The day sets off with a panel discussion headlined “Standardization: Positive impetus or market restraint?” The panelists are:
- Norman Heydenreich, a director of Microsoft Germany
- Hans Kauper, PSI and BITKOM
- Wolf-Dieter Lukas, Ministry of Education and Research
- Andreas Luxa, Siemens and IEEE
- Ingo Wende, German Institute for Standardization
- Moderator: Rainer Thiem, <xmlcity:berlin> e.V.
Microsoft is the main sponsor of the conference
Thiem: Standardization is great, but opposed to the free market principle … Can standards dampen progress?
Lukas is a physicist, Heydenreich is a philosopher
Thiem: Should the government be involved in standardization process?
Lukas: No, the gov should not be first. But the gov is also a big IT customer, and government promotion of research can lead to standards.
Heydenreich: A standard is not a purpose in itself; what’s the goal? Often, parties that did not invest into a technology request it to be opened up. […] We open up the Office XML schemas to the market; you can get a license from us. Microsoft is involved in lots of standards activities with W3C and other orgs.
Wende: One of the big standardization failures was the ISO/OSI stack. All interested parties must be involved for success. Some success stories: JPEG, MPEG.
Wende: Good standard prescribe little but ensure interoperability anyway, e.g. prescribe interfaces not implementations.
From the audience (Matthias Günig?): Users and professional societies must play a more active role in setting high-level standards.
Robert Tolksdorf, one of the conference organizers, in response to an audience question: Research on these subjects in Germany is centered in Karlsruhe, Hannover, Berlin and, somewhat, Munich.
Wende: Standards must be consensus based. Patents are a big issue.
Heydenreich: Patents are an issue, but some standards bodies require participants to sign away their IP rights. This takes away commercial incentive and is bad and will not be successful.
Luxa: You must be fast and innovative.
From the audience: Semantic standards are the gold of computer science/IT.
Thiem: It’s a social issue and not just a technical/economical issue.
Lukas: Setting standards is extremely important for long-term success of companies.
Kauper: Semantic Web is important.
Heydenreich: For one euro earned by Microsoft, small and medium business partners building on Microsoft’s platform earn 40 euros.
There was lots of talk about using XML standards in government and administration. It’s difficult in Germany because the federal states have so much independence.