Open Standards

Open Data Standards for Education and Training Simon Grant JISC CETIS “ Open to the Public”: BCS OSSG Meeting London, 2011-06-30

Open standards...
JISC Business Case discusses ...
adopted and maintained by a not-for-profit organisation
development through open decision-making procedure available to all
free access, use, copy and distribution
IP irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis
Refers to European Interoperability Framework for pan-European eGovernment services ( 2004 ref )
But not really black-and-white

Examples of (fairly) open standards
Dublin Core
DCMI Metadata Terms
"Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License"
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
IETF RFCs
including Atom (see later)
many communication and security protocols etc
freely available
neutral licence but prefers royalty-free
can create derivative works

Examples of (fairly) open standards (continued)
W3C
HTML , CSS , XML , RDF
HTML5 , RDFa ,
Widgets http://www.w3.org/2008/webapps/wiki/WidgetSpecs
freely available
royalty-free license policy
but no derivative works

Examples of not quite so open standards
anything from ISO, CEN or national standards bodies
you have to buy a copy; may lead to reduced adoption and delay on implementation, whatever the licence conditions
e.g. IMS Global Learning Consortium is a "membership organization that has its primary responsibility to its members. The most important goal of IMS GLC work is to enable an environment of interoperability based on the investment made by the IMS GLC members." ( use ref )
IMS License to use requires deposit of contact details, warranted as correct
IMS keeps full rights to allow or disallow derivative specifications

Potential problems
The situation with many other specifications is unclear
Possibilities may exist for " patent ambush " (see Wikipedia)
You have to be careful and check
otherwise you could be caught out later with a royalties demand

The current controversy
Mark Ballard in Computer Weekly, 2011-05-13
“ International alarm rings over UK ICT policy”
Government policy for mandating open standards
But e.g. CEN standards are mandatory
Can we work towards an open standards outcome?
“ Yes we can!” (to quote Bob the Builder)
How?

Leap2A as a case study
IMS LIP (2001) and ePortfolio (2005)
2006 CETIS community wanted to move on
2008 some initial progress on cross-mapping and common specification
2009 first full version
2010 slight revision tidying up loose ends
2011 starting to bring it into the European arena towards standardisation
The rest through recommendations (see below...)
Similar earlier experiences and challenges with XCRI , another community-driven project

Suggestions or recommendations for how to work towards effective open standards including references to experiences with Leap2A

1: CLA & Licensing
Use CLA (contributor licence agreement) from the start (default recommendation: Open Web Foundation )
Have a licence that allows derivative works, as with OWFa 1.0
Leap2A is using OWF, which has facilitated:
Leap2A providing foundation for MedBiquitous Educational Trajectory specification work
Leap2A being used by Academy of Medical Royal Colleges (UK) portfolio interoperability project

2: Developer involvement is essential
Adoption is everything
it is developers who adopt (unless there are enforceable laws)
Ensure that vendors and developers drive process
Leap2A extensively used within PebblePad and Mahara
Don't develop within currently constrained standards bodies
but explore ways for BSI/CEN/ISO to rubber stamp it
without requiring ongoing revenue, hence freely available
consider e.g. Publicly Available Specification

3: Reuse of existing work, where truly applicable
Leap2A partners decided to base the spec on Atom
e-portfolios have a fair amount in common with blogs
Atom structure is very general purpose and adaptable
Reuse lowers the barrier
to understanding: just one conceptual step forwards
to adoption: start by modifying existing libraries
But beware the danger of building on inadequate foundations

4: Good governance
Essential to prevent dominance of monopolistic or cartel interests
Who is going to decide when to offer the spec to an official standards body?
Those who adopt deserve some control over the future, e.g. revisions
But how exactly to do it, in a self-sustaining manner?

5: Effective publicity
Leap2A is actively looking for more adopters
among e-portfolio tool developers
among other "learner-ownable information" system developers
Also needs examples of real benefits to draw in more
Needs ongoing effort = money from somewhere

6: Modest support, but …
If you give people too much money, they are liable to forget their own longer-term interests in favour of short-term gain
Modest JISC funding has worked well for projects involving UK HE
This kind of funding could equally be from
BIS, DfE, Cabinet Office
European Commission
Is it realistic for commercial funding without major risk?
good question that needs investigation, but possibly not …

… reliable support needed
To maintain good governance
For ongoing publicity
Perhaps to fund BSI's modest involvement in CEN to:
look after UK interests
ensure UK open standards are not struck down by ENs
contribute UK view to European process and try to get it incorporated
work in conjunction with existing partners in the Workshop on Learning Technologies ( CEN page )
as with BSI, to explore routes to free availability
Could be very cost-effective

Thanks for your attention!
Find me at
JISC CETIS http://jisc.cetis.ac.uk/
my JISC CETIS blog
Gmail, Twitter, Skype, etc.: asimong
my home page

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Open Standards

by asimong on Jun 30, 2011

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