Earlier this month the WTO and IPR's: Issues in Standardization conference was held in Beijing, sponsored by the Chinese Ministry of Commerce, China's State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) and Sun Microsystems. An event at which Scott McNealy, former CEO, current chairman of both Sun Microsystems and Sun Federal, Inc., Sun's government sales arm was a keynote speaker.
Considering the growing importance of intellectual property rights (IPR) in an work increasingly gripped by the wave of globalization coupled with the fact that the US recently brought a formal complaint against China before the World Trade Organization, charging that the country with inadequate efforts to police IPR infringement. China responded by moving to enact more stringent legislation which cuts the number of pirated content that would define "serious" (1,000 down to 500), and from "very serious" (from 5,000 to 2,500). China also dramatically increased the penalties associated with such violations.
Of the three main document formats mentioned by McNealy during his presentation: Microsoft Office, Open Document Format (ODF) and China's Uniform Office Format (UOF), he called for the last two to be merged. Considering the fact that ODF has recently gained significant momentum within the domestic boundaries of the US, it is far from surprising that McNealy took the time to propose such a merger. The two formats share enough common ground to warrant a baseline being established between them. A merger of the specifications might do well to create a singular standard capable of providing foothold for open formats in the heart of what is a hotbed for IPR infringement issues.
China's status as a burgeoning force in world affairs has the potential to help propel the case for similar arrangements of collaboration within the rest of the developing world. The barriers facing this merger revolve more around the political and strategic spheres of Chinese policy than they do around the technical issues. China has previously shown a preference for adhering to their own set of standards when faced with high costs of adoption for other standards already in use elsewhere.
The outcome of this proposed merger will have significant effect on the role that open source software will play in China's rapidly emerging IT market. In terms of sheer size and volume, China is the main target for both closed and open source operations. If ODF and UOF can come together as one standard, there will be an even more inroads as a unified format will provide a tie-in to open source which already supports ODF. The outcome of this proposal will serve as a sign of the times for the country and the region's readiness to step towards the forefront of the global open source movement.
About the blogger: Alex Fletcher is lead industry analyst at Entiva Group Incorporated, a research and analyst firm which concentrates exclusively on the open source software industry. His main focus is working to help clients of all sizes formulate strategy and policy surrounding their use of open source software within the enterprise. Alex has prior experience as a consultant, software engineer and start-up founder. He can be reached at alex dot fletcher -at- entivagroup dot com.
Leave a comment