• Courthouse News Service - Reuters Says George Mason University Is Handing Out Its Proprietary Software

  “Thomson Reuters demands $10 million and an injunction to stop George Mason University from distributing its new Web browser application, Zotero software, an open-source format that allows users to convert Reuters’ EndNote Software. Reuters claims George Mason is violating its license agreement and destroying the EndNote customer base.”

  tags: OB, open source

Though we’ve not quite gotten everything resolved in the final Major League Baseball standings, I thought I would go out on a limb and give you some predictions, though not too seriously.

American League

In the East we have Tampa Bay already winning the division with the Boston Red Sox clinching the league wildcard position. Since the Yankees didn’t get into the playoffs, I don’t care very much here, but I can at least eliminate the Red Sox because, well, they’re the Red Sox. (I’ve lived most of my life in New York State, what did you expect?)

In the West, the Los Angeles Angeles of Anaheim clinched the division. However, since they have the longest and silliest name, I’m tossing them out without further thought. (New York Mets of Queens, anyone?)

One thing giving me pause is that they have the best record on the major leagues this year and could win 100 games if they win today, but I just can’t get past the name thing.

In the Central Division things are more problematic for me. The Minnesota Twins (of Minneapolis) are the official team of the state in which Bob Dylan was borned and raised. However, they’re only slightly ahead as I write this of the Chicago White Sox. Chicago has two major league baseball teams, the White Sox on the southside and the Cubs on the northside. My daughter is a college student at the University of Chicago, which is on the southside. Blood is thicker than music, so the nod goes to the White Sox.

So the choice is between Tampa Bay and the Chicago White Sox. Easy, my choice is the White Sox.

National League

In the West, the Los Angeles Dodgers, who are managed and coached by the most of the guys who handled the New York Yankees for the last decade or so clinched but have a pretty lousy record to date for a playoff team, 84-77. So sentimentally it’s nice that they won the division, but I personally don’t think any team that can’t win 90 of 162 games should be in the playoffs.

I’m not being really consistent on this since the Chicago White Sox are 86-74, but evidently some people think that the two leagues should have different rules, so tough. (Kill the Designated Hitter rule, long live some actually batting order strategy.)

In the East the Philadelphia Phillies have clinched, but the New York Mets and the Milwaukee Brewers are tied with today’s final games of the season yet to be played. My preferred result here is the New York Mets winning since I was a Mets fan until we moved so far away from the City that we couldn’t see the games regularly. Today was supposed to be the last regular season game at Shea Stadium (in Queens), but if the Mets and Brewers both win or lose today, there will be a playoff game at Shea tomorrow. Of course, if the Mets advance into the playoffs there will likely be additional games at Shea.

In the Central Division the Chicago Cubs have clinched with the best record in the League, 97-63, at this point. The Cubs have not won the World Series since 1908, 100 years. Though geographically I should root for the Mets, I’m going with the Cubs to win the League Championship.

Thus I’m hoping for a Chicago vs. Chicago World Series, northside vs. southside.

This is a tough one, given the new family connection to the southside. However, the Cubs have the much better record and the much longer drought of World Series victories. Also, though it has been a long time since the Cubbies won the big one, the fans have had an incredibly positive, non-nasty, far-from-bitter attitude about it.

Go Cubs!

I’ll update this from time to time based on reality.

Sunday Update

Mets lost, Brewers won, so Philadelphia Phillies, Chicago Cubs, and Los Angeles Dodgers all won their divisions and are in the National League playoffs, and the Milwaukee Brewers are the wildcard.

In the American League, Tampa Bay and LA won the East and West, respectively, and Boston is the wildcard. The Central is not decided and might last two more days: the Chicago White Sox must play a makeup game against the Detroit Tigers on Monday. If the White Sox lose, Minnesota wins the Central and Chicago goes home for the winter, since Boston already clinched the wildcard. If they win, the Twins and White Sox play on Tuesday with the winner getting the division and the loser getting to watch the playoffs on television.

• Vulindlela - Open the Path - ODF workshop update

  “Just two weeks to go before the 2nd International ODF User Workshop — hosted by South Africa’s Department of Home Affairs in collaboration with the ODF Alliance — kicks off on October 9 in Pretoria. ODF has come of age in 2008. Since the first ODF workshop in Berlin in October 2007, many governments have moved from policy adoption and are now down the road to implementation. We have a great lineup of speakers from governments around the world who will share their successes and challenges in adopting the OpenDocument Format.”

  tags: OB, ODF, South Africa

• Second Life’s Popularity Rests On Breadth Of Activities — second life — InformationWeek

  “What is there to do in Second Life? Finding your way around and learning about what to do there can be tricky for newcomers. Here is some information to help you get started.”

  tags: OB, virtual worlds, Second Life

• State to Replace, Not Rebuild, Tappan Zee Bridge - NYTimes.com

  “[New York] State officials announced an ambitious plan on Friday to replace the Tappan Zee Bridge with a new bridge with room for commuter trains and high-speed bus lanes. The price tag for a new bridge and expanded rail and bus lines: $16 billion.”

  tags: OB, bridge, NY

• Metamorphosis - Sweden: ODF made national standard

  “SIS CEO Lars Flink explains that in August 2007, SIS decided to abstain from voting on OOXML at ISO, after finding out some of the members in its OOXML committee had voted more than once. “Also, at the day of the vote, the SIS committee had also gotten between 25 and 27 new members, most of which were in favour of OOXML. At the time, our rules allowed such late-comers at the time. We have changed those rules.” Since April of this year, organisations that want to vote on standards at SIS, must have been a member for at least three weeks, Flink says. “They must be a participant in the standard committee when we send out the documents, which is three weeks ahead of the vote.” Flink did not know how many of the organisations that joined the OOXML vote at the last minute were still members. “I know a number of them have dropped membership.”"

  tags: OB, ODF, OOXML, Sweden

• A Goodbye to Shea Stadium From the Cockpit - NYTimes.com

  “La Guardia is one of the few airports in the country where pilots use land markers instead of instruments to guide their landings, along with Seattle (a shopping mall) and Washington (a river). Shea Stadium, which from the sky looks like a blue circle with a green center, is a primary runway guidepost. For one of the more common landing routes, pilots are instructed to follow the Long Island Expressway until they arrive at the eastern side of the stadium, at which point they bank the plane left around the outfield wall and head straight for Runway 31.”

  tags: OB, flight

• InternetNews Realtime IT News - A New Breed of Open Source Shopping Carts

  “While the Big Three of the old guard — osCommerce, Zen Cart, and CRE Loaded — continue to duke it out among themselves, new-generation open source commerce projects have begun to spring up with new ideas and new ways of thinking. Most noteworthy of the new crop are France-based Prestashop and US-based programs Ubercart and Magento.”

  tags: OB, open source

• An Antic Disposition: Introducing the ODF Interoperability and Conformance TC

  “For the past 6 months I’ve been talking to my peers at a number of ODF vendor companies, to fellow standards professionals in OASIS, to ODF adopters, as well as to people who have gone through interoperability efforts like this before. I’ve given a few presentations on ODF interoperability conferences and led a workshop on the topic. I led a 90-day mailing discussion on the ODF interoperability. Generally, I’ve been trying to find the best place and set of activities needed to bring the interested parties together and achieve the high level of interoperability we all want to see with ODF.”

  tags: OB, ODF, OASIS

• EA hit with class action suit over ‘Spore’ | Gaming and Culture - CNET News

  “Earlier this week, a class action suit was filed in the Northern District of California Court on behalf of Melissa Thomas and all other Spore purchasers. The suit contends that EA violated the California Consumer Legal Remedies Act and Unfair Competition Law by failing to inform consumers that by installing Spore, they also inadvertently install a program called SecuROM. SecuROM is a copy protection program that limits the number of times software can be installed on a PC. In the case of Spore, that limit was set to three (and later upped to five).”

  tags: OB, Spore, video games

• What makes Warhammer Online special, by Paul Barnett - Massively

  Err, there is no Mac or Linux version, so I really can’t tell.

  tags: OB, Warhammer, video games

Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of the Linux Foundation, has just issued the “Linux Foundation Statement on IBM IT Standards Policy.” He concludes with

Like IBM, the Foundation is working for similar goals. Accordingly, the Foundation calls upon others to support the principles laid out in the IBM announcement, and make common cause with this worthwhile effort.

I’m happy to discuss the Standards Principles with anyone who might like to join in on the effort to increase openness, transparency, accountability, and intellectual property certainty in standards setting.

To learn more about the Principles, see my blog entry from yesterday and the links therein.

This afternoon I was scheduled on a 4:45 flight out of Rochester, NY, to Washington, DC. Unless I have other business near the airport, I usually leave home about two hours before my flight. That gets me there with more than enough time to spare in case there is a long security line or other problem. This is how it went today.

2:30 Leave house and go to ATM at bank.

3:15 Park car at airport.

3:20 Get completely through security, notice that my flight is delayed, but so was previous flight.

3:30 Board previous flight, have two seats to myself near back of plane.

3:40 Wheels up for plane.

4:36 Wheels down in DC.

5:10 At hotel.

Perhaps this good luck is payback for all the flight delays I’ve suffered through around the world. I hope it’s not a downpayment on a really big delay yet to come.

For DC at least I can always rent a car and drive home, though it takes about six hours once I’m past the beltway. I considered that today since it was such a beautiful Autumn day, but I’m glad I stuck to the plane itinerary. Besides, I really do need to get the prescription checked on my sunglasses. This was obvious after driving 9 1/2 hours from Chicago this weekend. I got home with a really good headache a feeling that someone had been squeezing my eyeballs. Sorry about that imagery.

• EA in Spore DRM climbdown • The Register

  “The company will now allow players to install the game an unlimited number of times, so long as its not installed on more than five computers at the same time. EA also plans to release a patch this week to support multiple screen names, allowing families to play separate games on a shared computer.”

  tags: OB, Spore, video games

Just happened.

RING

“Hi, is Terrence there?”

“Sorry, you have the wrong number.”

“Oh! Sorry!”

HANGUP

RING

“Hi, is Terrence there?”

“Wrong number again.”

“Well, this is the number he gave me, so if he is home, give him the phone.”

“Really, there is no Terrence here.”

“Oh my God, I’m going to get that kid.”

HANGUP

It’s been an interesting day as I’ve watched the various responses to the publication of the IBM Standards Principles. As I hoped, they raised some issues and started some debates. I suspect that longtime readers of this blog will find themes in the principles that I have discussed here before.

The principles themselves are meant to be taken as a whole and are written, I think, in a positive, constructive way. For example, some of the words and phrases used include:

• “create economic development platforms”
• “deliver services to their citizens”
• “quality and openness”
• “adopt open and global standards”
• “participate”
• “advance”
• “collaborate”
• “clear, simple, and consistent”

These principles demonstrate IBM’s continued and expanded support for open standards, as well as the importance they hold for our customers. We are strengthening our commitment to open standards and the value they bring to all.

Let me add a few comments to the principles themselves, in reverse order.

-o-

Help drive the creation of clear, simple and consistent intellectual property policies for standards organizations, thereby enabling standards developers and implementers to make informed technical and business decisions.

I discussed this in the seventh prediction I made at LinuxWorld 2008. In that blog entry I said

Over at the Creative Commons, they’ve worked out six licenses that allow for several types of “free” use of creative content. The website allows you to check a few options, answer a few questions, and voila, you have a license.

I think something similar could work for standards organizations. Even though mathematically the different possible options for each element of a license could lead to a combinatorial explosion, in practice only one or two of the options are in common use.

We need to develop this small number of license templates and we need to get standards organizations to commit to using them, without change. No tweaking. No saying “Well, we’re special so we’re going to modify this area.” You’re not special.

If there were fewer licenses, they would be better understood. Approval to participate in standards efforts would become simpler. We would better know how to create products and software that mixed and matched standards from different sources. We would better understand how standards licenses lined up with open source licenses.

Where appropriate, we also need to employ ex ante, the early notification of intellectual property that applies to a standard. Disclosure up front so there are no unexpected surprises later.

-o-

Collaborate with standards bodies and developer communities to ensure that open software interoperability standards are freely available and implementable.

This is consistent with the software interoperability pledge that IBM made in June, 2007. More than that, it’s making sure that standards developers and software implementers, be it for open source or proprietary software, share requirements and work together to maximize use of the highest quality standards that will do well in the market. It also means that the right policies need to be in place and well understood by everyone.

-o-

Advance governance rules within standards bodies that ensure technology decisions, votes, and dispute resolutions are made fairly by independent participants, protected from undue influence.

Back in the 1990s I was a member of the W3C Document Object Working Group. One source of entertainment at some of the meetings was when two employees of the same company would argue strenuously for positions that were diametrically opposed. At the other extreme, having a large group of standards participants voting as a bloc, seemingly under the control of one party, does not bring balance and equilibrium to the situation.

That’s not to say that different people coming from their own positions can’t agree and therefore vote the same way. The problem comes when decisions are reached in ways that don’t reflect real independence of the decision makers.

I’ve asked before in this blog if we don’t need some sort of full disclosure from standards participants. In the wiki IBM facilitated last summer, there was a good discussion of the notions of open government and how these might apply to standards making. Over time various votes on standards will be won or lost. I think an open, transparent organization should help users and other stakeholders understand who voted how and why. This is especially true for organizations that represent countries. We must have and understand accountability.

-o-

Encourage emerging and developed economies to both adopt open global standards and to participate in the creation of those standards.

When we have a minimal number of high quality standards that many people around the world can use, then implementing software and other products can become easier. We get better interoperability and we can exchange information globally. We get more competition, wherever it might come from. This drives more and better choices of software and other products for customers.

Standards should take into account requirements coming from anyone who might use the standards, even if that person or organization is on the other side of the planet from you. Conversely, the more countries or regions that use global standards instead of creating local silos, the better connected we all will be.

A standard that can be used with great success globally does not necessarily have to be an “international” standard. Standards organizations need to respect the needs and opinions of technology creators and users from both emerging and established economies.

-o-

Begin or end participation in standards bodies based on the quality and openness of their processes, membership rules, and intellectual property policies.

IBM belongs to many, many fine standards organizations and we look forward to long and productive relationships with them. These organizations and their work are strategic to IBM’s business and the products and services it offers to its customers. IBM is proud to be a member of these groups.

Today IBM has various processes in place that determine if it joins a particular organization or a working group within it. I think these work well and they include both business and legal analyses. Usually IBM doesn’t join a particular effort if the work it is undertaking doesn’t match IBM’s business model. For example, I don’t think IBM is in any standards group that is creating specifications for, say, umbrellas.

IBM may choose to not participate in an effort if IBM thinks it unnecessarily duplicates previous, presumably better work. This was the case with OOXML in ECMA. If IBM gets involved with a standards effort it is because IBM thinks it is important and is something it will likely implement. This involves a lot of resources and, as with any organization, those resources need to employed efficiently and in the right places.

With this principle, IBM is saying that it will increasingly look more closely at issues like the openness and transparency of a standards organization, as well as the modernness and consistency of the processes and intellectual property rules. IBM did so before, but it will do more in the future. IBM will sharpen and communicate its criteria to those involved in a cooperative manner.

Notwithstanding the various sexy headlines I’ve seen today, leaving a standards group would be a last resort. Though IBM is but one company, it hopes to use its experience to help resolve problems that are found in a constructive and collegial way, before the situation becomes too dire.

-o-

To reiterate what I said at the beginning, IBM is more committed to open standards than ever before. IBM believes that open standards are good for customers since they provide more options, better products, and insurance against being locked in by any one vendor or provider.

I hope others will find value in these principles.

• Stanford and Harvard teach businesses how to squash open source | The Open Road - The Business and Politics of Open Source by Matt Asay - CNET News

  “More intriguingly, despite open source’s still-small market share relative to the Microsofts and Oracles of the world, it’s surely meaningful that professors from the world’s elite business institutions are turning their attention to figuring out how to beat open source. If it weren’t a threat, there would be no market for research like this.”

  tags: OB, open source

• Lorem Ipsum - All the facts - Lipsum generator

  “Lorem Ipsum comes from sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of “de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum” (The Extremes of Good and Evil) by Cicero, written in 45 BC. This book is a treatise on the theory of ethics, very popular during the Renaissance. The first line of Lorem Ipsum, “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet..”, comes from a line in section 1.10.32.”

  tags: OB, Latin, typesetting

The press release just hit about IBM’s new set of standards principles. I’ll have more on this in the morning, and there will be a lot to say over the next few days because there are some subtle points to it. All the principles are important, and they are not listed in any priority order. I’m anticipating that some stories will emphasize some aspects more than others, but if these cause some good discussion, that’s great.

Here are the principles from the press release:

• Begin or end participation in standards bodies based on the quality and openness of their processes, membership rules, and intellectual property policies.
• Encourage emerging and developed economies to both adopt open global standards and to participate in the creation of those standards.
• Advance governance rules within standards bodies that ensure technology decisions, votes, and dispute resolutions are made fairly by independent participants, protected from undue influence.
• Collaborate with standards bodies and developer communities to ensure that open software interoperability standards are freely available and implementable.
• Help drive the creation of clear, simple and consistent intellectual property policies for standards organizations, thereby enabling standards developers and implementers to make informed technical and business decisions.

If you are interested in a version of the standards principles in presentation form, I’ve put one together. It says the same thing as the press release but is structured slightly differently.

The September, 2008, OpenDocument Format Alliance newsletter is now available in PDF form. I might be mistaken, but it looks to me to be the longest and most news filled edition yet.