2008 Mar 21 - Fri

The ODF - OOXML Three Ring Circus

I've been following along with the standards-wannabe known as OOXML. Microsoft's want this proprietary standard so much, you can feel the flames of hell leaping higher. Ok, so my visual metaphors are getting out of hand. I recently did lighting for a sketch for BMDS's production of GUMS, which in itself is a series of comedic sketches. Anyway, the sketch of which I'm speaking is where the Devil, played by Steve Watts, delivers a monologue about recent arrivals in Hell. For example, the atheists are called a bunch of nitwits, the Christians are scoffed at due to the Jews being right. Very few groups were left out. And I must say, my 'fires of hell' lighting worked out quite well.

In reading various blogs and articles regarding Microsoft's process of stacking the National Standards Bodies with Microsoft's influence peddlers and lackeys brings forth strongly the image of "selling one's soul for something one believes in". But corporate greed and monopolostic habits die hard. Even bending to the level of personal slurs, with this not being the first documented one.

The Standards Blog sprouts forth a bright flower from the sewage of vitriol currently being spouted regarding incomplete standards, lockins, patent protection, and selfishness. He has exerpted comments from South African Minister of Public Service and Administration Geraldine Fraser-Moleketi. I'll reprint them here as representing a voice calling out from the desert:

...This past year has been marked by a raising in the tension between the traditional incumbent monopoly software players and the rising champions of the Free Software movement in Africa. The flashpoints of conflict have been particularly marked around the development and adoption of open standards and growing concerns about software patents..

It is unfortunate that the leading vendor of office software, which enjoys considerable dominance in the market, chose not to participate and support ODF in its products, but rather to develop its own competing document standard which is now also awaiting judgement in the ISO process. If it is successful, it is difficult to see how consumers will benefit from these two overlapping ISO standards. I would like to appeal to vendors to listen to the demands of consumers as well as Free Software developers. Please work together to produce interoperable document standards. The proliferation of multiple standards in this space is confusing and costly..

An issue which poses a significant threat to the growth of an African software development sector (both Free Software and proprietary) is the recent pressure by certain multinational companies to file software patents in our national and regional patent offices. Whereas open standards and Free Software are intended to be inclusive and encourage fair competition, patents are exclusive and anti-competitive in their nature. Whereas there are some industries in which the temporary monopoly granted by a patent may be justified on the grounds of encouraging innovation, there is no reason to believe that society benefits from such monopolies being granted for computer program .inventions.. The continued growth in the quantity and quality of Free Software illustrates that such protection is not required to drive innovation in software. Indeed all of the current so-called developed countries built up their considerable software industries in the absence of patent protection for software. For those same countries to insist on patent protection for software now is simply to place protectionist barriers in front of new comers. As the economist, Ha-Joon Chang, observed: having reached the top of the pile themselves they now wish to kick away the ladder. African software developers have enough barriers to entry as it is, without the introduction of artificial restrictions on what programs they are and aren.t allowed to write. When Steven Biko wrote .I write what I like. he was not referring to computer programs but it would certainly be an apt motto for today.s generation of African Free Software developers. It will become increasingly important for FOSSFA to continue to lobby and mobilize to keep this intellectual space open.

One cannot be in Dakar without being painfully aware of the tragic history of the slave trade. For three hundred years, the Maison des Esclaves (Slave House) on Gorée Island, was a hub in the system of forceful transportation of Africans as slaves to the plantations of the West Indies and the southern states of America. Over the same period people were being brought as slaves from the Malay Archipelago and elsewhere to South Africa. The institution of slavery played such a fundamental role in the early development of our current global economy, that by the end of the 18th century, the slave trade was a dominant factor in the globalised system of trade of the day.

As we find ourselves today in this new era of the globalised Knowledge Economy there are lessons we can and must draw from that earlier era. That a crime against humanity of such monstrous proportions was justified by the need to uphold the property rights of slave owners and traders should certainly make us more than a little cautious about what should and should not be considered suitable for protection as property..

Her comments are far ranging, but for me being a software developer, being sued for creating a smiley face that has already been patented is not my idea of a good time... as an example.

We do need a reality check regarding patents on software. We do have good corporate citizens like IBM who build real products, and obtain real patents, and make real money. Yes, I know there is dirt under the carpet over there, but still, with over 100,000 employees, they must be doing something correct.

Here's hoping that Microsoft will somehow get its comeupance regarding bullying a 6000 page incomplete document through what was, at one point in time, a relatively decent standards process.

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