---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Gora Mohanty gora@sarai.net Date: Feb 23, 2007 6:55 PM Subject: When is a standard not a standard (sub-titled Microsoft and BIS)?

(This message is being sent primarily to the ILUG-Delhi and Sarai PRC mailing lists, but is also copied to people that Venkatesh Hariharan had sent the original message to. Please note that henceforth, I will only be following up on the ILUG-Delhi list. You have to join the list to post there (see http://www.linux-delhi.org/cgi-bin/anCMS/mailingList.cgi?action=mailingLists ), but the archives are available publicly at http://frodo.hserus.net/pipermail/ilugd/ and http://news.gmane.org/gmane.user-groups.linux.delhi/ )

Hello, I had the (mis-)fortune of attending a seminar on Information Technology Standardization [sic] organised for the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), by MAIT. The ostensible reason for the meeting was to identify requirements of the IT industry in order "to formulate effective, meaningful and implementable standards". The background for this is an effort by Microsoft to push through a 6000-page document on Office Open XML (OOXML), presumably as a counter-standard to Open Document Format (ODF). Details on this are available on Venky's blog at http://www.osindia.blogspot.com/

Due to other commitments, I had time to attend only the inaugural session, which had a keynote address by Craig Mundie, the chief research and strategy officer of Microsoft Corporation. Incidentally, Microsoft was the only company represented on the panel, and allowed to give a formal presentation, though representatives from open-source companies, and the community were also present. Questions on the talks were also not entertained. What was frankly disgusting was the attitude of BIS officers, even those of senior ones, towards Microsoft; going beyond courtesy, and even obsequiousness, to border on servility. The HP laptop being used for the presentation prominently displayed the Microsoft Vista logo.

Mr. Mundie's presentation was, in my opinion, a masterpiece of double- speak, and fascinated me so much that I made sure to make a transcript of his slides. Apparently, having solved issues with security, privacy, and reliability, Microsoft has been focusing on inter-operability over the last 1.5 years. While this might seem like great news, Mr. Mundie was diligent in avoiding any specific commitments, such as the simple one of guaranteeing that any Microsoft application will be able to export to an openly-published, patent-unencumbered, standard format, without loss of information. While the presentation went ahead to extol the virtues of meta-data, and the use of XML data formats, Mr. Mundie somehow omitted to mention that XML does not automatically imply openness, or freedom from patent restrictions. Finally, it seems to be the opinion of Mr. Mundie that industry standards are needed to keep a check on "unconstrained innovation", which leaves me wondering how Microsoft knows about innovation, unconstrained or otherwise.

Fun and games aside, I think that it is worthwhile for the open-source community in India at large to formulate a coherent position on the use of openly documented, and patent-free standards for any government data, and to publicise the same to both government organisations, and the media. It is our data, so we should have an absolute guarantee of freedom in using it. I believe that Venky is drafting such a document, that we can put up on a Wiki, and use as a basis for a formal policy paper.

Regards, Gora