SunMink

Simon Phipps's other Weblog
(a WebMink in the Sun)

Raising the bar on patents and standards

Great news for OpenDocument fans. The guy from Microsoft couldn't have known this, but we were already working on a move that raises the bar on what it means to create a truly open standard. Yesterday, Sun sent to OASIS a new statement concerning patents on the OpenDocument standard. To decode this statement for you, it says that Sun promises not to enforce any patent in any country against any implementation of the OpenDocument format (ODF). That means that, unless you're intending to sue Sun in connection with ODF, you can use ODF with confidence and ignore the FUD.

To dive deeper on the key features:

1. It's a blanket promise connected with ODF that's not restricted to particular facets or features - it doesn't just have a list of a few carefully-selected patents and leave you to wonder what's not granted. This is for me a key philosophical point. While I congratulate the gesture behind them, previous attempts at patent protection using the "patent commons" approach glorify patents, forcing anyone who would benefit from the apparent protection to become a patent expert. A blanket statement like this just says "no need to look, you're safe, Sun is on your side".
2. It's irrevocable. It's a promise you can rely on, regardless of changes in Sun and the industry.
3. It's global. No games involving smiles in one country and attacks in places that don't hit the news so much.
4. It's not time-limited - there's no "everything before this point" clause. It extends into new features added to future versions of ODF all the time Sun continues contributing to its development.
5. It's reciprocal (we won't sue you if you don't sue us). That means that we're still able to take action to protect ourselves and the community we participate in, despite providing rock-solid safety for developers and end-users.
6. There's no bureaucracy. Some moves in the past have sounded generous but have required some sort of action to register a license or act in some other way that limits redistribution of software that's trying to benefit from the protection.
7. It's simple and clear. There is no game being played.
8. There's no "essential claims" language. Most statements like this one include language that says that you only get a "waiver" if you've no choice but to infringe the patent. This statement applies regardless. [Thanks to Orcmid, below, for this one]

While this is hugely important and re-assuring for ODF, it's even more important for open standards, as David Berlind points out. It provides an example of how to use patents in a defensive, open-source-friendly way. It provides a model for patent protection that doesn't involve the glorification of software patents. It balances the needs of the corporation to retain self-defence capability in the dog-eat-dog world of corporate IPR and the needs of open source developers to be freed from fear of legal attack.

It is inexpensive for corporations to make this sort of statement - it is an expression of vision rather than the carefully gamed result of an exhaustive patent search and a technical analysis of its outcomes. In my view, it sets the standard for future standards and I am thrilled we've taken this step. We've not patented this idea; feel free to copy it and set the open source world free of fear of legal action over 'open' standards.

Posted by webmink ( Sep 30 2005, 02:45:13 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [7]

FUD and the Lost Argument

I've had quite a few people contact me concerning a serious allegation made by Microsoft's Brian Jones in his blog and again later. Brian does his level best to smear Sun with this statement:

While we’re on this topic, I think it’s important that you all take a look at the comparable situation with Open Document. A lot of folks just seem to assume that since it’s a standard, there are no IP issues and everything is very straightforward. Well, take a look at this: http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/office/ipr.php Sun seems to be saying that it may have IP in the Open Document spec. While Sun says it is willing to provide a royalty-free license, one would still need to ask Sun for a license. The license is not posted. It would be interesting to see, and I'll probably try to see if I can find it. The statement on the site alone reveals that at a minimum, they have at least one condition – you have to give Sun a reciprocal license.

For the avoidance of doubt, let me say that Brian's position is 100% pure FUD. The statement he points to at OASIS is just a boilerplate statement put in place before OASIS created a royalty-free IPR option in their range of IPR policies (a change Sun advocated). It does not say that Sun "may have IP in the Open Document spec" - it says that, even if Sun did, it would freely grant a license tp anyone implementing ODF. But we don't, so the issue does not arise, the text is just for completeness, it's standards bureaucracy.

Here's what Eduardo Gutentag, Sun's primary representative at OASIS (and the current Chair of the OASIS Board) had to say in a recent e-mail to the OpenDocument TC:

There are a few things that should be made clear, since the goal of FUD is always to make things unclear.

What Sun posted as an IPR promise in 2002, as anyone in this field knows, including Brian, was a conventional short form assurance that, if we turned to have any patents that read on the specification, we would license them RF. We have never turned up any patents reading on the specification, so there has been no need to compose, let alone grant, a license. (Let me remind you that the issue here is an XML schema, not software; the very idea of patenting and enforcing patents against schemas is really more someone else's style and idea of fun than Sun's.)

The whole point of that assurance was to voluntarily remove FUD, by making it clear there would be no licensing obstacles.

We have all come a long way since 2002. After some aggressive uses of asserted patents and sub-licensing issues-- again, not from us -- the open source communities are now very cautious about precise license terms. This is actually good. And many vendor companies have also become more sensitive to the needs of the open source communities. This is even better.

Brian's comments join many of the comments in Microsoft's response to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in being misleading misinterpretations of apparent facts, which rely on their readers being outsiders to the domain at hand. So to summarise a few of those facts for their readers:

• XML is a standard but is not sufficient to give anyone sovereignty over their data. That takes a shared format implemented with XML.
• While XML transforms provide a means for a programmer to rescue data stored in an incompatible file format, end-users need applications to share formats if they are to gain independence from their suppliers.
• OpenDocument is an independent, royalty-free standard, which does not require licensing from any of its contributors.
• OpenDocument is implemented in multiple codebases by open and closed source software and by companies that compete against each other.
• Any vendor is free to implement OpenDocument alongside their closed formats or as the primary format for their software.
• As the format is extensible, they need lose no information even if the format currently has no explicit support for their innovative features.

It's standard marketing to FUD and/or make threats when you're losing the argument. I think Brian's statement gives us a clear indication of what's happening.

Posted by webmink ( Sep 27 2005, 03:30:12 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [2]

Doing things by halves

I've been watching it develop for ages, but today's the day Sun has announced its new Opteron-based servers. Half the price of a Dell, nearly half the power consumption, one-and-a-half times the performance^*. Runs any Linux (e.g. RHEL), any OpenSolaris (e.g. Solaris 10), any Windows. I want one. John, are you listening?

Posted by webmink ( Sep 12 2005, 11:38:49 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

A Study in Framing

There's framing going on and it's not pretty. Since I wrote my piece on Massachusetts and OpenDocument, it's been subject to plenty of comment both here and on Groklaw. In addition, Tim Bray has posted the speaking points Microsoft is using against OpenDocument. In all of these, under the surface is an act of framing that needs exposing and nipping in the bud. Here it is in Microsoft's speaking points (saying OpenOffice instead of OpenDocument is not a typo):

However, limiting the document formats to the OpenOffice format is unnecessary, unfair and gives preferential treatment for specific vendor products, and prohibits others.

Here it is, far more subtly, in Mike Champion's comment to my last posting:

The hard part in Massachusetts will be to get all those folks who have been "liberated" productively up and running on a new and (currently) unfamiliar system, and to keep them happy in a world where innovation is continuous and user expectations are ever-rising.

and here on his own blog:

This has generated a lot of weblog posts, mostly from open source advocates or employees of Microsoft competitors fulsomely praising it and hoping that this political decision will give their preferred technologies more economic clout.

and here in his group blog (my, he's prolific and subtle):

That's exactly what Massachusetts wants to have the freedom to do; but XML makes it possible today, and Microsoft's commitment to XML in products such as Office (and Sun's commitment in OpenOffice) makes it easy for our customers to reap and share these benefits, with or without universal document format standards such as ODF purports to be.

And here it is, crudely, in the blog of Microsoft's glove puppet PFF:

Massachusetts is on the verge of adopting a policy designed to force both state workers and people dealing with the state to use open source software programs as opposed to proprietary ones.

All these (and more, watch for it now I've mentioned it) want you to approach the discussion from the perspective this is Microsoft vs OpenOffice.org, Microsoft vs Sun, Microsoft vs Free Software - in other words, they want to frame the conversation as company competitive when it's nothing of the sort. Massachusetts are not mandating OpenOffice.org or any other specific product. If Microsoft would stop and listen for a split second, they would see they could trivially comply with what Bob Sutor explains is their customer's reasonable and necessary requirement for an open document format and add support to Office like they have for countless other file formats. The argument is not company competitive, it's about end-user freedom.

Claiming OpenDocument is open-source-only is an act of framing. IBM has a closed-source product that supports the format and we'll see more. If you hear this frame, break it straight away.

Posted by webmink ( Sep 12 2005, 01:07:24 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [2]

Coursey is wrong on Massachusetts

I just read an article by David Coursey, Massachusetts' Move to Open Format is Close-minded, and I'm afraid he has it totally wrong - too much time spent drinking from the fountain of Redmond wisdom, I fear, and not enough listening to David Berlind who understands the real issues perfectly. He criticises the proposal by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to mandate a policy of using open formats for its business, saying

"I am not sure what the real problem is with using Microsoft file formats. No, they are not open, but they aren't completely closed, either. There are a number of non-Microsoft apps that support them. That makes Microsoft file formats "open enough" for many users."

What a short-term view. The real point is not what applications are available today, it's that allowing the use of formats that are under the control of a single party - without transparency of process or involvement from any other interested group - results in what I call "corporate Alzheimer's", where you are condemned to be unable to use your documents at some point in the future where the tools available today that access the format are no longer available and/or usable. This becomes even more of an issue once the format gets wrappered in DRM, which causes early onset of corporate Alzheimer's. That's the reason the National Archive of Australia was involved in defining OASIS OpenDocument - to ensure future historians are able to access digital source documents key to Australia's history. If we don't use open standard formats, we are doomed to forget.

Coursey goes on to say

"[Mr Quinn has] created the 2007 requirement for an open storage format to create an excuse for removing Microsoft Office from state workers' desktops."

My word, that is worthy of a Microsoft press release. Microsoft could most likely add the same level of support for OpenDocument as they have for previous versions of Word, for WordPerfect and for about 20 other file formats, and do it easily by 2007. Members of the OpenDocument committee tell me they put in a great deal of effort to ensure the format was capable of easy conceptual mapping to MS Office formats, not least because of the need to make the writing of conversion filters easy.

The truth is exactly the opposite of what Coursey asserts. Massachusetts are not anti-Microsoft when they make this decision, as they are at pains to explain - they are pro-openness. Any company that chooses not to support the open, standard format excludes themselves, they are not being excluded by Massachusetts.

The effects of allowing public administrations to use software that flouts standards are painfully clear, as the examples of the Copyright Office and of FEMA have made clear. Sun, like IBM (well done, Bob) have written to Mr Quinn in Massachusetts to endorse the decision, which is principled, wise, brave and most importantly pro- rather than anti-competitive. It seems so obvious that in the participation age documents need to be long-term readable in any word-processor that the only way to object is by invoking FUD and XML schema.

Coursey does get one thing right, though. He says

"I encourage Microsoft to meet Massachusetts' demand by opening its own formats or, alternately, teaching Office to read and write the OpenDocument format."

That's what we've all been saying for years, and the fact they have done neither (their formats are not open because of restrictions on who can implement them and because control is not shared) will be their downfall. Failure on both counts means only the latter is open to them, and they would be well advised to stop FUD-ing and get on with it

Update: Tim Bray has posted on his blog a copy of the letter Scott McNealy sent to Mr Quinn.

Posted by webmink ( Sep 08 2005, 04:30:36 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [7]

A Boy And His Dog Go Travelling

A while back, Tim Bray and I did an interview with Sun's venerable Bill Howard all about the idea of blogging and where blogs.sun.com came from, philosophically speaking. It appeared soon after in Sun's customer newsletter, "Inner Circle", and we were both quite pleased with how it had turned out.

Imagine our surprise, then, when we discovered that the article had been deemed worthy of an appearance on the Sun.Com home page. I first spotted it when hits started to show up in my referrer log from people curious to read the blog of this loud-mouth featured on the home page. Even more amazing was the discovery that, unable to secure a suitably approved photo of Tim and myself, the editor had used a photo we'd both been trying to keep secret, showing our last visit to the office after Tim's recent experimental surgery.

You may not know, but actually "Bray" is a modified version of his original family name, "Bark". You'll see on the right that I'm largely unchanged (my hair is spiked but otherwise that's just how I look usually) but Tim has suffered extreme weight loss and grown a coat of white and brown hair - and unusually is not wearing a hat.

The story is rapidly spreading across the world - so far I have found it in French, German, Dutch, Chinese, Spanish and Polish as well as in English - so Tim's little secret is out. When you see him, remember to give him a pat on the head, ask if he wants walkies and most especially ask if Atom is his favourite brand of dog biscuit.

Posted by webmink ( Sep 07 2005, 04:51:24 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [1]

I/O Podcast 2 is out

Quick pointer to the new podcast my friend and colleague Richard Giles has just posted, which features OpenSolaris community manager Jim Grisanzio and leading light of the OpenSolaris community Ben Rockwood (pictured). From Ben's blog it seems this was nerve-wracking encounter for him, so well done Ben :-)

Posted by webmink ( Sep 07 2005, 06:38:43 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

Blogging on the Radio

If you're in the UK, you may be interested in listening to national Radio 4 at 4pm on Tuesday where the Shop Talk programme will be exploring "Business Blogging" (the programme will also be available online from Wednesday, for about a week). I had the pleasure to appear on the programme, which was recorded last Tuesday, along with the glitterati of the UK blogging scene - Adriana Cronin-Lukas, a UK blogging consultant, Heather Platts who runs soap manuafacturer Eieflud and has recently started a blog, analyst Azeem Azhar and James Cherkoff, another blogging consultant. There was also a recorded interview with online tailor Thomas Mahon.

As Adriana points out, the smooth but strongly directive approach taken by the very professional presenter, Heather Payton, meant that there was little room to really explore the UK blogging scene as a phenomenon. In particular and to my regret I didn't even get to plug the UK blogging conference, 'Our Social World', which is happening on Friday in Cambridge and will likely be an excellent venue for the discussion Radio 4 missed. I'll be there, maybe you will be too?

Update: Listen to the programme if you dare! (link likely to rot away on Sept 13)

Posted by webmink ( Sep 04 2005, 05:54:17 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [4]

Mail Down

Just in case you're trying to reach me by e-mail this weekend, be aware that my Sun mailbox is being moved to a new server and I'm locked out of it until Tuesday - when I'm travelling. So no replies are likely to anything before Wednesday, sorry.

Posted by webmink ( Sep 03 2005, 08:22:27 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

OpenSolaris Charter Ready for Review

One of my 'hats' is to act as the current Chair of the OpenSolaris Community Advisory Board (CAB). Our job is to devise governance for the OpenSolaris community, and as the first step to that we've recently finished drafting a Charter. The Charter documents the CAB's assumptions about its mission and status with respect to the OpenSolaris community.

We'll be treating the Charter as effectively ratified once comment has subsided (the Governance will be the formal document for the community and will probably be voted upon) and thus you may wish to go take a look and, if you're registered in the OpenSolaris community, post any comments or questions to the forum in the thread following the charter. Kudos to CAB member Al Hopper for the hard work that went into writing this and recording our conversations about it.

Posted by webmink ( Sep 03 2005, 06:10:06 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

OpenOffice.org to use LGPL only

Following my earlier announcement that Sun is retiring SISSL, the OpenOffice.org Community Council has got straight down to business and said that OpenOffice.org will only use LGPL from now on. I applaud that decision.

Posted by webmink ( Sep 02 2005, 01:26:49 PM PDT ) Permalink Comments [0]

Addressing Proliferation: Deeds not just Words

When I started getting the new Open Source Office ready a while back, my attention was drawn to the topic of license proliferation as being a crucial issue for the community of open source communities. Sun has already made an important contribution to reducing license proliferation by providing a new, OSI-approved open source license that renders continued cloning of the Mozilla Public License unnecessary. That license - CDDL - may have had a controversial first outing but in fact is a well-received license that makes any future attempt to build yet another MPL-clone vanity license much less likely.

Back in the early days of the Open Source Initiative, Sun created an open source license called the Sun Industry Standards Source License (SISSL). It's actually a very fine license, designed to encourage forks and derived works to support the same file formats and standards as the original work. However, it's not been used by very many projects and I don't think having it on Sun's list of preferred licenses is appropriate any longer.

Announcement: SISSL Retired

I'm therefore announcing today that Sun is 'retiring' the SISSL. I'm writing to OSI to ask them to place the license on the "not recommended" list being created by the License Proliferation Committee. It's my intention that Sun will not use the license again for future projects. Furthermore, I'd encourage any project that's currently using it to make other plans at the time of their next major release.

I spoke with Laura Majerus, who is OSI's Director of Legal Affairs, and asked her about the step. As well as giving me the appropriate OSI form to complete and return, she told me that reducing needless diversity and simplifying license choice is a key objective of the OSI and she told me I could quote her: "Sun's move is a welcome step that we'd like to see copied by the originators of many other OSI-approved licenses."

Promoting Best Practice

I consider license proliferation a key issue for open source. We need unnecessary licenses to be retired in favour of a smaller number of more modern ones, and we need the sort of consensus that Laura's committee is building to create best practice. The sort of erudite comment Larry Rosen is encouraging is essential. In my view, best practice involves:

1. keeping license choices simple,
2. helping communities each build a code commons that promotes contribution while protecting from patent attacks, and
3. making inter-community re-use as simple as possible.

Steve Mills may not think it's worth his time to worry about this - he considers it "wishful thinking" - but I plan to devote some time and attention to the issue of license proliferation. Shallow and attention-grabbing rhetoric like that employed by Martin Fink is not the answer either - no single license addresses all open source models. We're taking a practical step today, the first of several I hope, and committing Sun to actually help with the issue. I'd encourage other companies to do the same.

Posted by webmink ( Sep 02 2005, 08:45:00 AM PDT ) Permalink Comments [6]