Andy Updegrove, Author at ConsortiumInfo.org - Page 52 of 75ConsortiumInfo.org

Louis Gutierrez Resigns: Deja Vu on Beacon Hill

10/04/2006

In (another) sad day in Massachusetts, State CIO Louis Gutierrez submitted his resignation today to the Romney administration. Like his predecessor, Peter Quinn, Louis is a man of principle. And, like Peter, he is taking the high road by using his resignation to inform the citizens of Massachusetts of a regrettable lapse on the part of their elected representatives. In his letter of resignation to State Secretary of Administration and Finance Thomas Trimarco, he states:

IT innovation in Massachusetts state government ran out of steam in August, when the legislature closed its formal session without action on the IT and facilities bond. I am presiding over the dismantling of an IT investment program - over a decade in the evolution - that the legislative leadership appears unwilling to salvage at this time. I am therefore asking leave to relinquish my posts.... I have no remaining expectation of timely legislative action, and no continued appetite to watch the IT investment program lapse.

In a message sent to staff, Gutierrez struck a more personal note, and also elaborated on his reasons for submitting his resignation at this time:

When I joined ITD this year, I anticipated many challenges. It was my intention to navigate them through the start of the next administration. One scenario I found it hard to imagine, though, was the lapse in the bond funding that sustains most state IT investment....

Because I have no remaining expectation of near-term action on the IT Bond, I have offered Secretary Trimarco my resignation, effective 30 days from now. It is my hope through this resignation to provide one additional window onto the situation, which I trust will someday be resolved, but which stands to set the state's IT investment program back many steps the longer the lapse persists.

Time and Redemption Among the Living and the Dead

10/02/2006

It had been six long weeks since I returned from a backcountry trip to Utah, and six exhausting weeks at that. Thoroughly drained, it was high time to leave my demons behind (or try to), and seek comfort in the clean fall air of the White Mountains of New Hampshire.

Saturday morning found me not on a trail that would lead to the dramatic viewpoints popular at peak-foliage time, but instead on one that would thread the valleys between the peaks, meander past beaver ponds, and eventually bring me back to my point of departure, suitably (I hoped) refreshed.

The landscape I explored all that day proved to be unexpectedly spectral, haunted by the shadows of countless thousands of dead birches that loomed above a maturing understory of hemlock, spruce and maple. The explanation for their presence was not hard to guess: birch is a "pioneer" species with small, easily wind-borne seeds that sprout into seedlings that not only tolerate, but demand bright sunlight to survive. Throughout the west, aspens are the opportunists that retake the clearings. But in these northeastern woods, it is birch that is most likely to colonize areas burned by fire, or (like this) clearcut by man.

But birch is not a long-lived tree. The thousands of pioneers that together sprouted on these mountainsides a century ago had now together died, their reforesting mission accomplished. In the years that followed, their twigs rotted and dropped, and then their larger branches. Now, like hapless lepers, they raised only blunted limbs to the sky.

Standards and the Human Rights Crisis

9/29/2006

Following a ten hour, acrimonious debate, the U.S. Senate voted 63 to 34 yesterday to approve a measure that would confirm that detainees can be deprived of certain rights to contest their detention; would bar certain interrogation techniques; but would allow the President to determine whether other techniques would or would not constitute violations of the applicable Geneva Convention. Concurrently, the United Nations is debating what actions, if any, to take to defend those in danger of starvation, disease and violent death in Darfur.

Today, it seems that the progress towards consensus on human rights, and agreement on effective mechanisms to guarantee those rights, is at best lagging. As a result, I've dedicated the September issue of the Consortium Standards Bulletin to the topic of Standards and the Human Rights Crisis. You can view the entire issue here, and the editorial is reproduced below.

NATURAL LAW AND HUMAN RIGHTS

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness…And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of the divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.
The American Declaration of Indepence (1776)

In contrast to 1776, the idea of human rights is today often addressed as a relative rather than an absolute concept. Despite the fact that the modern concept of democracy was in part based upon a belief that human beings possess "unalienable rights," even democratic governments today disagree on how such rights must be honored in the breach. As a result, only scattered, selective, and in some cases haphazard mechanisms exist to permit the global community to intervene (if so inclined) to protect the rights of the individual against the powers of the state.

Online News Reporting at Internet Speed

9/27/2006

Remember the phrase, "Internet Speed?"

Wasn't that a phrase from the Bubble Years, when Everything Changed, and if you didn't Get It you Were History? Now, of course, Internet Speed, as a phrase, is So Last Century.

Except when it comes to on-line journalism.

This blog entry is in part a mea culpa account from the blogging trenches. Mea Culpa, because the first draft of my last blog entry turns out to have been very inaccurate. But only partly "my bad," because it was consistent with a reliable source, andI corrected it very quickly when I learned that it was wide of the mark. Still, the experience is salutary, and worth recording in some detail for what it indicates about contemporary on-line journalism (something I've written about from time to time before, to link to just a few prior stories), and particularly for those that are required to pump out many stories a day under the new on-line model of single-screen, rat-a-tat reportage.

This particular morality play began early this morning, when at around 6:30 AM I read a story by Steve Lohr in the print version of the New York Times headlined:

Hoping to be a Model, I.B.M. Will Put Its Patent Filings Online

Wow, I thought — IBM will put all of its 40,000 patent filings on line! Does that include confidential applications as well? Here's what the first line of the story said:

IBM Adopts Open Patent Policy

9/26/2006

Updated 12:45 PM EDT: The original version of this blog entry was based on an article in the New York Times, and then updated when the related IBM press release became generally available. For the Back Story on that rewrite, see this entry

The New York Times reported this morning that IBM would announce a new patent policy later today, and described in general what the terms of that policy might be. IBM clearly hopes that this move will increase pressure on other companies to accelerate efforts to improve the quality of software patents, which is an issue of interest and concern to a broad audience, and particularly those that participate in the development of, or that use, open source software.

The press release that issued later in the day states that the new policy applies to IBM's operations worldwide, and is based on four "tenets:"

Patent applicants are responsible for the quality and clarity of their patent applications.
Patent applications should be available for public examination.
Patent ownership should be transparent and easily discernable.
Pure business methods without technical merit should not be
patentable.

The Times article states that IBM is seeking to lead the market towards patent reform, despite the lagging efforts of Congress to improve the quality of software patents, which are widely regarded as being too easy to get, and too expensive and difficult to challenge.

Google Sulks in Wake of Belgian Court Decision

9/23/2006

In what seems to me to be a petty display of childishness, Google has refused to post at its own Websites in Belgium the news of a recent defeat it suffered in a Belgian courtroom. In contrast to the thousands of other news items that are automatically Hoovered on to its News page on a daily basis, Google claimed that the news had been so widely reported that reporting it at its Belgian news site was unnecessary and "disproportionate."

The New York Times, which has been reporting regularly on the subject, reported yesterday in two related stories (the second one is here) that the judge in the suit rejected Google's contention.

The dispute itself relates to whether the thumbnail images, headlines and news summaries that Google reproduces at its Google News site violate the copyright of the news content owners to which it links. I blogged on this issue a few days ago, in the context of a recently announced settlement between Google and the Associated Press, under which the AP will allow Google to continue to display its content, although at a new area of its site, and subject to an agreement between Google and AP the terms of which have not been disclosed.

The Belgian dispute is more serious, because Google has already agreed to honor the rest of the Belgian court's order, and is no longer digesting news from three French-language Belgian newspapers at its two Belgian news sites. And in a similar law suit brought by Agence France-Press in the Washington D.C. District Court, AFP is seeking $17.5 million in damages for copyright damages; Google contends instead that its news snippets fall under the fair use doctrine.

Google, the Associated Press, and the Fair Use Doctrine

9/20/2006

How much use is "fair use" when it comes to Web-based content?

That's a question that I expected would receive more attention in the blogosphere when Google announced last month that it had reached a deal with the Associated Press that would permit it to continue to link to AP stories at the Google Website — for a price. Every story I recall reading focused fairly narrowly on the specific deal, or at most on the economics of the relationships between major aggregators and major content producers. But in fact, the rights at issue relate to every Website in the world that provides more than a simple link to copyrighted content hosted on another Website.

As a first proposition, any part of a creative work (whether literary, musical or otherwise) that is large enough to be an identifiable part of that work (as compared to a few words or notes that could randomly appear in many works) becomes protected by copyright at the moment of creation. Unless copyright ownership is voluntarily surrendered (i.e., the work is placed in the public domain) in a work, or it is placed under a ">Creative Commons license that voluntarily limits that protection, no part of that work may be reproduced without the consent of the copyright owner.

FTC Begins Consideration of Industry Input on Rambus Remedies

9/15/2006

Updated 9/19/06: Ah, my good friends the Rambus daytraders have discovered the fact that I have filed another Amicus Brief and (better yet) that I now have a blog where they can leave public comments. Those who are not members of this community will find their comments below amusing, as they may RMBS and (Another) Dark Side of the Internet, which will help to place them in context

Today is the deadline for filing amicus curiae (friend of the court) briefs and other forms of input with the Federal Trade Commission, as it considers what the punishment of Rambus, Inc. should be for having engaged in "an anticompetitive 'hold up' of the computer memory industry [that]... contributed significantly to Rambus’s acquisition of monopoly power in the four relevant markets." The FTC made that announcement on August 2, and also announced that it would accept briefs from interested industry participants and others, as well as from Rambus and the FTC prosecuting team.

I've submitted three amicus curiae briefs over the past several years (with the Federal Circuit, Supreme Court, and FTC), on a pro bono basis, in relation to this investigation as well as in connection with the litigation between Rambus and Infineon, on behalf of a large group of standard setting organizations that collectively represent many thousands of corporate, government, university and non-profit members, and was encouraged to provide input in response to this invitation by the FTC as well.

Below are the "Issue Urged" and "Summary of Argument" from the brief, which will give you an idea of why the Rambus litigation is so important, and why it's equally important that the remedies that the FTC levies send a clear message that, when it comes to abusing the standard setting process, "crime does not pay." If you'd like to read the whole brief, you can find it in PDF form here.

ISSUE URGED

The remedy levied by the Commission against Rambus must send a clear message to that company, as well as to all that participate in the standard setting process, that the consequences of such bad-faith conduct, if discovered, will significantly exceed the potential gains of engaging in such practices. To fail to include a significant punitive element in the remedies assessed by the Commission would dangerously undermine the standard setting process, to the detriment of society and the national interest.

OASIS Launches OpenDocument XML.org

9/13/2006

OASIS announced yesterday in Lyons, France, that it has launched a public Website "designed to serve as the official community gathering place and information resource for the OpenDocument Format (ODF)" sponsored by IBM, Sun Microsystems and, interestingly, Intel as well. According to the brief press release, readers are encouraged to contribute content. Editorial Guidelines can be found here.

The site already contains quite a few features, including Wikis, white papers, links to external resources, and so on. It's nicely done and easy to navigate, and while it's hardly comprehensive at this point, each heading has at least a page of material. Hopefully, these categories will be filled out with much of the substantial amount of data that has accumulated over the last year in particular.

It will be interesting not only to see how well this site catches on, given how many sites exist that have their own resources and following, including the ODF Alliance site, serving the public sector, and ODF Fellowship site, serving a general audience, the sites of the open source projects that support ODF, such as OpenOffice.org and many other sites and blogs that follow ODF regularly.

It will also be interesting to see how activity at this site compares to what goes on at OpenXMLDeveloper.org, a somewhat similar site launched by Microsoft back in March. According to the home page of the site, registered members reached the 500 mark last week. Data on traffice is here.

Microsoft Releases New “Open Specifications Promise” on 35 Web Services Specifications

9/12/2006

Microsoft has just posted the text of a new patent "promise not to assert " at its Website, and pledges that it will honor that promise with respect to 35 listed Web Services standards. The promise is similar in most substantive respects to the covenant not to assert patents that it issued last year with respect to its Office 2003 XML Reference Schema, with two important improvements intended to make it more clearly compatible with open source licensing. Those changes are to clarify that the promise not to assert any relevant patents extends to everyone in the distribution chain of a product, from the original vendor through to the end user, and to clarify that the promise covers a partial as well as a full implementation of a standard.

I learned about the new covenant from Microsoft yesterday, which provided me an advance copy of the covenant and the FAQ that accompanies it and an opportunity to ask questions about what it is intended to accomplish. I did have a few requests for clarifications that I'll incorporate below which may resolve some of the questions that might occur to you as well.

Of course, Microsoft (along with IBM and BEA) proposed most, if not all, of these standards to begin with, but I am still impressed with the new covenant, and am pleased to see that Microsoft is expanding its use of what I consider to be a highly desirable tool for facilitating the implementation of open standards, in particular where those standards are of interest to the open source community.