On Monday, IBM announced a “new” standards policy and an accompanying threat to pull out of standards bodies that do not adjust their policies to IBM’s liking. The coverage of the announcement has been particularly interesting because of the complete lack of serious analysis. It’s early, of course, but you would hope that reporters/bloggers would do more than just rehash the IBM press release…especially when the whole thing is dripping with enough irony to fill Lake Michigan.
The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and etc. all failed to put this announcement in perspective or ask the tough questions that need to be asked. Even the normally incisive Register simply regurgitated the IBM talking points and saved its snark for the Microsoft (which is always the easy way out in the tech world, “when in doubt, take a shot a Microsoft”). But, it was one of our favorite open source bloggers, Matt Asay, who best summarized the message IBM was trying to convey:
“It’s good to see IBM’s moral leadership on this issue.”
Seriously? It is obviously in IBM’s best interest to portray its moves as based on some kind of high-minded idealism, but where is the healthy skepticism that we expect from the press and bloggers? A giant multinational, monopolist claims to be putting morals before business, and no one even thinks to question those motives…or its seeming political opportunism?
Let’s start with the most glaring issue:
IBM Wants to Make Make Standards Bodies More Open By Holding a Closed Meeting
This entire policy is supposedly the result of 6 weeks of discussions with “70 independent, forward-thinking experts across the globe,” but how do we know these people are independent or that this policy in any way represents their thinking? Because IBM says so!
This discussion was held on a closed Wiki (a seemingly an oxymoronic exercise), to which on only the Secret Group of 70 (SG70) has access. The only public representation of the Wiki and the SG70 is IBM’s own summary document. Only about 20 members of the group are identified in the document, 3 of which are IBM employees, and most of the others are people known to have similar views to IBM on these issues. Granted, there are many smart, capable people that in the SG70 (at least one 1 that I call a friend), but it is far from an independent, representative group from what little we know about it. So it is no surprise that the summary suggests all these “independent, forward-thinking” individuals largely agree with IBM’s positions. Presumably, this same group of people will be gathered later this year at Yale for the promised meeting where they will decide the future of the technology standards.
Let’s create a group of like minded experts together behind closed doors, using opaque processes, and decide how to make the standards world more open and transparent. Perhaps IBM hired Karl Rove and the team that edited the pre-war Iraq intelligence as consultants on this one.
Why is IBM Calling for Change in Standards Bodies?
IBM has been working standards bodies longer than anyone in the industry. They spend millions on participation in standards bodies, they have the largest patent portfolio in the world, and they have one of the largest standards teams in the world. As the IBM-friendly lawyer, blogger and SG70 member Andy Updegrove admits:
Microsoft, in truth, does not have the kind of global standards infrastructure in place that IBM maintains. IBM’s position is, I believe, unique among US multinational IT companies in this regard, with no other peer company having the first hand experience, presence and participation in standards bodies around the globe that IBM has created over the last fifty years.
They have used their power to manipulate the system in the past without complaining about the lack of openness or transparency. But, now that their supremacy in the world of standards isn’t so clear following a high profile loss, they are threatening to take their toys and go home unless the certain standards bodies change their rules.
Don’t get us wrong, we can all agree that the world of standards can use more transparency, openness and developing world participation. If that was there real goal, however, why would they designing the new rules based on closed door meetings/discussion with secret group of advisors?
A company that large does not threaten to shake the foundations of a system it helped build, unless it is being motivated by profit. As we wrote recently in our “Insider’s Guide to the IT Lobby,” the key understanding an IT company’s lobbying position is to understand its business model. So let’s take a look at IBM’s recent business strategies around standards.
Get a Technology Standardized, Lobby Governments to Mandate that Standard, Watch Legendary Govt. Sales Unit Do Its Job
The not-so-hidden reason for this “new” policy is the decision by ECMA and then ISO to approve Microsoft’s Open XML format as an international standard. What is often ignored in the “he-said, she-said” of the nasty battles over OOXML and ODF is that it was the all the result of IBM testing out a new business strategy.
IBM (aided in part by Sun Microsystems) decided to use its dominance of the standards world as a competitive weapon against Microsoft. Leveraging their advantage over standards setting, IBM set out to weaponize the standards bodies and use ODF to attack “at the soft underbelly of Office,” according again to Updegrove. The IBM plan was relatively simple: 1. Get ODF standardized. 2. Lobby Governments to Mandate Its Use. 3. Let the Legendary IBM Sales Team Do Whatever it Takes to Get the Sale.
Once IBM and its allies got ODF standardized, they created the ODF Alliance and started lobbying for global preferences for ODF or an ISO certified standard. The did not expect that Microsoft would eventually open up its own document formats, let alone attempt to get it standardized at ECMA and then ISO. So, “IBM, and to a lesser extent companies such as Google and Oracle, decided to lay on the full court, global OOXML press” according to Updegrove
, and, “Microsoft was left to play catch up ball, and lacked the type of finesse that its more experienced rival could bring to the game in countless venues around the world.”
Yet, IBM was unable to use its influence to quash OOXML, threatening the core of their newest business strategy. Is it any wonder that IBM is now threatening to take its toys and go home? Is it any wonder that they want to rewrite the rulebook for standards bodies in a secret meeting that is apparently closed to anyone with differing opinions?