[A2k] Sam Hiser: first impressions at Yale Symposium on Open Standards

[Manon Ress]

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[ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ]
This is Sam's witty as usual take on the Yale symposium.

There are also papers and other resources  at: http://
research.yale.edu/isp/eventsosis.html
Make sure you read submission to WTO: the Intellectual Property
Rights (IPR) Issues in Standardization (Communication from the
People=92s Republic of China) that was presented by Baisheng An.  Some
of the position papers are on the panels site.

Manon


http://fussnotes.typepad.com/plexnex/2007/02/yaly_osi_sympos.html

Yale Symposium, 1st Impressions

The Information Society Project symposium at Yale Law School
yesterday in New Haven was stimulating and gives cause for optimism
that law and software standards processes will eventually catch up
with the Internet.

Eventually.

The panel discussions focused attention on the need to acknowledge
the policital, legal and economic as well as technical relevance of
software code and of software standards processes; that software
standards are policies in disguise, that code is law, and that our
institutions exist today in the wrong shape to cope with creating and
managing technology that serves both public and private interests.

The day represented a start bringing good minds and experience from
the standards field together in what will be a multi-decade dialogue
ahead (extending on the 10 years we've already logged) to define open
standards in a way that will achieve good results.

Grounds for pessimism exist. This was a polite discussion where the
word 'Microsoft' was mentioned only once all day (my memory servers
me well here), even though Microsoft people contributed well and co-
sponsored the event. Yet we sat in the room while Microsoft continues
abuses of standards processes (the current ODF v Microsoft Office
Open XML conflict at ISO) and continues illegal, unacceptable and
dishonest behavior with its application interfaces (Vista, Office,
Sharepoint, Windows Server, SQL Server, Dynamics, etc.) -- crimes of
which it has already been convicted -- in order to protect its
markets. This Elephant in the Living Room and those two single-malts
the prior evening conspired to provide me a thumping headache all
day; oddly, it went away right when Jason Matusow -- the gentleman --
reached out and shook my hand upon the close. (Yet I'm still very
pissed off at him for the timed announcement on Friday supporting the
Microsoft-Clever Age-Novell MOOXML-to-ODF translator -- full of
baloney and gamesmanship about interop while delivering so
poorly...we looked at it right away: the C# routines are hogs and the
XSL Transformations weak. And the tactics with JTC 1 makes one
shudder and lose hope that there is ever a chance of getting out from
under the situation.)

On the plus side, markets themselves are less kind these days to
Microsoft and its self-preservational eccentricities (evidence: Mac's
success, Zune's failure, Vista's cool reception), and Harvard, Yale,
MIT, UC Berkely & NYU law & media integration programs (the ones I'm
aware of) are producing constructive conversations in the right
directions and generating graduate students who are trickling into
the field to make impact. This is an interesting and vibrant
conversation and it's spilling out from these elite institutions,
already having an influence.

One takes what one wants or needs to hear in these settings. For
myself, here's three things I heard that I like a lot.

I.    'Miltiple standards to do the same thing are a mess.'

(Peter Strickx - FEDICT, Belgium)

Peter was funny and quite to the point. It was very useful to see how
Belgium's three-culture, three-language system has produced a "weak-
federal" governmental structure in which the federal entity sees its
role as providing services to citizens and, equally, to the strong
regional and local governments. This is the context in which XML
offers an unusually clear opportunity for smooth-working government
processes flexible enough to address the cross-cultural requirements.
That's why ODF -- for one standard -- shouts out to the Belgians,
louder than to most other areas.

II.    "Standards inherently limit innovation! That's the purpose of
standards!"

(Rishab Gosh - University of Maastricht, First Monday)

A clear outline of economics & standards which will have made the
Microsoft representatives uncomfortable (though they remained
outwardly stoic). My loud applause was an infantile gesture to ensure
they felt even less comfortable.

III.    'Standards are policies: code is law'

(Vittorio Bertola, John Palfrey & Robin Gross)

The reference is to Lessig's Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. Larry
Lessig is always in the room when standards and law come up. And
rightly so. These are prominent and durable ideas that are going to
influence the re-structuring of our governments' and businesses'
attitudes to software standards.

I learned speaking with John Palfrey (Berkman Center's director), and
from his mercifully focused remarks on the Law panel, that his
direction this year will be to define what it means to be an open
standard and then map that in the general case to a set of desirable
outcomes. This should provide a much needed reference for specific
standards cases and for standards bodies to contrast their efforts
and shape appropriate policies.

On the day, the panels were very good (boring only in a few
individual cases). The leaders at Yale's Information Society Project
-- Jack Balkin, Eddan Katz & Visiting Fellow, Laura DeNardis --
deserve to be pleased with the result. And the student fellows in ISP
and from elsewhere who attended have a lot to chew on.

I regret missing dinner (back to the nest I went by Amtrak), since
some of these people are starting to feel like a family to me.

I would really love to see a list of possible position paper topics
-- Daniel Benoliel mentioned this during his excellent panel
moderation -- suggested by this symposium. This could give the
Student Fellows and people elsewhere ways to embrace, extend &
enhance the conversation.

Sutor -- who presented well and succinctly -- later showed me his
Second Life stuff and it really is compelling -- not to be sniffled at.

************************************************************************
***
Manon Anne Ress
manon.ress@cptech.org,
www.cptech.org

Consumer Project on Technology
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