rants

This morning I wanted to blog about my lesson at the MIP Politecnico Business School, but I stumbled upon this story that made me hate my Nokia 6680.  I tried syncing my Symbian based phone with my Ubuntu so many times but all I got was frustration.  This guy, OTOH, reports an [almost] flawless experience syncing Evolution with his WinCE based phone.  I’m so jealous. Is this the luck of the newbie or is it that Nokia has screwed things up royally?

I’ve been aware of the existence of the Linux operating system for a long time, but I’d always assumed that it would be too complicated for me to learn and was a bit too geeky. Recently, however, I began hearing about a version of Linux called Ubuntu that was supposed to be pretty easy to use. Flash forward a few weeks and not only have I found that it is relatively easy to use, but it’s already replaced Windows Vista as my main operating system of choice for day to day use!

Read more: A New Adventure! Windows Mobile and Ubuntu Linux

Oh, come on!? This is not a community, it’s a list of companies  that are doing business with Microsoft and have been doing so for a looooong time. There is no space for discussions, comments, hints and tips, chats or any other form of interaction.  Anybody that agrees that his

Company Name and URL may be published on this website and shared with ISO national standards bodies.

What is Microsoft trying to demonstrate here? That they have many partners? It’s not a secret, we all know it already.  How that site is going to demonstrate that OpenXML deserves to be called an ‘open standard‘ is beyond my understanding. Unless Microsoft really thinks that the ISO national standards bodies can be fooled by a list of companies on a useless web site.

Sam Hiser has started giving a look at Microsoft’s Office Open XML License.  His first reading classify this license as

a promise that, in practice, is not a promise.

PlexNex: Analyzing the Microsoft Office Open XML License

What do you think of it?   

Roberto is asking the same question I am asking: 

There are many proposal definitions of Open Format,[…]So, what about a “Free Format” definition?

I have explored new terms with the list discussion in July and came up with the term I used on the brief paper I wrote on the topic: Open Unencumbered Standard.  It’s ugly, though.  I personally don’t like the term Free Standard because I really don’t want to start again the ‘open is not free’ debate: it has bored me to death already for software and I wish we could get over it.

Roberto is asking a very difficult question: is OGG/Theora a standard, after all?  Since it is not documented in anything else but the source code, and the code is distributed under BSD license, what will make sure that nobody will start predatory practices on the format? 

I understand Richard’s request though, based on practical terms as usual: there are no other formats for audio/video that aren’t encumbered by nasty patents.  

Is OGG a standard?  Probably not.  Is it an open unencumbered format? I think so.  Will my data be safe for future use?  This is the most difficult question to answer: one can say that since the code is out there you can always write the decoder.  But real life is more complex than that.

I am dealing with a paper about standards and Free Software and I’ve found out that the term ‘open standard’ is a very common term in literature (and commercial advertising).  According to most of the definitions I found, an ‘open standard’ can be patented and, at best, subject to RAND licensing policies.  This translate into ‘open standard _can_ be impossible to implement in Free Software’.

Now, since I am summarizing in this paper what defines a standard that is implementable in Free Software, it would be nice to propose also a term that is non controversial like ‘open standard’. 

Free standard is not good: I don’t think it’s savvy to replicate the fight between ‘open’ and ‘free’.  A friend whispered ‘non discriminatory standard’ but he agrees that the negation at the beginning is less than optimal.  I couldn’t think of any more solutions, so I ask here two questions: 

1) does it make sense to introduce in the Free Software community a new term that is non-controversial and more precise than the generic ‘open standard’?

2) if yes, what would that term be?

Any suggestion appreciated. Please comment here or on the list Discussion where I posted this same message and I will summarize any useful result.