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IBM standards practices
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Wed, 24 Sep 2008 03:09:44 -0400
Begin forwarded message: From: Rod Van Meter <rdv () sfc wide ad jp> Date: September 23, 2008 9:12:56 PM EDT To: David Farber <dave () farber net> Subject: IBM standards practices Hi Dave, for IP if you wish...(I'm a little surprised this hasn't gone around here yet): IBM convened a (virtual) panel this summer to review its corporate position on standards. It is commonly perceived that this action was in response to IBM's unhappiness about OOXML being picked over ODF for a standard document format. Quoting: The tenets of IBM's new policy are to: * 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. For example, IBM will: * Review and take necessary actions concerning its membership in standards organizations. * In the regions and countries where we do business, encourage local participation in the creation and use of standards that solve the problems and meet the requirements of all affected stakeholders around the world. We will advocate governance policies in standards bodies that encourage diverse participation. * Advance governance rules within standards bodies that ensure technology decisions, votes, and dispute resolutions are made fairly by independent participants, protected from undue influence. * Work for process reform in standards organizations so that proxies or surrogates cannot be used in standards creation and approval. * Collaborate with standards organizations and stakeholders to streamline and consolidate intellectual property licenses and policies, with a focus on enabling software applications to become more easily interoperable by the use of open standards. ----- All apple pie and motherhood. We'll see how it plays out in practice. IBM has apparently singled out W3C as an organization they're happy with, and ECMA as one they're unhappy with. Of course, everyone here knows that by the time something gets to Standard, it's rarely what was originally envisioned, and a great deal of camelizing the horse has been done. The big question is, is the world a better place *with* the standard than it would have been *without* it? IBM's site: http://www.research.ibm.com//files/standards_wikis.shtml (the wiki itself where the discussion took place is not obvious; it may be closed, but there is a summary in PDF.) One of many news articles about it: http://www.crn.com/hardware/210603397 --Rod ------------------------------------------- Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
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- IBM standards practices David Farber (Sep 24)