06/03: Openness in New Orleans
While there - a good friend of mine, Butterworth (who just happened to be here when Katrina rolled through), brought to my attention a problem my industry is facing which I did not recognize until recently. He wondered where I stood on the question of openness. Blindsided by some of the sites at the tail end of Bourban Street - I wondered where he was going with this.
Apparently New Orleans had a problem during Katrina where they couldn't access a site because their software didn't recognize a seemingly standard webpage. Quite frankly, my initial reaction was that I could care less. I had more important things on my mind like the wine list and dinner at Cuvee', and how many more flashers I would need to ride through. The more we discussed it - the more I began to realize that many industries are facing a problem: what if the files I from my computer could no longer be read. What if the history I keep in Microsoft Word could no longer be read by my descendants - who would keep up the "Archer Standards"? What if Microsoft suddenly decided that previous versions of Excel were out of date and deactivated them just as easily as they activated them?
One person who is always up for a spirited conversation regarding all that is wrong with Closed-Source Microsoft is my good friend Scott McNealy of Sun Microsystems. He is constantly calling me to find out a good strategy for knocking Gates-y down a notch or two. So I asked him about this openness question and whether the Microsfot Word documents I write are truly "Standard", even though everyone seems to have Word. Scott was so happy that I was asking that he dropped an eMail to me explaining this idea of making "open source" software mainstream and adopted by the big boys in corporate America. I was so impressed by his response - I gave it to my friends at the WSJ. It's a pretty convicing argument he made - Here was his letter:
Dear Bob,
Thanks for the pretzels. Those were the ones I loved from your party. Following up on our debate about your pal Butterworth, here were my thoughts: In principle at least, there is no controversy. No one would argue that content you create belongs to anyone but you. But, in fact, it doesn't.
That's the dirty little secret behind much of the software people use today. In business, in government, in schools and in homes all around the world, we entrust our work to software applications: word processors, spreadsheets, presentation programs and all the rest. And, too often, that's where we lose control of our own words and thoughts -- simply on account of the way we save our documents. Because we tend to store information in formats that are owned and managed by a single dominant company, in a few short years we may no longer be able to access our files if the format is "upgraded." Or we may be required to buy a new expensive version of the software just to access our own thoughts. We do it without giving it a second thought. After all, what's the alternative? A typewriter? An adding machine? A quill?
Think about it: If the Constitution were being drafted today, we would likely lose free, or low cost, or even any kind of access to much of the vital background in the Framers' correspondence to one another -- all because the file format will no longer be supported sometime in the future. A letter is more or less permanent, and easily transferable to different environments. An email is not.
Software appears to give us all the control we need over our documents -- until it doesn't. The problem shows up when we decide to try something different. A new way of doing things or a different software application. Something better. Something cheaper, more reliable, easier. But we're stuck with all these files in a format that's exclusive to the company from which we bought the first software application. In business, that's called a barrier to exit. Companies that create barriers to exit figure we won't notice until it's too late when the cost of switching is too high.
In the larger scheme of things, barriers to exit are bad for the consumer. It means that in the long term we often end up paying more than we should and getting less innovation than we would on a level playing field. Companies should compete on the value their products provide, not on their ability to lock customers into a proprietary "standard." At this point, some people throw up their hands and say that's just the way of the world. Nothing we can do about it.
Not so. There is now an open, international standard for common personal productivity applications -- spreadsheet, presentation and word-processing programs -- called the OpenDocument Format (ODF). Approved by an independent standards body, ODF has the backing of a broad community of supporters including consumer groups, academic institutions, a collection of library associations including the American Library Association, and many leading high-tech companies, but no single company owns it or controls it. (A "standard" created and controlled by a single company is not a true standard.) Any company can incorporate the OpenDocument Format into its products, free of charge, and tear down the barriers to exit.
Imagine being able to open any email attachment, read it and make changes, even if you don't have the exact program it was created in. That's the kind of interoperability the OpenDocument Format is designed to foster.
If this standard is to become a reality, we must insist on it. In the U.S., Massachusetts has been leading the way with a mandate that all software purchased by the commonwealth comply with ODF. Globally, 13 nations are considering adopting it. The reason is simple. The data belongs to the people, not to the software vendor that created the file format.
If you don't think this is an issue, take a look at what happened after Hurricane Katrina. People needing emergency services information found that some government Web sites could only be accessed from a single brand of Web browser. Important, publicly-funded information -- in some cases life-saving information -- was unavailable unless you used that specific brand. That's like being told you can't use the highway because you aren't driving a Ford truck. It seems to me that this is one of those times when a government mandate makes sense -- so that we can all use the road and choose what car we want to drive.
Am I guilty of oversimplification? Sure. But you get the idea. In an increasingly connected world, having a single, open standard is the only thing that makes sense. And if there are competing standards, as sometimes happens (and appears to be happening here), they need to be harmonized. The extra added benefit of open standards is that they encourage competition, which spurs innovation and economic growth. Nothing controversial about that, is there?
Keep the Pretzels coming. I look forward to catching another hockey game soon
Your Friend,
Scott
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All this heavy talk on openness - Thanks Buttersworth - you helped me write off this trip.
