Matusow's Blog : Software Business Models

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Strategic Use of Collaborative Development in South Africa - Follow Up

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Politics of OSS Still Overshadow The Benefits of Collaborative Development

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Participation in standards...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Food for thought for sure.

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

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

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

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

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

Standards and business models

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

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

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

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

Free Software Licensing and RAND

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

ISO and RAND vs. Terms From Vendors

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

Vendor Promises – OSP/ISP/CNS

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

Is the OSP from Microsoft global?

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

Should standards orgs change their policies to accommodate free software?

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

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

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

Should there be multiple licensing schemes?

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

Conflict of reciprocal licenses – was I speaking correctly?

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

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

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

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

Ending this long post...

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

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. :-)

The Digital World of Music - Business Models Continued

jasonmatusow — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 22:06:18 GMT

I think the discussion on my last posting about digital music was great. If this topic interests you, you should take a moment to see the comments thread as people posted some really thoughtful stuff.

In case you didn't see this - the New York Times reported that Universal Music Group is going to put their full catalog on Imeem. From the business model perspective this is interesting as it highlights a hybrid approach. The consumer gets limited portability from their music - but unlimited selection. Then, if they want portability, they get the chance to buy for the $.99/track model. The real revenue (so hope the music producers/distributors) comes from advertising on the site. In other words, your listening experience gets subsidized by Snowboard manufacturers and the like.

The other news item worth looking at was this from News.com - Radiohead's experiment, (or was it a media-hype play?) to put up their latest album and let people pay what they want, seems to have gone belly-up. They are reverting back to existing business models of CD distribution and cutting a deal with iTunes. This is reminiscent to me of when Stephen King put chapters of a book up hoping to get people to pay him directly vs. dealing with those pesky publishers.

The last thing I will launch out there is an idea from a colleague of mine at Microsoft who has pointed out that at the heart of the discussion about how we will consume music in the future is the idea of fair use. The lack of clarity around what constitutes fair use of music (in the legal sense) results in a disconnect between what consumers expect they can do with music and what distributors feel is appropriate.

I'd love to hear from someone who has some real experience on that front as it would be very educational for all of us.

On the personal front - I have downloaded 600 songs in the past week and a half. Artists who I have known about for a while and some completely new artists (to me, that is). There is simply no way I would have done this on a pay-per-track service. It is this user experience that has driven people to the P2P networks and to massive piracy. They want to experiment and dabble. If the distributors can figure out a way to make that experience compelling, with both low subscription fees (and advertising) - then they are likely to capture a much larger percentage of digital downloads under legal terms. Especially if they can find ways to add value to the user experience.

Music Subscription Service - The Winning Consumer Model IMHO

jasonmatusow — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 22:56:34 GMT

I recently blogged about the fact that I was looking at my options for what music device and service would be my next purchase. The sexiest devices are clearly from Apple now - but the business model is the thing I don't want.

My music collection up until 2 years ago was completely stuck in physical media. Tons of CDs and cassettes. In the past I had 8-tracks (yes, I had a few. I wish I still had my The Who, Who Are You 8-track just for the sake of a really cool collectible.), and records before that. Funny thing - I bought more than a few albums 2 or three times on different media over the years, and moreover had friends permanently borrow others that I had to repurchase.

Along comes ripping and suddenly I have the ability to drop my whole collection onto my creative labs device - that was cool. But, through all of that, I went for about 10 years without buying more than 2 or 3 albums a year compared with the dozens I purchased during college and my early 20s. As a music listener - my favorite thing about the new music services is the easy exposure to new bands based on recommendations and services that help you find new stuff. So, my interest in new music has been rekindled and I want to find new bands now, all the time. I love finding new bands I like - that is the most important feature of a music service.

So, what is the business model issue here?

As a consumer, I have been trained over decades to want to "own" my music. Which is of course really only a license to listen to that music (but that is for the copyright nerds). I don't want anyone to have the ability to block me from my music. Right? Turns out, wrong.

The music industry is going through a pivotal point in its history. The old models are giving way to the online music services and the frightening (to the music business people) concept of limitless, persistent quality, redistribution.

The truth for me as a consumer is that I just want to have access to as much music as possible for as little cost as possible. Yet, I respect the idea of IP - and as a musician myself - really want to see continued incentive to artists to create. So, I have landed on subscription services as my favored model.

I bought a Zune 8GB device and am paying $15/month for unlimited downloads. I can experiment with unlimited abandon without paying per track for stuff that I ultimately delete from my machine. I can download stand-up comics, listen to them once and delete them. I can download speeches and other commentary - and delete them. I just wish the Zune guys would figure out audio books as well.

I found some rumors of Apple moving to a subscription service offering as well. If they do that - it would be extremely cool given the range of content on iTunes. But - the rumor that I saw was $100/month - WOW. At $15/month I will pay $180 a year to have >$2000 of content if I had bought it at $.99/track. I don't know that would be as excited to pay $1200 for that honor.

The biggest hurdle for the consumer on the subscription service is that when you stop paying the service, the music goes away. Ok, that sucks...or does it. It just happened to me when my Urge network went belly-up and they moved me to Rhapsody. I had a bad user experience at Rhapsody, looked around, and moved to Zune. I stopped paying one service and started paying another, had to go through the pain of downloading a bunch of music again - but am now perfectly happy with my music again - and am still ahead financially.

If there were dozens of subscription services to choose from then consumers would have peace-of-mind and will get to listen to more music.

Multiple Formats Discussion Continued...

jasonmatusow — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 09:21:00 GMT

I just have itchy fingers tonight, and can't help but blog a bit more. Peter Galli over at eWeek posted a piece in which I was quoted along with extensive input from Gary Edwards (late of the OpenDocument Foundation).

In the piece, Mr. Edwards talks at length about all the work he is doing to win business away from Microsoft. (That was the part I didn't like as much.) But, there were some fascinating other parts to what he said. (I think the incredibly good parts of the article were my quotes.<grin>)

First, he noted that ODF and Open XML could be converted to CDF. That couldn't be a better endorsement to one of my oft-returned-to themes...translation. The whole point of greater openness in document formats is that it is easier to translate between them.

Second, Galli reported on what Mr. Edwards hear in a discussion with IBM abouttheir Lotus Symphony product.

During that discussion, Heintzman outlined IBM's strategy of Web-centric cloud computing, where Lotus Symphony desktop documents are converted on the fly to an appropriate CDF profile, and then zoomed into the IBM cloud of Web platform applications and services, he said.
What Edwards and his colleagues took away from that discussion was the importance of the W3C CDF technologies to the IBM Cloud—Lotus Symphony desktop strategy as, once ODF desktop documents were converted to a CDF profile, many of the current ODF interoperability problems disappeared at that higher level

Once again, it is not about the document formats - it is about the applications and the business models behind them. IBM is SOOOOOO attached to ODF as the one-and-only document format, that they are going to translate it into <gasp> another format so that it can fit into "the IBM cloud" - in other words, into the rest of their business model.

At the end of the article, IBM is quick to try to distance themselves from Edwards and what is said in the article. It could be, because the points made in the article would seem to completely contradict the arguments they are making in favor of ODF.

I promise, my next few blogs will be about something other than IBM. I'm falling into a myopic pattern.