Defending Openness

The Open Access movement (open access to scholarly journals and data) is up against the old fashioned business model of the scholarly journal industry which charges outrageous subscription fees (many scientific journals cost >$12,000 per year) and page charges for submitted papers (typically $100/page for electronic manuscripts and $150 for paper manuscripts). These days most papers and subsequent corrections to the manuscript are done electronically by the authors -- so most of the work is done by the authors, not the journal. The peer reviewers (referees) are volunteers and not paid. What's wrong with this picture?

Barbara

An excellent question. I suggest you read about a recent award to Groklaw's founder, Pamela Jones:

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070921001839407

"Winds of change are set to blow..."—Pippin, "Morning Glow"

Thanks for this. An inspiring article. PJ is a fitting recipient of this award.

Barbara

Quoting:Now consider this from Brian Jones, a Microsoft manager who has worked on OOXML for six years. In July, Jones was asked on his blog whether Microsoft would actually commit to conform to an officially standardised OOXML. His response:

“It’s hard for Microsoft to commit to what comes out of Ecma [the European standards group that has already OK’d OOXML] in the coming years, because we don’t know what direction they will take the formats. We’ll of course stay active and propose changes based on where we want to go with Office 14. At the end of the day, though, the other Ecma members could decide to take the spec in a completely different direction. ... Since it’s not guaranteed, it would be hard for us to make any sort of official statement.”

Now that’s cynical. After all this work to make OOXML a formal, independent standard — a standard created and promoted by Microsoft, remember — Microsoft won’t agree to follow it.

Sorta puts Microsoft’s giddy public optimism in perspective, doesn’t it?

http://www.techworld.com/storage/features/index.cfm?featurei...

All that work into showing how MS doesn't truly care about real open standards, yet he doesn't even mention the already ISO approved ODF...

Quoting:It’s hard for Microsoft to commit to what comes out of Ecma...

As if we haven't known that already!

If this is not enough evidence for ECMA & ISO to consider when voting in next round, I don't know what is!

The vote should be outstanding "NO"

If that is what they are saying about OOXML, which is being pushed to be an ISO standard, I wonder what will they do with .Net & Silverlight! Some people never learn. :)

Thanks. I Posted it to the queue.