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Neelie Kroes: "Choosing open standards is a very smart business decision"

By Pamela Jones et al.

Neelie Kroes just gave a speech at OpenForum Europe today on standards, "Being open about standards". I put it in News Picks, but I wanted to be sure you didn't miss it, so I am putting it here also. In the OOXML context, the most important sentence, I'd say, is this one:

If voting in the standard-setting context is influenced less by the technical merits of the technology but rather by side agreements, inducements, package deals, reciprocal agreements, or commercial pressure ... then these risk falling foul of the competition rules.

Here's the second most important thing she said in the OOXML context:

Standards bodies do important work in difficult circumstances. But like all of us their rules need to keep pace with the changing commercial environment. If they need help in tightening up their rules to avoid being manipulated by narrow commercial interests, or to design the right ex ante rules, then they have my support. My door is always open.

Well, in the case of ISO, just formulating some required rules would be nice. You know, rules that can't change in the middle of the game. In my schoolyard, we called that cheating. I have a suggestion. How about a rule that a vendor proposing a standard can't stack committees trying to decide whether or not to approve it? No? Too simple?

She also said that choosing open standards is "a very smart business decision." Overall, it's a very encouraging speech. I see one area of concern. I don't think, for example, that she yet sees the significance of software patents and their anticompetitive effect on FOSS. I hope she will read Red Hat's amicus brief in In Re Bilski for a perspective on that. We have it as PDF and as plain text here. It explains very clearly how software patents clash with the Open Source development model, something I hope she will consider.

Full post as published by Groklaw on June 10, 2008 (boomark / email).