Monday, 29 September 2008

IBM Not Happy With The Standard Bodies

In a recent announcement IBM said that it would reconsider its membership in the hundreds of bodies that create global standards for everything from software to servers.

IBM wants standards bodies to collaborate with developer communities to ensure that interoperable open software standards can actually be implemented and are freely available.

In the new policy from IBM, beginning and end participation in standards bodies are based on the openness of their processes, membership rules, and intellectual property policies. The policy asks participants to encourage emerging and developed economies to both adopt open global standards and to participate in the creation of those standards.

The decision follows the acceptance of Microsoft's Open XML format by the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO), a recognition that IBM deems unethical. IBM backed the rival Open Document Format that had already been certified as an ISO standard. The company claims that Microsoft's format was only accepted because it was fast-tracked and the bodies bowed to political pressure.

"Common, open and consensus-based technology standards from reputable standards bodies help ensure that each of us can easily purchase and interchangeably use computing technology from multiple vendors," said Bob Sutor, IBM vice president of open source and standards. “The ways in which they are created and adopted provide reasonable assurances that disparate products will work with one another, and withstand the test of time.”

The vendor hopes its move will ensure that technology decisions and dispute resolutions are made fairly by independent participants, and that intellectual property policies become clearer and more consistent to enable more informed decision making by standards developers.