Just how open is the OpenTravel Alliance?
And, how much free stuff can a not-for-profit standards’ body give away while remaining independent and, well, open for business?
These questions were batted around a bit on Twitter — and likely elsewhere — as OpenTravel earlier this week introduced the OpenTravel Forum.
The forum, built on the phpBB platform, is designed as a resource for people implementing OpenTravel schema in the hospitality, transport, travel services, and tours and activities realms, and is moderated during work hours by Bonnie Lowell, the OpenTravel specifications manager and a former Starwood exec.
The forum — accessible to members and non-members to varying degrees — should be useful for developers who wake up in the middle of the night and wonder: “What is the difference between OTA_CommonTypes.xsd and FS_OTA_CommonTypes.xsd?”
If you have these sorts of dreams — as opposed to visions of strapping young men or Sports Illustrated swimsuit models — then the OpenTravel forum may be just the right fix for you.
OpenTravel pledges that Lowell usually will crank out her answers to such specifications or implementation questions within 24 hours.
OpenTravel’s new phpBB-based forum replaces a now-inactive forum which used a Google groups template. It was abandoned because the platform lacked robust user profiles, threads and moderation capabilities.
But with the launch of the forum came criticism on Twitter from people such as David Janes and Wilfred Springer, who basically questioned whether OpenTravel really is an open organization if some of its implementation materials are available to members-only.
So, in the scheme of things, here are some of the core issues:
Anyone — members and non-members alike — can download for free OpenTravel schema, including “XML files, XSD files, a 700+ page users’ guide, the full code table, flattened schema files and our best practices document, explaining how and why we structure our XML schema the way we do,” says OpenTravel Executive Director Valyn Perini.
However, membership — as opposed to non-membership, of course — gives companies and their employees the right to participate in OpenTravel working groups, and access to the specifications manager, the OpenTravel wiki and Implementation Guide, among other perks.
In addition, while members can roam the forum at will, non-members have more limited functionality available and can only access five of the 11 discussion boards.
For example, while non-members can access discussion boards on implementation and documentation, only members can access some of the meat and bones — i.e. discussion boards on architecture, hospitality, transport, travel services, and tours and activities.
Much of the debate on OpenTravel’s openness hinges on whether the schema can be implemented without complete access to the members’ only Implementation Guide.
This is what David Janes, cofounder of Discover Anywhere Mobile, has to say about the issue:
“I don’t think OpenTravel fully meets the definition of open, in the ‘open source‘ sense of the word because ‘the end-product (and source-material) available at no cost to the public’ condition is not met.
“The sucker is currently 773 pages,” Perini quips. “it’s a phone book.”
Also, there have been some 50,000 downloads of the schema since 2001, and the Implementation Guide was only first published in 2007, so there were many implementations without the members-only guide, she adds.
And, Stephen Joyce, co-chair of OpenTravel and CEO of Sentias, concurs with Perini that OpenTravel meets open source criteria and that its schema can be implemented without the members-only Implementation Guide.
Joyce says:
“From a technologist’s standpoint, implementing based on specifications is not particularly hard. The Implementation Guide is a value-add which will help to speed up the implementation of the specifications. So yes, it is open, because the base specifications are readily available (and in fact have been implemented by many non-members).
“It’s a classic freemium model. Give away the specifications but charge for some tools to help make it easier. We’ve [Sentias/Rezgo] implemented dozens of different XML schemas for travel companies in the past, most without any form of implementation guide. Not OpenTravel message schemas, I’m talking proprietary XML APIs, which are often more difficult because they are completely custom to the company.”
When informed that the users guide comes with the free downloads, Janes concedes that OpenTravel is “technically correct” that the schemas can be implemented with the data available to non-members, but says implementation wouldn’t be easy.
“I have enough experience in trying to implement specs to say that it will in fact be hard, hard to the point of being basically impractical beyond the point where you might as well pay for membership,” Janes says.
Meanwhile, Jim Davidson, the CEO of Farelogix, which offers an open source download of its Hawkeye desktop, seems to question OpenTravel’s open source credentials, although he conceded he was unfamiliar with details about the new forum.
“It seems that once you put any restrictions on something that is supposedly ‘open’ you are no longer open– members or not,” Davidson says.
Au contraire, says Perini.
“It goes back to the concept of source material,” Perini says. “Our schema and supporting docs are free to anyone. Reference materials, etc. are not required for a successful implementation, so aren’t free.”
Punctuating the point, Perini adds: “We use the same model as almost all standards’ bodies. Open doesn’t mean completely free.”
Perini notes that the issue of how standards bodies get funded can be sticky.
“You don’t want a single sponsor (lack of neutrality); small companies have a hard time participating (dollars or developers) so the big companies tend to carry the load,” Perini says. “In some cases, small companies expect the big companies to carry the load, then get unhappy when the big companies get member benefits but small companies (as non-members) don’t.”
OpenTravel wants to be perceived as neutral and doesn’t have — or want — a “sugar daddy,” Perini says.
She adds: “Like any business, we have to provide value to our customers (members) by providing them useful and desirable tools and services.”
Meanwhile, both members and non-members apparently are finding some value in the organizations’ services even as the debate about standards organizations and open source undoubtedly will continue.
In that regard, in the first couple of days since the forum’s launch, registrations came in from 56 people — 20 members and 36 nonmembers.
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[Full disclosure: Perini and Joyce are Tnooz nodes, and a feed of Tnooz stories appears on the OpenTravel Forum page.]
It’s a mercenary approach to open source and not one that lends itself to gaining traction and more supporters. This is too bad, as standards are a good thing.
There’s a big difference between “OPEN” and “FREE” yes the schemas (XSD) are free, no they are not open since contribution to the schemas from non-members is not allowed. Further, there are materials only available to members, there’s nothing free or open about that. So maybe they should change their name to semi-open travel. If you want to be Oasis admit to it and move on.
OpenTravel has an almost identical model to some of the most respected standards bodies out there, including OASIS and W3C.
All three organizations have members who, in return for financially supporting the organization, receive some benefits including access to staff, documents and processes – all of which are unavailable or available on a limited basis to non-members.
Here’s the link to OASIS membership structure and benefits – http://www.oasis-open.org/join/
Here’s the link to W3C membership structure and benefits –
http://www.w3.org/Consortium/membership-benefits
Regarding the specific comment about non-members’ inability to contribute, that is inaccurate.
Any individual can post a comment at any time about any of our schema using this form – http://www.opentravel.org/Specifications/CommentOnSpec.aspx – available on our public web site http://www.opentravel.org.
We get hundreds of comments every year, most of them from non-members, and we address every single comment we receive. We do not differentiate between comments received from members or non-members – no weighting or fast-tracking involved.
I’d be thrilled if we could give everything away and provide full access to all comers, but like any business we must generate capital to run our operations. In an imperfect world, that means those who directly support OpenTravel (and other standards bodies) receive additional benefits, while those who don’t still receive full source code, supporting documentation and a feedback mechanism to make their voices heard.
I have to disagree with both Christian and Agwego on their points. There is nothing mercenary about it. This is not an open source community in the sense that there are thousands of developers worldwide developing or contributing to an application like Drupal or Linux. These are business messaging standards that are painstakingly developed (in collaboration with the entire industry) by a dedicated group of supporters (members) who pay to help ensure they get developed. We aren’t building a free content management system that has mass appeal, these are very specific, narrowly focused sets of technical schema.
The members are paying to support the creation of these standards for everyone’s benefit. Many of the member companies even commit hours and hours of volunteer time on working groups to help guide the development process. In my opinion, the member benefits that are afforded these members is minuscule compared to the effort and dedication that they contribute.
Steven: That is a great differentiator that you point out, namely that these schema are not meant for a thriving, massive developer community fretting over consumer products. Puts the matter in a much more understandable context.
Woops, I mean Stephen.
Valyn misses the core of the complaint: that many of us don’t think their organization meets the spirit of the word “Open” in what they’re releasing. Even the public outputs of their standardization efforts are not targeted for human consumption, but are instead XSD files (primarily for consumption by tools) and PDFs (for consumption by printers).
Compare this with for example with the depth of description in a W3C spec or an OASIS spec. Complete, not behind a registration form, web-indexed HTML.
I am familiar with both writing and reading specs. I am the author of the hAtom microformat, which is widely been adopted into Microsoft’s Webslices and extended as Reuters’ hNews.
If you had only access to the XMDP Profile for hAtom and several examples, you’d be roughly in the same spot that OpenTravel puts you – able to implement it, but missing critical information that would make it practical to do so.
I disagree with people who characterize the Open Travel Alliance as somehow not being “Open”. It is one of the most open standards organizations I have ever come across.
There seems to be a misunderstanding what the Open Travel standards are and how they would be used. First of all, Open Travel does not provide a piece of software that can simply be complied and used like Open Source Software. They are not even attempting to do that, nor should they. The travel industry is an extremely diverse group of companies with differing needs. No single piece of software could ever hope to meet all the requirements.
What the Open Travel Alliance does is define a standardized way for travel industries companies to electronically communicate with one another. They don’t attempt to define anything about the various computer systems that do the communications. Only the format of the messages exchanged between partners is defined.
This is very much like the way TCP/IP defines a standard that allow computers to transfer data. It doesn’t attempt to constrain what the computer systems on each end of the communications are doing. It simply defines an agreed upon protocol for the two systems to use. To me the Open Travel Alliance standards are an open standard just like TCP/IP is an open standard. Anyone can get the specification for free, implement it, and use it without paying royalties to a standards organization.
For those of you who think that simply publishing the XSD’s is not enough to implement the standard, it is quite clear that you are reading more into the standard than is actually there. The Open Travel Alliance says nothing about what you will do with the information you communicate. It only provides a common language by which partners can communicate.
If you think that the standard should be documented in human consumable ways like other W3C standards, you miss the value of specifying it with abstract schema. By using XSD’s virtually every tool on every platform that deals with XML messaging can use the specification as input. This greatly reduces the development costs by eliminating the time spent by a developer interpreting the standard. In addition the concise and accurate specification afforded by XSD’s eliminates the ambiguity normally found in human languages.
For those who say that having membership somehow reduces the openness, I have to say that they must not have much experience with the Open Travel Alliance or its standards.
Years ago when I first started implementing the standards as a non-member, being naive, I wanted more than just the XSD’s. However as time went on and I actually learned the details of the standard, it became exceedingly clear that everything I needed was included in the publicly available downloads.
When I came across suggestions for enhancing the standard, I submitted them on the Open Travel web site and they got implemented in the next release of the standard. A sign of the openness of the organization is how quickly they addressed my comments and incorporated them into the standards. Not many standards organizations are this responsive to a non-member.
Years after we implemented our first Open Travel compliant services, I finally convinced my company (Ace Rent A Car) to become an Open Travel member. One of the first things I learned was that being a participating member was more about the standard specification process than anything else.
As a participating member, you get to work with the various Working Groups that implement new proposals. This normally involves analyzing the proposals, avoiding duplicate functionality, integrating them into the standard so they don’t adversely impact existing users, and then running them through review processes to insure the highest quality possible.
Being a member has its perks. You get to see new versions of the standard before they get published, you get to participate in the work groups, you learn about directions the industry is heading before the general public, and you get to say “We are Open Travel Alliance” members (a great marketing thing in itself).
But even as a non-member, the Open Travel standards are extremely valuable because of the openness of the standard. By being able to agree on the communication protocols early in the process where two companies are negotiating a partnership, time can be better spent on more important details.
Using open standards like the ones published by the Open Travel Alliance makes for a great leveling tool where both large and small companies can work together on an equal footing. Considering the vast number of companies that have implemented Open Travel standards, why anyone would ever want to use a proprietary or closed standard is a mystery to me.
Joe Schafer
Thank you Joe! That is an extremely well thought out and thorough response. I hope the detractors take the time to truly understand the meaning and intent of your comment.