Standards and Open Standards

Sun vice president and fellow Graham Hamilton has apparently left sun over their open sourcing of Java.

Hamilton, who in the past spearheaded Sun's work on compliance, interoperability and portability in Java sees the open sourcing of the platform as a bad thing because it erodes the technical uniformity of the platform, by allowing others to build incompatible versions. He is, of course, right. Open sourcing Java will allow third parties to fork the platform, but I have no doubt that the network effect would cause these to wither and die.

cheers, stuart

USB has just been standardised as the new way for mobile phones to talk to extremely large SIM cards. USB won not because it was the best option, nor because it answered a burning need, nor because the big players wanted it; it looks like it won because it was patent free (unlike MMC, another contender) and open (allowing to be perceived as neutral). It still faces the battle of getting implemented, but I suspect that implementation costs will continue to drop as the cost and quality of the silicon designs to implement the the standard continue to fall, driven by the use of USB in other fields.

cheers stuart

In this 26 minute recording, we'll hear from Rob Abel, CEO of the IMS Global Learning Consortium. Listen in as Marliu Goodyear hosts a discussion about standards, course packs and more.

There's been some coverage of a new 3.1 release from the good people at the Linux Standard Base (LSV). I've written in the past about how the LSB is a crucial convergent force within the diverse Linux community.

"The Linux Standard Base makes things better all around for RealNetworks," said Jeff Ayars, Vice President, BPS Technology, RealNetworks. "As an ISV it improves the reliability of our product by giving us a consistent platform to write to and test against, and as a service provider that manages and maintains hundreds of Linux systems, it provides us a more consistent system to administer and increases the pool of talented administrators for us to choose from."

"Novell has been a long-time, active supporter of the Linux Standard Base," said Markus Rex, CTO of Open Platform Solutions for Novell. "The launch of this specification is an important step for Linux on the desktop. Standards like LSB are essential if ISVs are to target the Linux desktop. At Novell, we think the desktop market is extremely strategic, and we will continue to invest in driving desktop innovation and desktop standards."

A new UCISA report has Moodle and Bodington each with 8% of the installed base, beaten soundly by Blackboard(43), WebCT(37) and in-house developed systems.

eweek are running an article that suggests that Microsoft's proposal to standardise the file formats for Office may not be all it appears. The situation is complex, but it is clear that OpenOffice has a standard file format today and that Microsoft Office will not for at least 18 months, which is effectively a purchasing cycle for most institutions.

Microsoft have announced that they will "open" their file formats by submitting them to ECMA International, a standards body. The ECMA is the lowest rung on the standards ladder, and effectively acts as a rubber-stamp for proprietary standards. Unfortunately from the articles circulating, it appears that Microsoft are going for post hoc standardisation, rather than the approach open office took of getting feedback from external third parties. These is also no word on whether Microsoft are going to licence their patents covering the format so parties in countries with software patents (i.e. the US) can legally access the files.

Still, it's a step forward for Microsoft, and in 2007 I guess Office 2003 may become technically standards compliant.

InfoWorld (via  Jeremy Kirk, IDG News Service) reported that Microsoft will support WS-Federation instead of SAML 2.0
http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/11/17/HNmssaml2support_1.html

The International Standardisation Organisation has announced the creation of ISO ISO 19005-1:2005, which standardises the format of PDF documents. PDF (Portable Document Format) is similar to the earlier PostScript (PS) format, both are from Adobe.

I guess the real question is whether any patent-holders are now going to crawl out from under their rocks and demand royalties. Adobe certainly appears to have done the right thing and granted liberal patent licences, all credit to them.