Last summer, a new organization was announced with the goal of promoting the uptake of open source software by the U.S. federal government. It's mission was described as follows:
The mission of OSA is to educate decision makers in the U.S. Federal government about the advantages of using free and open source software; to encourage the Federal agencies to give equal priority to procuring free and open source software in all of their procurement decisions; and generally provide an effective voice to the U.S. Federal government on behalf of the open source software community, private industry, academia, and other non-profits.
Now that organization has completed its first quite successful year of operations, and it's decided to celebrate that event by announcing an awards program to recognize those that have been most influential in advancing its goals.
Regular readers of Standards Today will be awar that hundreds of organizations that develop and promote standards have been formed using a legal and governance model that leads them to be referred to as "consortia." But think for a moment and tell me if you know what kind of model would be wise to use to set up an organization to support any other type of largely virtual activity?
That's interesting, isn't it? Silence would have answered the same question in the standards development community thirty years ago, too. But then a few pioneer consortia were formed, and the word spread. As it did, the structures used to form and govern consortia became more refined, and best practices evolved and became better known by word of mouth. The same phenomenon is happening today in the world of open source development.
As you may recall, the CodePlex Foundation indicated in January that it expected to name a permanent Executive Director within a few weeks' time. That has now happened, and in the "small world" department, the new ED happens to be Paula Hunter - someone I've known for years, and worked with several times in the past. The full press release is below. Paula is someone I like and respect a lot, and a great choice for CodePlex.
As you'll see from the announcement, one of Paula's prior jobs was as the Executive Director of UnitedLinux. UL was a client of mine, and that's where I first met Paula. And if you've never heard the saga of UL, it's a rather fascinating story.
Earlier this week, I noted the fact that the 100 day mark for the CodePlex Foundation had passed (on December 19) without any comment from the Foundation on how they had fared against their aggressive goals for that time period, including the replacement of the founding, interim Board of Directors, with a permanent board.
That blog entry sparked a call from the Foundation's PR firm, and an opportunity for me to spend an hour on the phone with Sam Ramji, the interim President of the Foundation, and Foundation Deputy Director Mark Stone during which we covered a lot of ground, including what's been accomplished so far, what the Foundation has learned so far, how that has affected its planning, and what we can expect to be announced in the short term and long term future. They also informed me that a press release covering some of the same topics would be issued today. That announcement was posted to the Foundation Web site at Noon, and you can find it here (as usual, it's also pasted in at the end of this blog entry).
With that as prelude, here's what we talked about, and here's what I learned.
As you may recall, Microsoft announced back on September 10 that it had launched a new foundation "as a forum in which open source communities and the software development community can come together with the shared goal of increasing participation in open source community projects." It called it's new non-profit organization the CodePlex Foundation, echoing the name of a commercial site, called CodePlex.com, that it had earlier set up to host open source development projects.
Microsoft launched the CodePlex Foundation with bylaws and other governance documents with which I had some issues, and about which I posted some recommendations. But it also publicly stated that these documents, and the initial boards of directors and advisors, were only temporary. Within 100 days, the statements posted at the site pledged, a new Board would be announced. Nominations for the Boards of Directors and Advisors were welcomed, as well as recommendations on changes to the governance documents.
But December 19 - the 100 day mark - passed quietly, with no announcement of a new Board or a status update on the other goals. So what's up with the CodePlex Foundation, and its pledge to promptly transition into a more independent organization?
If you're like me, you became fully aware of free and open source software only gradually, rather than suddenly and all at once. In my case, the process was somewhat schizophrenic, because I was personally involved, through my clients, in some of the evolutionary steps of FOSS itself, and only realized in retrospect how they fit into the whole picture.
Over the past few months, I've been reading several books on the early days of FOSS (I hope to review them later), each based upon extensive interviews with those that made FOSS happen. That's been especially revealing, because in recent years I've gotten to know many of the same individuals, and didn't always appreciate the roles that they had played in the early days of FOSS.
Recently, I tried to put all of this together, and more, into a single article that could serve as an introduction for people that might have an incomplete knowledge of FOSS, or might not fully appreciate all of its many dimensions. While no single article could ever hope to fully capture such a complex topic, perhaps the concise overview that I've put together can fill in some of the blanks for people who have only a general idea of what FOSS is all about. And hopefully it will also provide the incentive for them to want to learn more (I've provided a brief bibliography at the end for that purpose).
Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose
— French Proverb
Ah yes — "The more things change, the more they stay the same." Isn't that how the old saw goes? Or, in the more impatient parlance of today, simply "Same old, same old." So perhaps it should be no surprise that the old proverb would also hold true in the rough and tumble world of standards. And that is the case, not only generally, but more particularly in the suddenly hot war over eBook reader formats. This time around, though, there are a few new and interesting twists (on which more later).
What's the "same old" part all about? There are two alternate behavioral flavors: (1) try and set a de facto standard that you control, perhaps even obtaining a near monopoly in the process (the "winner takes all" strategy), and (2) pit your standard against another, where your standard gives you some relative, if not absolute, advantages (the "our team vs. their team" strategy).
In this case, it looks like Amazon is attempting to pull off the first, but in fact it's hard to tell whether they are serious, or just adopting a flawed strategy. Either way, I believe they will eventually have to admit defeat.
It's been more than a month since I last wrote about the CodePlex Foundation, the new open source initiative announced by Microsoft in early September. While things were pretty quiet at the Foundation site for some time, that changed on October 21, when the Foundation posted its new Project Acceptance and Operation Guidelines, a key deliverable that gives insight into a variety of aspects of the Foundation's developing purpose and philosophy. A "house" interview of Sam Ramji (pictured at left) by Paul Gillin was posted a week later.
Surprisingly, though, there was very little pickup on any of this new information until yesterday (perhaps with a little nudging from the PR side of the house), when several stories popped up on line, including this one, at InternetNews.com, and another at ZDNet.com. Each is based on a conversation between Sam Ramji and the reporter (Sean Michael Kerner, at InternetNews, and Dana Blankenhorn, at ZDNet.com).
In this blog entry, I'll give my impressions of how the CodePlex Foundation is developing, and (as before) my opinions on how effective the decisions being made are likely to be in achieving the Foundation's goals.
They're expected to deal with every new topic that comes down the pike, from regulating securitized credit swaps to beefing up cybersecurity, whether they've had any previous experience with it or not. Of course, there's never a shortage of people who want to educate them, but the "educators" with the greatest access are likely to be lobbyists. And when one paid advocate is promoting one action, political physics dictates that another highly paid individual in somebody else's pocket will be promoting an equal and opposite action. Soon, all potential solutions become obscured by a fog of business propaganda.
Two weeks ago, I wrote a critical analysis of the governance structure of the CodePlex Foundation, a new open source-focused foundation launched by Microsoft.
But what about the business premise for the Foundation itself? Let’s say that Microsoft does restructure CodePlex in such a way as to create a trusted, safe place for work to be done to support the open source software development model. Is there really a need for such an organization, and if so, what needs could such an organization meet?
As with my last piece, I’ll use the Q&A approach to make my points.
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Quote of the Day
“”
-Sample tag in the W3C's Emotion Markup Language, now under development
“EmotionML combines the rigor of computer programming with the squishiness of human emotion”
-Stephen Shankland, writing in CNET about EmotionML
W3C Launches HTML Speech Incubator Group W3C.org September 2, 2010 - W3C is pleased to announce the creation of the HTML Speech
Incubator Group, whose mission is to determine the feasibility
of integrating speech technology in HTML5 in a way that
leverages the capabilities of both speech and HTML (e.g., DOM)
to provide a high-quality, browser-independent
speech/multimodal experience while avoiding unnecessary
standards fragmentation or overlap. The following W3C Members
have sponsored the charter for this group: Voxeo, Microsoft,
Openstream, Google, AT&T, Mozilla. Read more about the
Incubator Activity, an initiative to foster development of
emerging Web-related technologies. Incubator Activity work is
not on the W3C standards track but in many cases serves as a
starting point for a future Working Group. ...Full Story
EmotionML: Will computers tap into your feelings? Stephen Shankland CNET.com September 1, 2010 - For all those who believe the computing industry is populated by people who are out of touch with the world of emotion, it's time to think again.
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which standardizes many Web technologies, is working on formalizing emotional states in a way that computers can handle. The name of the specification, which in July reached second-draft status, is Emotion Markup Language. EmotionML combines the rigor of computer programming with the squishiness of human emotion....The idea is called affective computing in academic circles, and if it catches on, computer interactions could be very different. Avatar faces could show their human master's expression during computer chats. ...Computers could respond to your expressions as people do. Computer help technology like Microsoft's Clippy or a robot waiter could discern when to make themselves scarce....But there could be a dark side, too, opening new class of worries for those online.
Might a company target you with particular advertising if it knows you're jubilant or despairing?... ...Full Story
The Future of the Web Is a Matter of Semantics Science Daily September 1, 2010 - ...Nikolaos Konstantinou of Athens Information Technology (AIT) and colleagues at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), in Greece, state that after almost a decade of research, the fundamental concepts that would underpin a semantic web have matured, yet the average web user cannot yet take advantage of their full potential. They suggest that there are three main issues to be overcome before Web 3.0 emerges and they present a roadmap in their paper to explain how these must be addressed:... a lack of simplicity, integration with existing technologies and practices, and adoption by the web industry.
They suggest that ways to automatically add meta data to digital objects are now needed to make it possible to publish semantically rich content without manual intervention regardless of whether the "publisher" is a large corporation or an individual content creator. They also say that semantic technologies do not offer a substitute for current practices, rather a complement to them and that web engineers need not abandon experience but should build on it. Finally, the driving forces of the web industry should adopt semantic web technologies since their adoption entails a series of benefits both for the companies themselves as well as to the end users.... ...Full Story
You want WAPI with that? If you think rolling out a new cellphone is complicated in the West, try China, where cellphone vendors and carriers need to not only deal with the mainstream global standards, but with China's home-grown TD-SCDMA standard as well. Oh - and you better include WAPI security as well.
Motorola Brings Android to the Ming Phones in China MobileTechReview.com August 31, 2010 - Motorola today introduced three new devices in China including MT810 for China Mobile's TD-SCDMA network, XT806 for China Telecom's CDMA-2000 network and A1680 for China Unicom's WCDMA network. The devices combine the Android smartphone experience with updated MING features and designs. Here is more info on the new Ming models:... ...Full Story
ANSI Launches Pilot ENERGY STAR® Accreditation Program ANSI.org August 31, 2010 - The American National Standards Institute (ANSI), coordinator of the U.S. standards and conformity assessment system, today announced the launch of a new pilot accreditation program for certification bodies that seek recognition from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to certify products under the ENERGY STAR® Program.
ENERGY STAR is a joint initiative of the EPA and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) that promotes energy-efficient products and practices. Because the ENERGY STAR products program has grown to encompass products in more than 60 categories and is relied upon by millions of Americans, EPA and DOE have put into place requirements for enhanced testing and verification....the EPA requires that third-party accreditation bodies operate in accordance with ISO/IEC 17011, Conformity assessment - General requirements for accreditation bodies accrediting conformity assessment bodies. Accreditation bodies must also be signatories to the International Accreditation Forum (IAF) Multilateral Recognition Arrangement (MLA) for Product Certification. ANSI is currently the only U.S. signatory to the IAF MLA for Product Certification.
The ANSI pilot program is designed to support the ENERGY STAR® Program through the independent, third-party accreditation of product certification bodies that evaluate and certify the activities of energy-efficient product manufacturers.... ...Full Story
Royalty-free H.264 may clear way for HTML5 standard Lex Friedman ComputerWorld August 31, 2010 - MPEG LA, the firm that controls licensing for a number of video and other standards, announced on Thursday that it will never charge any royalties for Internet video encoded using the H.264 standard that Apple favors, as long as that video is free to end-users....Just as with popular audio formats like MP3 and AAC, video formats aim to find the sweet spot between video quality and file size--they want to get as high as they can on the former, and as low as they can on the latter.
Much of the video on the Web these days is presented via Adobe's Flash technology...many popular Websites have made the move to support HTML5 video alongside or, in some cases, instead of Flash. HTML5 is the latest and greatest version of the Web's core markup language. The new HTML5 standard makes it possible for Websites to embed video that your computer can play without requiring a third-party plugin (like Flash)....the big browser developers couldn't agree on which video format the new tag in HTML5 should use: some sided with H.264, others with a format called Ogg Theora....The MPEG LA group, which owns the H.264 video codec, had declared that it wouldn't charge any royalty fees until 2016, but Mozilla and Opera were worried about what those future costs might be. Should H.264 video become a de facto Web standard in the meantime, the MPEG LA group would be in a position to charge a healthy fee for browser developers to keep using the format.... ...Full Story
Alliance Formed to Develop Electric Vehicles CRIEnglish.com August 30, 2010 - China set up a new alliance on Wednesday to unify standards and speed up the research and development of home-made electric vehicles. China set up a new alliance on Wednesday to unify standards and speed up the research and development of home-made electric vehicles, the Beijing Times reported...The non-profit alliance is made up of 16 state-owned enterprises from relevant sectors, including China's top three oil companies, two top power grid operators, and three major automakers - China FAW Group Corp., Dongfeng Auto Corp., and Chang'an Auto Corp. ...Full Story
With Information Sharing, Context Is As Important As Content Michael Daconta Government Computer News August 27, 2010 - ...Given that modern development platforms can automatically generate code
to process XML documents, a narrow perspective can affect the exchange
and any code that processes that exchange. The new approach being
spearheaded by forward-thinking elements of the Army and Air Force is
to create the semantics first, via a high-fidelity data model called
an ontology, and then generate the XML schemas from that model.
Although not based on the Web Ontology Language, the National Information
Exchange Model (NIEM) takes a similar approach, in which the XML schemas
are generated from a database-backed data model. The contextual nature
of this approach is that the ontology uses a more top-down, enterprise
perspective to guide the inclusion of bottom-up exchanges. The heightened
awareness and use of context were mirrored on the commercial front by
Google's purchase of Metaweb and the company's Freebase entity graph.... ...Full Story
IETF Internet Draft: The Network Trouble Ticket Data Model Dimitris Zisiadis, et al. IETF.org August 27, 2010 - IETF has published an updated level -04 specification for the
Experimental Track "Network Trouble Ticket Data Model," which provides
an XML representation for conveying incident information across
administrative domains between parties that have an operational
responsibility of remediation or a watch-and-warning over a defined
constituency. The data model encodes information about hosts, networks,
and the services running on these systems; attack methodology and
associated forensic evidence; impact of the activity; and limited
approaches for documenting workflow.
Details: "The Network Trouble Ticket Data Model (NTTDM) aims to simplify
TT exchange within the boundaries of a Grid and to enhance the functional
cooperation of every Network operation Centre (NOC) and the Grid
Operation Centre (GOC). Community adoption of the NTTDM enhances trouble
resolution within the grid framework and imparts network status
cognisance by modelling collaboration and information exchange among
the operators.... ...Full Story
Red Hat Submits Deltacloud APIs as Potential Industry Standard Joab Jackson InfoWorld August 27, 2010 - As the industry call for cloud interoperability grows more fervent,
open source enterprise software company Red Hat has submitted its cloud
platform, Deltacloud, to the DMTF (Distributed Management Task Force)
as a potential standard for cloud interoperability....Red Hat launched Deltacloud in September 2009 as a set of open source
APIs that could be used to move cloud-based workloads among different
IaaS (infrastructure as a service) providers, such as Amazon and
Rackspace. To encourage external contributions to Deltacloud, Red Hat
relinquished the Deltacloud code base to the Apache Incubator, a
repository for programs that may eventually be overseen by the Apache
Foundation....DMTF oversees existing standards such as CDM (the
Common Diagnostic Model), DASH (the Desktop and Mobile Architecture
For System Hardware), and OVF (the Open Virtualization Format)... ...Full Story
Last summer, a new organization was announced with the goal of promoting the uptake of open source software by the U.S. federal government. It's mission was described as follows:
As you may recall, the CodePlex Foundation 
Earlier this week, I 
As you may recall, Microsoft announced back on September 10 that it had launched a new foundation "as a forum in which open source communities and the software development community can come together with the shared goal of increasing participation in open source community projects." It called it's new non-profit organization the 
If you're like me, you became fully aware of free and open source software only gradually, rather than suddenly and all at once. In my case, the process was somewhat schizophrenic, because I was personally involved, through my clients, in some of the evolutionary steps of FOSS itself, and only realized in retrospect how they fit into the whole picture.
Ah yes — "The more things change, the more they stay the same." Isn't that how the old saw goes? Or, in the more impatient parlance of today, simply "Same old, same old." So perhaps it should be no surprise that the old proverb would also hold true in the rough and tumble world of standards. And that is the case, not only generally, but more particularly in the suddenly hot war over eBook reader formats. This time around, though, there are a few new and interesting twists (on which more later).
It's been more than a month since 
People in Congress have it tough.
Two weeks ago, I wrote a 
