12.26.07
One Patent Per Child, One Standard Per Village
The more, the merrier?
Andy Updegrove has found a couple of news items which are particularly interesting, especially when they are grouped listed in tandem (as they were). To address the “thirst” for standards, China has decided to create no less than — wait for it — 10,000 new standards!
The country will compile 10,000 new standards to meet the standard vacuum in certain fields next year. Meanwhile, some 11,000 outdated national standards will be revised, the Standardization Administration chief Liu Pingjun said, according to today’s People’s Daily.
That’s an awful lot of standards. The point of standards is to limit and to address detrimental diversity which eliminates cooperation and thereby choice.
”In spite of China’s open arms to standards, the country has just rejected one candidate.“How does this relate to this Web site? Think about Microsoft and Novell, both of which are striving to get — or at the very least assist — a document format specification standardised, despite the fact that one standard already exists to serve this purpose. Moreover, it does not suffer from all those deficiencies that we frequently mention, e.g. platform specificity, patent encumbrances, poor documentation, etc.
In spite of China’s open arms to standards, the country has just rejected one candidate.
The once-overwhelming VICS system of Japan eventually may not find its place in the China market. Tongyan Qi, key propeller of China real-time traffic information services and chief of the State Traffic Information Service Workgroup, sets forth in a panel discussion on NaviForum Shanghai 2007, the largest international navigation event organized by China government, that, though trial use of the VICS system is underway in Guangzhou and Dalian, it will not be used as the standard for China real-time traffic information; China will formulate its own standard instead.
Does that sounds familiar? If so, isn’t it time for ISO to intercept OOXML? Isn’t it time for Novell to retract its commitment/contract with Microsoft to implement OOXML translators? Shouldn’t the GNOME Foundation step down and escape its involvement in ECMA, which helps Microsoft fool everyone?
By the way, in relation to the title of this post, OLPC supports ODF, and ODF only. █
