[BenTrafford]

And now for a word from the democratic opposition...

Originally Posted by davidrothman

It'll be great if MobileRead readers can have the entire story.

...from Mr. Rothman's point of view.

Originally Posted by davidrothman

Adobe and ETI dominate the IDPF and bear close watching. Four of the seven IDPF board members are not from publishers but from tech-related companies (http://idpf.org/about/boardofdirectors.htm).

What Mr. Rothman fails to mention is that an accessibility advocate held a seat on the board for four years of the IDPF's existence. He also fails to mention that accessibility advocates sit on the IDPF's working groups, as do invited experts, people who are brought in not because of any corporate agenda, but because of the technical know-how they bring to the group.

Originally Posted by davidrothman

An ETI man is on the IDPF board. Result? The tech-company tail is wagging the publishing dog at the expense of not just publishers but also end users like MobileRead readers.

This idea, which Mr. Rothman propogates here and at his own blog and who knows elsewhere, is both ludicrous and more than a little insulting. It insults the various organizations who are IDPF members, and yet have no corporate agenda. Like the American Library Association. Like Access Pennsylvania. Like the DAISY Consortium. What? Are they so ineffectual that they have no impact? So stupid that they'll swallow anything handed to them? I think not.

As for publishers, take a look at the list of members. Publishers are well-represented. In fact, a quick glance shows that publishers are as well-represented as tech companies, with public interests taking a close third.

Originally Posted by davidrothman

This is why OpenReader (OpenReader.org) feels that publishers and the rest of the planet would be served better by standards-development work in a more neutral venue such as an OASIS tech committee where there would be a greater depth of technical talent, especially the disinterested varietey.

OASIS? Disinterested? Disinterested in what? Making money? Somehow, I doubt that. Take a look at their membership -- it's almost all tech companies.

As for a greater depth of technical talent, you may find that at OASIS, but what you'll also find is a higher bar for membership. Goodbye, invited experts. Goodbye, anybody who can't afford their higher membership dues.

In other words -- join OASIS, where the little guy can't come play, and where ebooks are a blip on the radar. Or play at IDPF, where ebooks have been the primary focus for the last eight years, and where anyone of sufficient technical ability can come play.

Originally Posted by davidrothman

Many and perhaps most of the techies who created the original IDPF production-level standards now refuse to have anything to do with the tainted IDPF.

What Mr. Rothman fails to mention is that that seven years have passed since those standards were built. A lot of people, like the aforementioned technical experts, have moved on to other positions and other opportunities. What he also fails to mention is the prominent role that several current people played...people who work for the Great Satan, ETI, for example, or invited experts, like myself.

Originally Posted by davidrothman

Oh, and a little detail. Guess who's pretty AWOL from the IDPF's standards setting. None other than Microsoft. That shows you how seriously Redmond takes the IDPF (sarcasm alert), and with good reason beyond Microsoft's usual arrogance. The moral authority at the IDPF just isn't there, not with such a blatant rigging of the standards-setting process.

Given that Mr. Rothman isn't part of the standards process, I don't see how he can make such egregious claims. A "blatant rigging?" What is this, a bad conspiracy movie?

Contrary to what Mr. Rothman might have you believe, most discussions at IDPF are not about how we can all join together aid Darth Ebookius to crush the rebels and see the ETI-Adobe Empire made dominant over the huddled and helpless masses...most discussions at IDPF are about what we can do to make ebooks available to everyone, rather than supporting the divergent mass of standards.

Yes, Microsoft does not have an active member on the IDPF working groups. They are still a member of the organization -- they just don't see working group involvement as being worth the money. And as long as people like David Rothman are splitting the nascent ebook community in two with frothing conspiracy theories, I doubt it will be worth the money. That's why I'm speaking out against his obfuscations, here and elsewhere.

Yes, there is no common consumer-level standard. Mr. Rothman lays the entire blame for this on the IDPF. But really, it's the publishers, whose interests he seems to hold so dear, who didn't want a consumer level format, because of their fears about piracy. And not just their fears, but the fears of authors' associations, who took out full-page ads and wrote long editorials decrying one consumer format for ebooks.

So IDPF did what it could -- we created a publication format, so that, at least, the publishers were delivering their content to a single target, which could then be specialized for each device or browser. It's a first step on a difficult road to update an industry that is, by and large, operating in the stone age.

But obviously, Mr. Rothman would've done something different. Doubtlessly, he will soon reveal his world-shaking plan to force the publishers to adopt his ideas -- OpenReader.

Originally Posted by davidrothman

Contrary to the canards spread by worried IDPF defenders, incidentally, Jon is not interested in chairing the proposed OASIS technical committee.

That'd be me he's talking about, by the way. I said that. Mostly in a fit of pique at Mr. Rothman's questionable announcements about the IDPF. Just in case you were wondering who the "worried" IDPF defenders are.

And he's right. I am worried. I'm worried that someone's going to look at OpenReader, think it's a valid and publisher-supported standard, and stake their company's livelihood on it...only to find it's all smoke and mirrors.

Also, I really don't like having my friends and colleagues bashed in public. I am most certainly not a neutral party, here, as Mr. Rothman has discovered, to the point of censoring my comments on his blog. I guess he's really not for open discussions among his peers, hmm?

Originally Posted by davidrothman

We want true neutrality (I'd love for the Illinois professor to head the committee!) and hope that public pressure will force the IDPF to clean up its act and move standards out of the Adobe-ETI frog pond and into the mainstream at OASIS or at least a similarly credible group.

Read: We hope that we'll get our way if we stamp our feet long enough. Because a standards body with an eight year history isn't good enough for us, because they won't do what we want.

It isn't a standards body Mr. Rothman wants. He wants to be able to present OASIS with a largely completed OpenReader specification, have the corporate-dominated group rubberstamp it, and move on.

I suspect he might find OASIS involvement to be a bit more complex than he expects, and quite a bit more dominated by financial interests that he expects. But then again...unlike myself, he's never worked with an OASIS group, so he's not expected to know any better.

Anyhow...there's the other side. For the record: I'm an invited expert at the IDPF, one of the group's earliest members, and have no corporate interest in ebooks at the moment.

I'm just here because I want Darth Ebookius at the Evil Empire to take me under his wing and make me a true Sith Lord. Much power has the Dark Side, or so I'm told.