IBM's SEC 10-K report: Open Standards? Interoperability?
I was just looking at IBM's latest annual SEC 10-K report. "Open Standards" are listed in the "Key Business Drivers" section with the following note (my emphasis):-
Open Standards
The broad adoption of open standards is essential to the computing model for an on demand business and is a significant driver of collaborative innovation across all industries. Without interoperability among all manner of computing platforms, the integration of any client's internal systems, applications and processes remains a monumental and expensive task. The broad-based acceptance of open standards—rather than closed, proprietary architectures also allows the computing infrastructure to more easily absorb (and thus benefit from) new technical innovations.
IBM's support of open standards is evidenced by the enabling of its products to support open standards such as Linux, and the development of Rational software development tools, which can be used to develop and upgrade other companies' software products.
IBM is telling its investors that Linux is an open standard. I think that all it evidences is a degree of cluelessness.
There's also an interesting update about PSI:-
On November 29, 2006, the company filed a lawsuit against Platform Solutions, Inc. (PSI) in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. IBM filed its amended complaint on August 17, 2007 and asserted claims for patent infringement, trade secret misappropriation, copyright infringement, tortious interference and breach of contract in connection with PSI’s development and marketing of a computer system that PSI says is compatible with IBM’s S/390 and System z architectures.
IBM also sought a declaratory judgment that its refusal to license its patents to PSI and certain of its software for use on PSI systems does not violate the antitrust laws. IBM seeks damages and injunctive relief.
On September 21, 2007, PSI answered the amended complaint and asserted counterclaims against IBM for alleged monopolization and attempted monopolization, tying, violations of New York and California statutes proscribing unfair competition, tortious interference with the acquisition of PSI by a third party and promissory estoppel.
PSI also sought declaratory judgments of noninfringement of IBM’s patents and patent invalidity. In October 2007, PSI filed a complaint with the European Commission claiming that the company’s alleged refusal to do business with PSI violated European competition law.
The company responded to this complaint in December. On January 11, 2008, the court in the New York lawsuit permitted T3 Technologies, a reseller of PSI computer systems, to intervene as a counterclaim-plaintiff, and the court also permitted the company to file a second amended complaint adding patent infringement claims against T3. Discovery is proceeding and the court has ordered that the case be ready for trial after December 1, 2008.
I guess the warm words about open standards and interoperability don't apply in this case for some reason. Maybe there's another meaning to the text,
Without interoperability among all manner of computing platforms, the integration of any client's internal systems, applications and processes remains a monumental and expensive task.
the Register reported that PSI maintains that IBM's lawsuit killed a very lucrative acquisition offer from HP. IBM double standards seem more the order of the day, and sadly still no word from Specious ECIS.
Document freedom day doesn't seem to have had much impact in IBM either, as Volker Weber noticed, they haven't made their 2007 Annual Report financial statements available in ODS.
No matter, I saved the file in OpenXML format, then used the SourceForge OpenXML/ODF Translator to save it in ODF format, then opened it in Zoho. It all seemed to work fine as you can see:-
Maybe I should send the files to IBM!