[Fsf-friends] Fwd: When is a standard not a standard (sub-titled Microsoft and BIS)?

[Arun M]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Gora Mohanty <gora at sarai.net>
Date: Feb 23, 2007 6:55 PM
Subject: When is a standard not a standard (sub-titled Microsoft and BIS)?

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Hello,
  I had the (mis-)fortune of attending a seminar on Information
Technology Standardization [sic] organised for the Bureau of
Indian Standards (BIS), by MAIT. The ostensible reason for the
meeting was to identify requirements of the IT industry in order
"to formulate effective, meaningful and implementable standards".
The background for this is an effort by Microsoft to push through
a 6000-page document on Office Open XML (OOXML), presumably as a
counter-standard to Open Document Format (ODF). Details on this are
available on Venky's blog at http://www.osindia.blogspot.com/

  Due to other commitments, I had time to attend only the inaugural
session, which had a keynote address by Craig Mundie, the chief
research and strategy officer of Microsoft Corporation. Incidentally,
Microsoft was the only company represented on the panel, and allowed
to give a formal presentation, though representatives from open-source
companies, and the community were also present. Questions on the
talks were also not entertained. What was frankly disgusting was the
attitude of BIS officers, even those of senior ones, towards Microsoft;
going beyond courtesy, and even obsequiousness, to border on servility.
The HP laptop being used for the presentation prominently displayed the
Microsoft Vista logo.

  Mr. Mundie's presentation was, in my opinion, a masterpiece of double-
speak, and fascinated me so much that I made sure to make a transcript
of his slides. Apparently, having solved issues with security, privacy,
and reliability, Microsoft has been focusing on inter-operability over
the last 1.5 years. While this might seem like great news, Mr. Mundie
was diligent in avoiding any specific commitments, such as the simple
one of guaranteeing that any Microsoft application will be able to
export to an openly-published, patent-unencumbered, standard format,
without loss of information. While the presentation went ahead to extol
the virtues of meta-data, and the use of XML data formats, Mr. Mundie
somehow omitted to mention that XML does not automatically imply
openness, or freedom from patent restrictions. Finally, it seems to be
the opinion of Mr. Mundie that industry standards are needed to keep a
check on "unconstrained innovation", which leaves me wondering how
Microsoft knows about innovation, unconstrained or otherwise.

  Fun and games aside, I think that it is worthwhile for the open-source
community in India at large to formulate a coherent position on the use
of openly documented, and patent-free standards for any government data,
and to publicise the same to both government organisations, and the
media. It is our data, so we should have an absolute guarantee of
freedom in using it. I believe that Venky is drafting such a  document,
that we can put up on a Wiki, and use as a basis for a formal policy
paper.

Regards,
Gora