Over the last few years, most of us in the community have often discussed setting up a foundation for Free and Open Source Software in India to work on policy, advocacy, promotion and development of FOSS and open standards. I think the time is now ripe to bring industry, government, academia, and the community to gether to create a FOSS consortium. Some initial thoughts on the charter of the foundation and organization structure are given below. I'd love to hear from the community what they think of this.
Charter of the FOSS Foundation
1)Formulate strategies on how India can benefit from deploying FOSS and
implement/monitor implementation of the same.
2)Monitor latest developments in FOSS technologies and ensure global
leadership in key strategic areas like supercomputing, security,
localization, affordable computing, GIS, embedded computing etc.
3)Research and quantify the benefits of using FOSS for India.
4)Work with government, industry, academia and the open source/free
software community to popularize FOSS in India.
5)Leverage FOSS to bridge the digital divide in India through affordable
computing and localization to all the major Indian languages.
6)Encourage research and analysis of FOSS in India through academic
research, market research, white papers, case studies etc.
7)Study the legal implications of free and open source licenses in the context of global patenting and copyright laws and recommending strategies beneficial to India.
Organization Structure
The Org Structure flows from the charter and therefore, dear blog readers, your comments on the above are of paramount importance. There are several org structures that we can consider:
1) W3C, which is one of the widest industry consortia with over 400 members. It also has an inclusive process which allows the public to participate in its debates and discussions.
2) The Linux Foundation
In brief, LF's structure is that each Platinum member can elect a director, subject to an upper limit of ten, Gold members can elect three directors from amongst themselves and Silver members can elect one director. From their web site, I could not figure out what mechanism they have for community participation.
3) NASSCOM
NASSCOM is the most successful industry organization in India. As its web site says, "In 1988, NASSCOM had 38 members, who together contributed close to 65 percent of the revenue of the software industry. Since then, membership of NASSCOM has grown multifold to reach over 1100 members."
We look forward to your inputs on how to create an open, participatory organization that keeps growing along with the FOSS community. Do send me your comments by the end of next week (26th October 2007).
Saturday, October 20, 2007
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Media replies on the OOXML issue
These are some questions that a media person sent me on the OOXML issue.
Venky
=====
> Q1. Do you look at this development as a decisive turn of events against
> Microsoft in the fight between the open source and proprietary software
> camps?
The fact that OOXML was defeated in India indicates that Indian policymakers are well aware of the importance of open standards and one must give them due credit for this. The open source and free software communities believe that public data should be in public formats. The government is the custodian of citizens data and has an obligation to ensure that this data is not tied to one particular application. Take the case of land records, which need to be preserved for 400 years or more. If land records are stored in a proprietary format, there is no guarantee that it can be retrieved a few hundred years later because the only one who can unlock the file is the organization that created the format.
The only way to assure that data can be stored and retrieved freely is to use published standards that have been built through collaboration and consensus and have multiple third party implementations. The Internet is one of the finest examples of true open standards because anybody can create web browsers and e-mail clients by following the standards published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
Open standards are important to humanity because it enables us to share knowledge freely. Both, open source and open standards are inclusive movements and therefore the rejection of OOXML is a great victory for those who campaign for the users freedom to encode and decode their data.
>
> Q2. How important would be the outcome of the final judgement on
> government spending on business software?
Open standards are not just important, they are fundamental to efficient e-governance. Using proprietary standards is akin to handing the keys to the treasury to a third party and is a very unwise step when it comes to citizens data.
> Q3 What are the loose ends Microsoft will have to fix in order to win the
> trust of voting members?
The Bureau of Indian Standards has submitted a list of issues with OOXML that has been submitted to ISO.
>
> Q4 Can you share on some of the concerns raised by the voting members
> regarding OOXML? How relevant are these according to you?
1) Taking the legacy Office file format and XMLising it does not make it an open standard. Third parties should be able to freely implement an open standard without recourse to the author of the document. At 6000 pages OOXML is too long and too opaque to be implemented by third parties. Most of those who claim to have implemented OOXML are parties which have private treaties with Microsoft.
2) There is an existing open standard for documents called Open Document Format (ODF). Creating multiple standards for the same purpose only leads to confusion. For example, in 1995, both Netscape and Microsoft came up with their own extensions to HTML. This lead to a profusion of websites proclaiming "Optimised for Netscape" or "Optimised for Internet Explorer."
The purpose of standards is to unify and not to divide and the best standards like ASCII, Unicode, HTML etc are ones that are created through consensus and collaboration. We have all gained enormously from unified standards for data exchange and the web. Let us ask the industry to collaborate and come up with a consensus unified standard for document exchange. Vendors should collaborate on standards and compete on their implementation. This is the best outcome for industry and consumers.
3) After more than 26 years of pushing proprietary formats, Microsoft is now arguing that it is OK to have multiple standards. Multiple standards for the same task lead to increasing the cost of compliance, testing and implementation for everyone. For developers, it increases the time taken to release an application, which drives up cost. For users it increases the possibility of errors and miscommunication.
For example, the recent delay in the launch of the Airbus A 380 (which will cost the organization €2 billion, or $2.5 billion over four years) has been attributed to the fact that the Airbus fuselage sent from Hamburg, Germany was received at Toulose, France, the workers found that the 300+ kms of wiring could not be connected properly. (See http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/06/26/business/airbus.php). Boeing itself has attributed it to "incompatibilities in the development of the concurrent engineering tools to be used for the design of the electrical harnesses installation." Anecdotal evidence indicates that both these organizations were using different measurement systems derived from the country of their origin. In a globalizing world having common standards helps everyone. International travelers who carry multiple power adapters for their notebooks know this logic well.
In e-governance, let us take a simple case. The revenue department uses data from the land records data base. Unfortunately, this is in a different format and therefore the the revenue department has problem decoding land records data. In such a case, who is responsible for the correct decoding of the land records? As mentioned earlier, the purpose of standards is to eliminate such friction and therefore, BIS should recommend that vendors should work together on unified standards.
The two attached docs will give more info on the subject. My blog at www.osindia.blogspot.com also has ore info. Specially these articles:
http://osindia.blogspot.com/2007/08/policy-challenges-for-open-standards.html
http://osindia.blogspot.com/2007/01/importance-of-open-standards.html
4) There are also serious objections to Microsoft's efforts at "Ballot Box Engineering" which are documented at my blog on www.osindia.blogspot.com
Venkatesh Hariharan
Co-founder
Open Source Foundation of India
Venky
=====
> Q1. Do you look at this development as a decisive turn of events against
> Microsoft in the fight between the open source and proprietary software
> camps?
The fact that OOXML was defeated in India indicates that Indian policymakers are well aware of the importance of open standards and one must give them due credit for this. The open source and free software communities believe that public data should be in public formats. The government is the custodian of citizens data and has an obligation to ensure that this data is not tied to one particular application. Take the case of land records, which need to be preserved for 400 years or more. If land records are stored in a proprietary format, there is no guarantee that it can be retrieved a few hundred years later because the only one who can unlock the file is the organization that created the format.
The only way to assure that data can be stored and retrieved freely is to use published standards that have been built through collaboration and consensus and have multiple third party implementations. The Internet is one of the finest examples of true open standards because anybody can create web browsers and e-mail clients by following the standards published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).
Open standards are important to humanity because it enables us to share knowledge freely. Both, open source and open standards are inclusive movements and therefore the rejection of OOXML is a great victory for those who campaign for the users freedom to encode and decode their data.
>
> Q2. How important would be the outcome of the final judgement on
> government spending on business software?
Open standards are not just important, they are fundamental to efficient e-governance. Using proprietary standards is akin to handing the keys to the treasury to a third party and is a very unwise step when it comes to citizens data.
> Q3 What are the loose ends Microsoft will have to fix in order to win the
> trust of voting members?
The Bureau of Indian Standards has submitted a list of issues with OOXML that has been submitted to ISO.
>
> Q4 Can you share on some of the concerns raised by the voting members
> regarding OOXML? How relevant are these according to you?
1) Taking the legacy Office file format and XMLising it does not make it an open standard. Third parties should be able to freely implement an open standard without recourse to the author of the document. At 6000 pages OOXML is too long and too opaque to be implemented by third parties. Most of those who claim to have implemented OOXML are parties which have private treaties with Microsoft.
2) There is an existing open standard for documents called Open Document Format (ODF). Creating multiple standards for the same purpose only leads to confusion. For example, in 1995, both Netscape and Microsoft came up with their own extensions to HTML. This lead to a profusion of websites proclaiming "Optimised for Netscape" or "Optimised for Internet Explorer."
The purpose of standards is to unify and not to divide and the best standards like ASCII, Unicode, HTML etc are ones that are created through consensus and collaboration. We have all gained enormously from unified standards for data exchange and the web. Let us ask the industry to collaborate and come up with a consensus unified standard for document exchange. Vendors should collaborate on standards and compete on their implementation. This is the best outcome for industry and consumers.
3) After more than 26 years of pushing proprietary formats, Microsoft is now arguing that it is OK to have multiple standards. Multiple standards for the same task lead to increasing the cost of compliance, testing and implementation for everyone. For developers, it increases the time taken to release an application, which drives up cost. For users it increases the possibility of errors and miscommunication.
For example, the recent delay in the launch of the Airbus A 380 (which will cost the organization €2 billion, or $2.5 billion over four years) has been attributed to the fact that the Airbus fuselage sent from Hamburg, Germany was received at Toulose, France, the workers found that the 300+ kms of wiring could not be connected properly. (See http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/06/26/business/airbus.php). Boeing itself has attributed it to "incompatibilities in the development of the concurrent engineering tools to be used for the design of the electrical harnesses installation." Anecdotal evidence indicates that both these organizations were using different measurement systems derived from the country of their origin. In a globalizing world having common standards helps everyone. International travelers who carry multiple power adapters for their notebooks know this logic well.
In e-governance, let us take a simple case. The revenue department uses data from the land records data base. Unfortunately, this is in a different format and therefore the the revenue department has problem decoding land records data. In such a case, who is responsible for the correct decoding of the land records? As mentioned earlier, the purpose of standards is to eliminate such friction and therefore, BIS should recommend that vendors should work together on unified standards.
The two attached docs will give more info on the subject. My blog at www.osindia.blogspot.com also has ore info. Specially these articles:
http://osindia.blogspot.com/2007/08/policy-challenges-for-open-standards.html
http://osindia.blogspot.com/2007/01/importance-of-open-standards.html
4) There are also serious objections to Microsoft's efforts at "Ballot Box Engineering" which are documented at my blog on www.osindia.blogspot.com
Venkatesh Hariharan
Co-founder
Open Source Foundation of India
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
FOSS.in makes the right call
Those of you who follow FOSS.in would have noticed that this year, the conference has done a reboot on its call for papers. The web page now says,
I think it is about time that we stopped being a nation of downloaders and started "uploading." TCS releasing WANem as open source is among the great contributions coming out of India, but we need more contributions going upstream given that we produce almost 20 percent of the software developers in the world. Unless and until we start contributing, we cannot have a say in the development of technology.
A couple of years ago, when I saw in Sri Lanka, Sanjiva Weerawarna told me that the island nation has 25 committers to Apache! If Sri Lanka can contribute so much to open source, so can we. Kudos to Atul Chitnis and the FOSS.in team for taking a bold call. I like it because it reminds me so much of one of my favorite sayings, "Hands that help are holier than lips that pray."
While we are on FOSS.in, as a former journalist, I also admire the well written content on the FOSS.in web site.
This note is going to catch many people by surprise:
As we had explained, over and over: this is a FOSS developer and contributor conference. We are no longer a FOSS user conference.
As was mentioned last year - in the end FOSS is about Free and Open Source Software, and somebody needs to write that software.
FOSS.IN is about demolishing the contention that India is a land of FOSS consumers, with almost no contributors - that we only take, not give back.
I think it is about time that we stopped being a nation of downloaders and started "uploading." TCS releasing WANem as open source is among the great contributions coming out of India, but we need more contributions going upstream given that we produce almost 20 percent of the software developers in the world. Unless and until we start contributing, we cannot have a say in the development of technology.
A couple of years ago, when I saw in Sri Lanka, Sanjiva Weerawarna told me that the island nation has 25 committers to Apache! If Sri Lanka can contribute so much to open source, so can we. Kudos to Atul Chitnis and the FOSS.in team for taking a bold call. I like it because it reminds me so much of one of my favorite sayings, "Hands that help are holier than lips that pray."
While we are on FOSS.in, as a former journalist, I also admire the well written content on the FOSS.in web site.
Monday, October 01, 2007
Policy recommendations on Open Source for India
These are some policy recommendations on Open Source for India. I look forward to your comments on these recommendations. This will be ciculated to e-government policy makers next week.
===============================================================================================
We, the members of the open source software (OSS) community in India, recommend that the Government of India should promote OSS in order to encourage competition and choice, make IT more affordable and bring the benefits of IT to the people of India.
We recommend that the Department of IT, Government of India adopt the following steps which will go a long way in promoting OSS in India.
1)Applications developed by the Government of India should be cross platform and not be locked in to a specific platform. Building cross-platform applications encourages choice and provides implementing agencies the freedom to select the platforms that suit them the best. Since applications have a long shelf-life, building cross-platform applications isolates the application from technological changes in the underlying platform.
2)Mandate that all documents and data created by government organizations follow open standards that are free from royalties, patents and other encumbrances.
3)Encourage the development and usage of Linux and open source desktop productivity applications in government. This move can reduce dependence on expensive proprietary software, encourage choice, promote healthy competition and save the country enormous amounts of foreign exchange. In areas like office productivity applications etc where open source tools match the functionality of proprietary software products, adequate justification must be provided for purchasing proprietary software.
4)Mandate that, by default, software development funded by the government should be available to the public under an open source license. This ensures that the code is available to government agencies for improvements and further enhancements. Since the code is available freely, this also provides an avenue for inputs and feedback from concerned citizens.
5)Create a central repository of open source e-government applications. This move can save India thousands of crores of rupees by facilitating reuse of applications, sharing of best practices, slashing implementation time and reducing risks of project failure. This can be on the lines of the Government Open Code Collaborative Repository (www.gocc.gov) established in the US as a, “collaboration between public sector entities and non-profit academic institutions created for the purpose of encouraging the sharing, at no cost, of computer code developed for and by government entities where the redistribution of this code is allowed.”
6) Create a collaborative community for open source in education. Enormous resources are needed for modernizing and IT-enabling the education system. An open source program for education can create a nationwide community of educators for creating software and content that can be freely shared across the system. This will help rapidly disseminate the latest educational pedagogy, software tools, content and best practices within the system. This can be organized around disciplines like mathematics, physics, chemistry etc. and involve the Indian academic community and software developers.
7) Encourage the use of the open source model which is based on collaboration, community and shared ownership of intellectual resources in scientific disciplines like agriculture, biotechnology, health care research, etc. so that the benefits of such research can reach the public faster.
8) Set up a high-powered think tank consisting of top-notch policy makers, academics and politicians under the auspices of a powerful policy making institution to provide leadership and direction on open source on a continuous basis.
The agenda for such an organization would be:
A)Identify and quantify the political, cultural and economic benefits for India as a result of open source. This would not just be restricted to software but also to issues like IP, content, scientific publishing etc. In other words, the focus of this body would be on how India can take full-advantage of the open source movement to benefit Indian society.1
B)Develop an action plan aimed at making India a global leader in the open source community. For example, India could take the lead in developing and customizing open source applications for developing countries or identify areas where it can make visible contributions to the global open source community. For example, Sri Lanka has made significant contributions to the Apache web server through the Lanka Software Foundation.
C)Leverage the open source development model based on community, collaboration and shared ownership of intellectual resources to bridge the digital divide. This forms part of point A, but is a large enough area to deserve special attention. For example, Indian language software development and localization of open source tools can be identified as a priority sector for funding. This will take IT beyond the five percent of India that speaks English and provide cost-effective software solutions to Indian users, thus bridging the digital divide. another area could be the development of applications and content that meets India's unique needs.
D)Create a road-map for open source software development for India's software export industry. In the long-term, software will be sold as a service. Open Source Software is accelerating this trend which plays to the advantage of India's vibrant software services industry.
===============================================================================================
We, the members of the open source software (OSS) community in India, recommend that the Government of India should promote OSS in order to encourage competition and choice, make IT more affordable and bring the benefits of IT to the people of India.
We recommend that the Department of IT, Government of India adopt the following steps which will go a long way in promoting OSS in India.
1)Applications developed by the Government of India should be cross platform and not be locked in to a specific platform. Building cross-platform applications encourages choice and provides implementing agencies the freedom to select the platforms that suit them the best. Since applications have a long shelf-life, building cross-platform applications isolates the application from technological changes in the underlying platform.
2)Mandate that all documents and data created by government organizations follow open standards that are free from royalties, patents and other encumbrances.
3)Encourage the development and usage of Linux and open source desktop productivity applications in government. This move can reduce dependence on expensive proprietary software, encourage choice, promote healthy competition and save the country enormous amounts of foreign exchange. In areas like office productivity applications etc where open source tools match the functionality of proprietary software products, adequate justification must be provided for purchasing proprietary software.
4)Mandate that, by default, software development funded by the government should be available to the public under an open source license. This ensures that the code is available to government agencies for improvements and further enhancements. Since the code is available freely, this also provides an avenue for inputs and feedback from concerned citizens.
5)Create a central repository of open source e-government applications. This move can save India thousands of crores of rupees by facilitating reuse of applications, sharing of best practices, slashing implementation time and reducing risks of project failure. This can be on the lines of the Government Open Code Collaborative Repository (www.gocc.gov) established in the US as a, “collaboration between public sector entities and non-profit academic institutions created for the purpose of encouraging the sharing, at no cost, of computer code developed for and by government entities where the redistribution of this code is allowed.”
6) Create a collaborative community for open source in education. Enormous resources are needed for modernizing and IT-enabling the education system. An open source program for education can create a nationwide community of educators for creating software and content that can be freely shared across the system. This will help rapidly disseminate the latest educational pedagogy, software tools, content and best practices within the system. This can be organized around disciplines like mathematics, physics, chemistry etc. and involve the Indian academic community and software developers.
7) Encourage the use of the open source model which is based on collaboration, community and shared ownership of intellectual resources in scientific disciplines like agriculture, biotechnology, health care research, etc. so that the benefits of such research can reach the public faster.
8) Set up a high-powered think tank consisting of top-notch policy makers, academics and politicians under the auspices of a powerful policy making institution to provide leadership and direction on open source on a continuous basis.
The agenda for such an organization would be:
A)Identify and quantify the political, cultural and economic benefits for India as a result of open source. This would not just be restricted to software but also to issues like IP, content, scientific publishing etc. In other words, the focus of this body would be on how India can take full-advantage of the open source movement to benefit Indian society.1
B)Develop an action plan aimed at making India a global leader in the open source community. For example, India could take the lead in developing and customizing open source applications for developing countries or identify areas where it can make visible contributions to the global open source community. For example, Sri Lanka has made significant contributions to the Apache web server through the Lanka Software Foundation.
C)Leverage the open source development model based on community, collaboration and shared ownership of intellectual resources to bridge the digital divide. This forms part of point A, but is a large enough area to deserve special attention. For example, Indian language software development and localization of open source tools can be identified as a priority sector for funding. This will take IT beyond the five percent of India that speaks English and provide cost-effective software solutions to Indian users, thus bridging the digital divide. another area could be the development of applications and content that meets India's unique needs.
D)Create a road-map for open source software development for India's software export industry. In the long-term, software will be sold as a service. Open Source Software is accelerating this trend which plays to the advantage of India's vibrant software services industry.
Saturday, September 15, 2007
Prof. Ashok Jhunjhunwala on OOXML
Yesterday, there was an interview of Prof. Ashok Jhunjhunwala in the Times of India where he supported OOXML. He also repeated Microsoft's statement that users want a choice of multiple formats. Prof. Jhunjhunwala is a very respected academician and prima-facie, the Microsoft line seems to make eminent sense. After all, who can argue about choice? (BTW, since when has Microsoft been about choice?) Let's scratch a little deeper by asking a few questions about choice:
1) When you wake up in the morning and choose which side of the road you drive on? I certainly don't?
2) Did you like the choice of Microsoft's HTML versus Netscape's HTML? Both companies created their own proprietary extensions to HTML that threatened to fragment the Internet. Even today, there are web sites that say "optimized to XYZ browser" and to me that is a sign of bad software design. Ironically, the Bureau of Indian Standards web site says, "Best viewed in MSIE 4.0 and above browsers." If you are developing or redesigning a web site, it would be much better to make your web site compliant to the World Wide Web (W3C) standards (called recommendations in W3C parlance). I am much happier having one single, unified web standard because it makes my life easier.
I therefore urge academics, policy makers and others to push for common, unified document standards, not a multiplicity of standards. The industry and vendors should collaborate on standards and compete on their implementation.
PS: There was one important question that the Times of India journalist missed asking Microsoft. I would have loved to know what the venerable professor thinks of Microsoft's attempts at Ballot Box Engineering on the OOXML issue.
1) When you wake up in the morning and choose which side of the road you drive on? I certainly don't?
2) Did you like the choice of Microsoft's HTML versus Netscape's HTML? Both companies created their own proprietary extensions to HTML that threatened to fragment the Internet. Even today, there are web sites that say "optimized to XYZ browser" and to me that is a sign of bad software design. Ironically, the Bureau of Indian Standards web site says, "Best viewed in MSIE 4.0 and above browsers." If you are developing or redesigning a web site, it would be much better to make your web site compliant to the World Wide Web (W3C) standards (called recommendations in W3C parlance). I am much happier having one single, unified web standard because it makes my life easier.
I therefore urge academics, policy makers and others to push for common, unified document standards, not a multiplicity of standards. The industry and vendors should collaborate on standards and compete on their implementation.
PS: There was one important question that the Times of India journalist missed asking Microsoft. I would have loved to know what the venerable professor thinks of Microsoft's attempts at Ballot Box Engineering on the OOXML issue.
Software Freedom Day
Today is Software Freedom Day. According to Wikipedia:
We don't usually link the two words "Software" and "freedom" together. After all, what does the high tech world of software have to do with freedom? However, freedom is basic to any human activity and software is no exception.
For example, the open standards movement is about your freedom to encode (create) and decode (retrieve) your own data. If you store data in proprietary formats, only the maker of that format knows how to unlock that data and you are now dependent on that vendor. This is like buying house but the keys to the house still remain with the builder. Why take the risk? Actively use open formats like ODF and OGG and avoid using proprietary formats like .doc and .mpeg which are proprietary formats.
The open source and free software movement is about your freedom to modify code and share it with others. It is for this reason that Linux can scale from tiny embedded systems to mighty supercomputers. Wikipedia is about your freedom to share knowledge and information with each other.
Over the next few years this movement will go from strength to strength because the open source and free software communities have shown that we can grow richer by sharing!
"Software Freedom Day (SFD) is an annual worldwide celebration of the free/open-source software. SFD is a public education effort, not only to celebrate the virtues of free and open source software, but also to encourage its use, to the benefit of the public."
We don't usually link the two words "Software" and "freedom" together. After all, what does the high tech world of software have to do with freedom? However, freedom is basic to any human activity and software is no exception.
For example, the open standards movement is about your freedom to encode (create) and decode (retrieve) your own data. If you store data in proprietary formats, only the maker of that format knows how to unlock that data and you are now dependent on that vendor. This is like buying house but the keys to the house still remain with the builder. Why take the risk? Actively use open formats like ODF and OGG and avoid using proprietary formats like .doc and .mpeg which are proprietary formats.
The open source and free software movement is about your freedom to modify code and share it with others. It is for this reason that Linux can scale from tiny embedded systems to mighty supercomputers. Wikipedia is about your freedom to share knowledge and information with each other.
Over the next few years this movement will go from strength to strength because the open source and free software communities have shown that we can grow richer by sharing!
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Microsoft Certified Ballot Box Engineering in Pakistan?
After some digging around, I found out that there was indeed a committee that met and voted yes for OOXML in Pakistan. It looks like the committee met just once. There was a presentation on OOXML by a Microsoft person to the committee members. From what I hear, no views from the opponents of OOXML were presented. I had e-mailed the directors of Pakistan Standards and Quality Control Authority (PSQCA) and to the Pakistani Minister of Science and Technology, Ch. Nouraiz Shakoor Khan saying that we would like the open source community's views to be presented before a final vote was taken but received no replies. After listening to the Microsoft person, the committee voted in favor of OOXML. Now here is the interesting bit: Out of the 12 committee members, four are Microsoft Gold Partners, one was a Microsoft representative and the rest were academics. After the invalidated vote in Sweden, I am not surprised that so many Microsoft Gold Partners were on this committee. I tried to check whether the open source community's views were taken into consideration before the voting but currently I do not have information on this.
PS: I hear that Microsoft is planning to now offer MCBBE (Microsoft Certified Ballot Box Engineer) course along with its other course. I hear that several Indian political worthies who have specialized in booth capturing are lining up to take this course and upgrade their professional skills!
PS: I hear that Microsoft is planning to now offer MCBBE (Microsoft Certified Ballot Box Engineer) course along with its other course. I hear that several Indian political worthies who have specialized in booth capturing are lining up to take this course and upgrade their professional skills!
Friday, September 07, 2007
BusinessWorld on ODF versus OOXML
BusinessWorld magazine has an article on the recent standards battle at the Bureau of Indian Standards over Microsoft OOXML proposal. As you know, the OOXML proposal was rejected unanimously by the LITD15 committee formed by BIS to review OOXML. The ODF Alliance which includes FSF, Red Hat, IBM and Sun worked hard to ensure that OOXML was not approved. The reasons for this can be read at www.noooxml.org
BusinessWorld is now running a vote on its web site asking readers:
"Which documentation standard do you want to vote for?" The link for this article and the vote (see right hand top corner of the page) is:
http://www.businessworld.in/content/view/2458/2536
I request all FOSS supporters to vote for ODF. Next Monday's issue of BW also has an article on this subject and I am looking forward to it.
BusinessWorld is now running a vote on its web site asking readers:
"Which documentation standard do you want to vote for?" The link for this article and the vote (see right hand top corner of the page) is:
http://www.businessworld.in/content/view/2458/2536
I request all FOSS supporters to vote for ODF. Next Monday's issue of BW also has an article on this subject and I am looking forward to it.
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Now, M$, please stop smoking it!
Despite all the ballot box stuffing, Microsoft's OOXML proposal was defeated at ISO. What does the company that calls darkness as light have to say? It has the arrogance to release a press release titled, "Strong Global Support for Open XML as it Enters Final Phase of ISO Standards Process." The press release quotes Robertson, general manager for Interoperability and Standards at Microsoft Corp as saying:
Excuse me Tom, but India voted unanimously against OOXML. In case that did not register, let me repeat: India voted unanimously against OOXML. Despite all the explanations given by Microsoft, the Bureau of Indian Standards committee formed to examine OOXML marked each of the 200 issues as unresolved. Now, do you still use the words high-quality and OOXML in the same breath?
What this company deperately needs is a moral compass!
"Technical experts around the world have provided invaluable feedback and technical recommendations for evolving the format," Robertson said. "The high quality of the Open XML format will be improved as a result of this process, and we take seriously our role in working within the Ecma technical committee to address the comments received.
Excuse me Tom, but India voted unanimously against OOXML. In case that did not register, let me repeat: India voted unanimously against OOXML. Despite all the explanations given by Microsoft, the Bureau of Indian Standards committee formed to examine OOXML marked each of the 200 issues as unresolved. Now, do you still use the words high-quality and OOXML in the same breath?
What this company deperately needs is a moral compass!
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Memo to Microsoft: Stop wasting our time!
Finally word is out and the Bureau of Indian Standards has confirmed that it will be submitting a "No with comments" vote to International Standards Organization on Microsoft's OOXML proposal. This brings to a temporary close five to six months of hectic legwork to prevent a sub-standard proposal from getting the coveted tag of an ISO standard.
I doubt if Microsoft realises it, but its actions are only making it the Union Carbide of the global IT industry. Microsoft is the world's largest software company but if you flip through their 6000+ pages of OOXML documentation, you'll be justified in wondering how they grew so big if the rest of their work is as shoddy as OOXML. The extremely flawed proposal certainly does not befit its stature in the IT industry. But, does Microsoft learn from all the feedback given to it or does it learn anything from it. No. Humility and Microsoft are like oil and water--never shall they mix. According to reports coming in from countries that are involved in the ISO vote on OOXML, Microsoft is busy stuffing the ballot boxes. Read Andy Updegrove's blog post The OOXML Vote: How Bad Can it Get? (Keep Counting). Originally, only 30 ISO members were supposed to vote on OOXML. However, as the September 2nd date for the final voting comes close, another ten more countries have joined the committee. Updegrove says:
Sitting here in India, it is difficult to influence countries like Malta, Cyprus, Ecuador, Jamaica, Lebanon, Pakistan, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, Uruguay and Venezuela in the two days left before the final votes are submitted, but we shall try. I checked with the IT ministry in Pakistan and brought to their attention that Pakistan is now a "P" member of ISO which entitles it to vote on OOXML. This was news to them as they were not consulted on the OOXML issue. I hope that Pakistan's vote will be cast only after thoroughly reviewing the arguements for and against OOXML.
Coming back to India, I am extremely proud of the fact that my country has voted against this proposal. To accept such a poor document would have been to denigrate the very meaning of "standards." The academia, the government bodies, industry organizations and non-profits like the Free Software Foundation spent countless hours debating and discussing this issue. Some of the best brains in India burnt the midnight oli to review this 6000 page proposal and the final consensus was that none of Microsoft's answers to the 201 technical issues raised was found satisfactory. I hope the Microsoft bosses in Redmond take note of this and make a genuine attempt to rectify the issues instead of trying to stuff the ballot boxes.
For wasting the collective intellect of India's best IT brains, Microsoft and ECMA must be blacklisted. Just as a person with a bad credit history has to redeem himself or herself before applying for subsequent credit, any standards proposal submitted by these two organizations should be thoughly vetted before it is even accepted for review or voting in India. India has more pressing problems to tackle than OOXML. Therefore, Microsoft, please do us a big favor and stop wasting our time. Next time, do your homework before you submit something to India.
PS: This is an old joke in the IT industry and shows how little Microsoft has changed in decades.
Q. How many Microsoft engineers does it take to change a light bulb?
A. None. Microsoft declares Darkness(TM) an industry standard.
I doubt if Microsoft realises it, but its actions are only making it the Union Carbide of the global IT industry. Microsoft is the world's largest software company but if you flip through their 6000+ pages of OOXML documentation, you'll be justified in wondering how they grew so big if the rest of their work is as shoddy as OOXML. The extremely flawed proposal certainly does not befit its stature in the IT industry. But, does Microsoft learn from all the feedback given to it or does it learn anything from it. No. Humility and Microsoft are like oil and water--never shall they mix. According to reports coming in from countries that are involved in the ISO vote on OOXML, Microsoft is busy stuffing the ballot boxes. Read Andy Updegrove's blog post The OOXML Vote: How Bad Can it Get? (Keep Counting). Originally, only 30 ISO members were supposed to vote on OOXML. However, as the September 2nd date for the final voting comes close, another ten more countries have joined the committee. Updegrove says:
As someone who has spent a great part of my life working to support open standards over the past 20 years, I have to say that this is the most egregious, and far-reaching, example of playing the system to the advantage of a single company that I have ever seen. Breathtaking, in fact. That's assuming, of course, that I am right in supposing that all of these newbie countries vote "yes."
I guess we'll just have to wait and see a few more days to learn whether that assumption is true. Want to place your bets?
Sitting here in India, it is difficult to influence countries like Malta, Cyprus, Ecuador, Jamaica, Lebanon, Pakistan, Trinidad and Tobago, Turkey, Uruguay and Venezuela in the two days left before the final votes are submitted, but we shall try. I checked with the IT ministry in Pakistan and brought to their attention that Pakistan is now a "P" member of ISO which entitles it to vote on OOXML. This was news to them as they were not consulted on the OOXML issue. I hope that Pakistan's vote will be cast only after thoroughly reviewing the arguements for and against OOXML.
Coming back to India, I am extremely proud of the fact that my country has voted against this proposal. To accept such a poor document would have been to denigrate the very meaning of "standards." The academia, the government bodies, industry organizations and non-profits like the Free Software Foundation spent countless hours debating and discussing this issue. Some of the best brains in India burnt the midnight oli to review this 6000 page proposal and the final consensus was that none of Microsoft's answers to the 201 technical issues raised was found satisfactory. I hope the Microsoft bosses in Redmond take note of this and make a genuine attempt to rectify the issues instead of trying to stuff the ballot boxes.
For wasting the collective intellect of India's best IT brains, Microsoft and ECMA must be blacklisted. Just as a person with a bad credit history has to redeem himself or herself before applying for subsequent credit, any standards proposal submitted by these two organizations should be thoughly vetted before it is even accepted for review or voting in India. India has more pressing problems to tackle than OOXML. Therefore, Microsoft, please do us a big favor and stop wasting our time. Next time, do your homework before you submit something to India.
PS: This is an old joke in the IT industry and shows how little Microsoft has changed in decades.
Q. How many Microsoft engineers does it take to change a light bulb?
A. None. Microsoft declares Darkness(TM) an industry standard.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Policy challenges for “Open Standards”
India's Department of Information Technology has taken a great first step by mandating open standards. Now it must take the next step and come up with a clear definition of open standards to protect national data
During India's independence movement, Mahatma Gandhi said, “Real swaraj will come not by the acquisition of authority by a few but by the acquisition of capacity by all.” Several decades later, Gandhiji's statement rings true in the context of the Open Standards movement which seeks to protect users' freedom to access their data.
One of the unintended consequences of the digital revolution is that users have often found their data locked up in proprietary file formats. As a result, users own the data they have created, but have no control over the format in which they are created. This is akin to a situation where a builder transfers the ownership of the house but retains control over the keys to the house. Software vendors have often exploited this situation by changing file formats from one version to another and thus forcing users to keep upgrading their software. Clearly this is an untenable situation and this is why India's Department of IT (DIT) has wisely chosen to mandate the use of open standards for data storage.
DIT's move needs to be applauded because it addresses serious political and economic issues that concern India's long-term security in the world of IT. The Government is the custodian of the citizens data and it therefore has the responsibility of ensuring that this data is accessible for centuries and is not locked down in proprietary file formats that are known only to the creator of the software. As a sovereign country, we cannot allow data that belongs to the people of India to be controlled by individuals or corporations.
It is a fact that the life of the data is often much longer than the life of the software which creates it. Twenty years ago Unix ruled, today it is Windows, tomorrow it may be Linux and day after it may be a software that has not even been imagined today. If data is tied to software platforms, we will need to recreate the data every time the software changes. This is neither practical nor desirable. For example, land records last for over four hundred years. If we take the average lifespan of a software platform as twenty years, this means that the data locked in proprietary file formats will have to be ported or recreated twenty times for it to be available to future users. The only practical solution therefore is to clinically separate the data from the software that created it. This what the open standards movement seek to achieve by giving users the freedom to encode and decode their own data.
Unfortunately, DIT's mandate has also resulted in several spurious proposals that claim to be “open standards.” Just as we need to be vigilant against adulterated medicines, we need to be vigilant against proprietary standards masquerading as “open standards.” The increasing move to open standards in India and abroad has forced some of the most adamant companies to now seek the coveted status of “open standards.” For example, the maker of a popular word processor that has supported only closed formats since 1983 is now demonstrating indecent haste by seeking to “fast-track” their proposal through international standards bodies. They are seeking to undermine the very sanctity of the term “open standards” by seeking to rush through craftily worded standards and hastily drafted proposal through standards bodies. E-government institutions across the country, and DIT in particular, must avoid being deceived by such wolves in sheep's clothing.
To avoid such situations, the Open Source Initiative has published the Open Standards Requirement (OSR). By implementing standards that follow the OSR, organizations can ensure that they retain full control over their data and avoid paying extortionate royalties and license fees for accessing their own data. The Open Standards Requirements are:
1.No Intentional Secrets: The standard MUST NOT withhold any detail necessary for interoperable implementation. As flaws are inevitable, the standard MUST define a process for fixing flaws identified during implementation and interoperability testing and to incorporate said changes into a revised version or superseding version of the standard to be released under terms that do not violate the OSR.
2.Availability: The standard MUST be freely and publicly available (e.g., from a stable web site) under royalty-free terms at reasonable and non-discriminatory cost.
3.Patents: All patents essential to implementation of the standard MUST be licensed under royalty-free terms for unrestricted use, or be covered by a promise of non-assertion when practiced by open source software
4.No Agreements: There MUST NOT be any requirement for execution of a license agreement, NDA, grant, click-through, or any other form of paperwork to deploy conforming implementations of the standard.
5.No OSR-Incompatible Dependencies: Implementation of the standard MUST NOT require any other technology that fails to meet the criteria of this Requirement.
The purpose of Open Standards is to include and not exclude. As we have seen from the growth of the Internet, open standards bring tremendous benefits with them. Today the Internet has more than a billion people who use it as a platform to socialize, communicate and transact. The common, unified standards like HTML has enabled the Internet to grow rapidly. Since the specifications for HTML are freely available, anyone can create tools that create (encode) HTML and tools that read (decode) HTML. Software developers, web site designers, Internet portals, social networking sites, bloggers, photo sharing sites and many others use HTML as a global means of reaching out to others. This would have not been possible with proprietary standards because that would mean that the data is accessible only through a specific software to the exclusion of other software.
For example, in 1995, both Netscape and Microsoft came up with their own extensions to HTML. This lead to a profusion of websites proclaiming "Optimised for Netscape" or "Optimised for Internet Explorer." Both these companies came up with proprietary extensions to HTML which could be viewed only with their own browsers and this development threatened to fragment the Internet. Fortunately, pressure from the World Wide Web Consortium and users forced both companies to back down and adhere to common standards. Unfortunately, bad habits die hard and we still see organizations optimizing their systems for one particular browser instead of following open standards that can be accessible through any browser.
We have all gained enormously from unified standards for data exchange and the Internet. The best standards like ASCII, Unicode, HTML etc are ones that are created through consensus and collaboration. This promotes choice, encourages competition and brings down cost for end users as companies come up with the best implementation of the standard.
As custodian of citizens' data, the Indian Government must come up with a clear definition of open standards that protects Indian citizens and enshrines their right to encode and decode data. The Open Source Initiative's Open Standards Requirement (OSR) is a good first step for arriving at such a definition. Such a definition will ensure real swaraj by ensuring “the acquisition of capacity by all” and not the “acquisition of authority by a few.”
Venkatesh Hariharan is a member of the Open Source Foundation of India. He can be reached at venkyh [at] gmail dot com.
This work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution License and freedom is granted to reproduce this article provided this notice is retained intact.
During India's independence movement, Mahatma Gandhi said, “Real swaraj will come not by the acquisition of authority by a few but by the acquisition of capacity by all.” Several decades later, Gandhiji's statement rings true in the context of the Open Standards movement which seeks to protect users' freedom to access their data.
One of the unintended consequences of the digital revolution is that users have often found their data locked up in proprietary file formats. As a result, users own the data they have created, but have no control over the format in which they are created. This is akin to a situation where a builder transfers the ownership of the house but retains control over the keys to the house. Software vendors have often exploited this situation by changing file formats from one version to another and thus forcing users to keep upgrading their software. Clearly this is an untenable situation and this is why India's Department of IT (DIT) has wisely chosen to mandate the use of open standards for data storage.
DIT's move needs to be applauded because it addresses serious political and economic issues that concern India's long-term security in the world of IT. The Government is the custodian of the citizens data and it therefore has the responsibility of ensuring that this data is accessible for centuries and is not locked down in proprietary file formats that are known only to the creator of the software. As a sovereign country, we cannot allow data that belongs to the people of India to be controlled by individuals or corporations.
It is a fact that the life of the data is often much longer than the life of the software which creates it. Twenty years ago Unix ruled, today it is Windows, tomorrow it may be Linux and day after it may be a software that has not even been imagined today. If data is tied to software platforms, we will need to recreate the data every time the software changes. This is neither practical nor desirable. For example, land records last for over four hundred years. If we take the average lifespan of a software platform as twenty years, this means that the data locked in proprietary file formats will have to be ported or recreated twenty times for it to be available to future users. The only practical solution therefore is to clinically separate the data from the software that created it. This what the open standards movement seek to achieve by giving users the freedom to encode and decode their own data.
Unfortunately, DIT's mandate has also resulted in several spurious proposals that claim to be “open standards.” Just as we need to be vigilant against adulterated medicines, we need to be vigilant against proprietary standards masquerading as “open standards.” The increasing move to open standards in India and abroad has forced some of the most adamant companies to now seek the coveted status of “open standards.” For example, the maker of a popular word processor that has supported only closed formats since 1983 is now demonstrating indecent haste by seeking to “fast-track” their proposal through international standards bodies. They are seeking to undermine the very sanctity of the term “open standards” by seeking to rush through craftily worded standards and hastily drafted proposal through standards bodies. E-government institutions across the country, and DIT in particular, must avoid being deceived by such wolves in sheep's clothing.
To avoid such situations, the Open Source Initiative has published the Open Standards Requirement (OSR). By implementing standards that follow the OSR, organizations can ensure that they retain full control over their data and avoid paying extortionate royalties and license fees for accessing their own data. The Open Standards Requirements are:
1.No Intentional Secrets: The standard MUST NOT withhold any detail necessary for interoperable implementation. As flaws are inevitable, the standard MUST define a process for fixing flaws identified during implementation and interoperability testing and to incorporate said changes into a revised version or superseding version of the standard to be released under terms that do not violate the OSR.
2.Availability: The standard MUST be freely and publicly available (e.g., from a stable web site) under royalty-free terms at reasonable and non-discriminatory cost.
3.Patents: All patents essential to implementation of the standard MUST be licensed under royalty-free terms for unrestricted use, or be covered by a promise of non-assertion when practiced by open source software
4.No Agreements: There MUST NOT be any requirement for execution of a license agreement, NDA, grant, click-through, or any other form of paperwork to deploy conforming implementations of the standard.
5.No OSR-Incompatible Dependencies: Implementation of the standard MUST NOT require any other technology that fails to meet the criteria of this Requirement.
The purpose of Open Standards is to include and not exclude. As we have seen from the growth of the Internet, open standards bring tremendous benefits with them. Today the Internet has more than a billion people who use it as a platform to socialize, communicate and transact. The common, unified standards like HTML has enabled the Internet to grow rapidly. Since the specifications for HTML are freely available, anyone can create tools that create (encode) HTML and tools that read (decode) HTML. Software developers, web site designers, Internet portals, social networking sites, bloggers, photo sharing sites and many others use HTML as a global means of reaching out to others. This would have not been possible with proprietary standards because that would mean that the data is accessible only through a specific software to the exclusion of other software.
For example, in 1995, both Netscape and Microsoft came up with their own extensions to HTML. This lead to a profusion of websites proclaiming "Optimised for Netscape" or "Optimised for Internet Explorer." Both these companies came up with proprietary extensions to HTML which could be viewed only with their own browsers and this development threatened to fragment the Internet. Fortunately, pressure from the World Wide Web Consortium and users forced both companies to back down and adhere to common standards. Unfortunately, bad habits die hard and we still see organizations optimizing their systems for one particular browser instead of following open standards that can be accessible through any browser.
We have all gained enormously from unified standards for data exchange and the Internet. The best standards like ASCII, Unicode, HTML etc are ones that are created through consensus and collaboration. This promotes choice, encourages competition and brings down cost for end users as companies come up with the best implementation of the standard.
As custodian of citizens' data, the Indian Government must come up with a clear definition of open standards that protects Indian citizens and enshrines their right to encode and decode data. The Open Source Initiative's Open Standards Requirement (OSR) is a good first step for arriving at such a definition. Such a definition will ensure real swaraj by ensuring “the acquisition of capacity by all” and not the “acquisition of authority by a few.”
Venkatesh Hariharan is a member of the Open Source Foundation of India. He can be reached at venkyh [at] gmail dot com.
This work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution License and freedom is granted to reproduce this article provided this notice is retained intact.
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Media coverage of OOXML issue
The media seems to have taken great interest in the OOXML issue. The Economic Times, which is the world's second largest financial newspaper had an article titled, India throws MS open format out of the window. The article said:
Business Standard, had an article titled, "BIS stumps Microsoft for new language"
This article quotes a Microsoft spokesperson saying, "We respect the decision taken by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS)-appointed committee. At the same time, it is important to note that all the BIS members unanimously support the need for multiple standards. Going forward, we will work with the BIS and the committee members on the comments noted during the ballot resolution process.”
Well, I attended almost all the meetings of BIS and certainly do not agree with this viewpoint. My submission to BIS is that vendors should collaborate on standards and compete on their implementations. Who in the world wants two different HTML standards? I certainly don't.
Hindustan Times had an article titled, A New Duel.
NEW DELHI: India on Thursday gave Microsoft a thumbs-down in the war of standards for office documents.
In a tense meeting at Delhi’s Manak Bhawan, the 21-member technical committee decided that India will vote a ‘no’ against Microsoft’s Open Office Extensible Mark Up Language (OOXML) standard at the International Standards Organisation (ISO) in Geneva on September 2.
“We unanimously agree on the disapproval of OOXML with comments. The same will be submitted to ISO,” National Informatics Centre head and BIS technical committee chairperson Nita Verma said after a marathon meeting that lasted over six hours. There was no need for a voting as only Infosys Technologies and CSI supported Microsoft.
The Open Document Format (ODF) alliance, enjoying widespread support from academia and corporates like Oracle, IBM, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems, Google, were in a jubilant mood having succeeded in stalling OOXML from being accepted as a standard in India.
Business Standard, had an article titled, "BIS stumps Microsoft for new language"
Leslie D'Monte / Mumbai August 24, 2007
Microsoft today suffered an initial setback when the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS)-appointed technical committee did not approve of its Open Office eXtensible Mark-up Language (OOXML) as an alternative standard for electronic office documents to the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO).
It qualified its disapproval with comments. The BIS can review the decision till September 2, when the same has to be submitted to the ISO along with 123 other country-specific standards bodies.
This article quotes a Microsoft spokesperson saying, "We respect the decision taken by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS)-appointed committee. At the same time, it is important to note that all the BIS members unanimously support the need for multiple standards. Going forward, we will work with the BIS and the committee members on the comments noted during the ballot resolution process.”
Well, I attended almost all the meetings of BIS and certainly do not agree with this viewpoint. My submission to BIS is that vendors should collaborate on standards and compete on their implementations. Who in the world wants two different HTML standards? I certainly don't.
Hindustan Times had an article titled, A New Duel.
Friday August 17, 12:54 AM
The biggest IT giants are at war. A war so huge that its magnitude spans almost the entire planet. The bone of contention is who will control your office documents - to be precise, the underlying document formats that run on your computers. It is a bit like what language a national anthem will be written in. It involves pride, sentiments and high stakes.
The rivals in this high pitched battle are Microsoft on the one hand and an influential axis of IBM and Sun Microsystems on the other. The IBM-Sun axis is backing the Open Document Format (ODF) alliance. A veritable who's who of the industry is lined up, taking sides.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
India votes no against OOXML
Just returned from delhi where I attended the Bureau of Indian Standards meeting on OOXML. Red Hat is a voting member of this committee and I had the privilege to represent the company on this committee. The committee has voted an unanimous "No with comments" on OOXML. I will wait for an official mail from BIS before saying anything more but thought that I should share the good news with my friends in the FOSS and open standards community.
Sunday, August 19, 2007
TCS joins the open source community
This is good news. India's largest software company, TCS, has released its Wide Area Network Emulation product called WANem in open source. The project is hosted on http://wanem.sourceforge.net/
Hopefully, this symbolises a small but significant cultural shift among Indian software exports companies. Traditionally, they have not encouraged contribution to open source projects because their primary focus is outsourced software development.
Hopefully, this symbolises a small but significant cultural shift among Indian software exports companies. Traditionally, they have not encouraged contribution to open source projects because their primary focus is outsourced software development.
Friday, July 20, 2007
The Big Bazaar and Open Source
These days, I feel that i cannot pick up a book without stumbling on some mention of open source. I was reading Kishore Biyani's (Pantaloons, Big Bazaar, Future Group fame) autobiography, "It happened in India." Throughout the book, the theme is that of collaboration and partnerships. What was interesting to me was that, in the second last page of the book, Biyani talks of open source.
"In the Creative Economy, innovation will also necessarily come through collaboration. And that is evident from some of the most successful innovations that we have seen in recent years --from the Toyota Production System to the way Linux, or more recently, Wikipedia, has developed,"says Biyani in the book.
It is an interesting book and I would recommend it to anyone interested in the changing business scenarios in India. I wonder if Biyani has read Eric Raymond's, "The Cathedral and the Bazaar?" I am glad to see that more and more industry leaders are talking about open source.
"In the Creative Economy, innovation will also necessarily come through collaboration. And that is evident from some of the most successful innovations that we have seen in recent years --from the Toyota Production System to the way Linux, or more recently, Wikipedia, has developed,"says Biyani in the book.
It is an interesting book and I would recommend it to anyone interested in the changing business scenarios in India. I wonder if Biyani has read Eric Raymond's, "The Cathedral and the Bazaar?" I am glad to see that more and more industry leaders are talking about open source.
Sunday, July 08, 2007
Bill Gates and open standards
In 1997, in my previous avatar as a journalist, I had interviewed Bill Gates. What a different world that was!
That was his first visit to India and the fanfare would have made you believe that this was a head of state visit. Microsoft had just crushed Netscape in the great internet wars and seemed completely indomitable. I was extremely keen to meet the man who sat at the very center of the desktop universe to understand what his next move would be.
One of the biggest changes from 1997 to 2007 is that the desktop rapidly diminished into being a subset of the Internet universe. The focus of users shifted from being limited to their desktops to collaboration and communication via the Net. I remember that my first PC was bought in 1994 and I soon got bored of it until my 1200 baud modem was purchased in 1995. It was as if a whole new universe was now available to me through my rasping, screeching modem. Of couse, none of us, including Bill Gates, expected this universe to expand so rapidly.
One of the factors (and consequences) of the growth of the Internet was that open standards became more popular. The Internet itself would not have existed without open standards. One consequence that I could notice around 1997-2003 was that new file formats for audio and video and other forms of data emeerged that were no longer tightly tied down to the desktop. My term for it, at that time, was Platform Independent File Formats (PIFF). Looking back, the PIFF observation was a good one as far as trends go. However, having file formats that are independent of the underlying platform is not good enough and this is where open standards come back into the picture. If I create a document, the document belongs to me. However, if I made the mistake of creating it in a proprietary file format, the only way I can decode it faithfully is by using that proprietary vendor's application or try my best to reverse engineer that file format. That is like buying a house but while I own the house, the builder owns the keys to *my* house. Not a good idea right?
I have blogged about this in my article "The importance of Open Standards." In a world of truly open standards, monopoly pricing cannot be guaranteed. And that world is not far away because users clearly understand the alue of open standards and the impact it can have on their lives.
That was his first visit to India and the fanfare would have made you believe that this was a head of state visit. Microsoft had just crushed Netscape in the great internet wars and seemed completely indomitable. I was extremely keen to meet the man who sat at the very center of the desktop universe to understand what his next move would be.
One of the biggest changes from 1997 to 2007 is that the desktop rapidly diminished into being a subset of the Internet universe. The focus of users shifted from being limited to their desktops to collaboration and communication via the Net. I remember that my first PC was bought in 1994 and I soon got bored of it until my 1200 baud modem was purchased in 1995. It was as if a whole new universe was now available to me through my rasping, screeching modem. Of couse, none of us, including Bill Gates, expected this universe to expand so rapidly.
One of the factors (and consequences) of the growth of the Internet was that open standards became more popular. The Internet itself would not have existed without open standards. One consequence that I could notice around 1997-2003 was that new file formats for audio and video and other forms of data emeerged that were no longer tightly tied down to the desktop. My term for it, at that time, was Platform Independent File Formats (PIFF). Looking back, the PIFF observation was a good one as far as trends go. However, having file formats that are independent of the underlying platform is not good enough and this is where open standards come back into the picture. If I create a document, the document belongs to me. However, if I made the mistake of creating it in a proprietary file format, the only way I can decode it faithfully is by using that proprietary vendor's application or try my best to reverse engineer that file format. That is like buying a house but while I own the house, the builder owns the keys to *my* house. Not a good idea right?
I have blogged about this in my article "The importance of Open Standards." In a world of truly open standards, monopoly pricing cannot be guaranteed. And that world is not far away because users clearly understand the alue of open standards and the impact it can have on their lives.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Six Questions on MS OOXML
Georg Greve of Free Software Foundation, Europe has come up with a simple set of six questions that policy makers must ask before approving OOXML which has been proposed as a standard.
This is recommended reading for those interested in open standards.
This is recommended reading for those interested in open standards.
Monday, June 11, 2007
Eben, Kerala and other issues
I had a very long chat with Eben Moglen last week and had gone down to Delhi in this heat wave to meet with him. On Saturday morning, when the temperature was 45 degrees centigrade, around 50 people turned up to hear him talk about the issue of software patents and Microsoft's claims that Linux violates its patents. Eben is a combative force-of-nature and I am glad he is on our side!
We spoke about a number of things that will become common knowledge once the Software Freedom Law Center unveils its plans for India. Before, coming to Delhi, Eben had spent three days in Kerala. We agreed that it was important that Kerala succeeded with Free and Open Source Software because it is one place where there is both, political will as well as grassroots support for FOSS. The plans to set up an academic center of excellence for FOSS in Kerala was another thing that we spoke about. This academy is a wonderful idea and I would love to teach there. Incidentally, I will now be speaking on open source at the IIT Bombay's course on ICT for Development.
We spoke about a number of things that will become common knowledge once the Software Freedom Law Center unveils its plans for India. Before, coming to Delhi, Eben had spent three days in Kerala. We agreed that it was important that Kerala succeeded with Free and Open Source Software because it is one place where there is both, political will as well as grassroots support for FOSS. The plans to set up an academic center of excellence for FOSS in Kerala was another thing that we spoke about. This academy is a wonderful idea and I would love to teach there. Incidentally, I will now be speaking on open source at the IIT Bombay's course on ICT for Development.
Saturday, May 26, 2007
The Success of Open Source
I finally managed to read the first chapter of Steven Weber's book, "The Success of Open Source." My first reaction on reading it was, "Wow! Somebody really gets it and can also explain it to others in a lucid way." The first chapter is available online and I encourage you to download it and read it without delay.
"The conventional notion of property is the right to exclude. Property in open source is configured fundamentally around the right to distribute, not the right to exclude."
One reason why open source appealed to me from the very beginning was because of the notion that we could grow richer by sharing. When we began localization of Linux to Hindi with IndLinux.org in 1999, it was exciting to know that our effort would one day reach millions and millions of people could freely contribute and share this work. And mind you, I knew very little about Free Software or Open Source in 1999.
Call it an epiphany or whatever you will but it just felt so right and so good. Starting IndLinux.org was probably one of the best decisions in my life.
In the industrial era, people grew richer by creating private property that excluded others. In the knowledge era, the open source model proves that we can all grow richer by sharing. So, why should we build the foundations of our country on the exclusionary notions of the industrial era?
When we started IndLinux.org, there was never any doubt that we should use the GPL license because our intention was that those who spoke Hindi and other Indian languages should be able to use a computer with the same comfort that English language users enjoyed. We did not want our work to be captured by private interests and converted into a monopoly and the GPL with its "share-and-share-alike" model was the perfect vehicle for a developing country like India.
Our vision was the schools and colleges and villages and the poorest of the poor should be able to use computers in their own language. Our concern was that if such a fundamental tool as the computer was denied to our people, it would only accelerate the digital divide. That was not something that our conscience was comfortable with. Our hope was that more and more people would join us, help us with the translations, improve upon the software and share it freely so that the digital divide could be bridged rapidly. Looking back, our biggest self criticism is that we were not more ambitious and more courageous in our goals. The last eight years has only strenthened our convictions that open source is the path ahead for India.
There is still along way to go before we bridge the digital divide but we can We can look back with some satisfaction and see that the movement has grown quite a bit. I am reminded of the lovely lines of the Urdu poet, Majrooh Sultanpuri:
Main akela hi chala tha jaanib-e-manzil magar,
Log saath aate gaye aur kaaravaan bantaa gayaa.
This loosely translates as:
We set out alone towards our goal,
but others kept joining us
and our caravan kept growing
And since I am on poetry, let me close with the last four lines from John Lennon's immortal Imagine:
You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one.
"The conventional notion of property is the right to exclude. Property in open source is configured fundamentally around the right to distribute, not the right to exclude."
One reason why open source appealed to me from the very beginning was because of the notion that we could grow richer by sharing. When we began localization of Linux to Hindi with IndLinux.org in 1999, it was exciting to know that our effort would one day reach millions and millions of people could freely contribute and share this work. And mind you, I knew very little about Free Software or Open Source in 1999.
Call it an epiphany or whatever you will but it just felt so right and so good. Starting IndLinux.org was probably one of the best decisions in my life.
In the industrial era, people grew richer by creating private property that excluded others. In the knowledge era, the open source model proves that we can all grow richer by sharing. So, why should we build the foundations of our country on the exclusionary notions of the industrial era?
When we started IndLinux.org, there was never any doubt that we should use the GPL license because our intention was that those who spoke Hindi and other Indian languages should be able to use a computer with the same comfort that English language users enjoyed. We did not want our work to be captured by private interests and converted into a monopoly and the GPL with its "share-and-share-alike" model was the perfect vehicle for a developing country like India.
Our vision was the schools and colleges and villages and the poorest of the poor should be able to use computers in their own language. Our concern was that if such a fundamental tool as the computer was denied to our people, it would only accelerate the digital divide. That was not something that our conscience was comfortable with. Our hope was that more and more people would join us, help us with the translations, improve upon the software and share it freely so that the digital divide could be bridged rapidly. Looking back, our biggest self criticism is that we were not more ambitious and more courageous in our goals. The last eight years has only strenthened our convictions that open source is the path ahead for India.
There is still along way to go before we bridge the digital divide but we can We can look back with some satisfaction and see that the movement has grown quite a bit. I am reminded of the lovely lines of the Urdu poet, Majrooh Sultanpuri:
Main akela hi chala tha jaanib-e-manzil magar,
Log saath aate gaye aur kaaravaan bantaa gayaa.
This loosely translates as:
We set out alone towards our goal,
but others kept joining us
and our caravan kept growing
And since I am on poetry, let me close with the last four lines from John Lennon's immortal Imagine:
You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
Colonizing Yoga
CNN-IBN reports that "According to the US Patent Office, 150 yoga-related copyrights, 134 patents on yoga accessories and 2315 yoga trademarks have been granted." I remeber reading that the US Patent Office is supposed to train the Indian Patent Office on how to grant patents. Makes me feel like someone awaiting a consignment of toxic waste.
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