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Regular visitors to the LF site may recall that in late August we posted a statement urging eligible standards bodies around the world not to vote in favor of approving Microsoft’s OOXML document format standard for adoption by ISO/IEC JTC1, the global standards body that has approved many IT standards, including our own Linux Standards Base. Open document formats have been a hot topic in government as well IT circles ever since Massachusetts CIO Peter Quinn first included them in that State’s Enterprise Technical Resource Model in September of 2005 - and did not include Microsoft’s OOXML as an acceptable format. He later quit his job over the resulting furor, as did his successor.

Legislators unsuccessfully launched open format bills in six states - all of which failed (in two cases, “further study” was approved). Now it looks like open formats have entered the presidential debate as well. Here’s the scoop, from my Standards Blog:

Those of us who live in America are currently in the midst of that most protracted, expensive and (often) tedious of all democratic processes: the quadrennial quest to find, and perhaps even elect, the most able leader to guide the nation into the future. Part and parcel to that spectacle is a seemingly endless torrent of printed words and video. These emanate from more than a dozen candidates, each of whom is trying to convince the electorate that he or she is The One, while at the same time hoping to avoid offering any point of vulnerability that can be exploited by the opposition.

It is an overwhelming and leveling experience for all concerned, electorate and candidates alike.

Out of the campaign cacophony of the last week emerged a handful of words from Senator and Democratic party hopeful Barack Obama that could not fail to catch my attention. He used them during the presidential debate held in Las Vegas, and they also appear in the “Innovation Agenda” that Obama had released a few days before. He announced this agenda in a speech he delivered on November 14 at an aptly selected venue: the Google campus in Mountainview, California. One of the pledges he made in the course of that speech reads in part as follows:

To seize this moment, we have to use technology to open up our democracy. It’s no coincidence that one of the most secretive Administrations in history has favored special interests and pursued policies that could not stand up to sunlight. As President, I’ll change that. I’ll put government data online in universally accessible formats. [emphasis added]

A presidential candidate that is including “universally accessible formats” in his platform? How did that come about?

[Read the rest of this story and find links to Obama’s Innovation Agenda and press release here]

Popularity: 67% [?]

Comments

• Andy Updegrove

  

  Andy Updegrove is a partner and founder of Gesmer Updegrove LLP, a Boston-based technology law firm, and has represented and helped structure more than 80 worldwide standard setting, open source, promotional and advocacy consortia over the past 20 years. He has also represented hundreds of both emerging as well as established technology companies, and is the founder and editor of both the popular website http://www.consortiuminfo.org and the widely-read Standards Blog

• Karen Copenhaver

  

  Karen Copenhaver is a partner in Choate, Hall & Stewart LLP ‘s Business & Technology practice focusing on technology transfer and licensing of intellectual property with a specific emphasis on open source business models. Most recently, Copenhaver was executive vice president and general counsel at Black Duck Software, Inc.