Break out the champagne: OpenReader draws fire from Adobe exec
You know you’ve arrived when the big boys start attacking you directly and in public. Bill McCoy, an Adobe executive involved with e-pub activities, has honored the OpenReader format with some criticism that is already a tad obsolete. He is belittling OpenReader as “NoringOSoftReader”–a proprietary creature of OpenReader Executive Director Jon Noring and OSoft, the first implementer. His blog denies he’s doing that; but from the tone, he might as well be.
Bill, the OpenReader Consortium is already shopping around for a recognized standards group. Jon wanted a stand-alone approach similar to the model of the very reputable Digital Radio Mondiale. I said, “No, let’s blend in our actual standards-setting with an existing organization to avoid B.S. from Proprietary Formatters trying to confuse the issue.” And this week, in fact, before I saw your post, we decided to approach such groups after having earlier considered this. Stay tuned.
OSoft’s just the first implementer: Care to do the same, Bill?
Moreover, anyone can build an OpenReader; that’s the whole idea. We’ll be delighted to see Adobe and other Proprietary Formatters join the Consortium and take standards seriously. No, we’ve hardly been bashful about giving Adobe a chance to do its own implementation of the standard. What happened, Bill? You were even supposed to send a guy out to Utah to meet with Jon. Did your bosses thwart you? In your heart of hearts, we’re convinced, you mean well. You’ve already talked about the desirabilty of an MP3 for e-books. That’s us, with our standards-based XML/CSSish approach.
OpenReader’s core format will merely update the basic OEBPS specs from the Open eBook Forum, now known as the International Digital Publishing Forum. Jon and I begged and pleaded with Bill and the other Proprietary Formatters to get serious about a consumer-level format. Adobe didn’t. Nor have the other PFs–hence, the formation of the OpenReader Consortium. Ideally Bill would have joined and helped to support OpenReader and truly advanced the cause standards. We still have hopes for him; perhaps the news in the second paragraph will do the trick.
No spare 100K for an executive director
Meanwhile, as the main ringleaders of the Consortium, Jon and I would love to be able to afford a $100,000-year executive director (yes, that’s about what the IDPF is paying Nick Bogaty). Same for Adobe’s mega-million-dollar publicity machine.
But we have something far more credible, a grassroots Web log, born out of a desire for well-stocked digital library systems. Pre-blog, I’ve been pushing TeleRead since the early 1990s, and the standards movement fits in well since you can’t take e-books seriously for libraries unless society also addresses the Tower of eBabel issue. Long before Jon and I had ever heard of OSoft, which called us up out of the blue after I did a blog item mentioning its ThoutReader, we were pounding away at the need for standards. For years, standards have been a topic of Jon’s eBook Community list.
Ironically even Adobe could benefit from our cause, which is pro-open standards, not anti-Adobe or anti-any company. Bill, in fact, should be grateful that OpenReader is around. Without it, the e-book world very likely would be headed toward a WordPerfect scenario, where the rivals grind each other into little pieces, and Microsoft emerges almost unchallenged.
PDF/A: Another reminder of the proprietary nature of PDF
As for PDF/A, mentioned in Bill’s blog post on OpenReader, that definitely has its purposes, but it is not a consumer standard. It is for archivists, not the typical consumers who buy commercial e-books and other publications.
Otherwise why will Adobe continue with its own consumer format, complete with an equally proprietary DRM option?
Meanwhile, isn’t it telling that there must be a special archival standard for Adobe? The world most assuredly will not need an OpenReader/A.
OpenReader’s Rx for standards setters: No DRM chokehold
DRM? Well, that’s for the standards-setter to decide. The first version of the OpenReader spec almost surely won’t have DRM included. Companies will have to duke that one out in the marketplace. OSoft has the most attractive of the DRM approaches that Jon and I have seen–or, should we say, the least obnoxious? We both continue to hate DRM, as do other key participants in OpenReader. One problem is that DRM does not lend itself to the open-source concept and is in fact used by the likes of Adobe and other Proprietary Formatters to strengthen their hold on customers.
But the large content providers want copy-protection, so, as a compromise, we’ll ask the standard setters to oblige them with the most reader-friendly of approaches. If OSoft wins on merit, fine. If another company does, that’s okay as well. We just hope that the victor of the DRM wars will follow OSoft’s admirable example and agree to avoid gouges and also let publishers and nonprofits act as DRM registrars. No chokeholds, no DRM fees of as much as 10 percent or more in some cases. That is what OpenReader and OSoft both want to avoid. In our vision, publishers will spend much less on DRM than if Adobe’s current model prevails.
OpenReader vs. today’s Adobe on accessibility issues
Along the way, we’d love to see the OpenReader standard make e-books more accessible for disabled people than current products do from Adobe and the other Proprietary Formatters. Standards will be catnip for users of speech synthesizers. Why, after all these years, have Adobe and friends failed to come up with satisfactory solutions? True e-book standards will help.
I know Jon will speak his own mind and add to the points above, which I’m making as an individual. Meanwhile I hope Bill, who has been clueful about so many things, will reconsider his views and urge his bosses at Adobe to do the same–now that he knows the full facts, up to the very nanosecond. The OpenReader door remains very much open for Adobe, Microsoft and other big players if they are truly serious about e-book standards at the consumer level. Furthermore, as I’ve noted in the past, we will be very open to helping large companies make a graceful transition from their current proprietary approaches.
January 29th, 2006 at 7:13 pm
For more tactful commentary, see Jon Noring’s take on Bill’s post. I’m speaking just for myself.
January 20th, 2008 at 9:38 pm
[...] stating the obvious. And later, in a critique of… many things: Meanwhile, as the main ringleaders of the Consortium, Jon and I would love to be able to afford a [...]