[Ecommerce] The Register: Open standards group to beat Microsoft at its own game

[Thiru Balasubramaniam]

The Register (UK)

Open standards group to beat Microsoft at its own game
Government lobbying, here we come

By Kieren McCarthy in Athens
More by this authorPublished Wednesday 1st November 2006 10:04 GMT

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/11/01/open_standards_coalition/

IGF The first "dynamic coalition" resulting from the Internet Governance
Forum (IGF) has vowed to get governments interested in adopting open
standards for both hardware and software.

A panel, which included academics, business, and standards bodies argued
its case in Athens, where one of the aims of open discussions between
different groups has been to get like-minded people together.

Sun Microsystems government policy head Susy Struble warned of
"technical hooks" being embedded into standards, where companies
suddenly claim controlling rights to widely adopted protocols, and
argued that government's proper role in developing standards needed to
be understood. "A truly open standard provides for the highest level of
competition," she said. "It provides more equitable access, and wider,
global interaction."

Meanwhile, Yale Information Society Project head Eddan Katz argued that
people tend to overlook the power governments have on standards - not
only in the purchase and widespread use of the chosen technologies, but
in the huge databases of information built by governments using
particular formats.

What no one at the launch - which included the head of technology at the
Library of Alexandria, Professor Magdy Nagi, Daniel Dardieller from W3C,
and Free Software Foundation Europe president Georg Greve - would say,
however, was that the initiative is hoping to take Microsoft on at its
own game, namely, persuading governments of the advantages of its software.

Ever since Linux was officially promoted as a threat to Microsoft's
enormous global software reach, representatives from the software giant
have gone to extraordinary lengths to promote the Microsoft software
model with governments across the world. The drive has been very
successful, and despite numerous reports praising the advantages of open
source software, governments have tended to stick with what they know.

It is this inertia that the "Open Standards Workshop Organisers Form
Coalition" hopes to fix.

"Governments talk about open standards in general terms," explained
Jamie Love from the Consumer Project on Technology. "It's one thing to
agree, but quite another to implement it."

Struble gave recent examples of the Danish government and the State of
Massachusetts' decision to use the open document format (ODF) as models.

The group therefore aims to produce a best practice guide for
governments in moving to open standards. The process will begin with a
"data collection phase" starting immediately and continue with a Yale
University symposium on the issue on 3 February.