DivaBlog

Global confusion between Open Standards and Open Source

Here at the 3rd day of GUADEC, just listening to a very interesting day of sessions about public policies in support of adoption of Open Standards and Open Source. The day was opened by remarks about the World Summit of the Information Society (WSIS) by Eva Hildrum, Director General, Ministry of Transport and Communications, Norway.

Ms. Hildrum points out that WSIS is the officially United Nations sanctioned process for creating global policies to maximize participation in the "Information Society" for the greater humanitarian good, which she says are increasingly equated with adoption of technologies based on Open Standards and Open Source. She quotes the June 12th, 2004 issue of The Economist, which stated:

Technology enabled collaboration among large groups of people working without pay for a common aim, whether it is called "Open Source" or something else, can be a powerful force for good, and is to be welcomed.

In the last year or so, about half of my time has been spent flying around the world supporting people like Eva Hildrum as they work to establish new policies and practices which leverage and contribute to the Open Source movement to make better choice of technologies to build future infrastructures. This has been incredibly rewarding work, since I share the conviction of many Open Source activists that simple lack of transparency is the root enabler of both government corruption and technology lock-in.

I was at the WCities conference last December in Lyons which was a working group conference on eGovernment leading up to last year's WSIS Summit in Geneva, and I was struck there by how much difficulty delegates were having talking clearly about concepts like Open Standards. Eva Hildrum says that the WSIS process has been a little different than previous UN-sponsored summits because the language of the information society doesn't fit into existing diplomatic language.

After Ms. Hildrum's remarks, a panel of Europeans (plus Bruce Perens) commented on the various policies supported by their individual governments. All of their policies first try to separate the concept of Open Standards from the concept of Open Source. I have encountered confusion between these two terms in my work around the world. This is because both terms include one of the most misused words in the English language, the word "open".

The Open Source Definition tries to bring clarity to the meaning of "Open Source", but nowhere is there clarity around "Open Standards"! Is a standard open if it includes proprietary extensions? Is it open if it touches patents that are licensed under so-called RAND (Reasonable And Non-Discriminatory) terms? Can a standard be called open without an open source reference implementation?

More on Conversation

[tracking a TrackBack] David Warnock says in his TrackBack of my blog this morning

"You can definately count me as one who feels a lot more positive about Sun than before, and as developer with a significant ongoing commitment to java that goes back to January 98 I am very happy about that."

Glad its making you happy, David, (and that our comments are giving you tips, etc.). Now, how can we make sure that others find that tip now that its surfaced? I'm just wanting to see all this goodness made usable in the future, not just "sha...la...la...la-la-la...just for today" (hope you don't mind a reference to the Grass Roots.

What's missing from Sun blogs (or, is Executive Blogging enough)?

Much has already been blogged today about Jonathan Schwartz starting his own blog, but I had to also take a minute to applaud his decision to lead by example and join what Jim Grisanzio is calling the Cluetrain Revolution at Sun. The Cluetrain says that in the future only companies which learn how to talk to the world directly and without goopey marketing spin (my words, not theirs) will be able to gain any traction in the new (smarter, networked) markets.

From my point of view, getting everyone to blog is only one step along the road to aligning Sun with Cluetrain. Sun has famously invested heavily in open source projects and is basing many of its core products on open source parts (such as Java Desktop System), planning to increase revenues by adding value to commoditized products. Cluetrain says:

People in networked markets have figured out that they get far better information and support from one another than from vendors. So much for corporate rhetoric about adding value to commoditized products.

And we see this borne out in the enormous popularity of the OpenOffice.org project user lists for instance. So, if Sun is going to actually change itself to take advantage of Cluetrain teachings, its going to have to learn not only how to have real conversations with customers and others on the web, but also how to be more helpful to customers than they can be to each other. And that's going to mean listening to the questions customers ask and answering them quickly and accurately (and hopefully delightfully).

So far most Sun blogs (my own mostly included) are examples of one-to-many communication, not really conversation. Answering comments/questions and interacting with referrers is not yet part of common Sun blogging style. There is a long-held belief inside of Sun that actively engaging in two-way conversations will take up too much bandwidth, and yet according to Cluetrain we must figure out a way to expand this competency. Perhaps what we need is a new (as yet unconsidered) tool that helps us gather customer queries and publish our responses in a way that customers will find more accessible.

So, what do you think? What information are you looking for? How would you prefer to receive it?

Please answer in my comments section below...can't criticize the tools unless you use them, eh?

@ 01:30 AM PDT

Pics from GUADEC

So, like many others I have eschewed JavaONE for GUADEC this year. Actually I would have liked to attend both, but once I was aware that they conflicted this year I really had to come to GUADEC, for reasons I'll explain below:

First of all, GUADEC is simply a really fun conference. Its completely different than JavaONE. For one thing, it is largely arranged by the geeks, for the geeks. The most consistently populated room is the "connectivity room"

Its a good place for me to get a feel for how Sun's reputation is doing in the FOSS community. Its interesting to see what people are worrying about as well. Since GNOME is an interface, the GUADEC community is always interested in accessibility and localizability issues. The conference is small (around 300 this year) but it attracts people from all over the world.

Plus, this year it is in Kristiansand, Norway (think Midnight Sun)

Edits to the DMCA?

For several months there has been work going on at Sun to decide what our policy should be on Digital Rights Management (aka DRM) and the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (aka the DMCA). Yesterday we finally saw some fruit from that effort in the form of a story that Sun and others are supporting Senator Boucher's bill to amend the DMCA to allow circumvention of copy protections so long as copyright isn't being violated.

I've heard Larry Lessig say that unchecked erosion of the Fair Use provisions in the Copyright Act should be one of the greatest concerns of people who care about technology (not to mention consumers). But the issue won't be visible to most people until VCRs stop being able to copy their favorite TV programs off a digitial cable feed with DRM. Making copies of purchased content for personal use or convenience used to be considered Fair Use (before such content was digitized and before the DMCA said that defeating digital copy protection was illegal). Looks like Boucher's bill would partially fix this problem, although not surprisingly there are some concessions to the entertainment industry.

Free Speech on the Amazon

Larry Lessig is one of my heros. He works to make people aware of dangerous backroom machinations between corporate interests and governments that threaten the Open Source movement and our precious right to Freedom of Speech in the USA. He makes me want to go to Law School. And he's a really nice guy on top of it all ;-).

Anyway, I just read a /. story about Microsoft filing a defamation suit against Sergio Amadue, a Brazilian government official, for his recent public remarks about their business practices. The complaint refers to an "excess of Free Speech" employed by Amadue in his public criticism of the "lock-in" mechanisms. Larry Lessig is pointing out that in the US this suit would have no basis (cause here in the land of the free and home of the brave we generally get to say what we believe to be true, even if it hurts someone else's feelings, although there are exceptions).

Check out my good friend Simon Phipps' excellent coverage of his impressions on his trip to the FISL conference!

Why Executive Blogging Is Harder

Earlier today Glynn Foster blogged a question here that boils down to "Why don't Jonathan Schwartz and Scott McNealy blog?". Interesting question, Glynn, which I thought I'd give a shot at answering.

First of all, despite all assurances to the contrary, it takes a bit of time to maintain a successful blog (I speak from experience, since I don't write *nearly* often enough myself when I'm traveling). Executives are pretty busy and hence many routine tasks get delegated to assistants. Have a look at the Bush/Cheney '04 Campaign Blog for an example of this problem. At least there are no pretensions that George W. Bush is actually writing this blog, but its pretty dry reading and indicates a misunderstanding of what makes a blog compelling: Authentic Voice. Nobody makes this point better than the Cluetrain Manifesto.

"But learning to speak in a human voice is not some trick, nor will corporations convince us they are human with lip service about "listening to customers." They will only sound human when they empower real human beings to speak on their behalf."

Not that the Bush campaign isn't trying for a human voice (check out the Presidential Cookie bakeoff. Can't you just see Laura Bush whipping up a batch?) For comparison, check out Kevin's Polemics blog, a fine example of what I would consider an authentic voice.

Second, there are good reasons why executives, as legal officers of an organization, have to be very careful what they actually say in public. Extending the Presidential example (and assuming that the President actually had time to blog) imagine pundits combing over every entry looking for clues to his state of mind on any number of issues. Imagine fluctuations in the stock market if every Presidential blog were analyzed for references..."That's the third time this month he's mentioned having Oatmeal at breakfast instead of Corn Flakes...Oat futures are on the rise". Extend your consideration of this issue and you'll see that it would be pretty hard to write a casual blog (as Microsoft blogger Rob Scoble said recently in his comments on self-censoring).

Third (and not to be underestimated) is the cultural shift involved in blogging. For many many years official caution in public communication has been the norm. Sun has gone so far as to famously issue a new official policy to encourage open blogging, but its definitely still a new concept to most Sun employees. There is a blogspace behind the Sun firewall and some executives (notably John Fowler) are starting to show up there. And of course there is at least one Sun VP and Fellow with a public blog, James Gosling.

So, while I agree with Glynn that it will be a great thing when the senior Sun executives start blogging, it may be awhile before we see lots of spontaneous executive blogs. Still the medium is creating a shift inside Sun and other companies. Traditional assumptions and practices are being re-examined, which was one of my hopes when I and others started promoting the idea of blogging to Sun.

Happy Accident
No great photog, I...uploading my pics from SunNetwork yesterday I found this happy accident:

This pictures was taken from the rooftop of a great restaurant called "M on the Bund". Note the Sun Logo spotlight trained on the tall black building on the right.

Better call a plumber

Last week at SunNetwork Conference, Shanghai, Jonathan Schwartz "leaked" our intention to open source Solaris.

This whole business of "leaking" information is fascinating to me. This story has actually been "leaked" at least 3 times that I know of already: First by Anil Gadre all the way back in January of 2000 in the Wall Street Journal (so long ago that I can't find a link for it), then again in 2002 in interviews with Rob Gingell and most recently last December by Jonathan Schwartz.

So, what's going on with all this leaking?

At companies I've worked for I've seen executives "leak" news when they wanted to test the waters, both inside and outside a company. You might ask why they don't just file a regular story? Well leaks are interesting. It feels like you're learning something you're not supposed to know. In my experience executive "leaks" are almost never unintentional, however.

In the old days at Apple (before Steve Jobs came back), MacWeek and similar magazines devoted whole columns to handling leaks put out with varying degrees of intention by product groups. In fact those columns were the best way for Apple employees to find out what was going on because internal communication was terrible. If your "rumor" got published the magazine sent you a coffee mug (which you could only use at home, although I remember one gutsy product manager who used his at work)! Reaction to well-placed rumors helped many an executive decide what to do. If the reaction was disasterous, it was only a leak after all.

So, I always remember that there are two audiences for every leak. The public and the private (company internal) audience reaction to a given piece of news may be very different. "Leaking" helps gauge reaction and helps close the gap when internal and public opinions don't match and helps move a decision along. This is a reality of doing business today in High Tech. Change is hard and almost nobody likes it. Getting used to the idea of a big change is sometimes best handled in small (leaky) increments.

Open Source Grows
Just finished giving a talk to an enthusiastic audience at SunNetwork Conference, Shanghai on the Economics of Open Source (alternate title: Yes, You CAN Make Money in Open Source). I gave the same talk last month at Sun Tech Days Hyderabad and I'm noticing a trend. Interest in Open Source is growing (both inside and outside of Sun). In both places the room was packed and the questions were excellent. In India people were literally sitting in the aisles and many were unfortunately turned away for lack of space. People seem to be really interested in understanding and joining Open Source (although, to be fair there are always questioners who ponder WHY Sun or any company would chose to give away so much...) ;-) After last month's talk I received several mails from people in India who wanted to get started already! How cool is THAT?