Welcome to Orcmid's Lair, the playground for family connections, pastimes, and scholarly vocation -- the collected professional and recreational work of Dennis E. Hamilton

Recent Items
 
What Programmers Do
 
The Comfort of Open Development Processes
 
Abandoning an M.Sc
 
Relaxing Patent Licenses for Open Documents
 
Windows Media Center's Been Good To Me ...
 
Responding to Hurricane Katrina
 
Consigning Software Patents to the Turing Tar Pit
 
Merchants of Attention
 
Symbols of Trust
 
The Passing of Salvatore Lombino: Farewell, 87th Precinct

The Comfort of Open Development Processes

OpenOffice.org Delays Version 2.0 Release.  As a bystander in the promotion of the OASIS Open Document Format (OpenDocument), I have been startled by what seems a dangerous rush associated with positioning and framing on the degree of ODF readiness for mandated adoption. 

I’m concerned because I see people who apparently haven’t lived with the legacy preservation of documents and formats under-estimating the challenges.  I am disturbed by signs of belief that it is a simple matter of programming and throwing a switch to introduce a newborn “standard.”   I haven’t seen much concern for the serious heavy-lifting involving conformance testing, test-document cases and other activities related to assuring interoperable implementations (in that they are in effect substitutable) and successful, defined interchangeability of documents for the critical cases: preservation of documents and their provenance as records that remain accessible for an indefinite and long time; round-trip preservation of fidelity in collaborative work.  These are the boundary cases and it takes work and considerable dedication to span them.   Moving to a public format is a promising step in that laborious journey.

Also, there is already a major legacy case — we all know what it is — and I find the downplaying of the importance of that case as another cause for concern.  I don’t want to see the civilians (all the users of you-know-what) as necessary collateral damage in the ideological posturing that colors the undertaking.

I’m pointing at the delayed release of OpenOffice 2.0, and the introduction of an additional beta not to say “I told you so.”  This delay is good news. It says something about the deliberateness of the development, release and deployment process for a major ODF-compliant fixture.  I take that as a good sign.  It reflects some grounded reality and a standard of care.  That’s reassuring to me.  It says to me that there will be more to come.

I also notice that there is something comforting about a visible development process.  We can see the bug lists and the build and test process if we choose to observe it.  The code is available for inspection once you figure out how to navigate the site, something a bit more complicated than your everyday SourceForge project.  It takes effort to find the bits, but they’re there.   (E.g., I went there to find the present current Document Type Definition that is referenced in the XML files produced by the software but apparently not available at a global URL).

The existence of an open and unrestricted invitation to inspect, to participate, and to contribute is very welcome.  It is also valuable to see the degree of narration of the project and how that supports newcomers.  It is usual to see that QA, Documentation, and other activities following on a little later, but I take it that these activities are also taken seriously.  Many projects never cross that speed bump.

There’s no way to avoid having to comprehend a considerable amount of toolcraft, even to simply observe and follow-along at some level of detail, and it appears that the OpenOffice.org project recognizes that and provides more than the typical guidance.  Ordinary open-source projects — and closed-source counterparts — tend to have their toolcraft assumptions buried under a mound of tacit understanding.  This project provides more exposure than that.

We are thereby privileged to observe how this and other projects work toward providing matured, deliberate releases that lead to stability and trustworthiness in use.  We also have the opportunity to see how cultivation of development and adoption communities can be achieved in this approach to software development and delivery.  I find that fascinating, admirable, and worthy of emulation.

posted by orcmid at 10/13/2005 08:24:46 AM

Abandoning an M.Sc

E040200: Introduction to My Classmates.  I have mentioned the M.Sc effort on this and other blogs since I began my studies in November 2002.  I thought it would be useful to provide an account for where I ended up.

On September 27, I announced (one day before the last, final deadline) that I would abandon my M.Sc in IT dissertation and not submit a thesis.     I will obtain a Postgraduate Diploma for the course work, and I will not go through the make-up process that is available (involving more tuition and a completely-different project dissertation).

Although this has me regrouping with regard to next steps, I also want onlookers to know that this does not diminish my commitment to the work on Open-Systems Trustworthiness and projects to make computing more accountable and also more accessible, whether under ActiveODMA, nfoWare, or the Miser Project.

Some of the first materials to appear and be announced on this blog and over at the BlunderDome will be postings of articles derived from my thesis efforts, including ones on pattern languages, the nature of trust in artifacts, and important ways to look at the requirements gap, software as solutions (and what that doesn’t provide), and even what computers “know.”  Stay tuned.

Update: I couldn’t stand the first paragraph and reorganized the narrative.  I also noticed that I was a little teary as I sat down to write this.  That came up even more when I then sent the e-mail to my advisor and my program manager to affirm my chosen course.  So, a needed completion process.  I don’t expect to grieve much: there are too many exciting interests to pursue.

posted by orcmid at 10/11/2005 01:47:32 PM

Relaxing Patent Licenses for Open Documents

W050601d: Microsoft's IP-Infringement Specter - Analysis 0.50.  Updated Information: The table, below, has been updated in Analysis 0.75, Toward Open-Format Adoption.  The 2005-12-06 blog post, Lining Up Formats for Office Documents, summarizes the later analysis.  

In June, I made some examination of the move by Microsoft to open up the Microsoft Office document formats as part of moving to XML-based default formats for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.  Other components of the suite also support XML but this full-up default format is for the three key applications in the Office “12” development scenario announced so far.

I had already been studying the relationship between intellectual property (especially patent licenses) and practices that I have in mind for open-source development.  The exploration of the Microsoft Office Open XML formats is instructive in that regard.  My own investigation along with discussions about the licenses on various blogs was valuable in sharpening my own thinking on safe use of differently-licensed intellectual property as part of an open-source contribution.

I’ve completed my personal appraisal of the licensing conditions around Microsoft Office Open XML formats (OX) and the OASIS Open Document Format (ODF).  I have enough to formulate the approach that I will be employing in patterns of TROST and contributions under ActiveODMA.

Also, in June, I posted a comparison of the license and use restrictions that apply between OX and ODF.  That comparison depended, for part of its analysis, on the Sun Microsystems IPR statement on OpenDocument from December, 2002.  Sun made a dramatic improvement with a new Sun Patent Statement that was published on September 29.  I have updated the original comparison to reflect the impact of that as well as further explorations in OX (to the degree publicly known) and the ODF specification.  The changes resulting from the new patent statement are summarized (in my words) in the following extract from the new comparison table.

	OASIS Open Document Format (ODF)		Microsoft Open Office XML (OX) Format
	with Sun IPR notice of 2002-12-11	with Sun Patent Statement of 2005-09-29	with Microsoft Office XML Reference Schemas licenses (patent license impact only)
royalty-free patent licensing	Sun Microsystems "essential claims" royalty-free license	Sun Microsystems will not enforce any of its patents, present or future	Microsoft "necessary claims" royalty-free license
patent-license scope limitation	only where unavoidable in order to implement the specification, and only to implement the specification	any implementation of ODF 1.0 and subsequent versions in which Sun participates to an extent that OASIS rules apply in regard to IPR	only where unavoidable in those portions of a software product that read and write files that are fully compliant with the specification of the schemas
patent reciprocity required	Yes.	No.  License is terminated for any party that attempts to assert patent rights against any ODF implementation.	No.  Suing Microsoft or affiliates for infringement of a related patent claim will terminate the license for the complaining party.
patent-license notice	none required		specific statement required

The full table provides references to all of the materials as part of an extensive discussion of this and other aspects of the two approaches.

As part of my latest review, I have also noticed some features of OpenDocument that make me wonder how conformance for interchange of documents across products is to be assured. I don’t know how materially OpenDocument’s intentional “looseness” will interfere with successful preservation of public records, for example.  This situation reminds me of the “floor=ceiling” debate that surrounded the specification of the COBOL programming language as part of nailing down the ANSI standards and building conformance tests.  This was a momentous challenge, witnessed by the act of Congress that it took to bring Grace Hopper back to duty for creating the Navy certification process for COBOL compilers. 

If you consult the full table you will see that I have no information on how Microsoft’s Office Open XML format will work in this regard.   Since the standard to be met is consistency of Microsoft Office products with themselves, it is not clear how that will translate to an appropriate public agreement for achievement of interchange and legacy preservation.  It appears that ODF is going to be the incubator for how meaningful interchange and preservation of electronic documents are established.

posted by orcmid at 10/11/2005 11:51:00 AM