What’s happening in the world of consortia, standards,
and open source software
The Standards Blog tracks and explains the way standards and open source software impact business, society, and the future. This site is hosted by Gesmer Updegrove LLP, a technology law firm based in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. GU is an internationally recognized leader in creating and representing the organizations that create and promote standards and open source software. The opinions expressed in The Standards Blog are those of the authors alone, and not necessarily those of GU. Please see the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy for this site, which appear here. You can find a summary of our services here. To learn how GU can help you, contact: Andrew Updegrove
If you follow technology news or music news (or both), you doubtless know of an amendment to a French on-line copyright bill that would make it legal to thwart the digital rights protection (DRM) software of the fabulously successful Apple iTunes/iPod system. The vote to adopt that legislation takes place in Paris today, and Apple has stated that if it passes, it may no longer offer French customers the ability to purchase music from its iTunes site.
As you may recall, the ODF Alliance was formed on March 3, 2006. Given that they've already had, oh, two and a half weeks to change the world, I thought I'd check out the Alliance Website to see whether they had achieved their manifest destiny yet.
The following entry sets forth the opinions of the author alone, and is not meant to represent the views of any other member of Gesmer Updegrove LLP, the sponsor of this site
Not quite two years ago I wrote an essay called Is Iraq "Another Vietnam?". By then, it had become apparent that our military venture into the Middle East would not prove to be of as limited duration as had initially been hoped. Instead, the disturbing specter of the Viet Nam experience was beginning to rise in the public consciousness — as it should have before war was declared. And many began to ask the question: "Will Iraq be "Another Viet Nam?"
It has frequently been observed that the clock of administration support for ODF may be ticking down in Massachusetts. After all, Governor Mitt Romney, who recommitted decisively to continue support for ODF following the resignation of State CIO Peter Quinn, announced that he will not seek reelection in November of this year. On the other hand, Secretary of State William Francis Galvin, an announced opponent of ODF, has stated that he will run for reelection - and believes that he should have a strong say on the subject of IT policy as it relates to document retention.
As noted in my post of a few days ago, it was expected that last week's ISO vote on whether to adopt the IEEE WiFi specification or the Chinese WAPI submission would come out in favor of WiFi. As early as Sunday, word began to leak that the vote had in fact favored the IEEE alternative — and decisively so (with 86% in favor of WiFi and only 22% for WAPI). Later in the week, this result was confirmed, and China state forcefully that it would not take the vote as the last word.
One of the more bizarre, but less noticed threads in the OpenDocument Format (ODF) story in Massachusetts involves whether or not the many hundreds of municipalities in Massachusetts would be required to use software that supported ODF, or at least be able to work with documents created using such software when they interacted with State government.
I'm not a Boston Globe subscriber (I'm a Times man, myself), so it was alert Standards Blog reader Patrick McCormick who emailed me to let me know that Globe ombudsman Richard Chacon had written something that I'd find interesting, and he was right. Regular readers will recall that Mr. Chacon had promised way back on December 12 of last year to look into the circumstances surrounding the writing of a Globe article that contributed to the resignation of Massachusetts State CIO Peter Quinn.
Two years ago, a standards war between Wi-Fi and a Chinese standard, WAPI, was averted - but only an interim compromise had been reached. After a number of recent warning signals, it now appears that the truce is over.
When it comes to politics and technology, there are always (at least) two opinions. Today, I provide the full interview with Massachusetts Supervisor of Public Records Alan Cote, whose views on ODF differ substantially from those usually expressed in the Standards Blog
Massachusetts legislators on Beacon Hill today will see a demonstration of accessibility features for Office 7, but they won't see the complete picture.