[meta] Re: Open Government Data bill (for comments)

[Jeffry Smith]

On Tue, Jan 11, 2011 at 4:55 PM, Seth Cohn <sethcohn at gnuhampshire.org> wrote:
>> On Tuesday, January 11, 2011 02:13:16 am Jeffry Smith wrote:
>>> My recommendation would be to include (based on IETF procedures) a
>>> requirement that any non-NH Government standard be implemented by at
>>> least 2 independent programs, that can read and write the format
>>> interchangably.  For NH Government developed ones, the final
>>> format/specification cannot be finalized until there are at least two
>>> indendent programs, to ensure that the format is, in fact able to be
>>> implemented by anyone.
>
> While I agree this would be nice, it's the sort of specifics I'm
> trying to avoid... that's more far policy detail than statute level.
> I'll put it on my list of 'would be nice' changes, to see if there is
> enough support to add, once I get general buy in.
>
>
My concern is if it's not in the guidance, the policy makers will
weasel out "OOXML is a standard so MS Office is good" (ISO 29500) -
even though, in fact, there are NO conforming implementations (MS
admits MS Office does NOT conform to the ISO standard).  The
requirement for multiple implementations helps make IETF documents
self-regulating, as it does this.  How do you know it's open?  There
are two independant implementations of software that reads/writes the
standard, and they can exchange information.  No need to worry about
definitions (except related to patent/copyright).

jeff.