[Ecommerce] Updegrove: Sun's McNealy Calls for Merger of OASIS/ISO's ODF and China's UOF

[Manon Ress]

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[ Picked text/plain from multipart/alternative ]
Sun's McNealy Calls for Merger of OASIS/ISO's ODF and China's UOF

http://www.consortiuminfo.org/standardsblog/article.php?
story=3D20070417025728436

'm speaking at a couple of conferences in Beijing, the first of which
is called WTO and IPR's: Issues in Standardization, convened by the
Chinese Ministry of Commerce, China's State Intellectual Property
Office (SIPO) and Sun Microsystems, and supported by a half dozen
other Chinese Ministries, Councils and Commissions. One of the
keynote speakers today was Scott McNealy, the Chairman of both Sun
Microsystems and Sun Federal, Inc., Sun's government sales arm.

The overall focus of the conference is intellectual property rights
(the IPRs in the conference title), a topic of more than usually
current interest, given that the US brought a formal complaint
against China before the World Trade Organization (the WTO in the
conference title) last week, charging China with inadequate efforts
to police infringement of IPR. Only a few days thereafter, China
enacted laws that would decrease by half the number of copies of
pirated content that would constitute "serious" (from 1,000 down to
500), and from "very serious" (from 5,000 to 2,500), and more
significantly, dramatically increase the penalties for doing so.
Presumably each side was aware of the other's intended actions, so
the new Chinese legislation is likely intended more as a public
refutation of US charges rather than a concession likely to take the
complaint off the WTO's table.

But the conference is also timely in that McNealy took a meaningful
amount of time during his presentation to note that there are (in his
words) three main document formats in existence today: Microsoft
Office, Open Document Format (ODF) and China's Uniform Office Format
(UOF). And he also called for the last two to be merged.


What is significant about his statement is not the sentiment, as a
harmonization or merger of the two formats has been a topic of
conversation and speculation for some time. OASIS, for example,
chartered a working group some months ago to explore with the Chinese
how the two formats might be brought closer. But until now, ODF
proponents have been shy about placing any pressure on the Chinese to
take any such action, not unlike someone who very much wants to be
asked on a date, but is afraid to scare off the object of affection
by being too forward.

The same call for merger was made even more forcefully later in the
day, when Crawford Beveridge, Executive Vice President and Chairman,
Sun, EMEA APAC and the Americas spoke. Perhaps further mention will
be made by another speaker tomorrow. If so, I'll need to learn second
hand, as I'll be speaking at a UN Asia-Pacific development program
conference then.

Why the call for harmonization or merger would be made here is not
difficult to guess. For Sun's Chairman to travel all the way to China
to deliver the message is clearly good diplomacy. One might wonder,
though, why now? Perhaps the comfort level and discussions between
the two sides relating to a technical d=E9tente may have risen to the
level where the timing is right. Or perhaps Sun wants to add one more
element of momentum behind the advance of ODF while OOXML is under
review in ISO, if the Chinese are receptive to the invitation.

Will they be? Presumably McNealy would not have extended the
invitation if he did not expect it to be welcomed. Whether, and how,
it may be accepted, however, will have a lot to do with exactly how a
reconciliation of the two formats might be achieved. At one level,
ODF and UOF could be harmonized in such a way that implementations of
each could natively (rather than through plugins) save documents in
the other format. And at the highest level, the specifications for
the two formats could actually be merged into one, which I'm told
would be possible.   Which approach (if either) is actually taken may
have a lot to do with China's overall strategy, which for the last
several years has been oriented towards developing "home grown"
standards in areas where high foreign royalty payments, or product
prices, would otherwise be encountered. These standards have most
notably been in the area of wireless (WAPI), video (AVS), and 3G
telephones (TD-SCMA), with other standards on the way.

For China to give up independence with UOF would run counter to this
trend, and would provide a very interesting bellwether indeed
regarding China's future standards strategy. To provide for the two
standards to coexist in a way (through harmonization) that would add
power to each would make good sense by any strategy. But to actually
merge the standards would be evidence of a braver and more
sophisticated strategy that would be more focused on achieving the
end result through international collaboration, rather than simply
through the unilateral exercise of its independent =96 and very
substantial =96 domestic market power.

I, for one, will be waiting with great interest to see whether
McNealy's invitation is accepted, and if so, through which of the two
technical approaches available.

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

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