Microsoft's Interop Chief: People Should Choose Their Own Standards

TOM ROBERTSON, General Manager for Interoperability and Standards, Microsoft: The fourth toolset - it took me a long time to get there - is standards. I don't need to say too much about standards, but they are a very important tool to use to address interoperability. But I would note that they're not the only tool, and they may not be the most appropriate tool in a particular set of circumstances.

An example there would be where you have a cycle of innovation that's more rapid than the cycle of standardization. In that case, I do wonder whether standardization is the most appropriate way, and shouldn't you look to some of the other tools that you have available to you, to address interoperability?

But I don't want to diminish the role of standardization. Microsoft has acted in hundreds of standardization activities around the world every year, and implements thousands of standards in its products. It's really important, and we'll continue to develop and refine our work in the standards space going forward.

SCOTT FULTON, BetaNews: Well, in the real world, aren't standards really determined by the market?

TOM ROBERTSON: I would say that standards need to be determined by the market - that at the end of the day, people should have the ability to choose the technology that best meets their needs. And where you have one, two, three or more standards, then they should be able to choose between those standards. Where you have other vehicles to address interoperability, then they should have those as options to choose from also.

The point is that the information technology industry is highly dynamic, and the issue of interoperability is going to become more and more important over time, because the connections between things are going to become more important. You have to have as dynamic an approach to interoperability as you have to the development of the industry as a whole. So the way you do that is to allow new and innovative ways to bring things together, to spring up and evolve over time. And you have to give people the opportunity to choose the one that best meets their needs. If you mandate one approach, then basically, you're freezing out any other potential approaches that either exist or may be developed in the future. And that can't be the right way.

SCOTT FULTON: But let me ask you this, though: In a situation where the standard has been chosen by the market, why should other protocols, other designs, other formats, other ways of working be considered by agencies as standards, when it appears the market - or at least the majority of a market - may have already made a choice, and it wasn't one that was mandated for it? Why must standards agencies, in effect, mandate that there must be an alternative when it appears the market has already made a decision?

TOM ROBERTSON: It's hard to just generalize here. My general view is that government agencies ought not, except in very exceptional circumstances, mandate particular standards. We think they ought to identify the objectives of interoperability that they want to achieve, and then allow the deployers of information technology throughout the government to choose the method that best suits their needs.

Governments also have to be very cognizant of the technology that's actually in use in the marketplace, and I think one of the goals of government is to create a connection between government and its citizenry, to recognize and accommodate the choices that the broader community is making.

SCOTT FULTON: So in situations where you have to use that collaboration part - the #2 item in your toolset - you're commonly dealing with the open source community, and even though there are products from the open source community sold under brand names, the community at large tends to be one interoperative entity, to coin a phrase. And even though there are no executives in charge of it, it does seem to have its own marketing strategy. That marketing strategy does tend, from time to time - 24 hours a day - to be antagonistic toward Microsoft. Given that fact, does Microsoft view the open source community, when you try to collaborate with it, as a competitor or as a customer?

TOM ROBERTSON: If I could go back to some of the elements of what you just said, I think actually things are not as monolithic as you might have characterized them. We actually see that the open source community is quite broad, and we see a lot of different business models emerging from the open source environment. You have open source companies that are monetizing the support services that they're providing, they're monetizing the hardware that they're providing, they're monetizing premium versions of the open source products that they make available, they're monetizing add-ons - proprietary software that they make available, that work in conjunction with the open source products. That's just to name a few of them, and this environment is developing fairly rapidly with lots of different solutions and business models being created on a rapid basis.

So we don't view the open source community in a monolithic way; we see it in all of its complexity. And we look for ways to collaborate with the open source community. We believe that we've got a very positive relationship with Novell, we're excited about the announcement that was just made with Xandros, we have been working with JBoss, with SugarCRM, all the work in the Port 25 space [Microsoft's open source laboratory]. There is room for collaboration, and we will continue to explore that going forward.

SCOTT FULTON: So you think that if the open source community were a corporation at large, then what's currently being pumped out as its marketing message might not truly speak for the rest of the company?

TOM ROBERTSON: I can't characterize it in that way. All I can say is, I don't think it is monolithic. I don't think of it is a corporate entity. I think it is quite a varied community, and is developing in ways that change day to day. Microsoft continues to look for ways to collaborate with the community, and we're happy to say that there are many in the community that want to collaborate with us.

SCOTT FULTON: So when a corporation - say, for instance, IBM - stands up and says, "On behalf of the open source community, we'd like to make our position known and take a stand against the imposition of the Office Open XML format as a standard," you would say to that, "How can you speak for the community at large?"

TOM ROBERTSON: I don't think IBM or any other entity can speak on behalf of the community. I think IBM speaks on behalf of IBM, and its own commercial interests.

SCOTT FULTON: So any effort in that regard would make as much sense as if a company that produced its own proprietary word processing format standard, were trying to muscle its way into the standards game as a competitor just the same, whether or not it was open source?

TOM ROBERTSON: Are you talking about IBM?

SCOTT FULTON: I'm saying [do you think] that IBM's voice in this, its intent, is not to be treated by Microsoft any differently than if IBM had invented the OpenDocument format for itself, and was creating its own proprietary word processor and was trying to push that into the standards space on behalf of its own corporate interests?

TOM ROBERTSON: I think IBM is a company that has an obligation to its shareholders. And any step that IBM takes ought to be viewed from that perspective. It's a company that's focused on delivering value to the shareholders, and the steps that it takes will always be in furtherance of that goal.

SCOTT FULTON: So when Microsoft does make inroads in collaborating with Novell, Xandros, JBoss, when it makes those positive, pro-active steps, those steps are collaborations with corporations, aren't they? Not with the open source community?

TOM ROBERTSON: The open source community is quite a varied community, and I think if you talk to any of those entities - Novell, Xandros, JBoss, SugarCRM - they would tell you that they're part of the open source community. We very much value the collaboration we have with them, because we think that this serves the interests of our customers.

SCOTT FULTON: To that end, when you say that Microsoft has to listen more, to listen to what customers and sometimes its competitors are looking for in terms of interoperability, is it listening to individual companies on one track, to governments on another track, customers on a third track, the open source community on a fourth track?

TOM ROBERTSON: I'd say as a general matter, we are listening. We are trying to appreciate, like any other player in the community, how our customers' interests are best served, and we're focused on addressing those interests.

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