problem first - Windows source code - rather than the edge cases with tools and resources. But, that is the benefit of hindsight talking. For 6 years we have been sharing source code, kicking off projects, experimenting with licensing models, funding projects, contributing to projects, taking contributions from others, launching tools (GDN Workspaces -painful- and then Codeplex), and establishing collaboration relationships with OSS companies. In that time, we also formed an OSS lab at Microsoft that has done some great work and continues to build bridges between OSS projects and MS dev teams.

Now, they have launched www.microsoft.com/opensource. This will be the place where information about the various activities is aggregated. Other resources that have been spun-up over the years still exist:

· Port 25 – Open Source Software Lab at Microsoft

· Codeplex – Microsoft’s open source project hosting site

· Shared Source – Microsoft’s set of programs for sharing source code with customers, partners, governments, researchers, etc.

· Microsoft Open Source ISV Forum – offer for OSS ISVs through Microsoft Partner Program

I am sure the launch of this site will kick-off a whole new round of discussion about MS and open source - but that is exactly what it is supposed to be about. The conversation continues.