Jeff Kaplan - Open ePolicy

Interested in Open Data, Open Gov & Open Innovation?

2011-06-18T13:56:00.008-04:00

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BBC Aims to Expand in Middle East

2009-09-23T12:13:00.004-04:00

The BBC has big ambitions in the Middle East.

Following on its launch of BBC Arabic last year, the BBC plans to be a major producer of original Arabic content.

Creating market-specific content will require new partnerships with local production, media services and marketing firms. In other worlds, big opportunities for local media companies in major Arabic markets.

When BBC's plans are seen in the context of recent investments by News Corp, Google and Yahoo, one thing becomes clear:

Big Media expects big business in the Middle East media market.

Social Networks Make You Fat and Happy

2009-09-12T15:54:00.009-04:00

Social networks can make you fat and happy.

That's not an opinion, that's a fact revealed by medical data collected over the past 50 years.

Simply put, our friends heavily influence our habits and happiness, from our weight to smoking (and quitting) and our overall joy.

All these things have a viral quality to them. You eat more, they eat more. You stop smoking, they are more likely to quit. Happiness is similarly contagious.

This image shows the Framingham social network, mapping the people of Framingham, Mass. in 2000.

Blue = sad
Yellow = happy
Green = shades in between

A quick look makes clear that sadness (blue nodes) and happiness (yellow) tend to cluster and spread together.

And the technology that powers online social networks does not change the basic dynamics common to all social networks.

It turns out that Facebook operates like most other social networks. It transmits the happiness virus just as well.

Just knowing that makes me happy.

Mapping Global Warming

2009-09-07T23:18:00.005-04:00

A very cool interactive tool here

... allows you to map the possible flooding that global warming may bring to your home if sea levels rise.

You can see any place in the world.

Here is a view of New York City if sea levels rise 2 meters from current levels.

This is Your Brain on Twitter (vs. Facebook)

2009-09-07T11:06:00.005-04:00

The science of social media is starting to attract attention.

At least one scientist is investigating the effects on working memory of using Facebook vs. Twitter.

His conclusion (oversimplified) is: Facebook makes you smarter. Twitter makes you dumber.

More specifically, Twitter requires less mental processing and fewer synapses firing. And reduces attention span ... as if people these days didn't already suffer enough from this problem.

Gov 2.0: Beyond the Platform

2009-09-04T16:06:00.007-04:00

Originator of the phrase Web 2.0, Tim O’Reilly seeks to breathe new life and purpose into the phrase Gov 2.0.

His mantra …Gov 2.0: It’s All About The Platform.

As Tim emphasizes, innovative new platforms are game-changers – for companies, economies, all of us. Think how interstate highways, personal computers, the Internet, GPS, even the iPhone each transformed society. Each was a new platform for commerce and people to use.

Today, new technologies are helping redefine what governments as a platform can accomplish. Gov 2.0 means more than simply government use of social media. Absolutely right.

However, let us not lose sight of the whole purpose of Gov 2.0. It is not all about the platform. The platform has a purpose: real-time public service.

Gov 2.0 must keep its eyes on that prize. O’Reilly is closest when he imagines Gov 2.0 as an “organizing engine for civic action.”

What makes Gov 2.0 enormously transformative is that government, powered by new technologies, is more than a platform; it is a catalyst for innovations in real-time, public service. Government offers not only a scalable operating system for services, but also adds raw data, standards, APIs, apps, even investment dollars in some cases.

Gov 2.0 is an open ecosystem in which anyone — a start-up, an agency, an entrepreneurial individual — can invent, enhance or crowdsource a service aimed at the public, or some segment of it. Government becomes one delivery channel among many.

Gov 2.0, in many ways, echoes President Kennedy’s famous words:

Google Gets Busy in Middle East

2009-09-03T00:19:00.007-04:00

Not to be outdone by recent moves from Yahoo and News Corp, Google is getting busy in the Middle East market.

Google already dominates search among Arab-speaking users. Now it is making a serious play in Arabic digital content.

Its release of Google Sites in Arabic and four new Arabic editions of Google News (for Egypt, Lebanon, UAE and Saudi Arabia) represent a smart effort to expand beyond search into content.

Offering a free, Arabic version of Google Sites is designed to make customized website creation in Arabic a simple process with (of course) searchable results. Google powering Arabic content creation, pure and simple.

Arab publishers, especially regional newspapers, will need to speed up efforts to build strong news sites (and aggregators) and online brands, or risk permanently losing their readers to local Google News in Arabic.

Through search, Google is already the main gateway for most users to reach news sites. Middle East publishers will completely lose control over how their audience reaches them if Google News in Arabic succeeds, if they fail to build a direct relationship with their online readers.

Google moves in apps and news pale in comparison to the dollars and headlines of this week’s big investments of Yahoo and News Corp.

However …

Google is already the #1 site among Internet users in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, UAE, Jordan, Kuwait and Qatar.

If Google is able to penetrate both the Arabic content creation and news spaces, it will have a formidable position in the Middle East before the online market truly reaches its growth potential.

And it will have outflanked Yahoo, News Corp and all other comers.

Quick Hit: Google may also be planning an expansion in Jordan, perhaps even siting their regional IT hub there.

News Corp Eyes 20% of Rotana, Following Yahoo to Middle East

2009-09-02T15:16:00.012-04:00

The Middle East is hot, and global media companies are keen to grab a piece of its rapidly growing media market.

Fast on the heels of Yahoo's acquisition of Maktoob.com, News Corp is seeking a 20% stake in Rotana Media, a Saudi-based media and entertainment giant, reports the Wall Street Journal.

This is the second major Middle East media deal in one week.

But in many ways, it is no surprise. Kingdom Holding Company, controlled by Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal and owner of Rotana, already owns 5.7% of News Corp. Rotana broadcasts two Fox-branded channels (Fox Movies and Fox Series) in Saudi Arabia.

Last year, James Murdoch made a high-profile visit the Gulf exploring partnerships with major Middle East media firms. His trip included meetings with Prince Al-Waleed to discuss future collaborations.

Now we see the fruit of those meetings. News Corp's first big Middle East investment.

While Yahoo's tie-up with Maktoob.com was a purely digital play, Rotana's media assets include a TV network, a library of over 2,000 Arab movie titles, a production company, record label, music channel, and hotel chain.

First Yahoo, now News Corp. There will be more deals to come as Big Media identifies other opportunities in this young, booming Middle East market.

MySpace … the Next AOL?

2009-09-02T09:55:00.012-04:00

MySpace is looking like the first AOL of the 21st Century. And not in a good way.

TechCrunch noted that Twitter has overtaken MySpace in traffic in the UK. That day is surely nearing in the US and globally.

The question: Is an AOL-like decline inevitable for MySpace?

One data point suggests that MySpace’s downturn is not only relative.

Daily pageviews per user has dropped by 50% for MySpace over the past 2 years.

It is steadily losing the competition for eyeballs.

Obviously, the rise of both Facebook and Twitter has been at the expense of MySpace, still the second largest social network in the world.

But MySpace is heavily dependent on US users and traffic.

Facebook has successfully broadened beyond the US, which now accounts for only 31% of Facebook’s user base. Twitter draws 59% of its traffic from outside the US.

For MySpace, 65% of its users still come from the US. And it’s been around for years. That is a recipe for stagnation.

Twitter and Facebook have room to grow, as uptake rises in other countries.

Unless MySpace identifies some new, compelling services or finds a way to grow its brand globally, it looks like a contender for the next AOL.

News Flash: Social Media News Acquisition

2009-09-01T16:46:00.006-04:00

NowPublic, a social media news website, has been acquired by the Examiner.com, a local news network controlled by the Clarity Media Group (Philip Anschutz’s outfit).

The reported price tag: $25 million.

Apparently, citizen journalism sparks interest (and dollars) from Big Media.

And consolidation may help find a sustainable formula that balances coverage (NowPublic claims citizen reporters in over 100 countries) with operational efficiencies of scale.

Hyperlocal News: New Oasis or Mirage?

2009-09-01T15:49:00.006-04:00

Despite the flurry of attention (and acquisitions) on hyperlocal news, its prospects as a viable business remain unclear.

No question there is plenty of activity in the space, as Open ePolicy discussed here.

While proponents laud (hype?) the potential market value of hyperlocal -- estimates reach $100 billion -- can anyone entice enough local advertisers to turn a profit?

Local advertisers -- Mom-and-Pop stores -- are the long in "long tail." They are the Last Mile in advertising.

You need staff to create (or at least edit) local content. And once you get there, you still have to compete with CraigsList.

Attention Big Media: The Ultimate Lesson from CraigsList

2009-08-31T13:14:00.010-04:00

Media companies are suffering the slings and arrows of online competition for eyeballs and advertising dollars.

CraigsList seems to be the villain of choice, given its outsized role in the collapse of classified ad revenues, the traditional mainstay of newspaper profits.

While simultaneously trying to vilify and emulate CraigsList, most media companies fail to appreciate its ultimate lesson.

CL has plenty of flaws—mainly because it so accurately reflects the imperfections of the masses using it. However, it enjoys spectacular growth while remaining stubbornly committed to a simple (even outdated) design.

The lesson is simple: Pay constant attention to what your users are telling you.

Customer service is the Qi of CraigsList. It is what energizes and sustains its massive community of users.

It also pays.

Excellent customer service breeds customer loyalty. And that makes your content and services more valuable over time while driving down costs.

Don’t know what your users think of your content or services? Then you have found your primary problem. You.

CraigsList, by eliminating marketing, sales, and business development, has eliminated every layer separating its programmers (who run CL) from the users they serve.

No layers = no sound barriers.

User feedback reaches the people who operate CL unfiltered. This can be a painful experience for managers, programmers and writers. But it is irreplaceable if you want to win your customers’ loyalty (and page views).

CraigsList famously responds to annoying complaints with haikus. In this case, their advice to other media companies might be:

Steam rising from rice
User feedback clearing your
Confusionism

More Japanese Robots!!

2009-08-29T17:28:00.006-04:00

You can never get enough Japanese robots.

Meet Riba ...

A robot nurse that can lift elderly patients from wheelchairs and beds. A giant teddy bear robot.

Awesome!

Woofer: Antidote to Twitter, or More of the Same?

2009-08-29T17:14:00.008-04:00

With a 1,400-character minimum, Woofer in theory offers salvation from our growing Twitter-dom. Or Twitter-dumb.

The three principles of woofing: 1. Be eloquent. 2. Use adverbs. 3. DEA (don't ever abbreviate).

Noble statements.

Encouraging a person to think, compose and express. Macroblogging over microblogging. The anti-Twitter.

Not so fast. In reality, Woofer seems to merely encourage more idiocy and verbal spam.

Hence, a “woof” ten minutes ago that reads:

I am Awesome. I am [Name Deleted]! Hear Me Type! Penis, Penis, Penis, Penis …

When people have nothing to say, why can’t they just say nothing?

Online Advertising Hit, But Print Advertising Got Floored

2009-08-28T12:13:00.013-04:00

Media executives may see recent data on advertising revenues from the Newspaper Association of America as a good news / bad news situation.

They would be wrong. It’s all bad news.

Newspaper ad revenues are down 29% during Q2 of 2009. Obviously bad news. But even their online ad revenues had a double-digit drop of 16%.

So what’s the good news that publishers see? The worst is behind them. Wrong again. The worst is still ahead.

The recession only explains half the loss in print ad revenues. The rest (about 13% of the loss) is pure erosion of the print newspaper business model.

As newspaper publishers search for an online news model that can sustain their revenues and newsrooms, they must apply basic investment strategy … diversify, diversify, diversify.

If you are only business is news, you are heading for a cliff. Yes, you need a digital platform for news. But you also need platforms for other categories of digital content. Either build them, buy them or merge with other companies that already have them.

Yahoo Grabs Big Piece of Middle East Internet Market

2009-08-27T13:57:00.007-04:00

Eventually, global Internet companies would realize the Arab world is one of the last underdeveloped frontiers for digital media. That day was yesterday. Yahoo bought Maktoob.com, the largest Arabic online portal, for an undisclosed sum, reportedly around $100 million.

This is a big deal. Even Twitter is a buzz with the news.

The Arabic speaking world of Internet users has not been completely ignored. Google opened it first office in the Arab world in 2006, and is the top search engine among Arabic users. Already 8% of Facebook's user base is in the Arab world. Yahoo is not the first major equity investment in a portal in the Arab world (or even a portal based in Jordan). Intel Capital recently invested in Jeeran, a Jordanian based social network with 1 million members. And that was Intel’s seventh investment in Middle East digital media. Last year, Vodafone Egypt bought Sarmady Communications (Sarcom), a digital content company based in Egypt.

But with this deal, Yahoo landed the biggest digital media acquisition to date in the Middle East. Yahoo calls it their biggest geographic expansion in years. I call it a very smart move. Maktoob has been the #1 Arabic website (in terms of users) for years, steadily growing organically and through a series of regional acquisitions. Its acquisition was inevitable. The only surprise is that it took so long. Maktoob has been around for almost 10 years.

320 million Arabic speakers worldwide, but only 1 per cent of all online content is in Arabic. That math adds up to outsized growth as the online advertising market catches up with the rapid rise in Internet penetration and usage in the Arab world. This deal alone may drive increased online advertising in the Middle East, as well as accelerate the shift away from newspapers and print advertising.

So Maktoob becomes Yahoo Maktoob at the price of $6 per user ($100 million for 16.5 million users). Although Middle East entrepreneurs will envy the valuation and the newly minted millionaires among them, that price will look dirt cheap one day. And that day is today.

Murdoch to Create the OPEC of News

2009-08-21T15:34:00.005-04:00

Rupert Murdoch has a new idea to make news a paying business again. Call it the OPEC of news.

News Corp is pressing to create a consortium of premier media brands—including the New York Times, Washington Post and Hearst—that charge for online news.

Can this latest effort to re-monetize news work? Assuming it survives antitrust review, can a handful of major media publishers shift the entire digital news market?

The theory seems simple: combine the biggest, most trusted names in the same “walled garden” and people will pay to play, by subscriptions or micro-payments. One cartel, one low price.

But news is not oil. News is not a pure commodity that can be refined into a product with a uniform value regardless of the producer. Can every news producer (or even most) be the Wall Street Journal? Doubtful.

Also, right now, oil has minimal competition. Alternative energy remains more expensive and lacks an efficient distribution network. Online news accessible via the Internet and mobile devices is ubiquitous. Online news sources, aggregators and re-posters are endless, and offer an attractive price point: free.

Online news is sunshine, available almost anywhere. And we the readers are walking solar panels.

The WSJ and a few others like the Financial Times occupy a privileged place in the news space. Frankly, their product is worth more. It is timely and quantifiably valuable, both to readers and advertisers. Indeed, a consortium of premier news brands may prove more valuable for increasing ad dollars than generating reader revenues.

Newspapers are definitely interested in consortiums. In four short months, Journalism Online’s payment platform for digital distribution of news has attracted over 500 newspapers.

Still, I suspect that few news organizations have a critical mass of readers who view them as indispensable, and are willing to pay. An oligopoly of premier news publishers may save those chosen few. That is no guarantee that most publishers, even if collected into a broad consortium, will attract enough paying readers.

Open Data Meets Hyperlocal in San Francisco

2009-08-19T14:03:00.005-04:00

Once again San Francisco renews its claim to be the most open city in America, and the most open government.

Mayor Gavin Newsom announced the launch of DataSF.org, a new website offering citizens access to raw, machine-readable government data on a wide range of issues from crime and housing to health inspections and street repairs.

The basic idea behind this initiative? Open data drives innovation. Free access to information gathered by government enables developers and citizen entrepreneurs to create new applications and online services. Open data is exactly what will power the growth of hyperlocal websites, which cater to the interests and needs of local communities.

The emergence of hyperlocal news and online services is already a trend receiving much attention, and investment. MSNBC’s acquisition of EveryBlock, a hyperlocal news aggregator, is one recent example, but not the only one. AOL and even the New York Times have entered the hyper-local space.

Finding the right business model for hyperlocal sites will be a challenge. For every MSNBC and AOL buying in, there is a Washington Post exiting. Success requires real community participation, not always easy to sustain when the website belongs to a big corporate entity, as well as a local advertising base will to spend.

Still, more governments offering open data is a good thing, promoting transparency and public accountability, regardless of whether hyperlocal websites succeed or not.

Twitter Babble

2009-08-15T17:59:00.006-04:00

I have nothing against Twitter. I have an account, rarely used and never tweeted. Mostly because I have neither the patience nor the interest for useless chatter, and Twitter is full it.

Don’t take my word for it. A new study looked at a large, random sample of tweets and found – surprise! – nearly half of all public tweets (40.5%) are empty babble.

Most tweets were not shameless self-promotion (think Ashton Kutcher), just pointless drivel. Think tweets like “I am scratching my ass right now.” Pure noise. Twitter spam.

Yes, Twitter proved invaluable to Iranian protestors risking life and liberty to protest recent elections. But “news” came in last place among categories counted, less than 4% of all tweets.

So who is projecting all this mindless crap? Twitter reaches 27 million people per month in the U.S., so the answer is easy …Tweets like us.

Is China Reverse Engineering America’s Future?

2009-08-11T16:42:00.005-04:00

Recent news about China made me recall a comment made by my 13-year old niece not long ago: “All those Chinese will come here and steal our jobs.”

For the moment, leave aside a child’s understandable ignorance (and the likely racism of the teachers who fed her such nonsense).

If odds makers tried to determine today’s leader in tomorrow’s economic race between China and the U.S., they might give China the nod.

Consider three, recently reported facts:

China announced that it will extend universal health care to its entire population in 2011.

China will release new fuel efficiency standards requiring a minimum of 42.2 miles per gallon (for every car, not a fleet average) by 2015, far beyond what has been proposed in the U.S. and even farther beyond what any current US-made car can achieve.

In China, the number of students earning first university degrees in engineering far exceeds U.S. levels.

Think graduation statistics in China are bogus? Consider a fourth fact:

China’s Tsinghua and Peking Universities are now the top feeder schools for American PhD programs, with the largest shares in the natural sciences and engineering.

Back to my niece’s comment. Not only is it wrong on the facts today, it is wrong about tomorrow. According to a 2008 survey, only 10% of Chinese students in the U.S. want to stay here permanently. Barely half (54%) even want to work briefly in the U.S. after graduation. They are taking their degrees back to China, where they see brighter, long-term economic prospects. Can anyone say “Back to the Future?” Or reverse engineering?

Not convinced where the trend line is headed? It is not only American-educated Chinese students returning to China. The number of young Americans seeking (and finding) work in China is rapidly rising. Yes it is partly a reflection of today’s recession in the U.S. It also says something about tomorrow’s future in China.

Climate Change Puts National Security on Thin Ice

2009-08-10T14:21:00.013-04:00

Sarah Palin, Congressional Republicans and other flat earthers may reject the science of climate change and evidence of man-made global warming. U.S. national security agencies, however, take the threat of global warming seriously.

These are not merely pollyannish predictions from lefty academics. This is coming from analysts at the CIA, the Pentagon, Center for Naval Analysis and US Army War College who all consider the risks of global warming real, and a threat multiplier. Dennis Blair, Director of National Intelligence, agrees. His testimony before Congress stated that the Intelligence Community believes "global climate change will have important and extensive implications for US national security interests over the next 20 years."

Doubters routinely dismiss or downplay observable changes like glacial melt, rising temperatures, coastal inundation and extreme weather events. Intelligence analysts, however, link them to specific national security threats like scarcity of cropland and freshwater, population displacements, new disease vectors, resource conflicts and political destabilization. Even the loss of vital US military bases.

Climate changes are not maybe's or aberrations. They are measurable.

Last week, the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center reported that the polar ice cap shrunk an average 41,000 square miles per day in July, well above the historical average and equaling the rate of melt seen in 2007 when the North Pole ice hit a record low. Top 3 years of fastest ice melt? 2007, 2006, 2009.

If climate change skeptics won't take facts seriously, at least military planners do. The Pentagon is wargaming scenarious that incorporate climate-induced crises in vulnerable regions (like South Asia and the Middle East).

At least some in the US Senate are taking notice. The Foreign Relations Committee recently held hearings on the issue.

Not only are global warming naysayers staring blindly in the face of the best available science, they are being reckless with our national security.

Political Note: Hate vs. Obama

2009-08-09T11:41:00.014-04:00

With town halls turned violent and anti-Obama blogs on attack, I feel a need to speak (with evidence courtesy of Google search shown below) ...

The labels used to demonize Barack Obama over the past 18 months have been unrelenting and far more frequent than what has been leveled at any American President in my lifetime.

They include Obama as …

Black militant
Muslim
Arab
Terrorist
Anti-Semite
Anti-American
Racist
Foreigner
Anti-Christ
Nazi / Hitler
Nazi appeaser
Socialist
Communist / Stalin
Anarchist and Villain (Joker/Heath Ledger poster)

And these are just the portrayals covered by mainstream media. Others have not received primetime mention (like Obama as Satan).

American Presidents always draw harsh criticism and caricature.

But as shown in this chart of search results associating each of the past 4 presidents with a label, Obama’s association with negative portrayals far exceeds other recent Presidents (even with “Bush” essentially double counted by not distinguishing between the two Bush presidents).

The search structure was:

president + [name] + [label]

When politics and polemics are stripped away, I would suggest that a single fact animates this anti-Obama phenomena … Obama is the first black President of the United States.

Aging Silos and Open Data

2009-08-07T10:51:00.007-04:00

A new job often means big plans. So it is for the new Federal CTO, Aneesh Chopra. He's saying all the right things, but can he make all the right moves?

In his visit to Silicon Valley yesterday, Chopra called for the elimination of technology silos that litter the government landscape.

Good idea.

Focusing on IT, however, is less impactful than focusing on information. Tearing down data silos is more important -- for the public, the economy and improved government services.

The new federal IT dashboard showing tech spending by federal agencies is a nice start. The Office of Management and Budget (OMB) moved in a similar direction when it required all federal agencies to use the same open, standardized formats for financial reporting so spending under the Recovery Act can be displayed on Recovery.gov. Shining a light on how government spends our money is helpful.

But more must be done. Windows of transparency are nice. Access to actual data is better.

Government needs to open source its information, research and investment. Perhaps our new federal CTO and CIO should commit to opening up access to a different set of government data every week. The public can help. Create an online forum where people can suggest (and vote for) what information they want made publicly available.

Call it democratizing data. Or open sourcing data. Either way, there is a powerful magnifier effect to increasing public access to government data that will drive innovation and real economic opportunity, not to mention government transparency.

That is creative silo destruction we can believe in.

Mr. Obama, tear down these silos!

Categories: government, OpenStandards, innovation

FCC is Catching Up

2009-08-05T08:58:00.012-04:00

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is working on the first national broadband plan for the U.S.

Better late than never.

During yesterday's stop on the FCC Summer Tour, its new chairman, Julius Genachowski, referred to broadband as this generation's highway system. They are ambitious words ... if not original.

The same exact point was made here over 3 years ago. Again, better late than never.

There is a major difference between our broadband highway and the asphalt highways built in the 1950s to connect America. Broadband is much more important to America's future.

Broadband does not to just connect our cities; it connects our lives. Broadband reaches into every house, every business, every hospital, every school and will power endless innovations that will re-shape our lives.

And a policy of net neutrality is vital for keeping these digital roads flat and fast-moving for everyone. Without it, broadband will turn into an endless series of toll roads on which those people and companies who buy the Easy Pass move fast while the rest crawl along in the right lane.

There won't be any Cash for Clunkers program if that happens.

Categories: netneutrality, broadband, FCC

Captain Cook Meet Global Warming

2008-09-01T12:38:00.009-04:00

The great navigators of the Age of Explorers were a bit early in their quest to traverse the famed Northwest Passage linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. What a difference 500 years makes. What a difference global warming makes.

For perhaps the first time in recorded human history, arctic ice around the North Pole has melted clearing not only a Northwest Passage but also a Northeast Passage.

The North-West Passage (circled left) and the North-East Passage (top right) are both clear of ice now, as shown in satellite photos.

It is an historic event.

But is the world without a North Pole a good thing? Shipping companies and ExxonMobil may love the idea. Climate change scientists are wary.

Polar bears are less enthusiastic, some now facing a 400-mile swim for survival.

And for the rest of us? Is this really such good news?

Categories: GlobalWarming

Software Patents: Innovation's Quicksand

2007-10-16T09:49:00.003-04:00

Eric Maskin is no fan of software patents, and people should pay attention.

Professor Maskin is no technology flower child pushing P2P with his LSD. This Harvard and MIT economist just won the Nobel Prize in economics for his work on mechanism design theory. In 1999, he turned his economic eye to the value of software patents. And found them wanting.

His research showed that when patent protections for software strengthened during the 1980s, "far from unleashing a flurry of new innovative activity, these stronger property rights ushered in a period of stagnant, if not declining, R&D among those industries and firms that patented most."

Strong patent protection produced less R&D spending, and slowed productivity growth.

Why?

Technology is an industry of sequential innovation, with advancements built on the preceding invention of others. Imitation breeds innovation. In software, copying ideas and concepts is vital for innovation. Hence, the genius of open source as a software development model -- few barriers to the use of other people's concepts and code.

In dynamic industries like software, patents constrict innovation.

This relates to a larger enemy of innovation that I have blogged about -- content scarcity.

Maybe it is time to stop applying 19th Century rules on intellectual property to post-industrial areas that have an entirely different economic mechanics?

Categories: innovation, software, IP

An Inconvenient Nobel Prize

2007-10-12T09:35:00.001-04:00

Al Gore, modern day prophet, has just won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to raise social and political awareness of the dangers of global warming. Gore shares the Prize the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Propelled by the movie "An Inconvenient Truth," Gore has toured the world delivering his PowerPoint pitch on the risks of man-made climate change. The film won an Academy Award. The man is now a Nobel laureate.

The best thing that ever happened to Al Gore was being defrauded in the 2000 election.

Of course, George Bush, the court-appointed winner of that election, is likely too thick to recognize that this year's Peace Prize is a direct retort to his empty, oil-infused rhetoric on climate change and energy policy. Bush rejected the Kyoto Protocol early in his presidency and has spent the intervening years doing nothing to break the US's "oil addiction" as he called it. Empty words.

Some may question the connection between global warming and peace. It is a short-sighted protest. It is not hard to imagine how severe climate change--bringing the loss of drinkable fresh water, massive flooding, refugees and ruined agricultural lands--could spark major conflicts as people become more desperate to avoid its impact.

Gore will no doubt reject the temptation to run for President this year, despite the efforts of draftGore.com. And why should he? He's on a roll, and the rest of the world beyond 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue knows it.

Categories: GlobalWarming, AlGore

GSA "FEMAs" California

2007-10-04T08:41:00.001-04:00

Life on the Internet can be fragile, as California learned yesterday. While taking counter-measures against a hacker re-directing traffic from a state county's website to a porn website, the U.S. General Services Administration deleted California - virtually.

For seven hours, the entire ".ca" domain -- home to every government agency in California -- was gone. A flick of a a switch and ... No web access. No email. No California.

It started with the discovery that the website for Transportation Authority of Marin Country was hacked, and all traffic we sent to pornographic websites. The fear that its DNS server had been compromised, and could thus compromise the entire ".ca" domain apparently led the GSA to make California disappear entirely -- or more technically de-list ".ca" making it in accessible from servers worldwide.

As more public services become web-delivered, the need for reliable 24/7 access is obvious. Maybe a little more attention needs to be paid to disaster recovery by governments as they pursue e-government.

Who needs an earthquake when you have GSA? Maybe we should get FEMA to take over the ".gov" domain management.

Open Source Gets Himalayan High

2007-09-10T20:25:00.002-04:00

It is a rare day when I can mention open source and Bhutan in the same sentence. The beautiful, tiny, mountain kingdom is far from a hotbed of technology innovation. Or is it?

Bhutan represents a great example of the power of open source. Too small to get its language supported in Microsoft products, open source allows Bhutan to help itself. The result ...

Dzongkha Linux (Pronounced like "Zonka"). Its release by the country's Department of Information and Technology demonstrates what open source--and only $80,000--can do.

Developed in 13 months, Dzongkha Linux is bootable on both Mac and Windows systems It is also bilingual, supporting both English and the Dzongkha language for word processing, spreadsheets, PowerPoint, web browsing, even chat. And Bhutan is not done yet. Next they plan to develop local language based, speech recognition and text-to-speech functionality.

All that innovation for an $80,000 investment. Now that is a major return on investment, courtesy of open source.

Categories: Bhutan, opensource

ISO Rejects OOXML - Now What?

2007-09-04T16:02:00.002-04:00

After months of political maneuvering and manipulation, ISO has rejected OOXML for fast track approval as an international standard. Approval required a two-thirds majority, or 67% "yes" votes. OOXML received 53%, a few votes short.

Rejection of OOXML is a setback for Microsoft, which wanted ISO approval to help convince customers--especially governments--to accept its usage and speed adoption of Vista and Office 2007.

The loss is likely temporary, though it is difficult to say how temporary. In February, ISO will convene a special ballot resolution meeting to consider changes to OOXML addressing technical objections raised by countries. There are many. And most do not address to core issue -- the need for a truly open document standard (like ODF) without proprietary extensions (as currently fill OOXML).

The real battle continues in the marketplace and in government policy circles. However, Microsoft can do itself (and ISO) a big favor, and follow the advice of France...

Split OOXML into two standards -- one that can be merged into ODF as a real open standard; and one that catalogs all the proprietary extensions needed for backward compatibility with the legacy MS formats (a closed but useful standard).

In this case, splitting the baby will save it (and us).

Categories: ISO, OOXML, Microsoft

Microsoft: Mistakes Were Made in Sweden

2007-08-30T14:45:00.003-04:00

Microsoft has admitted that a rogue employee sent a letter to MS partners in Sweden advising that they were expected to join the recent OOXML-as-ISO-standard meeting and vote "yes" in return for "market subsidies" (like paying for their advertising) and "additional support in the form of Microsoft resources." [Article is translated here.]

Microsoft has said that it was unauthorized, improper and quickly corrected. On his blog, Microsoft's Jason Matusow noted yesterday that "The whole point of the process is that organizations with an interest may participate."

He is right. Unfortunately.

In most countries, the technical committees considering how to vote on OOXML have created a process that invites (even relies on) companies -- all of whom have huge commercial interests in the decision -- to vote.

Such a process invites games, and abuses - as I noted here.

Why are governments enabling this? Why are governments abdicating their responsibility for decisions that affect public interests? Yes, technical issues are involved. But they are technical issues with big impact on public interests.

So blame the companies for their underhanded actions, and blame governments failing in their duty to serve the public interests.

[Quick Update: After revelations of improper actions by a Microsoft employee and concerns that it tainted voting on OOXML, the Swedish Standards Institute has declared its vote invalid and decided to abstain in the ISO vote.

Apparently, Sweden is not alone. Hungary's Minister of Economy & Transport instructed the Hungarian Standards Institution to re-do the OOXML voting due to ballot stuffing, arbitrary changing of rules, and exclusion of "no" voters.]

Categories: OpenStandards, OOXML, Sweden, Microsoft

Microsoft Stuffs OOXML Ballot Box in Sweden?

2007-08-28T10:48:00.005-04:00

Sweden is the stage for the latest games being played as the ISO vote on OOXML approaches. Last minute arrivals (listed here) at the meeting of Sweden's technical committee tipped the vote in favor of OOXML.

Is this Microsoft's fault? The real problem is that countries like Sweden (and Portugal before this) never established clear, transparent rules on who and how votes take place.

And companies exploit this. Why? Because huge business interests are at stake, and they can. Microsoft gets its business partners to vote. Microsoft's competitors also show up to vote. They all pay their admission fee and vote.

This is what happens when a vote that should be based on technical and public interest grounds is left to companies to decide.

The basic question: why should companies vote at all on a country's position on a standard?

Whether one standard or another best serves the public interest of a country is not an issue that should be decided by companies, which all have huge market and business interests at stake. This is a decision for government -- weighed by technical experts and decided in a transparent process by politically accountable officials.

Anything less is unacceptable.

Categories: OpenStandards, OOXML, Sweden

India Rejects OOXML, for Now

2007-08-24T11:51:00.002-04:00

Another big shoe has dropped on OOXML.

India will vote "No" at the upcoming ISO vote on whether or not OOXML should be a standard. For the moment, India is saying "not."

After six hours of debate, 19 of the 21 members of India's technical committee agreed to vote "No" with comments, meaning that should Microsoft later address technical concerns about OOXML, India might shift its position. That will be no easy task. There are some 200 technical issues that have been raised by various parties to the OOXML specification, which itself spans a few thousand pages.

Last week a similarly big blow struck OOXML when Brazil decided to vote "No". As one member of its technical committee indicated, Brazil is likely to use ODF as the basis for its national document standard.

Most countries have not yet indicated their position. However, with the US abstaining and China and Japan voting "No," it is difficult to see how OOXML will in reality become a global standard, regardless of the ISO vote results.

ODF and OOXML will likely coexist for a time, and some (like Gartner) argue that OOXML will be the de facto standard given Microsoft's market dominance. Yet, technology dominance is a hard to maintain forever, and the winds are shifting as governments look to ODF, not OOXML, as the foundation for their own national standards.

After all, silicon is not stone. There is always the hope that Microsoft will continue to evolve and find a way to provide backward compatibility with all its proprietary formats while still ensuring that an unencumbered document standard like ODF is the way forward.

Categories: OpenStandards, OOXML, India, Brazil

Global Warming's Give and Take in Norway

2007-08-21T19:40:00.000-04:00

Global warming is bearing gifts to Norway. As Norway's glaciers disappear, it is gaining islands at an equally rapid (or alarming) pace.

On the Svalbard archipelago, a cluster of islands off Norway's northwest coast, the give and take of climate change are evident and undeniable.

Svalbard's glaciers are melting, and fast. The ice is receding at a rate of 16 cubic kilometers each year, according to the Norwegian Polar Institute.

At the same time, new islands are appearing along Svalbard's coasts. But these islands are not its first global warming gifts.

Last year, a new island emerged off Svalbard.

In 2004, yet another island, the size of a soccer field, rose off the eastern coastline of Svalbard.

What global warming taketh, it giveth back.

For some, it means access to new lands and natural resources (like oil). For others, it means submerged homes, less food and the disappearance of water supplies.

Lucky Norway.

Categories: GlobalWarming, Norway

China: Patent Moves Meets Standards Muscle

2007-08-12T11:10:00.003-04:00

China is moving up the intellectual property value chain and becoming a serious player in the IP world. In 2005, the number of Chinese patents jumped 33% over the prior year. It ranked 3rd behind the US and Japan, filing 170,000 patents. And that was 2 years ago.

China's influence over the future of technology is not limited to what is built, but also what is standardized. This only magnifies China's market impact.

China has not yet signaled how it will vote on fast track for the OOXML document standard at ISO. The US will not support fast track. While this is notable, China's vote will be the major indicator of OOXML's future. China has its own national standard for document formats - UOF. It has a stake in the standards fight different than the US, and leverage over the debate that the US lacks.

Critics argue that the volume of Chinese patents says nothing about the quality of those patents or the creativity of its technology. That may be true ... for now. But tens of thousands of engineers graduating every year combined with entrepreneurial drive and the growth of multinational research centers in China will change that, sooner rather than later.

As any foreign company in China will tell, their most talented Chinese staff are constantly leaving for new positions in other companies or their own start-up.

I have no idea how China will vote on the OOXML document standard. And I do not underestimate Microsoft's will to establish itself in China, as discussed here.

Still, I have my suspicions. OOXML does not support the use of Chinese characters within a Web address, and its use of Windows-specific specs for many functions -- for example, "useWord97LineBreakRules" or "autoSpaceLikeWord95" -- makes OOXML less appealing to a China intent on building its own patent portfolio and high tech industry.

[Image: "China Flag" by Dion Laurent]

Categories: China, openstandards, IP, OOXML

When the Boss Mentions Open Source

2007-08-06T15:23:00.002-04:00

Just saw this and laughed.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing ...

Has Microsoft Open Sourced Itself in China?

2007-08-01T12:19:00.002-04:00

Many reports are now discussing how Microsoft has conquered China through a combination of political hands-on and piracy hands-off, together with deep discounts (some call it dumping).

Another way to describe Microsoft strategy in China is open source lite.

Yes, Bill Gates has courted Chinese politicians aggressively in Beijing and Redmond. Yes, Microsoft has a shiny, new Chinese research center. Yes, it offers Windows/Office at rock bottom prices - $3 for Chinese students. The discount for government is top secret.

But, most importantly, Microsoft now takes a hands-off approach to the rampant pirating of its software in China.

The truth is: Piracy is helping Microsoft compete in China, and beat Linux.

In effect, Microsoft has partially open sourced itself in China ...

Windows and Office are copied and distributed for free (or nearly so) without any real licensing or IP restraints, and without legal challenge by Microsoft.

MS provides access to source code, for the government at least, allowing the Chinese to insert their own code and cryptography.

As a matter of business strategy, Microsoft is concentrating on building (even dominating) market share first, and worrying about sales second.

And finally, it has made China--through its research center in Beijing--an integral part of a collaborative, global process for software development.

Sound familiar? It isn't.

It's not the normal Microsoft strategy, and obviously it is not the work of an open source company. But Microsoft's approach to China has stolen a few pages from the open source playbook.

Call it: "Dr. Gateslove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Piracy."

Categories: China, Microsoft, opensource

FBI Investigates Ted Stevens' Tube Fetish

2007-07-30T19:28:00.000-04:00

Senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) really has a thing for tubes. Not long ago, Stevens displayed his ignorance about the Internet by describing it as a "series of tubes." Brilliant!

Apparently, however, those were not the only tubes of interest to Stevens. This time it's tubes as in plumbing and wiring.

As I write this, the FBI and IRS are searching Stevens' Anchorage home as part of a corruption investigation into the re-modeling his house -- work possibly paid for by Veco, an oil-field service company that lobbies government extensively.

When it comes to tubes, maybe Senator Stevens is more of an expert than we knew.

Categories: Internet, FBI, tubes

Portugal Plays Musical Chairs on OOXML

2007-07-27T10:07:00.001-04:00

After reading commentary on a recent meeting in Portugal to decide that country's position on voting for/against acceptance of OOXML as a standard by ISO ... a couple questions arise. Fortunately, they have simple answers.

1. Can an "open standard" require proprietary extensions in order to implement it?

No.

2. If the standards process is not open to any and all participants, can the standard produced be considered "open"?

No.

[Are you listening Portugal and Italy? You cannot shut people out of the discussion and then claim the standard under discussion is an open standard. The size of the room is NOT a legitimate reason to limit discussion.]

3. Should "fast track" ever be part of the standards process (at least if an open standard is the objective)?

No.

Standards by definition are technical and complex. They are not amendable to short-cuts or fast tracks. The only reason to fast track consideration is to limit discussion (and discussants). And that undermines the basic foundation of an open standard.

If the process is invisible or closed, the standard is not open.

Categories: OpenStandards, Portugal

Open Standards and IP (Redux)

2007-07-21T11:56:00.001-04:00

A simple question: should an "open standard" have any proprietary elements in it?

If this sounds like the start of an extremist, anti-business rant on standards (and vendors), let me re-phrase the question ...

Should development of a standard begin with the business considerations of a company or the technical need to ensure interoperability and unfettered use in any future products by any person or company?

I ask this question with no axe to grind. I work for no vendor. I have no equity stake in any standards or company promoting them.

If you think the idea of open standards being standards with no proprietary elements is heretical or simply some Platonic ideal divorced from reality, consider this ...

We are moving in that direction already, though slowly.

The fact that interoperability is becoming the touchstone for any standards discussion is a positive sign. Governments--the largest set of technology consumers--are starting to assert their interests (the public interest) in both interoperability and avoiding permanent lock-in any one technology or vendor.

Companies are beginning to loosen (though not legally liberate) standards from their intellectual property claims. That is another positive step. Latest news on that front: IBM's "patent pledge" to grant universal access to hundreds of patents related to web services and SOA.

IBM's decision is laudable, but not ideal. It sends an important message to the market: let innovation reign, and don't worry about us suing. It does not remove IBM's legal right to assert control. It just offers the world a partial, unilateral IP disarmament. That is a good thing, and more than most big IT companies have done.

When it comes to open standards, proprietary anything creates barriers. A pledge to not assert ownership to a standard removes one proprietary barrier (litigation). It does not remove all proprietary barriers.

Why should I have to talk about products to have a discussion of an open standard?

Why should I be forced to consider (or enter) a business relationship with any single company when I consider using an open standard?

Why should an open standard come with any strings (or chains) attached?

The answer is, it shouldn't.

Open standards should be agnostic to products and companies and business models and ... IP.

[Image: Pandora's Chains - CalTech]

Categories: interoperability, openstandards, IP

Open Standards Rise in Japan

2007-07-15T10:03:00.002-04:00

Once again Japan stands out for technology leadership in Asia. Last week, the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry issued its official Interoperability Framework.

It makes open standards -- including the OpenDocument Format (ODF)-- a required element of its procurement rules for technology and e-government.

The main objective of Japan's open standards requirement for procurement: interoperability (both data and process compatibility) and optimizing the value of ICT investments.

The Framework emphasizes a few specific policy points:

* the need to guarantee long-term access and retention of public documents.

* a prohibition on specifying individual products in procurement to avoid lock-in and dependency on non-interoperable products.

* when procuring software, open source software should be considered.

* decisions on software procurement should exclude software from considered based upon its development model or license.

* Preferred data formats are XML-based formats supported by multiple products/vendors with a low degree of dependence upon any single platform or specific technology.

And lastly, at the moment Japan's new Interoperability Framework recognizes only one acceptable document format: OpenDocument Format (ODF).

Categories: openstandards, ODF, Japan

FCC: Open Source Idiots

2007-07-06T17:02:00.002-04:00

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is apparently both ignorant about open source software and distrustful of the market's ability to determine the efficacy of new products.

The FCC is set to issue new rules governing "smart" radios -- the next generation of mobile technology that can receive signals from cellphones, broadband, radio and TV stations. While the radios may be smart, the regulators are not ... at least when it comes to open source.

As the FCC puts it, "a system that is wholly dependent on open-source elements will have a high burden to demonstrate that it is sufficiently secure to warrant authorization as a software-defined radio."

The FCC has swallowed the stale FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) about open source and will rule that smart radios using open source software are inherently less secure. This is at odds with the opinions of tech security experts. Even the industry association representing telecom giants like Motorola and AT&T disagrees, and urged the FCC to rethink its position.

By endorsing a "security through obscurity" approach to software, the FCC ignores the past decade of software development and the judgment of federal agencies intimately committed to security (like the Pentagon and NSA) that use open source in an increasing number of security sensitive areas.

Unfortunately, the combined determination of security experts, industry engineers, and market testing is not enough for the FCC. Its new rules will only delay the arrival of innovative, new products in the market without any assurance that security will be improved.

At least the FCC did not ban open source in smart radios outright.

If only the FCC would follow some good, old fashioned wisdom: Don't just do something, stand there.

Categories: opensource, FCC

Does Interoperability Require an IP Discussion?

2007-07-05T00:33:00.002-04:00

According to Microsoft, yes. According to Red Hat, no. Microsoft and Red Hat -- oil and water -- and they don't mix, as recent discussions have shown. End of story right? Not necessarily ...

Interoperability and intellectual property are entirely different. Interoperability is about enabling things to work together, more at a "mechanical" level. IPR is about ownership of things and conditions on the right to use them.

Interoperability is also not about open vs. closed. Both open and proprietary technologies can be designed to interoperate.

You can design an application to work seamlessly with other apps without giving up your ownership of it.

Although interoperability and intellectual property are fundamentally different animals, they live in the same jungle. Interoperability does not undercut IPR, but IPR can impede interoperability. For example, an IP owner can set conditions on use of its patented technology that prevents development of a plug-in enabling it to work with other applications.

The result: users have an interoperability problem. However, it is an artificial problem created by technology vendors -- not the user or the engineering of interoperability itself. It is not a problem intrinsic to interoperability, but rather linked to the business models of the vendors discussing it.

The question for vendors is: which is more important?

Categories: interoperability, IPR

China's Newest Export: Baseball Players

2007-06-18T21:12:00.001-04:00

It was bound to happen one day. A Major League Baseball team signs a player from China. That day is today, and that team is the New York Yankees, who signed not one but two young Chinese baseball players, with approval from the China Baseball Association.

This deal, however, falls more into the Dominican Republic category than the Japan or Korea category. What do I mean? This is not about signing talented players, often late in their careers as happens in Japan. This is about the long-term development of baseball in China, players and fans. Under the deal, Chinese teams will gain access to Yankee training facilities in New York and Florida. There will also be an exchange of coaches and trainers.

Will China become the next Venezuela of baseball? Is the baseball version of Yao Ming out there waiting to be signed? Nobody knows. But the New York Yankees are investing in that possibility. It's smart baseball and good business for the MLB and the Yankees brand.

Categories: baseball, China

What's the Matter With Standards in China?

2007-06-18T01:04:00.001-04:00

When the question of standards is raised in China, officials and companies are quick to focus on one issue: intellectualy property rights.

A week of meetings in China--including discussions with officials from the State Council, the Beijing Municipality and national standards bodies--made clear that China's drive to develop its own technology standards (open and closed) is directly linked to its intent to avoid IPR owned by foreign companies. The issue is less about open verses closed, but standards with or without IPR.

China does not want its innovation, its industrial development beholden to others. And does not want to spend the next 20 years watching royalties and license fees flow overseas. Even pledges not to sue are unacceptable, which partly explains why China developed its own opendocument format instead of simply adopting ODF.

Hence, its move to open standards, and in particular standards without any IPR. China intends to level the playing field, at least within its borders, to the maximum extent possible. In fact, at least one official from a Chinese standards organization maintained that a standard is not "open" if it has any IPR in its specification.

China's influence over the direction and content of the standards debate will surely increase. And other governments will follow suit, insisting upon open standards unemcumbered by IPR. As these policies become reflected in procurement and the work of international standards bodies, it will drive changes in how companies develop and sell technology, at least those that want access to China's growing market.

Categories: openstandards, China

Open Source Insecurity? Don't Tell the Military

2007-05-30T23:31:00.000-04:00

Think of the most high risk, highly classified area for using technology. Military units trying to communicate in the heat of battle. Surely, fighting wars is too demanding, too dangerous, too chaotic to risk using any systems based on open source and open standards?

Think again. War is the ultimate interoperability challenge.

The U.S. military's newest, most advanced battlefield technology is based on open standards and open source. When bullets fly, the U.S. turns to open technologies to ensure interoperability -- to ensure that coalition forces can communicate over secure networks, share classified data in real time, and coordinate combat operations.

Governments who think that open technologies are too insecure, immature and unreliable for mission critical activities could not be more wrong.

Generic statements about the security or insecurity of any technology are useless at best, and usually just propaganda for someone's beliefs. But the U.S. military is finding new ways to apply open technologies to their hardest, most dangerous needs.

Web-based chat, shared whiteboards to map operations, shared databases, file transfer -- and all based on open standards and all scheduled for deployment. Without compromising security, or secrecy. It is the very openness of these technologies that allows the military to ensure interoperability, maintain flexibility to rapidly integrate future innovations, and guard security.

And it is not only the U.S. military; others are turning to open technologies.

Does that make application of open technologies easy? No. Does it mean that every government agency should take notice? Yes.

Categories: opensource, openstandards, military

Blogging is Sex, Not Masturbation

2007-05-27T11:28:00.001-04:00

Blogging, like unsafe sex and political protest, is risky behavior.

According to a new UK study, bloggers are taking big risks by posting derogatory comments and damaging details about their firms, bosses and colleagues. One-third of all bloggers risk losing their jobs over their blogging activities.

I have posted before about the risks to bloggers of being political scapegoats or the target of legal retaliation.

This is different. Blogging is like unprotected sex. It feels like masturbation, but it is unsafe sex with a world of unknown partners.

Or to use another metaphor, this is about self-immolation.

Sitting alone in your office or home, it is easy to forget that blogging is a public activity. It feels private and informal, like writing a diary that nobody reads. It isn't. Blogs, for the most part, are public property, a web-based diary accessible to the world.

Would you go around your office hanging signs on the walls with critical comments of your boss? No? Then take care. Blogging is basically the same thing.

If you want to make a statement, make it. But understand it is for public consumption.

Categories: blogging

A Little Search Help ...

2007-05-25T01:08:00.000-04:00

This is not my usual type of post.

I need your help with something ...

I want to find some people who know about "search" -- to chat about capabilities and development of different types of search engines (Google and beyond).

Can you suggest anyone to contact?

Digg in the Crossfire

2007-05-21T18:57:00.001-04:00

Digg.com is caught in a crossfire -- facilitate piracy or censor content provided by its users.

Digg--a user-prioritized news site--deleted stories featuring code for cracking copyrighted DVDs, as demanded by the AACS Licensing Authority, an entertainment industry consortium. Digg users rebelled, and overloaded its website with postings. Digg backed down, allowed re-posting of the stories, and now faces a possible lawsuit (and court-ordered closure).

Truly the definition of "between a rock and a hard place." Internet users ( = Digg customers) verses copyright holders.

Who do you side with?

Either side could close down your business.

Censor articles posted by users and watch them crash your website, or side with their wish to share stories that expose intellectual property and risk closure by lawsuit.

What does this fight show? For one thing, intellectual property rules created for industrial societies do not work for a networked world.

Categories: piracy, copyright, Digg

Open Source Samurai

2007-05-20T08:05:00.004-04:00

Japan is planning to put Microsoft to the sword. The government has announced that open source software will be top priority in public procurement, and vendors are lining up to provide it.

Open source may prove to be Japan's Field of Dreams, demonstrating to the world that when creating a market for open source, if government buys it, they will come.

The Ministry of Communications has issued new procurement guidelines that makes open source (specifically, Linux) a priority beginning on July 1.

Japan's open source move follows a recent policy declaring that technologies based upon open standards, including the OpenDocument Format (ODF), will have priority.

It is notable that the initial list of vendors jumping at the open source opportunities on offer by the Japanese government do not include any "pure" open source companies.

The Japanese government will need to be mindful that procurements involving open source are not like other IT procurements. They require real work by an agency to identify potential open source solutions and the support (internally, or by vendors, consultants or communities) BEFORE a tender is put into the market.

Categories: opensource, Japan

The Yin and Yang of Open Ecosystems

2007-05-05T10:30:00.001-04:00

At this week's World Bank event on open technologies, the presentations of Microsoft, Sun and the ODF Alliance drew no blood, but did prompt an interesting dialogue on open source and other open technologies.

To begin, I held up this picture ...

and asked the audience what it was.

My answer: a heterogeneous ecosystem.

My point: all ecosystems are mixed -- your company, your agency, your household, your economy, your ICT ecosystem, and even the table of presenters at the World Bank event which included Microsoft, Sun and the ODF Alliance.

The enemy is neither open or closed technology. The enemy is lock-in. Lock-in to a vendor, format, distribution channel, device, service provider, procurement model, source of financing, licensing model or development methodology.

Technology policies and decisions should all be aimed at breaking lock-in. That is what fuels ...

innovation in service delivery;

transformation of your business;

competition and new business opportunities; and

the genius of collaboration.

Where do open technologies fit in? They are designed to break lock-in -- unlocking your services, business processes and data from the hardware and software infrastructure.

So, where to start? Procurement.

Re-visit your procurement rules and practices - how you buy technology. Whether you realize it or not, your procurement is likely limiting your choices and creating some form(s) of lock-in.

Remember -- in our globalized world, there is no such thing as standing still. You are either moving forward or falling behind.

Categories: ecosystem, opensource, WorldBank

Open Source Debate at World Bank

2007-05-03T10:27:00.001-04:00

When people come together to discuss open source software, it does not take long for the discussion to sharpen into a debate, especially when governments face off with vendors like Microsoft and Sun.

Yesterday the World Bank webcast an event - Open Systems for e-Government in Developing & Transition Countries. Officials from countries including Azerbaijan, Moldova, Georgia, Kenya, Rwanda and Tanzania participated by video conference.

While the discussion was thoughtful and cordial, the issues sharpened quickly. ODF vs. OOXML. What counts as "open" when it comes to standards. The influence of multinational IT companies in developing countries. The economic model for open source.

But the question asked most often about open source was: If I have a problem, who do I call?

The belief (or fear) that no support exists for open source software remains a major obstacle in the minds of many governments. The "no support" myth (and it is a myth) persists.

Andy Stein, Director of Technology for the City of Newport News, Virginia shared his experience finding external support for his city's open source apps. His answer: Your ICT ecosystem will include many options for support -- ranging from commercial companies and consultants to online communities and other governments. (My response is here.)

The bottom line: Open source does require an agency or enterprise to take responsibility for its IT decisions. There are many options in the market for open source products and support, but the buck stops with you.

Open source offers real value, but it is not a free ride.

Categories: opensource, WorldBank

Managing Open Source Sprawl

2007-04-25T10:05:00.002-04:00

Open source software has real grassroots appeal. By definition, it is easily acquired, allowing IT Departments to quickly deploy it within their ICT ecosystem. However, open source's ease of acquisition and often absence of formal procurement presents its own challenges.

Enterprises--especially those with talented, enterprising developers in house--may be surprised to learn how many open source components exist within their IT infrastructure. Surprise is not a good thing when it comes to technology.

Open source management is essential to maximize the benefits of open source. In this respect, it is not so different from other software. Both open source and proprietary software will be (and likely are) part of your organization's ICT ecosystem. Both must be managed, like any asset.

However, open source management is different than other source management. Its decentralized nature elevates certain risks:

* Use (and benefits of in house customization) of an open source product may not be evenly distributed within an organization.
* Security patches may not be uniformly adopted.
* Licensing issues may be overlooked.
* Interoperability gaps may not be identified.
* Improvements by the open source community may get missed.

There are products commercially available to help enterprises manage open source assets, as reported here. But it is impossible to purchase or outsource effective management. Good management starts at home. Enterprises need to establish their own rules and processes to manage open source software. Commercial partners and products can help, but they are no substitute for an enterprise's own management efforts.

Categories: opensource, management

Open Source Education: Coming to a Child Near You

2007-04-20T01:13:00.002-04:00

No sector has more hardened silos than education. Untold sums of money and time are wasted re-inventing the wheels of education -- lesson plans, curricula, textbooks and other learning materials.

But a revolution in education is coming, and technology is the prime catalyst. The convergence of two innovations --- ultra-cheap laptops and networked teaching --- will forever change how children learn. Man-made barriers to learning are falling, enabling children (and teachers) to literally access the world and learning resources, regardless of location or socio-economic status.

Enter open source education. What is that? Collaborative, networked learning, enabled by the Internet and unbounded by walls, distance or low expectations.

Two specific projects embody this education revolution in the making: the One Laptop Per Child project and Curriki. They represent the hardware and software for this sea change in global education. OLPC will put an Internet-enabled computer into a child’s hands for a mere $100. Curriki will enable any teacher, parent or student to access teaching materials shared and developed around the world.

Despite tremendous local, grassroots energy going into open source education, governments and companies must play their part. Open source education requires connectivity. And that means governments and partners (the World Bank and Google are recent examples) need to invest in basic infrastructure – the networks and applications needed to access the online world.

Forget TV. The revolution will be networked.

Categories: education, OLPC, Curriki

Data is King, for Web 2.0 and Everything Else

2007-04-13T10:37:00.002-04:00

Tim O'Reilly says that Web 2.0 is all about controlling data. He's right. Data is king, but it's not just about Web 2.0. Source code, standards, blogging, news, music, video -- control of data is central to all of them. The liberation of data from proprietary controls is the ultimate disruptive force of the Internet Age.

Access to data is what builds (and breaks) empires, whether it's search (Google) or code for operating systems (Microsoft). Access to data on demand -- anywhere, anytime, from any device -- is becoming a reality.

And companies and governments alike are finding it difficult to adapt. Profitable business models are threatened; government control of information is undermined. The Recording Industry of America files lawsuits to stop people downloading music. Turkish courts order national ISPs to block YouTube.

Ultimately, efforts to control digital data will fail. If you can build a digital lock, you can build a digital key. And that's generally good news. Unlocking information unlocks innovation and ideas.

Categories: innovation, Web2.0

No Global Warming? Go Tell It to the Mountain

2007-04-08T11:45:00.000-04:00

Glaciers are the thermometers of global warming. When they melt on a massive, persistent scale, you know global temperatures are rising. Don't believe panels of scientists or peer reviewed research? Just ask any mountaineer. They are global warming's eyewitnesses.

And according to them, mountain ice is disappearing around the world. Ben Nevis, Britain's highest peak. Switzerland's Mount Matterhorn. Africa's Mount Kilimanjaro. Even Mount Everest. Signs of global warming are unmistakable on all of them, as witnessed by a mountain climbers.

Those famous snows of Kilimanjaro ...

What a difference 7 years makes.

At this point, doubters of global warming are like people who stare at a thermometer, refusing to believe the temperature it registers.

Categories: GlobalWarming

YouTube Can Live Without Big Media

2007-04-07T10:38:00.003-04:00

The legal battle between YouTube and Big Media just received an interesting piece of evidence: videos with copyrighted content (like Daily Show clips) do not dominate YouTube viewership. This is not good news for Viacom and other Big Media companies suing Google to prevent posting of copyrighted video on YouTube.

Big Media's copyrighted videos that were removed by YouTube comprised 9 percent of all videos on the site. And, surprisingly, those videos represent only 6 percent of total views. Yes, some copyrighted content surely remains on YouTube with less obvious tags making them more difficult for copyright holders to identify and demand removal. So those numbers are a bit higher in reality. But likely not orders of magnitude higher. If clips are under the radar of copyright owners, they are probably under the radar of YouTube users as well, not making any most viewed lists or generating many hits.

Even if copyrighted videos are 12 percent of total views, the vast majority of YouTube users are not watching Big Media content. This may not slow Viacom's lawsuit against Google, as one Wired News commentator said, but it may slow Google's willingness or need to settle. Google could remove all Viacom's content and go on its merry way, still enjoying robust and growing usership. It has past its tipping point.

In fact, stripped of Big Media content, YouTube's business model and usage might evolve even more rapidly. Instead of becoming the iTunes of Big Media video clips, who knows what YouTube could morph into? Or it may lead artists to re-think deals with Big Media companies that blocks their content from reaching the mass audiences on online social networks like YouTube.

Categories: media, YouTube

Porn Offers Old School Answers to Piracy

2007-03-31T12:41:00.000-04:00

DRM and other embedded controls on digital content will never stop peer-to-peer copying and sharing on the Internet. The answer is an "old school" approach -- pioneered by radio, TV and the Grateful Dead -- live performances. And once again, the porn industry leads the way, proving that it remains the barometer for high-tech innovation and entrepreneurship.

But with the Internet, live shows are not limited by the reach of a radio signal or a loudspeaker, or the lousy picture quality that defines most online video today. The world is the audience. Broadband streaming of high-definition, live video is a winning business model online, and the porn industry is proving it with record revenues.

Forget the grainy, lousy 70,000 pixel videos that populate the Web today. Real high-def -- with resolutions of 1 million pixels and more -- is the killer app for online content. For now, that requires cutting edge hardware and fiber to deliver fast enough to feel live. But that will change.

Hopefully, it is a lesson that Viacom, CNN and other mainstream content creators will learn.

Categories: media, Internet

Blogging Gets a Presidential Endorsement

2007-03-28T23:26:00.001-04:00

If the mark of a credible news source is the importance of the people who cite it, blogging just got a big endorsement -- from President Bush. In a speech on Wednesday, Bush cited a pair of Iraqi bloggers to support his argument that the US military surge in Iraq is making progress.

The bloggers are two Iraqi dentists who write an English-language blog, IraqTheModel.com. These bloggers, who have met President Bush in the Oval Office, are generally supportive of the US efforts in Iraq. But neither that nor your opinion on the Iraq (civil) war, diminishes the import of this. The President of the United States has cited a blog as a news source.

While some governments use bloggers as scapegoats, blogging has reached the top of the political mountain in the US.

Categories: blogging

Is Oregon Wobbling on Open Standards?

2007-03-28T13:44:00.001-04:00

Oregon has yet another new bill before its legislature about open standards in government. Unfortunately, this one equivocates on the choice of document standards and may produce more confusion than uniformity and interoperability among agencies.

House Bill 2920 "[r]equires state agencies to disclose public records in electronic form in certain circumstances and, when practicable, in open formats for which freeware is available."

Not the clearest language. "Requires" "in certain circumstances" "when practicable"? Now that's language only a lawyer could love.

More importantly, the bill defines an open standard as:

"Free of legal or technical restrictions on the specification's use for encoding, displaying, reading, printing or storing information or data in electronic form."

AND ...

"Developed or updated by more than one independent software provider in a well- defined, inclusive process."

Three questions come to mind:

1. What "freeware" will exist for OOXML's implementation?

2. What "technical restrictions" exist in OOXML? It certainly is loaded with legacy specs to ensure backward compatibility with MS products, and I suspect that creates many technical barriers for its use with products by other software providers.

3. Is OOXML truly "developed and updated" by more than one independent software provider? Its progress through the EMCL and ISO processes is about approval of the standard, not really its development. Or am I wrong about that?

The good news? The bill gives the Secretary of State the authority to fix its built-in equivocation. The Secretary can issue rules setting a
preference among open formats to "encourage uniformity among state agencies where different open formats exist that serve the same purpose, shall prefer the open format for which the widest selection of freeware is available for use by the
public."

Now who would win that competition?

A hearing on competing open standards bills is scheduled for next Tuesday, April 3rd at 1 p.m.

Categories: OpenStandards, Oregon

One Laptop per Millionaire

2007-03-27T12:04:00.000-04:00

The difference between this

... and this ...

... is more than a few zeros.

Forget the $100 laptop per child.

A UK-based company Luvaglio is offering the world's first $1 million laptop. No, that is not a typo. And the company is being very secretive about it. Entering their website is by appointment only.

What does $1 million buy in a laptop? A 17-inch, special anti-glare, self-cleaning screen, 128GB hard drive, and ... wait for it ... a removable diamond power button that also serves as security identification.

One laptop per millionaire. As the Luvaglio website says, "We're not interested in 'mass production' or designing entry-level products ... or children." (OK, I added that last part)

Conspicuous consumption trumps social entrepreneurship? Maybe not.

Luvaglio is obviously targeting the other end of the Digital Divide -- the ultra rich who have been unable to join the Age of Computers.

Categories: OLPC, digitaldivide

Democracy Meets Open Standards in Texas

2007-03-26T00:55:00.002-04:00

Tomorrow, an unusual thing will happen. Open standards -- for most a very technical and opaque matter -- will be the subject of a political hearing in Texas. State lawmakers will debate adoption of a technology policy for Texas in which open standards will have a central role.

Public comments (by Texas residents or anyone else, non-residents, even non-Americans) may be sent online here.

It will be a chance for lawmakers to hear about the value and importance of open standards -- to drive innovation, to ensure future access to public records, for cost savings and public control over vital IT infrastructure.

The hearings will be publicly webcast live.

Here is the link for the House hearing at 10:30AM.

And here for the Senate hearing at 1:30PM.

Categories: OpenStandards, Texas

China: Spam Champion

2007-03-23T11:10:00.001-04:00

Wonder where most of your spam is coming from? Asia. According to Semantec, a well-known anti-virus company, 69% of all emails originating from Asia are spam. And China leads the way, generating the most spam in the world by volume.

I don't know if this is accurate, but I do know that almost all of the spam "comments" received on this blog are from IP addresses in China. It seems China is emitting spam at a rate that rivals its CO2 emissions.

Categories: China, spam

Problems? Blame the Blogs

2007-03-21T17:13:00.001-04:00

That is what the Malaysian government is doing apparently. Malaysia's Information Minister has warned newspapers (and by extension citizens) against using blogs as sources of information. According to the Star newspaper, Minister Zainuddin Maidin described blogs as "anarchist websites" and said most websites are run by frustrated journalists and political pundits.

Governments, companies and politicians worldwide are having difficulty adjusting to our wired world. The Internet disintermediates government and others who have traditionally filtered or rationed information. News oligopolies have ended.

Today, individuals can easily and instantaneously project their ideas, opinions and reporting out to the world. It can be a painful experience, as the Malaysian government discovered when allegations of corruption appeared in blogs and were later picked up by mainstream media.

Instant, unfiltered access to information is good. Yet, people still have a responsibility to assess (and question) the credibility of sources -- whether they are blogs or government-controlled media.

It's hard to lose control, and easy to scapegoat bloggers, as I noted here in connection with a company targeting a widely read blog.

As with most things, however, the fault lies not in our blogs but in ourselves.

Categories: Malaysia, blogging

Google Lands in Africa

2007-03-20T11:21:00.001-04:00

By now, many of you have seen the news about Google's partnerships in Africa with the Rwandan Ministry of Infrastructure and the Kenya Education Network (KENET). Google will supply Google Apps software to thousands of students in both countries as well as government officials in Rwanda.

Three important things are happening here.

First, more and more core business services are becoming Web-based and Web-accessed.

Second, Google sees that partnerships in emerging markets (with governments and educational institutions) is the way to win early mindshare and market share, not to mention goodwill from local communities.

Third, in many countries the public sector is the key catalyst and lead adopter for application of new technologies (unlike in the US).

In many of these markets, users will jump right to communication, business and data management tools delivered over the Internet -- avoiding the pain and expense of installing (and maintaining) business software on their individual computers.

No licensing, no lock-in.

To put it in Monopoly terms, "Go to the Web, go directly to the Web; pass licensing, do not pay $200.”

Categories: google, Africa

The (Small) Business Case for Open Source

2007-03-16T11:46:00.002-04:00

If the code for open source can be shared, why not the business cases for it? No reason at all, says one UK company that will blog its experiences migrating an entire small business IT infrastructure to open source.

Mercian Labels, a 20-person maker of custom printed self-adhesive labels (and who doesn't love them?), posted a press release on its corporate blog announcing the start of its open source migration and its case study. As the migration proceeds, the company will blog about its strategic decisions, cost benefit analysis, technical options and problems faced during its open source journey.

To grow the open source user base, sharing best practices, case studies and business cases is just as important as sharing code -- especially for resource-challenged small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). And as Mercian found, SMEs may be positioned to realize returns on their open source investments faster than larger companies.

For Mercian, the switch to open source was an easy decision. Its business case balanced new costs of training, internal development and support against its existing costs from viral damage to mission critical servers, uncontrollable system changes, security threats and expensive upgrade paths.

Mercian decided to take control of its own IT destiny. Control, cost and future flexibility make open source an unbeatable component of its small business success. And even accounting for new costs, the company projects a positive (dollar) return on its investment in 1 year.

Categories: opensource, businesscase, SME

Why IT Projects Fail?

2007-03-13T11:28:00.002-04:00

Your technology project has failed. Most likely it was not the technology that failed to deliver; it was you paying too little attention on your people, schedules and budgets. According to a recent company survey, the top 3 reasons for the failure of tech projects are: poor communications, unrealistic schedules and insufficient resource planning.

While most managers focus on the high-priced hardware, the complex architecture and technical issues, it is the "soft" issues that end up hurting a project the most -- people who do not communicate well, inattention to how long tasks take to complete, and not enough money and people to do the job well and on time.

Planning for project success means planning to communicate up, down and across the org chart. Communication is not an ad hoc activity; processes need to be defined so people know when and what they are expected to communicate.

People, schedules and budgets are the 3 pillars of successful IT projects.

Categories: ITprojects, communications

Open Source Politics in the UK

2007-03-11T14:41:00.001-04:00

Open source was thrust into the rough-and-tumble of British politics this week when the Tory Party's shadow chancellor criticized Tony Blair's Labor Party for its failure to expand use of open source software in government.

George Osborne seems to get it, and he spoke with clarity and passion. In his remarks (full speech is here), he complained of the uneven playing field for open source in government procurement.

But his challenge went beyond procurement rules. Osbourne called for a change in the culture of government in the digital age, and presented a technology strategy for the Conservative Party based upon three pillars: equality of information, social networking and open source. And not just open source as software but open source as a powerful model for mass collaboration.

Open source politics does not mean open source dictatorship. A Conservative Party spokesperson underscored this after the speech:

"Procurement should be based on what best meets their needs. Functionality, performance, security, value and the cost of ownership of software should be the priority, not categorical preferences for open source software, commercial software, free software or any other software development model."

If only more politicians spoke like this.

Categories: opensource, UK, government

Next Victim of Global Warming: Japan

2007-03-06T01:45:00.002-05:00

What is cold, white, flaky and missing in Japan this winter?

Snow.

According to Japan's Meteorological Agency, for the first time since records began in 1867, downtown Tokyo has had a winter with no snow. In fact, this is Japan's warmest winter ever.

And it is not only Tokyo that is suffering. Winter festivals across Japan have been canceled due to insufficient snow.

And a few time zones to the west, the UK has experienced its warmest year-long period ever, from March 2006 to February 2007. That is since 1659, when temperature records began being officially collected in England.

But I'm sure it has nothing to do with the global warming myth.

Categories: GlobalWarming, Japan, UK

Enemies of Innovation

2007-03-03T12:15:00.001-05:00

Empires are often built upon scarcity and control of distribution. Things like digital rights management (DRM) and proprietary ownership of standards are tools for protecting business empires. However, scarcity is the enemy of innovation. And the Internet is turning fortresses into sand castles.

The ultimate problem faced by companies fighting to maintain a death grip on their content (whether it's music, software code or news) is that the artificial scarcity of their content is disappearing. So are their distribution monopolies.

You do not need to watch CNN to see one of their news stories. You can find it online, and not only on the CNN website. It is likely posted on hundreds of blogs and other websites. It can be emailed to you, downloaded using BitTorrent, podcast or viewed on YouTube. The economics and business models of content are changing.

These new dynamics are explained with wonderful clarity by TechDirt in a series of articles about the economics of scarcity.

YouTube, open source, blogs, BitTorrent, Skype, Craig's List. They are all exploding old business models based on artificial scarcity, and shifting the competitive landscape for what value means in a wired world (and marketplace).

But this is not the end of the world. Scarcity is the enemy of innovation. Today, content scarcity is disappearing, but that only means that innovation can accelerate.

Categories: innovation, economics, DRM

ODF Isn't Just California Dreamin'

2007-02-27T11:22:00.000-05:00

It looks like the OpenDocument Format (ODF) is coming to California. A State Assemblyman from San Francisco has tabled a bill that would require all state agencies to create, exchange and preserve public documents using open, XML-based file formats beginning January 1, 2008.

The bill is designed to make sure that open is as open does. It requires open file formats to be:

* interoperable among multiple platforms
* implemented by multiple vendors
* fully published and royalty free
* controlled by an open industry organization

From Massachusetts to Minnesota to California. It looks like ODF is making its own cross-country migration. Go West, young format!

Categories: ODF, standards, California

An Inconvenient Oscar

2007-02-26T22:36:00.000-05:00

Last night a spotlight shined on the cause of global warming and Al Gore's interrupted political career when his PowerPoint-turned-film, An Inconvenient Truth, won the Academy Award for
best documentary.

Forget 2000. The Supreme Court can't strip him of the Oscar. And Al Gore's post-Washington career has been impressive. Professor, investment adviser, environmental advocate and Nobel Peace Prize nominee. Even more impressive, Gore has been right about the most important issues of the day -- the power of the Internet, Iraq and global warming.

As the Vice President noted, the fight against global warming only depends on the will to act, a renewable resource. So, is Al Gore's political career another renewable resource?

Categories: GlobalWarming, AlGore

South Africa Recommits to Open Source

2007-02-22T22:46:00.000-05:00

Today the South African Cabinet issued a new policy for technology in government, deepening its commitment to open source and open standards.

In its statement, the Cabinet said: "All new software developed for or by the government will be based on open standards, and government will itself migrate current software to FOSS."

Smartly, the South African government avoided setting any timetables or quotas. Instead, it focused on the benefits that open technologies afford the government and the country: lowering costs (for agencies, schools, communities and homes), enhancing IT skills and streamlining local software development.

It will also establish a project management office dedicated to implementing its new policy and expanding adoption of open source across government.

The government-wide move on open ICT follows quickly on the heels of a a decision by the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research to adopt the open document format (ODF) as its default document format.

Categories: OpenSource, SouthAfrica, government

Google, Microsoft and Disruptive Business Models

2007-02-20T09:53:00.002-05:00

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer admits that he's worried -- less about competitors and more about being blindsided by a new business model. He should be worried about the combination -- an innovative, resource-rich competitor building a new, disruptive business model (and the infrastructure to deliver it).

In a recent interview, Ballmer noted that Microsoft is playing catch up in search. That isn't news. Google has effectively won that battle. Ballmer also mentioned open source as a worrisome threat. That isn't news either, though it is not only the pricing pressure created by open source that should worry him. Open source has other powerful drivers behind its adoption globally.

However, Microsoft should be most worried about plans accidentally revealed during a Google presentation. Google is building the capacity for "infinite storage" -- meaning the ability to mirror someone's hard drive online and store all of their files, every e-mail, photo, mp3, web history, bookmark, and make them accessible on demand, anytime, anywhere, from any device.

Now that would be a disruptive business model.

Categories: Microsoft, Google, business

Are Newspapers Dying?

2007-02-19T10:52:00.002-05:00

The Internet is killing newspapers. It is not a sudden demise, but more a death of a thousand cuts -- loss of readers (eyeballs, in online lexicon), classified ads and subscriptions. Is there any way for newspapers to compete against Craig's List and the headlines-on-homepage habits of consumers?

One newspaper publisher in Norway found an answer, and makes piles of money online. It did have the advantage of moving fast online in a small market, quickly becoming a big fish in a small pond. But it also did other things right -- including, most importantly, re-inventing its business model and hiring managers from outside the newspaper business. It built or bought links with other publications. It started giving content away for free and moved its classified ads online.

There are lessons here for other newspapers, other businesses and even governments in how to adjust to life (and business) in an online world ...

1. New leadership and management is often needed -- people not tied to the organization's old business models. The Consumer is king, not your old business model.

2. Recognize that you are selling services more than content.

3. Trust remains a key asset. Consumers prefer to source information and services from people (and brands) they trust. This is especially true online given the amount of garbage and scammers on the Internet.

4. Use trust to get online visitors coming to you directly, and not just through a search engine. Partnerships linking you with other visited sites can help get visitors through your front door, as opposed to the back door via a search engine.

5. Keep costs down. Providing services online can be very profitable, provided you take advantage of the cost savings that business online allows.

Categories: consumers, media, Internet

Global Warming's Next Victim: Peru

2007-02-16T13:23:00.001-05:00

Global warming sure does produce pretty photos from distant places, pretty photos with ugly implications. The next page in the global warming scrapbook comes from Peru. While India is losing islands and Canada its ice shelfs, Peru is losing its glaciers.

A story from The Times (UK) reports the impending loss (that is, melting) of Quelccaya, the main glacier of the world’s largest tropical icecap, located in South America's Andies mountains. It is melting faster than scientists previously measured. Current prediction: Quelccaya will lose half its current mass by next year and disappear entirely by 2012, only 5 years from now.

Here is how the glacier's retreat has progressed in the past 25 years ...

But why worry about a pile of ice far off in the Andies Mountains?

Peru's glaciers feed the rivers that supply water to rural communities and cities where most of the population lives. Glaciers are vital for water supplies, essential for drinking, electricity and agriculture. No glaciers means less water, and less water means less food and more human hardship. It's a simple equation with devastating consequences.

Categories: GlobalWarming, Peru

Outing Groklaw & Open Source Bloggers

2007-02-14T11:29:00.001-05:00

Anonymous blogging is becoming a risky proposition. And if you blog about legal issues related to open source, be prepared for real trouble. As part of its court case attacking Linux vendors and users, SCO has subpeonaed Groklaw blogger Pamela Jones, a frequent commentator on the SCO lawsuit. SCO intends to force Jones to sit for a deposition. Why? They claim Jones is somehow associated with IBM, or might even be one of its lawyers.

Even if true, what will SCO gain, other than the embarrassment of outing an online commentator or exposing how advocates use the Internet to project their views to the world? Groklaw posts about the SCO case are mainly commentary based upon court documents and filings. So SCO is basically harassing a blogger for her widely-read opinions (protected by the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution). Sounds like a cheap shot, and a move almost guaranteed to create a storm of bad press for SCO. And they would deserve it.

It is unclear what relevant evidence Jones (whoever she is) would have for the lawsuit and SCO. If she was a lawyer for IBM, any information beyond the blog posts would be protected by attorney-client privilege. If she is a paid mouthpiece for IBM or associated with it in some other way, nothing indicates that she has any information beyond what is publicly available in court documents. In the end, this looks like SCO attacking a person for her support for open source.

Allowing this subpeona of a blogger would set a dangerous precedent and send a chilling signal to anyone who posts online. Intimidation and reprisals should not be part of the blogging experience.

Categories: opensource, SCO, IBM, blogging

The Network Effect of Open Source

2007-02-13T11:30:00.001-05:00

Open source is breaking out of software and starting to drive innovation in sectors beyond ICT. As pressures increase on companies (and labs and universities) to develop and discover faster, they are finding open source to be a model for networked collaboration and a catalyst for innovation.

The Human Genome Project is a famous example of open source collaboration in science. Now comes news that a giant drug company, Novartis, will build upon this open source approach for its diabetes research. Instead of hoarding its genetic data, Novartis is sharing it to create a library of diabetes data freely available online, expecting to both accelerate its own innovation and spur new partnerships.

Open source is making similar inroads in education, consumer products, even medical devices for amputees.

This connection between open source and innovation beyond software will be a focal point for the next phase of the Open ePolicy Group.

Categories: opensource, innovation, OeG

10 Things You Should Not Buy New

2007-02-07T10:33:00.000-05:00

Interesting article on MSN Money by Liz Pulliam Weston listing 10 things you should generally never buy new (and it's more bad news for content creators) ...

1. Books
2. DVDs / CDs
3. Children's toys
4. Jewelry
5. Sports equipment
6. Timeshares (in real estate)
7. Cars
8. Software (and video games)
9. Office furniture
10. Hand Tools

Other things to add to the list ... clothes for kids under 2 years old? Skiis? Pets?

Anything you would add?

BBC Handcuffs Viewers to Microsoft

2007-02-05T09:18:00.000-05:00

I love the BBC -- its news coverage, its TV shows, its website, its independence even in the face of pressure by its public paymasters. When it comes to technology, however, the BBC seems willing to trade that famous independence for a set of handcuffs.

Access to BBC on-demand TV services will be unavailable to consumers who do not have an up-to-date version of Microsoft Windows. It matters not what you think of Microsoft; forcing consumers to choose any single vendor, system or computer is unnecessary, wasteful and unfair.

Just ask the victims of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 who were unable to register online for disaster relief on the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) website. Online registration for disaster help required Internet Explorer initially.

The truth is: lock-in is a bad idea.

You can tell the BBC what you think about its plans on its website here.

Categories: consumers, lock-in, BBC, Microsoft

Global Warming? How about Global Coloring?

2007-02-02T11:45:00.001-05:00

While politicans and scientists dither over the recent report on global warming issued yesterday by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, there was more colorful climate news from Siberia.

Oily, smelly, orange and yellow snow fell on several villages in western Siberia this week.

While they flew in a team of chemical experts to investigate, Russian officials also pronounced no serious health threats from the malodorous, tinted snow.

Despite their assurances, it might be best for Siberians to heed the famous words of advice given to kids in America ... "Don't eat the yellow snow."

Categories: GlobalWarming, Siberia

Leveraging Open Source (or Open Anything)

2007-01-29T19:33:00.001-05:00

Declaring a commitment to open source and other open technologies is the easy part. Finding ways to actually leverage open ICT is hard, as governments are discovering.

This lesson is learned and re-learned every day, as two articles I saw today illustrated. First, a new survey in India indicated that one major challenge to growth of open source was customers convinced of its value remain unsure how to leverage open source in their organizations. This problem is directly linked to low skill levels and experience in open ICT, few incentives to explore open source options, how staff performance is measured, and a failure of leadership by senior managers.

The second story came from the Land of Kiwis where the New Zealand Open Source Society complained about the non-tender of a government software procurement. The NZ story highlights 2 major obstacle to successfully leveraging open source: (1) There is often no vendor representing an open source option, while proprietary vendors deploy armies of sales and marketing personnel; and (2) Too often tender documents (RFPs and RFIs) specify a specific vendor or product, thus totally eliminating the possiblity of any open source options.

In New Zealand, a government agency issued a tender (designed by an outside consultant) for a service provider to implement a Microsoft-based online registration system. Not an online registration system. A Microsoft-based system. Nothing against Microsoft, but governments should focus on the services they want to deliver, not forever locking themselves into one company or technology.

Wait-and-see approaches to procurement will not maximize choices, competition or value for money. Nor will they produce in open source options.

Unfortunately, old habits die hard. Service-oriented, technology-neutral procurement goes against everything that procurement officers and CIOs know or have learned. Only clear direction (and rewards) from an organization's leadership can change this.

Categories: opensource, procurement, government

Global Warming: Greenland Gains Island, India Loses One

2007-01-16T08:23:00.002-05:00

At least in the short run, global warming is creating winners and losers. As average temperatures and sea levels climb, some places go green while others go under (water).

Greenland just got greener, adding an island off its coast that was once buried under glacial ice, now melted.

Neither climate computer models nor Google Earth can keep pace with global warming. In this photo, it still shows the island connected to Greenland's mainland by a glacial bridge. (It's the grey-white ice just above the words at bottom of photo)

Contrast Greenland's gain with India's loss. Just before the New Year, the island of Lohachara, once home to 10,000 souls, was submerged by the sea, as blogged about here. It was the first documented case of inhabited land lost to global warming.

The problem is... Greenland's newest island -- named Uunartoq Qeqertoq ("the warming island") in the Inuit language -- is uninhabited. Lohachara had a population of 10,000, and there is no re-location program available to its former residents.

Greenland's melting ice is the #1 contributor to rising oceans globally. It is losing 80 cubic miles of ice per year. That translates into a lot of water. More than Lohachara could withstand. More than a lot of other places will survive.

So global warming has its first namesake: Uunartoq Qeqertoq.

What will we call the next Lohachara?

Categories: GlobalWarming, Greenland, India

Governments: Follow Consumers in ICT

2007-01-07T12:42:00.001-05:00

Governments can learn a thing or two from consumers when it comes technology. And they should, especially when it comes to using and buying technology. After all, consumers -- the public -- are government's primary customers.

What ICT lessons should governments learn from consumers?

1. Services trump hardware. In the end, people care less about the hardware and more about the content and services that hardware delivers. Hardware becomes obsolete. Services and users endure. This is the main reason for governments and enterprises to focus on becoming service- and user-oriented, and leaving behind their (procurement) attention on hardware.

2. The physical is moving to digital. People like -- they want! -- new ways of getting information and services. They don't want to stand in lines. They don't want to wait on hold on the telephone. Enter "disruptive distribution channels." Internet, instant messages, email, Blackberries, podcasts, blogs, P2P, Bluetooth. They all represent new ways to access information and services -- from governments, companies AND, importantly, from each other.

3. New technologies become mainstream faster today. Consumers are adopting new technologies faster than ever now. And old technologies become obsolete faster than ever. Governments must be aware of this, or risk falling far behind their customers in the ICT they use and the delivery channels they want. Governments cannot afford to only think about upgrades; they need to think about the next generation of ICT (and distribution) to deliver public services and information.

To avoid becoming obsolete, governments need to take their technology cues from consumers.

Categories: consumers, ICT, government

Cities Will Be Innovation Leaders in 2007

2007-01-03T19:48:00.001-05:00

Open source, open standards and open technologies will continue to make big news and big gains among governments and enterprises in 2007. However, I expect the real action -- the real leadership -- in open ICT will be by municipal governments. Cities are today's leading open innovators.

As 2006 ended, cities were driving technology innovation (and open ICT) in the public sector. Notable examples include:

* Netherlands: Amsterdam (and 8 other cities) issued a "Manifesto for Open Source in Government," committing themselves to bringing open ICT to city government. Amsterdam will commence an open source demonstration project in early 2007.

* France: the greater Paris region will become a center of excellence for open source software development. The effort will be a major public-private partnership aiming to provide a new foundation for innovation and growth.

* South Korea: A major city, Gwangju Metropolitan City, has been designated an Open Source City in order to promote regional software development and drive economic competitiveness. The city completed an Information Strategy Plan, identifying areas ripe for open source in their infrastructure. Execution begin in the education sector.

* Germany: A healthy competition exists among cities vying to be Germany's open source trendsetter. Current contenders include Munich, Nuremburg, Mannheim, and even tiny Schwäbisch Hall (population 36,000), the first to entirely replace Windows.

* Numerous cities big and small -- including Vienna, Bergen, Bristol, Birmingham, Barcelona, and even Kenosha, Wisconsin -- are adopting open technologies. The race is on, and there are new entrants every day.

The trend is clear: For leadership in open source and open ICT, look to your cities.

Categories: OpenSource, innovation, government

Ayles Ice, Lohachara & Our Bi-Polar Disorder

2006-12-29T15:40:00.001-05:00

Although they are thousands of miles apart, the Ayles Ice Shelf and Lohachara Island have a lot in common. They are the newest victims of global warming.

Canada now has a new floating island of ice, shown here breaking off from Ellesmere Island on August 13, 2005 ...

... while in India's Bay of Bengal an island has disappeared under the waves (It's now a smudge just below the island in photo), as blogged here recently.

Scientists reported today that the Ayles Ice Shelf, one of only six major ice shelves left in the Canadian Arctic, collapsed from the coast of Ellesmere Island into the sea. And it wasn't the first.

In 2002, the Arctic's largest ice shelf -- the Ward Hunt Ice Shelf -- broke up.

Is this news? It shouldn't be. In 2002, a paper published by the U.S. Geological Survey concluded by saying:

"The ice shelves [along the north coast of Ellesmere Island] were once much more extensive than they are today ... and it is reasonable to suppose that the disintegration of the Ellesmere Ice Shelf was a response to the pronounced warming during the last century ... It is difficult to ignore the connection between the state of the Ellesmere Island ice shelves, the state of the climate, and changes taking place elsewhere in the Arctic Basin. The ice shelves are bellwethers of climate change."

As a New Years resolution for 2007, we should wish all these ostrich-like politicians and skeptics to pull their heads out from the ice and see the bi-polar changes that global warming has already brought. Not to mention what's coming.

Categories: GlobalWarming, Canada, India

The Needle and the Damage Done (to Baseball)

2006-12-27T15:58:00.000-05:00

Yet again, a federal authority is taking steps to restore integrity to America's national pastime forfeited by a shameful conspiracy between Major League Baseball and the Players Union.

Minutes ago, a federal court ordered that the urine samples of baseball players who tested positive for steroids in 2003 (the height of "juiced" baseball) can be used by federal investigators. This will undo a shameless, shady deal cut by MLB and the Players' Union to hide the evidence, protect the cheaters, and sell out the efforts of clean players.

That grey pall on Barry Bonds' name is one step closer to becoming a black mark, if his name is among those 100 samples that tested positive in 2003. Not that anybody seriously doubts his steroid use.

His personal trainer was guilty of steroid distribution, and sits in jail for refusing to answer questions about what Bonds knew. Hmm. Now why would he refuse to answer that question? Bonds' position is equally telling. He says that he never knowingly used steroids, though he admits using the infamous "cream" and "clear" distributed by Balco. What were the "cream" and "clear"? Steroids, as established in the Balco court case.

Anything to add Mr. Bonds?

Categories: baseball, steroids

No New Year for Lohachara

2006-12-25T08:16:00.001-05:00

While most of us will celebrate the coming New Year with hopes for a joyful 2007, the people who lived on the tiny island of Lohachara in India will not. Their island, located where the great Ganges River meets the Bay of Bengal, is gone. It is the first inhabited island to fall victim to global warming. But surely not the last.

Lohachara had an address: Latitude 21.9 / Longitude 88.1058333.

It had a population: 10,000 inhabitants.

It had neighbors: Suparibhanga Island (uninhabited and also now submerged forever).

And now Lohachara has disappeared, swallowed by a rising sea. (It's the grey smudge just below the island in the center of the photo above).

I want to wish all those skeptical, "do nothing" politicians and "scientists" a special New Years wish ...

I wish for you to move to Lohachara's neighboring Ghoramara Island, or Sagar Island, or the Carteret Islands off Papua New Guinea, or Vanuatu ... stay awhile ... and then tell the world that global warming is not happening. I suggest, however, you bring some scuba gear and a boat.

Categories: GlobalWarming, India

ODF v. OOXML -- Size Matters

2006-12-24T12:57:00.000-05:00

Rob Weir has an excellent post comparing OpenDocument Format to ooXML, championed by Microsoft. The conclusion: Size matters.

The bottom line is that ooXML has a weight problem. Not only is it a bloated specification, but on average it also produces files that are bigger and slower than does its ODF rival when each is used by the same application.

This echoes the point made in my recent blog post about the practical differences between ODF and ooXML. In this Standards Smackdown!, differences in performance and complexity will likely impact decisions by developers about which standard to use.

Categories: OpenDocument, ODF, standards, ooXML

Open Source Brings Neutrality and Manifestos

2006-12-23T16:48:00.000-05:00

The debate about open source and open standards challenges governments to replace their rhetoric with tangible actions. Governments are gravitating toward the idea of issuing "technology neutral" policies as a starting point.

This raises two issues that most governments have yet to face: (1) What is technology neutrality? and (2) What must governments do to establish true ICT neutrality?

Neutrality (at least as rhetoric) appeals to everyone, governments and vendors alike. Few, however, have really considered what neutrality means and how to establish it.

A vigorous, open debate about technology neutrality is happening in at least one country -- Malaysia -- as evidenced by a recent opinion piece in its largest english-language newspaper the New Straits Times.

The second challenge -- creating genuine ICT neutrality -- is harder. Passive policymaking is not enough. As governments are learning, a "wait and see" approach produces endless waiting and little seeing.

As blogger here recently, the City of Amsterdam (and 8 other cities in the Netherlands) are waiting no longer. They signed a "Manifesto for Open Source in Government," committing themselves to exploring the use of open ICT. Amsterdam's City Council just announced that an initial test in the use of open standards and open source will begin in early 2007.

Do not be fooled by rhetoric, from governments or vendors. It matters less if someone uses the words "neutrality" or "manifesto." The only thing that counts is whether there are more choices in ICT procurement, whether vendor lock-in is eliminated, and who controls your data, documents and ICT decisions. Open is as open does.

Categories: OpenSource, ICTneutrality, Netherlands, Malaysia, government

The U.N., Open Source and Repression

2006-12-14T09:52:00.001-05:00

The United Nations helps governments use open source as a tool of repression, according to a group named the Inner City Press. Among their rambling and rumormongering, this group accuses the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) of aiding the government of Uzbekistan in using open source as an instrument to support systematic repression.

I would offer a few general comments on this:

1. The UN has not shown much leadership in technology policymaking. UNDP itself has been incoherent and contradictory toward open source. While UNDP’s former chief, Mark Malloch Brown, urged Microsoft to work with the open source community, its IT Department organized marketing presentations to staff by big proprietary vendors. The gulf between the words of UNDP management and the actions of staff is often wide.

2. At least one group within the UN system (and ironically under UNDP) does an excellent job in promoting forward-thinking ICT policies: the Asia-Pacific Development Information Programme (APDIP). Unlike many UN agencies, it is focused, principled, competent and physically separate from UN headquarters.

3. Let’s be honest. UNDP’s mandate is to work in poor countries. And many poor countries have un-democratic governments. Partnerships with such governments are always difficult, often problematic and sometimes compromising.

Specifically, about UNDP’s project in Uzbekistan ...

UNDP’s technology efforts in Uzbekistan fall under a new project assisting the Uzbeki government in the formulation and implementation of ICT for development policy. According to UNDP, the project aims to promote an “[e]nabling environment for civil society to participate actively in the development process.” This is normal, meaningless UNDP fare.

The project—which runs from 2005-2009 with a budget of $535,000—included financing a report on free/open source software. It also supports typical UNDP project activities like study tours, seminars and other capacity-building efforts.

UNDP frequently works with governments of all persuasions to develop ICT policy frameworks. Nothing wrong with that. Technology is one aspect of a country’s development efforts. However, it is reasonable to ask whether UNDP should have certain policy parameters or conditions to avoid technologies of repression?

In other words, should UNDP attach strings to its ICT projects?

This is a serious question. Possible conditions might include making UNDP funding of ICT projects contingent upon partner governments not blocking access to news sites, or establishing privacy protections for users. And certainly UNDP should not provide or pay for software used enable censorship or limit user freedoms. It needs to openly and strongly condemn such practices.

Perhaps all UN agencies should consider setting common policies for ICT-in-development projects.

Three disclaimers:
o In the past I have worked for UNDP projects in various capacities.
o UNDP-APDIP participated in the Open ePolicy Group, which I founded.
o I know one person in UNDP’s office in Uzbekistan, though we have not discussed this post or these issues.

Categories: OpenSource, government, UnitedNations

Standards Smackdown!

2006-12-11T08:18:00.000-05:00

Technology rarely sparks public debate, let alone political intrigue. But a “no holds barred” fight has begun in the technology world over document formats. That means nothing to most people. But it is turning the IT world into the UFC. This fight is not just among geeky programmers. Industry heavyweights and governments are getting ready to rumble.

Ecma's approval of the Office Open XML (ooXML) standard this week sets up a big showdown. A competing standard – the OpenDocument Format (ODF) – is already ISO-approved.

I noted in a recent CNET article that Ecma's approval of ooXML will increase confusion in the marketplace. Consumers and companies now face two different document standards. One is a proprietary-encumbered standard, the other an open standard. Both are endorsed by standards organizations and industry allies.

The average person, even the average corporate customer will be confused. And when it comes to technology, the uninformed are easily abused. Politicians, often among the most technologically challenged, are already being targeted. It’s about to get worse. A giant PR blitz is coming. Corporate commanders are fueling the FUD missiles.

The ultimate question is which document standard will become the standard?

One group will greatly affect the outcome – the actual consumers of standards: programmers and IT developers. They are the people who use the specifications of these 2 standards. These developers (and companies that employ them) must deal with reality. Software development is hard work, and complexity drives up costs. It is true for software. It will be true for document standards.

According to a new study, in Asia today 70% of computer programmers use open source software in their work. Why? It’s cheaper than proprietary software and allows total access to the source code. Applying ooXML, a standard bloated with proprietary functions, will be difficult and costly. These will be serious disincentives to IT developers not employed by Microsoft.

All those Asian software developers using open source – 50% of them will use XML next year. Will they be willing to endure to pain and costs of using ooXML instead of ODF, a simpler, more open standard?

Welcome to the standards smackdown. The fighters have entered the Octagon. It looks like a sumo champion will face a jui-jitsu master. It’s déjà vu all over again. Want to know the results the first time? It’s here.

Oh yeah – it's on now.

Categories: OpenDocument, ODF, standards, ooXML, Microsoft

Dutch Cities Demand Open Source

2006-12-07T10:15:00.000-05:00

Apparently, passivity is not working. A group of 8 cities in the Netherlands will wait no longer for the market to provide more technology choices. Fed up with poor interoperability and uni-vendor dependency, they are demanding open source software alternatives.

An article (in dutch) in the Dutch newspaper Trouw describes the effort by several large Dutch cities to access open source choices. Indeed, they have gone so far as to publish a manifest insisting on open source options from vendors who want to compete for municipal ICT contracts.

Is this the IT equivalent of Martin Luther nailing his 95 Theses to the door of the Wittenberg church?

Categories: open, source, procurement, Netherlands, government

Technology Neutral ≠ Open Source Inaction

2006-12-05T12:11:00.002-05:00

Memo to governments: technology-neutral policies on procurement do not mean that governments should do nothing about open source. While governments like Malaysia are neutralizing formal preferences (or mandates) for open source, they should not become passive about procurement or competition within the ICT market.

Technology neutrality is not a natural state, for governments or anyone else. People have preferences, even if policies on paper do not. Removing a sentence from an Open Source Master Plan, as Malaysia has done, does not magically level the playing field in ICT procurement. Neither does an open source preference for that matter. Procurement trumps policy every time.

To establish a truly neutral and competitive procurement environment, governments need to focus on 2 things: (1) setting clear objectives; and (2) burning your old, standard RFPs.

For step 1, Malaysia has it right. Its OSS Framwork sets the right targets: increase software choices and interoperability, reduce total costs of ownership and vendor lock-in, and ensure security.

Step 2 -- changing how procurement is actually done -- is much harder. It requires both changing rules and how people act. Tweaking your procurement policies will not work because you cannot "tweak" people's behavior. More dramatic action is needed.

Three actions can help drive changes in procurement practices and behavior. First, issue new standard RFP provisions that show agencies what neutral language looks like. Second, establish new criteria for bid evaluation that takes proper account of how open source works in the market. Lastly, find a way to make agency interactions with vendors more transparent. Too often, procurement decisions are made behind closed doors before an RFP is even issued. That is not a formula for value for money.

Categories: open, source, procurement, Malaysia, government

Government Procurement Adds to Open Source Problems

2006-12-02T10:53:00.000-05:00

As governments embrace service-oriented and performance-based procurement, they are discovering one major problem: they are not very good at it. And this has serious implications for the adoption of open source solutions by the public sector.

Performance-based procurement of services presents new challenges, as U.S. federal agencies are learning. Services are not managed, measured or maintained in the same way as products. The focus is service needs, not products specifications. Procurement personnel trained in buying hardware and systems are spec-oriented, not outcome-oriented.

These difficulties are compounded with open source. Open source is just as disruptive of government procurement as it is for the IT industry. Worse, open source involves the procurment of both a software product (community-developed and often free) and support services (with performance-based contracts).

Common criteria for bid selection -- how well product meets specs, financial stability of the company, product costs, and alignment with current suppliers -- make no sense with open source. Getting the software and getting the support are often two different things.

While open source fits well with service-oriented procurement and its performance-based contracts, governments so far do not. More is required of IT staff with both open source and performance-based contracts before procurement begins. They need to understand the open source product/services and the outcomes they expect. They will need training to handle new demands with respect to estimating contract costs, conducting risk assessment, setting realistic baselines, performance benchmarks and financial incentives.

Metrics must become their new mantra.

Without a serious commitment to training, it is a lot to ask of any Acquisition Department.

Lessons from the Open Source Frontier #2

2006-11-30T13:00:00.001-05:00

Things with open source software are not always what they seem, or what is reported. Just ask the City Council of Birmingham (UK). Critics declared their open source effort a failure, but not so fast. Reports of the death of open source in Birmingham are greatly exaggerated.

According to its Head of IT, the City Council actually expects to realize cost savings over time, and contrary to press reports it plans to "significantly increase" its use of open-source.

Which brings us to a few additions to my original Lessons from the Open Source Frontier.

Lesson #3: Open source requires skills.

You can build them up or buy them. More likely, you should do both. But either way, a real migration is involved and requires experienced people--techs, installers and troubleshooters--to manage it. The level of skills on staff will impact the "team costs" (like project set-up, technical design, development, testing and training) that were so high in Birmingham. Investment to acquire those skills: real. Value of those skills for the next open source project: priceless.

Lesson #4: Objects in the mirror are less costly than they appear.

Government budgets are often short-term. The true TCO of technology projects is not. Costs for open source may differ greatly in the short term and long term. Special discounted license rates--such as offered by Microsoft to governments--affect the cost comparision in the short term. But start-up costs are not the only consideration. Vendor lock-in has its price. You never develop the technical and managerial skills needed to have more choices in the future. And the costs of your data/documents trapped in proprietary formats will always be there.

Even the iMpower Consulting report criticizing Birmingham notes:

"The extra resources involved in decision making and project management mean that the cost of this first-time open source implementation for BCC was significantly higher than for a comparable proprietary upgrade."

So, costs were higher the first time around. Is this a surprise? How much did the Windows license cost the first time around? The obvious implication is that management and training costs will be lower for future open source implementations.

Lesson #5: The price of lock-in is high, as is the price of freedom from it.

Identifying and eliminating technical "lock-in" is hard work, as Birmingham discovered. There are endless ways in which proprietary applications and configurations obstruct porting to any other technology. That is the price of lock-in, and it is permanently steep if you continue to live in a world of fewer choices. If you never move, you never feel the weight of the chains around you.

Lesson #6: Consider putting the cart before the horse.

Sequencing matters. Birmingham's rollout plans were ambitious, especially given the technical levels of its staff. A better business case may have been to begin by migrating applications before operating systems. Designing and implementing a Linux desktop system can be difficult. Yet, adoption of open source applications like Firefox and OpenOffice is often easy for users, as Birmingham learned. Either way, it should be budgeted and managed as a multi-year effort.

You Want Open ICT? Burn The Boats (or RFPs)

2006-11-28T14:49:00.001-05:00

When it comes to technology policies, governments should heed the words of Hernan Cortez … “Burn the boats.” Or, more specifically, burn the RFPs.

Procurement is the real measure of a government’s approach to technology. How “open” a government is toward ICT is not measured by whether or not it buys open source software, but how it procures technology. It's not what you buy, but how you buy it that counts most.

As governments are discovering – most recently in Australia and UK-- tweaking existing procurement policies to encourage more bidding by open source companies will not create more choices, even when specific open source companies are pre-qualified.

Procurement band aids will not lead to increased competitive bidding, ICT choices and access to innovation. Your old procurement rules, evaluation criteria and standard RFPs will not work. They will not level the playing field. They will not break vendor lock-in.

Why? Because conventional government RFPs are structured for big, proprietary vendors. They evaluate bidding companies based on criteria inappropriate for open technologies.

For example, public agencies still focus more on purchasing products, while open source solutions are more about services and support. RFPs often under-value interoperability, and instead focus on system specs and large product suites. Criteria such as minimum annual revenues and established user base disadvantage small companies and tend to proliferate vendor lock-in.

And let’s be honest, too many RFPs are rigged, written in order to buy a specific solution from a specific company with whom the procurement officers have long-standing relationships. Their objective is not best value-for-money, competitive bidding or technology neutrality, but buying a specific system already pre-determined.

Sunday in the Dark with George

2006-11-26T13:45:00.000-05:00

I rarely comment on American politics here, restricting my blogging to issues of technology.

However, it is impossible to stand silent on the travesty that is President Bush's war in Iraq.

This entire Iraq fiasco has been a faith-based initiative from the beginning, perpetrated by a President wilfully ignorant of facts and other faiths, bolstered by officials with their own hidden (and deeply flawed) agendas. It is a classic example of presidential followership by a man with little understanding of the world.

To listen to President Bush speak about Iraq only confirms that he remains completely clueless about global politics, history and facts on the ground.

Bush in his own words ...

On the current situation: "Absolutely we're winning." (October 25, 2006).

On the Iraqi government: "We've all been impressed by the Iraqi leaders' commitment to maintain the unity of their country." (April 29, 2006)

On lesson of Vietnam for Iraq: "We'll succeed unless we quit." (November 17, 2006)

On the insurgency: "Those who want to stop the progress of freedom are becoming more and more marginalized." (January 4, 2006)

On Iraqi public opinion: "The Iraqi people are growing in optimism and hope." (June 25, 2005)

On Iraq's effect on the region: "The victory of freedom in Iraq is strengthening a new ally in the war on terror, and inspiring democratic reformers from Beirut to Tehran." (March 19, 2005)

On the current status: "I think we're making good progress." (January 26, 2005)

On the day Saddam was captured: "All Iraqis can now come together and reject violence and build a new Iraq." (December 14, 2003)

On WMD in Iraq: "We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories." (May 29, 2003)

And let us not forget...

"Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed." (May 1, 2003, as Bush stood below the infamous "Mission Accomplished" sign)

And now?

October 2006: deadliest month ever in Iraq. 3,709 Iraqi civilians killed.

November 22, 2006: Over 100 bodies found, victims of sectarian executions.

November 23, 2006 (one day later): deadliest day ever in Iraq. Over 200 killed in Baghdad alone.

Is it me, or is the trend line pretty clear here?

The Iraqi "unity" government is more oxymoron than government, and helpless to stem the sectarian conflict. A key member of that government, Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's bloc, has threatened to withdraw support for the Prime Minister should he even meet President Bush later this week. This same Prime Minister accuses factions in his own government of fuelling the conflict. This is the government central to success in Iraq?

There are no signs of democratic reformers awakening in the Middle East. Lebanon's government has collapsed, even before the most recent assassination of a prominent politician. Iran proceeds with its nuclear program. Yesterday in Bahrain, hard-line Islamist candidates swept to victory in parliamentary election. Hezbollah won elections in the Palestinian territories.

Worse, the insurgency, according to a classified report by this Administration, is now a self-financing operation, netting $70 - 200 million a year from illegal activities and ransom payments, aided by corrupt Iraqi officials.

Iraq produces a steady stream of bodies, and Bush ... an endless stream of platitudes.

ISO + ODF + Brazil = A Tide Turning

2006-11-21T18:16:00.001-05:00

The acceptance by ISO of the OpenDocument Format (ODF) as an international document standard is finally having a tangible effect on government policy. Or rather, it has given ODF a gravitational pull that is now turning the tide on government policies on document formats.

Today, Brazil officially announced the release of a new version of its national interoperability framework -- e-PING Interoperability Framework 2.0. In it, the e-PING recommends use of the OpenDocument Format for archives of documents, spread sheets, presentations, and graphical diagrams.

The e-PING 2.0 was the subject of a three-month public consultation. It applies to the exchange of information between systems of Brazil's federal government and other levels of government, cities, the judiciary, companies, international organizations and other countries.

And Brazil is not the only government on the ODF move. Italy and Switzerland are considering ODF as a national standard in light of its acceptance by ISO.

By the way ... this Open ePolicy blog has hit the century mark! This is my 100th posting. And a good day it is for ODF.

Thailand v. Philippines: Open Source Opposites?

2006-11-17T15:45:00.001-05:00

When it comes to open source software, Thailand and the Philippines are heading in opposite directions. A change in government in Thailand has led to open hostility and backpedaling by the new Minister of ICT toward open source. At the same time, in the Philippines, Congress will begin hearings on mandating government use of open source.

In his first press conference as Thailand’s new ICT Minister, Sitthichai Pokaiudom referred to open source as buggy and useless. He added, "With open source, there is no intellectual property. Anyone can use it and all your ideas become public domain. If nobody can make money from it, there will be no development and open source software quickly becomes outdated."

Minister Sitthichai’s views on open source are 10 years out of date, and ignore or misconstrue a few basic realities:

o Open source and intellectual property are not incompatible. Open source simply involves a different approach to the use of IP, not its abandonment. It does not consign everything to the public domain; it is simply governed by a different kind of license. It offers a different balance between creators and users.

o Open source is not the enemy of profit. There are open source companies making money, lots of it. The fact is that open source requires new business models, ones that emphasize services over products. Entrepreneurs, enterprises and investors will struggle to learn what business models work. Some will learn the hard way. Open source’s creative destruction brings both innovations and business failures. In this way, open source is no different than other industries. Revolutions are usually messy, disruptive and divisive.

o All software is buggy, regardless of the software development model used. One need only consider the millions (or billions) of dollars and hours spent on Microsoft Windows over the past 20 years. It’s the nature of the beast. And here is another hard truth: software projects fail. The volume of proprietary software built that has failed surely exceeds the number of open source projects that have stagnated. That is hardly the basis for condemning either model.

o Open source offers more than just financial gain. As emphasized by the author of the FOSS legislation in the Philippines, open source gives small and medium-size enterprises greater access to ICT, enabling them to compete in new ways and new sectors. It allows for local customization that is often impossible with off-the-shelf, proprietary software. It gives organizations greater control over their ICT decision-making.

And yes Minister, open source sometimes saves money.