Tineke M. Egyedi

Standard-compliant, but incompatible?!

Abstract This paper addresses the question why standard-compliant IT products often do not interoperate. The findings are based on an institutional analysis, three case studies, and a debate among experts. The paper concludes that some dilemmas cannot be resolved easily. However, many causes can be addressed, in particular those in the area of standard development. Where interoperability is concerned, standard development and implementation issues cannot be meaningfully separated.

Consortium Problem Redefined: Negotiating Democracy in the Actor Network on Standardization

This paper examines the standards consortium problem (i.e., lack democratic procedures) and the democratic rhetoric that surrounds it from a European perspective. The social shaping approach is used. The analysis addresses the organizational level (consortium procedures) and the actor network level (processes of meaning negotiation). The research method includes two in-depth case studies of consortium standardization: Java in ECMA and the Extended Markup Language (XML) in the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The findings illustrate inaccuracies and inconsistencies in the way the consortium problem is defined. They indicate that the dominant rhetoric underestimates the openness of most industry consortia and overestimates the practical implications of the formal democratic procedures. This unbalanced portrayal and sustained indistinctness about what is meant by ‘democracy’ are part of the meaning negotiation that takes place in the actor network. Implicitly, the European actor network is still predominantly defined as an instrument of regulatory governance. This marginalizes the role of consortia. The paper offers several suggestions to redefine the consortium problem.

Succession in standardization: grafting XML onto SGML

Succession in standardization is often a problem. The advantages of improvements must be weighed against those of compatibility. If compatibility considerations dominate, a grafting process takes place. According to our taxonomy of succession, there are three types of outcomes. A Type I succession, where grafting is successful, entails compatibility between successors, technical paradigm compliance and continuity in the standards trajectory. In this paper, we examine issues of succession and focus on the Extensible Markup Language (XML). It was to be grafted on the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), a stable standard since 1988. However, XML was a profile, a subset and an extension of SGML (1988). Adaptation of SGML was needed (SGML 1999) to forge full (downward) compatibility with XML (1998). We describe the grafting efforts and analyze their outcomes. Our conclusion is that although SGML was a technical exemplar for XML developers, full compatibility was not achieved. The widespread use of HyperText Markup Language (HTML) exemplified the desirability of simplicity in XML standardization. This and HTMLs user market largely explain the discontinuity in SGML-XML succession.

Difficulties implementing standards

We explore why diversity among and incompatibility between standards implementations arises. An answer is sought top-down by means of institutional analysis, and bottom-up by analysing standards cases (SGML/ XML, OSI standards, and UML). The analyses highlight very diverse causes (errors, ambiguities, inconsistencies, and parallel options in standards; functional deviations, etc.). To structure the findings, a taxonomy is drawn up. Its aim is to help identify and localise causes of standards implementation problems. We conclude that, although further research is required, the aim of implementability should acquire higher priority in standards development.

Standards of quality and quality of standards for telecommunications and information technologies

AbstractIn this paper, we adopt the project management methodology to provide a checklist for managing the risks that could affect the standard development process as well as the quality of the final standard. We show how the adoption of these management techniques can help improve the quality of standards.

Handling variety: the tension between adaptability and interoperability of open source software

Open source software (OSS) offers unprecedented opportunities to create variety. This could lead to incompatibility and fragmentation. To prevent this some form of coordination is needed. This paper explores which mechanisms of coordination are responsible for limiting divergence in OSS. Two cases are examined: Java and Linux. A systematic difference seems to exist between the mechanisms identified in the two communities. With respect to Java, divergence is where possible avoided ex ante, whereas for Linux divergence is foremost reduced ex post. The conclusion discusses this difference and the implications of both types of coordination in respect to interoperability.

Education about Standardization: Recent Findings

The purpose of this article is to provide insight in standardization education by presenting the results of an international workshop organized by the International Committee for Education about Standardization (ICES) together with findings from literature. The main topics are: needs for standardization education, audiences and learning objectives, contents of an academic curriculum, and available materials for academic teaching. We found an enormous gap between manifest and latent needs for standardization education. The lesson to be learnt from some Asian countries is that this gap can be bridged. First, by a strong national policy which may be part of a regional policy. Secondly, by cooperation between government, industry, national standards body, academia and other educational institutions. The increasing number of initiatives and activities of the last three years indicates that there is a momentum for education on standardization. Our paper provides a structured approach for using this momentum to further develop and implement standardization education. It challenges researchers in the field to interrelate research and education.

The Standards War Between ODF and OOXML: Does Competition Between Overlapping ISO Standards Lead to Innovation?

A strong belief exists that competition between de facto standards stimulates innovation and benefits consumers because it drives down the costs of products. The tenability of this belief, and its preconditions and limits, has been widely scrutinized. However, little has been written about competition between negotiated, de jure i.e., committee standards. Are competing de jure standards a good thing? Blind 2008 equals de jure to de facto standards and concludes that competition between de jure standards increases social welfare. In this article we argue that it is important to distinguish between de jure and de facto standards; therefore, that Blinds basic assumption is incorrect. We illustrate our argument with the same example as Blind, that is, the standards war between the document formats of ODF and OOXML. In our view, the implications of condoning-and even encouraging-competition between de jure standards will have far-reaching consequences for public IT-procurement. It will hinder innovation and counteract supplier-independent information exchange between government and citizens.

Inverse infrastructures: Coordination in self-organizing systems

The paper argues that a new category of infrastructures is emerging, user-driven, self-organizing and with de-centralized control: inverse infrastructures (IIs). IIs are not well-understood. Moreover, they represent a paradigm shift in infrastructure development. Their bottom-up development shows tension with the current socio-institutional framework for infrastructures. Internationally infrastructure laws and policies are based on a top-down and centralized view of infrastructures. Regulation is based on a control paradigm that does not fit the characteristics of inverse infrastructures and has no ways to deal with them. Policy (re)design is needed in the face of inverse infrastructure emergence.

Standardization and Other Coordination Mechanisms in Open Source Software

Open Source Software (OSS) offers programmers the opportunity to elaborate and adapt source code. It is an opportunity to diverge. We would therefore expect incompatible strains of software to develop, and consequently a demand for standardization to arise. However, this is only partly the case. In this paper we explore which other coordinative mechanisms are at work apart from committee standardization. We identify four other categories of coordinative mechanisms, and illustrate their relevance in OSS development. They complement committee standardization, can be used in standardization, and are sometimes an alternative to standardization.