Trond's Opening Standard

The EU Wants to Re-define "Closed" as "Nearly Open", Glyn Moody wrote on 2 November 2009 in Computerworld UK. A slightly wider interpretation is to say they have gone bananas. Going bananas, as defined by to English Daily, has the following etymology: When apes are given a bunch of bananas, they eat them with tremendous enthusiasm, as though they've lost their minds.

What are the bananas in question?
The fruit at the centre of all this is the quite obscure word, concept, and indeed the practice of interoperability. The EU now shares with a certain monopolist vendor in the IT space the characteristic that they have fallen in love the concept. They love it passionately, especially when it refers to anything and everything. Things are easier then. More than that, if we are to believe the current draft, a certain part of the EU, namely the part that buys their own IT solutions, embraces an IT procurement practice that basically says anything goes. One would be tempted to think they are worried about their own procurement practices. In EIF 1.0 and in the first draft of EIF 2.0 it was a strong focus. Now it has disappeared. Instead, we find an apologetic for doing nothing. Just listen to this: In the current draft EIF 2.0 which has just leaked we can read:

"While there is a correlation between openness and interoperability, it is also true that interoperability can be obtained without openness, for example via homogeneity of the ICT systems, which implies that all partners use, or agree to use, the same solution to implement a European Public Service."

If interoperability can be obtained through staying with existing legacy systems based on proprietary technology that does not implement open standards, then anything goes. If interoperability means that all open source solutions are perfectly open regardless whether they implement open standards, then anything goes. Unfortunately, neither is possible. The EU is surely going bananas.

The leaked draft of EIF 2.0 appears to be an excuse for continuing to purchase certain operative system and office packages (and not take the blame for past procurement choices in that regard). But should pan-European policy be guided by one, small Directorate's greatest fear, regardless whether or not they coordinate internal IT policy in the Commission?

Who supplied the EU the bananas?
The new version of the European Interoperability Framework (EIF 2.0) appears to have been rewritten by the Commission's DG DIGIT without regard for the 53 public comments received last year, without taking into account the concept of open standards, and without any particular awareness of the signal they are sending to the world, which is: in the EU anything goes.

Did the EU eat their own bananas?
Now, it is not inconceivable that there were lobbyists involved, this is Brussels after all. But in this case it seems the eurocrats (at this juncture, I am ashamed to say I was one for four years) ate their own poisoned fruit. DG DIGIT were too scared to issue something that might implicitly lead to criticism of their own procurement practices. DG ENTERPRISE were too petty to allow another DG to mention the word "standard", because that has another definition in their Directive 98/34, a standard being

a technical specification approved by a recognised standardisation body for repeated or continuous application, with which compliance is not compulsory and which is one of the following:
-- international standard: a standard adopted by an international standardisation organisation and made available to the public,
-- European standard: a standard adopted by a European standardisation body and made available to the public,
-- national standard: a standard adopted by a national standardisation body and made available to the public;

How to take away these bananas?
What to do about this? Well, we need to stop the supply of bananas. This means ignoring and reducing the impact of internal turf wars in the EU's many directorates (and inside each of them). We need to remove the nonsense of "anything goes" from the important concept of interoperability. We need to stop talking about interoperability without open standards. The phrase should be open standards based interoperability, nothing less.

As a final note, I love real bananas, but I know how to keep my love from bananas from interfering with my professional practice. Also, even for me there can be too many bananas.

The EU Wants to Re-define "Closed" as "Nearly Open", Glyn Moody wrote on 2 November 2009 in Computerworld UK. A slightly wider interpretation is to say they have gone bananas. Going bananas, as defined by to English Daily, has the following etymology: When apes are given a bunch of bananas, they eat them with tremendous enthusiasm, as though they've lost their minds.

What are the bananas in question?
The fruit at the centre of all this is the quite obscure word, concept, and indeed the practice of interoperability. The EU now shares with a certain monopolist vendor in the IT space the characteristic that they have fallen in love the concept. They love it passionately, especially when it refers to anything and everything. Things are easier then. More than that, if we are to believe the current draft, a certain part of the EU, namely the part that buys their own IT solutions, embraces an IT procurement practice that basically says anything goes. One would be tempted to think they are worried about their own procurement practices. In EIF 1.0 and in the first draft of EIF 2.0 it was a strong focus. Now it has disappeared. Instead, we find an apologetic for doing nothing. Just listen to this: In the current draft EIF 2.0 which has just leaked we can read:

"While there is a correlation between openness and interoperability, it is also true that interoperability can be obtained without openness, for example via homogeneity of the ICT systems, which implies that all partners use, or agree to use, the same solution to implement a European Public Service."

If interoperability can be obtained through staying with existing legacy systems based on proprietary technology that does not implement open standards, then anything goes. If interoperability means that all open source solutions are perfectly open regardless whether they implement open standards, then anything goes. Unfortunately, neither is possible. The EU is surely going bananas.

The leaked draft of EIF 2.0 appears to be an excuse for continuing to purchase certain operative system and office packages (and not take the blame for past procurement choices in that regard). But should pan-European policy be guided by one, small Directorate's greatest fear, regardless whether or not they coordinate internal IT policy in the Commission?

Who supplied the EU the bananas?
The new version of the European Interoperability Framework (EIF 2.0) appears to have been rewritten by the Commission's DG DIGIT without regard for the 53 public comments received last year, without taking into account the concept of open standards, and without any particular awareness of the signal they are sending to the world, which is: in the EU anything goes.

Did the EU eat their own bananas?
Now, it is not inconceivable that there were lobbyists involved, this is Brussels after all. But in this case it seems the eurocrats (at this juncture, I am ashamed to say I was one for four years) ate their own poisoned fruit. DG DIGIT were too scared to issue something that might implicitly lead to criticism of their own procurement practices. DG ENTERPRISE were too petty to allow another DG to mention the word "standard", because that has another definition in their Directive 98/34, a standard being

a technical specification approved by a
recognised standardisation body for repeated or continuous application,
with which compliance is not compulsory and which is
one of the following:
-- international standard: a standard adopted by an international
standardisation organisation and made available to the public,
-- European standard: a standard adopted by a European standardisation
body and made available to the public,
-- national standard: a standard adopted by a national standardisation
body and made available to the public;

How to take away these bananas?
What to do about this? Well, we need to stop the supply of bananas. This means ignoring and reducing the impact of internal turf wars in the EU's many directorates (and inside each of them). We need to remove the nonsense of "anything goes" from the important concept of interoperability. We need to stop talking about interoperability without open standards. The phrase should be open standards based interoperability, nothing less.

As a final note, I love real bananas, but I know how to keep my love from bananas from interfering with my professional practice. Also, even for me there can be too many bananas.

In essence, standards are good because they create the level playing field on which all can compete. [...] We are also currently revising the guidelines for horizontal agreements in which we plan to improve the existing chapter on standardisation to provide more guidance on standard setting. [...] If standardisation processes are open and transparent, then standards can bring significant benefits to consumers by ensuring compatibility between products, which will generate competition on price and innovation. I see an important pro-competitive rationale to having standards bodies require the disclosure of patents and, where relevant, patent applications, in the early stages of standard-setting. Ex ante disclosure helps those involved make a properly informed decision, and competition law should not stand in the way. [...] This will almost always entail ex ante disclosure of the existence of essential patents. But it could also entail unilateral ex ante disclosure of maximum royalty rates and the most restrictive licensing terms that would apply should a company's technology be made the standard. If the ex post royalty is significantly and unjustifiably higher than the ex ante price, then we may have an excessive pricing case. [...] Standards may facilitate economies of scale, but it is with interoperability that they really add value to the economy. Standards are the foundation of interoperability - they create the level playing field needed for interoperability, where all can compete. When good standard-setting allows everyone to interoperate, it is also more likely that consumers will get the sort of high-quality and innovative products that work in a wide range of situations. [...] If I may summarise my thinking: Standards can greatly affect the fortunes of both individual companies and the wider economy. As such standardisation must occur through open and transparent processes. Ex ante price disclosure schemes will generally not raise competition issues. Standards should be as open as possible. This is not a black and white choice but a question of degree, and it is in society's best interest that standards should be as open as possible. In many industries de facto standards are just as beneficial and valuable as de jure ones. And that requires that the creation and availability of de facto standards are held to a similarly high level of scrutiny by market participants and competition authorities. And of course, any standards body should see the Commission as a partner. We have an open door to discuss these issues. It is in the interests of all parties that we work together toward openness, and towards high standards.

Developers have some core attitudes that are deeply shaping contemporary society. They foreshadow a society built on leadership from below, where leadership is less hierarchical. In this new, somewhat individualistic world, paradoxically, collaboration and standardization lay the foundation for the future. This is a speech I will present today to the European Commission's internal IT conference Smart IT 2009.

The EU leads the US on broadband and aims to become the leader in Digital Competitiveness. With these notions in mind, Commissioner Vivian Reding launches a consultation on the future EU policy in the IT domain, according to yesterday's EU press release. She asks: How can the EU increase its weight in the international arena of the worldwide web and the global information society?

While I understand the need to consult, the answer is that you could take the lead by investing in open standards policies, adoption, and best practice. Oh, and it would help if you motivate innovators to kick-start new ventures, and being good-hearted--pick up the tab for failed entrepreneurs so they still qualify for unemployment benefits if so happens. Creating a European software industry based on open standards is a good start. What if all things in life were that simple?

Today, on 3 July 2009, the European Commission adopted a White Paper on 'Modernising ICT Standardisation in the EU', with the lovely name COM(2009) 324 final, outlining the thrust of a forthcoming legislative reform. In essence, it paves the way for the recognition of standards from fora/consortia like W3C, OASIS, and IETF alongside European Standardisation Organizations (ESOs) and international standard setting organisations (ISO, ITU, IEC).

Standardization is a major driver of competitiveness. ICT represents one of the key industrial sectors of the 21st century, and standardization reform will significantly impact EU growth. Importantly, the Commission underlines the importance of global open standards as well as important Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) concerns like transparency through mandatory ex ante declaration of licensing terms and royalty free licensing where needed to enhance software interoperability. The fact that the issues contained within is White Paper already have been discussed among key European stakeholders (governments, industry, SMEs, consumer organizations, etc.), means there is solid backing behind its main conclusions, as well as in the implied way forward. The Commission is now set to launch major legislative reform of European ICT Standardisation in the beginning of 2010, revising the outdated Council Decision 87/95.

Highlights in the White Paper include:

A strong emphasis on openness and transparency:

While industry can use any standards, public authorities have a strong preference for, or even an obligation to use standards resulting from open, transparent and inclusive processes.

Openness: The standardisation development process occurs within a non-profit making organisation on the basis of open decision making accessible to all interested parties. The open standardisation process is driven by the relevant stakeholder categories and reflects user requirements.

Declaration ex-ante of the most restrictive licensing terms, possibly including the (maximum) royalty rates before adoption of a standard, may be a means of improving the effectiveness of (F)RAND licensing since this can allow for competition on both technology and price.

Standards based procurement is encouraged:

The Commission suggests clarifying that when they are defined within the context of ICT strategies, architectures and interoperability frameworks, the implementation of standardised interfaces can be made a requirement in public procurement procedures, provided the principles of openness, fairness, objectivity and non-discrimination and the public procurement directives are applied.

A clear path for recognizing fora and consortia:

The Commission suggests promoting better cooperation between fora and consortia and ESOs on the basis of a process which would lead to standards issued by the ESOs.

public authorities should have the possibility, provided the right conditions are fulfilled, to depart from the general rule of referencing formal ESO standards. To that end the Commission could put in place a suitable procedure to enable the referencing of specific fora and consortia standards in legislation and policies.

The Commission suggests the establishment of a permanent, multistakeholder, ICT standardisation policy platform (with a wider membership than the Member State SOGITS Committee previously established by Council Decision 87/95/EEC) to advise the Commission on all matters related to the European ICT standardisation policy and its effective implementation

The Commission has opened a public consultation on the ICT Standardization Reform White Paper on the Your Europe portal, open until 15 September 2009. Despite the fact there is wide agreement in the European and global ICT industry about the importance of recognizing standards from fora/consortia, there are a few thorny issues that are likely to cause debate in the months to come. Expect some debate on the fine print surrounding IPR, the standardization needs of European software industry, and on the precise way to organize stakeholder input—and pressure from industry to finally get the legislative reform underway.

Summing up, mandatory ex ante disclosure, royalty free licensing for technologies included in standards that are essential for software interoperability, and full recognition of fora/consortia standards and specifications in EU policy and legislation is now a real possibility. Moreover, this approach is fully endorsed by the Commission.

While one would wish for EU standardization reform to go even further, calling for a more radical rewriting of the European system of regional and national standardization—taking into account global realities and the need for wide availability of open standards, what we have to look forward to in the near future is already a lot better than the current regime. Fear, uncertainty, and doubt about certain, smaller aspects of this reform should not overshadow the great accomplishment this White Paper represents. While there is still time to debate the fine print, the sign-off has been made.

With the White Paper as the foundation, an exciting legislative agenda is building up for 2010. Expect higher innovation in all sectors that deploy ICT standards in the time to come, and watch the efficiency of public sector ICT investments increase as open standards based openness takes a stronger hold on bureaucrats, programmers, consumers, and politicians alike. EU standardization reform is underway.

When you try to pitch a film, you try to relate it to another successful film. So, you might say of a Sci-Fi movie script: “it is Forrest Gump meets StarTrek”. Similarly, one could say of the future of standardization, which is slightly more complex, it is either "Facebook meets ISO meets Microsoft meets Forrest Gump" (meaning it becomes further specialized, complex, and irrelevant, but hugely popular among the masses), or "Firefox meets Watergate meets W3C meets people" (meaning it will be hugely open, efficient, self-regulated, and shockingly simple). I prefer the latter. Let's go to 2020, and see what has happened:

The global standards process is the only game in town. All standards either quickly evolve in a transparent, open, efficient manner and become ubiquitous, or the effort is stopped. All meetings can be attended online, there is online voting facilities, but presence is encouraged at kick-off, and during especially tough negotiations, and at the last meeting. All interested parties get free travel to those meetings. For the rest, things happen online and via videolink and online/offline integration.

European Standards Organization (ESOs) are super lean marketeers of global standards, educational facilities, and provide advanced online material and face-to-face instruction to governments, students, and society, they also maintain the legacy of European Standards which were developed until 2010, trying to turn them into global standards (or dissolving them).

National Standards Organizations (NSOs) do not develop standards any more, but are competence centers that occasionally provide assistance on problem areas within global efforts, feeding directly in, and also act as face-to-face meeting places during global innovation jams.

The European Commission is a watchdog and liaises closely with a lean standards steering committee for software. It implements and references in procurement standards from wherever, as long as they are open.

National governments implement only global standards and send their own civil servants to important standards efforts, such as accessibility, health interoperability efforts, and suchlike.

ISO is either revitalized or disbanded. It is certainly smaller, leaner, and not under the UN anymore. Industry has an equal seat, and there is ample funding for SMEs who want to participate.

As I said, this is the future, not today. As for today, software is already an enabler of innovation across the economy. While this is good, it is not enough. People need to catch on to the same logic of interconnection, change, and flexibility built on a common platform—technology, ideas, and negotiation. When many people agree about what technologies they want, how they want to use them, and the technologies themselves are cooperating, a lot can get done.

Assuming there were forces who joined up to change the current situation where the formal standardization system is hopelessly outdated, what would they be doing? Let's take a look at some alternatives that would please the software sector:

1. Influence governments to re-build the credibility and efficiency of the existing formal standards process.

2. Create new formal organizations with global reach. For example, one could create a new ISO with companies present, with a different business model, where standards are free, and the IPR policy is simple, and where online participation and voting is welcomed and effective. One would have two options, in fact, create a competitor to ISO, or simply shut it down and start over.

3. Endorse and financially support certain consortia not others. Contribute to a shake-out by picking winners and losers. The example of this might have been IBM's Standards for Standards initiative. IBM made a promise to pull out of places where they do not agree or are able to change the rules. A good principle, let's see about the results.

4. Someone simplified the template for what constitutes a standards organization and a standards process. There were easily accessible, clear, simple and consistent intellectual property policies for standards organizations, thereby enabling standards developers and implementers to make informed technical and business decisions.

5. Governments started shaking up the formal standardization system. For instance, BSI would not automatically receive its £6 million a year from the British government's DIUS. Moreover, fora/consortia like W3C and OASIS (and others outside the IT space) would be recognized as contributing to standards, since the policy would be that the government picks up any standard, from any origin, insofar as it is fully open and widely available and implemented.

6. Major players agreed to consolidate the number of fora/consortia from 500 to 50 in the interest of efficiency and wide implementation, pooling their resources together.

7. One put in place a tier-system for standards organizations, in order to avoid the binary approach (formal/informal) and provide a path towards gradual recognition (or not). The categories could be the following: (1) Formally recognized, (2) To watch and emerging, (3) Hopeless, unless major changes in governance structure are announced, (4) New initiatives that have yet to prove their worth, but could be innovative. The criteria could mirror those of the WTO criteria, supplied with the CAMSS criteria, and governed by an online voting system where governments, multinationals, SME associations, and user and consumer organizations had a voting quota each.

8. National Standards Organizations stopped issuing standards and instead became competence environments, funding agencies for standards participants in global organizations, and venues for local chapters that worked on specific problems within a global standard.

9. Standardization reform followed the path of ICT, so openness and self-regulation became the norm (realizing that this is not the best time to argue self-regulation across sectors).

10. Standards were sexy? Not sure what that might entail, but some aspects of sexiness include highly appealing or interesting; attractive. What I find enlightening is a piece advice from an old manual of sex tips for geeks: Even a single good feature can make you attractive enough to be a sexual success. That might be realistic, too.

11. All companies begin or end participation in standards bodies based on the quality and openness of their processes, membership rules, and intellectual property policies.

Will our children's children recognize today's Internet? Probably not. The reason is that much of it is ephemeral. It will go away, change faster than previous generations' impressions in books and popular culture. Governments, and Google as well, do try to archive historical pages, and they will be available to some extent for historians. However, Internet as we know it today, is likely to only last for a few more years.

Standardization is a tool to grapple with globalization. It yields more than £, $ or €—it yields freedom. Standards create and define networks. When these standards are used by many, network effects abound. Mostly, these network effects are benign, but in the case of quasi standards which sometimes are not standards at all, chaos erupts. In the beginning of this blog series, I said let's' consider network effects a given, and proceed. This was a wrong assumption. There is a world beyond network effects, but it is not pleasant. It is cumbersome, expensive, and risky. Moreover, not all network effects are created equal.

While it is possible to argue that standards matter, it is not easy to explain it in plain terms. We could quote Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, who says:

“Standards like HTML, XML, Style Sheets (CSS), to name a few — have fueled billion-dollar industries and connected people like never before”.

Standards are what links the Internet together. The future strength of applications like Facebook, LinkedIn or YouTube is in the hands of standards setting professionals – like you and me. By endorsing this or that widget or application, we contribute to picking winning standards. So, next time you opt not to register your name with Open ID, which would have enabled you to use one password across sites like Yahoo, Google, etc., you are making a standards choice. Most people do not think of it that way, but you are actually spinning the global wheel by doing or not doing certain things on the Web.

In fact, ideally, end users should always participate, even more directly. Local officials, small business owners, lawyers, software developers and consultants should go to standards meetings now and then, even if the meetings are in Hawaii (you could also surf in the water for a day, not just on the web). Wide participation gives a better standards because more ideas are on the table and more experience is brought to bear. Wide adoption is only possible if all impacted stakeholders know about the standard, believe in it, and promote it.

The reality is, even though standard setting tends to take years and involves patiently sitting out day and week-long meetings to discuss small details, standards themselves can actually be quite simple. Agreeing on them is the difficult part. This is why common wisdom has it only experts should go: bureaucrats, engineers, low level technical policy makers and such like. Nothing could be further from what we need.

New consortia and alliances are formed virtually daily with the announced purpose of addressing some pressing need for standards. There are so many Standards Setting Organizations (SSOs) today that even the largest organizations can not participate in all of them. Clearly, the fact that all the 500+ fora/consortia standards cannot be referenced in legislation in the EU27 is a good thing. Even more clearly, the fact that none of them can, is a problem. In fact, this is a major problem, and a legacy from the pre-Internet era, that is thirty years ago.

In the meantime, new standards, or “specifications” in Eurospeak (since the word standard is a reserved term for official stuff from recognized standards bodies) pop up all the time. The formal standards system is rapidly eroding, at least in the software space. And, with time, software becomes an enabler in all industries, and they will all get their own software standards. But will the software logic prevail?