freedom bits

Re-enacting the parrot sketch

Mi, 02 Apr 2008 14:48:33 +0200

Calling the past months work-intensive would be something of an understatement. Fortunately my colleagues in FSFE did an excellent job of working on the same project in various countries while I was partially absent. They also managed to put out some interesting comments on the IS29500 approval. What I can say on the issue is unfortunately fairly limited by the various shrouds of secrecy over what in my personal opinion should be like any other public interest process that affects the lives of citizens.

Why are various national standardisation bodies not accountable to the public they represent in ISO? Why can the public not know what is going on? If I had a magic wand, non-accountability and intransparency would be my top two issues to fix in all of this. It could also be a good idea to get some procedural buffs from the United Nations to make things more predictable and reliable on a procedural level. Had you told me a year ago I'd be wishing for the procedural efficiency of the United Nations, disbelief would have been a likely reaction. Now the United Nations appear extremely well-functioning in comparison.

Due procedure would allow for fair dialog based on substantial considerations. In this case it would have allowed discussing technical issues and answering the most fundamental question for any specification: Is it technically sound so it can be approved without further review or modifications?

This question can be answered on technical grounds. There is no need for attempts at authoritative arguments, assertions about the quality of future editorial work, or referrals to the maintenance process. Attempts at answering that question in any of these ways indeed translate into "No, it is not."

Of course there are also other questions that are relevant when it comes to standardisation - including the "Six questions to national standardisation bodies" that FSFE put out around July 2007. Answering some of these issues is a little less clear-cut than the technical side, but can be done in an environment where people are accountable for their actions and statements. The media could have helped a great deal at keeping that dialog honest.

As accountability and transparency are sadly lacking, the past months often seemed like a gigantic, world-wide re-enactment of Monty Python's parrot sketch with the involvement of several multinationals and billions of EUR spent. I am pretty sure the original was more cost effective -- and thanks to the wonders Gnash we all get to enjoy this classic here:

My only question is: Where is the standardisation store of ISO's brother so I can return IS29500?

[update@20080404]

Thanks to Octavio Ruiz, this blog entry is now also available in Spanish.

FSFE's Sun Fire T-1000

Mi, 07 Nov 2007 12:32:59 +0100

Most of you have probably seen in FSFE's latest newsletter that Sun kindly donated a SunFire T-1000 server to FSFE's Fellowship.

And while not as probiotic as other recent blog entries, I think that some of you should be curious to have a look at its insides. Here is a picture of the actual machine, click on the picture to get a larger version:

But in the tradition of cool "Freedom Figher" pictures, allow me to also share the following:

"Freedom Fighter with his faithful T-1000"

Many thanks to Sun for this very nice machine.

At the upcoming SFscon in Bolzano, people will get together for a Fellowship sprint to keep this baby busy.

An emerging understanding of Open Standards

Do, 04 Okt 2007 12:08:35 +0200

Open Standards have been somewhat of a holy grail for some time now. Interoperability and vendor-independence, the IT industries' equivalent of eternal life, are the prize for those who find the grail that are Open Standards. This conquest took decades, has spawned many different definitions of what people might call an Open Standard, but has also left many of the seekers with a much better understanding of what it is we really seek.

Some of the more interesting definitions are

The Open Standards definition in the European Interoperability Framework, which had some good success in achieving interoperability and has consequently come under heavy criticism from Microsoft and its interest groups.
The Open Standards definition by Bruce Perens, which includes practice recommendations, based on the understanding that a definition is worthless without practice to uphold it.
The definition of an Open Standard adopted in Denmark as part of motion B 103 of the Danish Parliament

But there are also many others. Based on practical experience, the understanding of Open Standards continued evolving in various fora, including the Dynamic Coalition on Open Standards (DCOS) at the United Nations Internet Governance Forum, where governments, industry and civil society discuss Open Standards in an open and inclusive way. There are also the recent discussions around the European Interoperability Framework, the controversy around ISO approval of MS-OOXML, the various discussions on interoperability in almost any country, the effects of lacking interoperability on procurement cost, including at WIPO, and so on.

Allow me to share with you five criteria that have emerged from dialog between stakeholders, and constitute a concise and balanced definition of what an Open Standard should be. Such a standard is

subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a manner equally available to all parties;
without any components or extensions that have dependencies on formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open Standard themselves;
free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by any party or in any business model;
managed and further developed independently of any single vendor in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third parties;
available in multiple complete implementations by competing vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all parties.

It is obviously impossible for a new format or protocol to meet the fifth criteria, so there will have to be a grace period for new protocols of formats until it is fully applied. There also needs to be active and continuous checking of Open Standards against this definition to prevent abuse or false labelling, but this would be true for any definition. In balance I do consider the five points presented above to be rather solid.

One of the first projects to adopt this definition is Science, Education and Learning in Freedom (SELF), including the Internet Societies in the Netherlands and Bulgaria, various Universities, some NGOs (including FSFE) and is funded by the European Union in its framework programmes.

Ideally we should all come to some common understanding of what constitutes an Open Standard. Considering that there are some parties that base their business model on lack of Open Standards and have a commercial interest in falsely declaring proprietary formats as Open Standards, that is unrealistic.

But if the majority of politics, industry and society at large came to a common understanding on the issue, that would probably be sufficient. So I hope that we'll be able to continue this discussion further at the IGF in Rio.

WIPO GA: Current situation, and FSFE's statement

Sa, 29 Sep 2007 12:30:56 +0200

The good news first: The outcome of the Development Agenda discussions has been accepted by the Assembly of the Member States of WIPO, so there is now formally a Development Agenda for WIPO to discuss the substantial issues. Definitely a big step forward.

But overall the WIPO GA continues being confrontational, with the issue of WIPO Director General Idris being at the center of the conflict. It has all the elements of a proper scandal: accusations, attempted justifications, and rebuttals by the Joint Inspection Unit of the United Nations. If you want to know more, you might be interested in this IP-Watch.org article.

The other critical issue is around reduction of the fees on the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT), which are demanded by the United States and Japan as a 15% flat reduction, and which Brazil and others would like to see only as a reduction for developing countries. And of course there will be the issue of funding for the Development Agenda, among other things. All of this creates a rather complex web of interests in which the various groups are trying to negotiate an agreement.

As a result, the GA is now far behind schedule even though there are night sessions and yesterday the chair asked for a session on Saturday. So there is almost no way to speak as NGO, but thankfully the chair offered to submit statements in writing for the protocol. So here is a copy of the statement I submitted on behalf of FSFE yesterday. You can also find it online at http://fsfeurope.org/projects/wipo/statement-20070928 and there is a nice PDF Version (44k):

Assemblies of the Member States of WIPO

Forty-Third Series of Meetings, Geneva, 24 September – 3 October 2007

Intervention by Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE)

The FSFE has comments on various items on the agenda of this year's Assemblies of the Member States. In the interest of time and on invitation of the chair, we are submitting these comments in writing for your kind consideration.

Considerations for WIPO's procurement decisions

On the question of WIPO's technical needs and systems, as discussed in multiple agenda items, FSFE submits that WIPO should follow the established principles of vendor independence, interoperability and Open Standards for all its procurement. References in this area are provided by the European Commission's IDABC European Interoperability Framework (EIF) or the work done on the subject in other Member States.

Experience indicates that cost related to lack of interoperability easily accounts for up to 40% of IT budgets, and is a major cost driver for all users of information technology, including public bodies. This lack of interoperability is a common result of vendor specific procurement decisions and lack of Open Standards.

Interoperability and Open Standards are also central for the issue of sustainable storage of and perpetual access to data and information. FSFE submits that it is in direct conflict to the mandate of WIPO as a multi-stakeholder intergovernmental organisation to depend on any particular company's products for access to its data and communication with its Member States.

FSFE therefore suggests that the Assemblies of the Member States establishes clear guidelines for WIPO's management to ensure vendor independence, interoperability and Open Standards in all its procurement decisions.

On a Development Agenda for WIPO

FSFE congratulates the Member States of WIPO for their agreement to work together on a concrete set of issues to establish a Development Agenda of WIPO. We have followed this process for the past years and continue to offer our input and assistance in allowing these discussions and their implementation to come to a successful outcome.

Pertaining to the comments on interoperability, Open Standards, and vendor-independence, we believe the same issues should also be included in the Development Agenda discussions, specifically in Cluster A, including, but not limited to, items 7, 10 and 11.

Regarding Cluster B, in particular items 22 and 23, FSFE would like to emphasise the role of Free Software to establish and maintain an open, competitive and innovative technology industry. Free Software is often the only remaining competitor in markets that saw abuse of neighboring monopolies, and the best choice to re-establish competition.

For reference, we would like to point out the investigation conducted since 1998 by the European Commission in this field, and the recent decision of the European Court of First Instance. The decision concerned two markets, one of which was the workgroup server market. In this market, due to massive leveraging of desktop monopoly into the market based on obstruction of interoperability, Free Software is left as the only remaining competitor, currently providing the basis for competing products by no less than four major vendors.

Pertaining to Cluster C, FSFE would like to emphasise the importance to discuss the role of Free Software in technology transfer and capacity building, as agreed upon during the World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva, referenced in item 24. Citing section C3, 10, point e of the WSIS Plan of Action:

"Encourage research and promote awareness among all stakeholders of the possibilities offered by different software models, and the means of their creation, including proprietary, open-source and free software, in order to increase competition, freedom of choice and affordability, and to enable all stakeholders to evaluate which solution best meets their requirements."

Overall, FSFE considers it imperative to dedicate sufficient resources to the upcoming Development Agenda discussions within WIPO to bring this work to concrete results in a timely manner.

On the future activities of the SCCR and SCP

Regarding agenda item 17, the future activities of the SCCR, FSFE would like to reaffirm its support for the September 2006 Joint Statement of Certain Civil Society, Industry and Rightholders Representatives Regarding the Draft Basic Proposal for SCCR 15.

Considering the large amount of pressing issues in the area of Copyright and related rights, including a potential treaty on Access to Knowledge, the issue of Limitations and Exceptions, and the issue of alternative Copyright-based system to incentivise creativity, such as Creative Commons and Free Software, FSFE believes the SCCR should priorise these issues over more meeting devoted to issues that are unlikely to see consensus in the next years.

FSFE furthermore in reference to agenda item 19 believes that the SCP should analyse the effect of patenting in the area of IT standards, incorporating a perspective on potential antitrust issues, which in our experience are relevant to the full picture.

Groklaw article: Microsoft, antitrust and innovation

Do, 27 Sep 2007 16:34:08 +0200

[http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20070923170905803]

Microsoft, antitrust and innovation
-- by Georg C. F. Greve

If one were to believe Microsoft, antitrust law is for sore losers who are too lazy to innovate, and the decision of the European Court of Justice against Microsoft was to the detriment of consumers around the world. One might even believe that any company with large enough market share would now have to fear the wrath of the European Commission and its anti-innovation bloodhounds.

At first the notion seemed ludicrous, but then more and more blogs repeated it and serious media started picking it up. Even representatives of the US government spoke out on behalf of Microsoft, to the annoyance of Neelie Kroes, the European Union's antitrust commissioner.

When the European Court of First Instance announced its decision, the first reaction of Microsoft was to talk about compliance with the ruling and that it was only partially confirmed by the court. Then people read the decision.

There was only one modification to the Commission's case, relating to the trustee provision. This was because the EC should not have asked an independent third party selected from a list provided by Microsoft to monitor compliance. It should have supervised this itself. In essence the Commission was told they had been too forthcoming with Microsoft. This was not a partial annulment by any means, it could rather be seen as going beyond what the Commission had decided.

During the hearing, Microsoft had tried to attack the case on procedural and administrative grounds, no matter how likely or unlikely. None of this stuck, because the European Commission had done its homework, and done an extraordinarily thorough, careful and balanced investigation. It also showed extraordinary patience with Microsoft's attempts to delay.

Declaring antitrust law to be "of the devil" and to distract from the situation by pointing fingers at others was really the last available option to distract from the facts of the case.

This allegation does not hold up to examination though. Allow me to tell you why.

1st Fallacy: That the Ruling Punishes Innovation

The first fallacy was that this kind of ruling punished the innovator. Who were the innovators? Real Inc. innovated the streaming media market, and Novell was the innovator in the workgroup server market. In both cases Microsoft unfairly leveraged its desktop monopoly to drive the innovator out of the market. That is why future innovators in Silicon Valley often do not receive venture capital if they do not have defensive strategies against Microsoft or at least a co-existence strategy. Quite often that strategy is to become successful enough to become an attractive purchase for Microsoft. Not much of a reward for innovation.

One of the functions of antitrust law is to create an environment that is protective of the innovator. Microsoft has not been an innovator.

2nd Fallacy: That Google, Apple and All Successful Companies Need to Fear

The second claim, echoed widely by major media outfits, is that Google and Apple should now be worried about similar lawsuits because of their large market shares. But antitrust law is not about having large market shares. Antitrust law says nothing about offering a product and gaining monopolies. As long as there is no distortion of competition in neighboring markets, this is legitimate.

What antitrust law cares about in this context is leveraging monopolies of one market into another through abusive practices. The Commission found Microsoft employing two abusive practices: bundling and the deliberate obstruction of interoperability.

Horatio Gutierrez of Microsoft is quoted asking "If Microsoft can't bundle an audio player with Windows, why can Nokia bundle a camera with a phone?" -- the answer seems obvious.

It is questionable whether Nokia has 95% market share in mobile phones, but even if that were the case: There is currently no separate market for mobile phone add-on cameras, so there is no neighboring market to be be distorted by monopoly abuse.

If Nokia had 95% domination and if there were such a market, Nokia might find itself in conflict with antitrust authorities if it took active steps to ensure that a) all its phones always came with the camera included and there is no way to buy the phone separately; b) removal of the camera would be very difficult for a normal user and potentially end up damaging the phone; c) the phone would be built in ways to make sure cameras of other vendors would not work and it would be impossible to buy both together.

Microsoft was found doing all of the above with its media player.

Interoperability:

The second abusive practice the Commission found Microsoft guilty of is the deliberate obstruction of interoperability, generally achieved through arbitrary and willful modification of Open Standards. This makes it impossible for competitors to write interoperable software. This is to the detriment of customers, who find themselves locked into the products of one vendor, the antithesis of competition.

Microsoft is comparatively silent on this charge and for good reasons. Vendor lock-in is precisely what public administrations around the world are concerned about. It is a driving force behind the growing momentum on Open Standards, and Microsoft's refusal to end the obstruction might not go down too well.

It might look much worse in the light of public statements that Microsoft will not even commit to standards that it has proposed itself, such as the recent Microsoft OfficeOpenXML (OOXML) format it wants approved by ISO.

The less people talk about the interoperability side of the case, the better for Microsoft. Otherwise people might connect MS-OOXML to the fact that Microsoft initiated the standardisation effort in the workgroup server area to open the market and later started obstruction of interoperability on its own standard to drive the innovator out of the market.

As long as other companies avoid these practices they will have nothing to fear from the European Commission.

Despite what Microsoft and its partners would have you believe, monopoly abuse is not good for you. It only benefits the monopolist at the expense of competition, innovation and society at large. Antitrust law was created to address this issue and to protect the interests of society.

If a monopolist tells me that antitrust law harms innovation, I have to clearly state that I am not convinced.

Neither should you be.

ADDITION: On the same subject you might be interested in the ''Logic from another planet'' blog entry about previous activities of the people speaking out on behalf of the United States.

WIPO GA: Starting off by grinding to a halt

Di, 25 Sep 2007 10:58:49 +0200

The 2007 general assembly of the UN WIPO started off yesterday by grinding to a halt over accusations against WIPO director general Kamil Idris, who apparently changed his officially recorded birth date. The United States wants that issue discussed and dealt with at this year's assembly, while the group of African countries moved to take this item off the agenda. You can read more about this at IP-Watch.org and Thiru Balasubramaniam of KEI.

So while we're waiting for the closed door meetings to come to some kind of agreement on the agenda, allow me to share some fun that I came across while waiting.

If someone were to raise the idea that public transportation providers could reduce the amount of free riders by subjecting people to a mandatory whipping when buying a ticket, most people would probably consider that a pretty stupid idea. It seems that different standards for stupid exist on this planet, because this is precisely what the so-called "reproduction rights industry" is doing with the "piracy trailers" on its DVDs -- always vastly overexaggerating and often misrepresenting the law.

So it comes as no surprise that many people felt annoyed by this and reacted in a creative way to the not so creative industries, by making alternative versions of the clips. Below is the output of the Sydney University Law Revue 2007, courtesy of Hugh Aitken. Thanks to Luisa for pointing them out to me.

My personal favorite is probably the second clip. I should also warn in particular my fellow Germans that the third clip is showing a certain lack of historic sensitivity. You have been warned.

Ah, they're calling the assembly. Let's see whether we have an agenda now.

So this is what hit Microsoft...

Do, 20 Sep 2007 14:42:48 +0200

The past two months have been interesting in the Chinese sense. A primary culprit of that was Microsoft's failed attempt to push their proprietary MS-OOXML format through ISO. But there were also talks and meetings with ministers (see [1][2]) to promote Free Software in Chile, the SELF board meeting in Argentina, review meeting in Brussels, and launch of the SELF beta platform. And of course there was finally the decision of the European Court of First Instance in Luxembourg on the Microsoft antitrust case.

On all of these issues there would be quite a bit to report, and I am planning to tell at least some of these stories, but right now I am trying to get some of the most important email out of the door before the WIPO general assembly next week in Geneva.

Meanwhile, David "Novalis" Turner noticed that there was no picture of a female Freedom Fighter on FSFE's t-shirt ordering page. So he took one of his fiance Danielle. Admittedly my mind was quite occupied with the antitrust case, so it comes as no surprise that my first thought was

"So this is what hit Microsoft"

You can read more about that case in the joint FSFE/Samba statement and the Groklaw report. Groklaw also put an interview with most of the joint team up today where you can get a little bit of an idea about the work we've been doing over the past years.

And finally I'd be more than pleased if you wanted to join our cause and support this work. Signing up for the Fellowship would be a good way to do that. Convincing your company to become a patron of FSFE would be another.

Reminder: 10 days left!

And don't forget to submit your Free Software projects for the Trophees du Libre, only ten more days to go!

Submit your Free Software projects for the Trophees du Libre

Mo, 30 Jul 2007 17:08:07 +0200

Cetril, the "Centre Europeen de Transfert et de Recherche en Informatique Libre" is once again organising the Trophees du Libre, an award for Free Software projects in various categories, focussed on unknown and innovative projects. The web page is now open for registration and you can download the PDF leaflet here. Deadline for registrations is 1 October 2007.

Having participated as part of the jury last year, I can say that this event has left me with a very positive impression: A clear focus on Free Software, professional organisation where the finalists' present themselves in the afternoon to the responsible parts of the jury, and a very nice award ceremony.

Prizes for the 2007 awards include financial support for the projects from EUR 500 to EUR 3000, laptops, books, and other goodies. The idea of the award is to give new, young and hitherto unknown projects a chance of support, recognition and visibility. So don't hesitate and submit your project today.

Free Beer (as in freedom)

Di, 24 Jul 2007 19:05:35 +0200

Recently I stumbled upon a student initiative called project21.ch who were asking for preorders on their Free Beer, as in freedom: The recipe is available online and you're invited to modify it under a Copyleft license. You can either get Free Beer in bottles through them, or play with the recipe and have the

Wädi-Brau-Huus AG
Steinacherstrasse 105
CH-8804 Au-Wädenswil
Telefon +41 44 782 66 55
Fax +41 44 782 66 56

bier@waedenswiler.ch

brew it for you, although you have to order at least 1000l in that case. Since that was out of the question, I bought my Free Beer today:

When I picked it up they told me there are around 400l of the last batch still available. So if the Zürich University is somewhere within your reach, you should order some Free Beer and while you pick it up, you can stop by FSFE's Zürich office, which is right around the corner.

Update: After it had cooled down sufficiently, I just had my first Free Delicious. FreeBeer is not only free, it is also very good.

Ah, the taste of freedom.

Mountains+Geeks+Barbecue+Freedom=Bergtagung

Mi, 18 Jul 2007 13:57:29 +0200

FSFE Fellow Alex Antener reminded me today that some of our Swiss Team set up the Bergtagung for next weekend in the beautiful Swiss Alps mountain town Siat. The purpose of the Bergtagung is to have a meeting open minds, Free Software/Free Culture enthusiasts and others, with the following agenda items (from the Bergtagung web site):

To hold and listen to talks about various subjects, relating to Free Software or not, it's entirely in the speakers' hands
To relax in the sun
To drink beer (or non-alcoholic beverages of your choice)
To go for walks and enjoy the scenery
To eat grilled sausages and local specialties (and/or tofu, vegetables...)
To chat about software, culture, technology and whatever else seems to fit. Maybe even, god forbid, football

Just imagine what happens if we combine some of these. Drink beer while hiking up a mountain with a sausage AND listening to a lecture!

So in short: Have a good time. If you don't have plans for next weekend, this is definitely something to consider, so I hope to see you there.

NOTE: Yes, it is strange that you haven't heard of this before. It only goes to demonstrate the competency of FSFE's secret service. ;-)

The Inquirer on MS-OOXML and ODF

Di, 17 Jul 2007 18:19:31 +0200

The Inquirer has an interesting opinion piece called "Microsoft twists and turns over ODF" in which they pick up on the MS-OOXML conversion hoax:

The problem is that if Robertson and Paoli's early claim is correct would be theoretically impossible to convert a plane into a car? If Open XML is so complex it would be a bugger to convert into something as simple as ODF. Unless they have got it all wrong of course.

And link to the six questions about MS-OOXML that are meanwhile available in eight languages. If you want to add more, please check this page on how to get involved in FSFE's translation effort. FSFE will continue to offer information on

as deep links for the time being, because the topic is still not as widely discussed as it should be. Only yesterday did I have a journalist from a well-known news agency tell me about fearing the topic might be too "technical" for their readers. Formats and protocols are like languages. And formats for office applications concern virtually every computer user and every citizen of every government that makes use of software. So practically everyone who could read this. That ought to be a large enough potential readership to publish something.

In a democracy it is the responsibility of the media to oversee the government, analyse their work and criticise when democratic principles are being thrown overboard -- which unfortunately happens all too often when there is no public scrutiny. A sad example was recently delivered by the Swiss standardisation body for e-government (eCH), which in an act of anticipatory obedience approved MS-OOXML as an Open Standard for Switzerland with a description that reads like it was written by Microsoft's spin-doctors, including the obviously false claim of free implementability across vendors and platforms.

Microsoft certainly has huge advertising budgets, and it is known that they like to wave this fact in front of publishers to get friendlier treatment. So stories about their barely concealed manipulation of UN processes or US state governments usually have a hard time gaining traction in mainstream media.

The BBC and The Inquirer have now given some coverage to this issue, but most journalists are still unaware of the significance of what is going on. So we will need to make them aware. Help us spread the word.

Here are two things you can do easily:

Email the newspapers and journalists you may know and ask them to have a look at
As well as
- Dual Standards: More Choice, Or Less?
- Rob Weir's blog
- Bob Sutor's blog
- ODF Alliance web page
Because unlike MS-OOXML, the Open Document Format (ODF) has support from a large group of independent and competing vendors and implementations.
Put this banner on your web page and use it to link to the six questions on MS-OOXML that are still unanswered:

<a href="http://fsfeurope.org/documents/msooxml-questions" border="0"><img src="http://fsfeurope.org/graphics/msooxml_small.png" /></a>

MS-OOXML conversion hoax

Mo, 16 Jul 2007 12:26:15 +0200

Microsoft has been quite busy signing up various associates such as Novell, Xandros, Linspire and Turbolinux to work on its MS-OOXML converter. This was somewhat surprising.

To make myself clear: It was no surprise that Microsoft would try to enroll the help of other companies to make its proprietary format seem more interoperable than it is. It also came as no surprise that some companies were interested enough in improving their cash-flow balance to agree promoting the Microsoft agenda. What came as a surprise was the unquestioning acceptance of the possibility to achieve full interoperability through a converter when Microsoft had already stated that it did not support the Open Document Format (ODF) because it wanted features that ODF did not have.

Ignoring for a moment the point that ODF does not have those features because Microsoft remained a passive observer of the Open Document Format (ODF) standardisation process -- something they could change with the investment of participating in two telephone conferences -- there is a striking weakness to the idea of conversion.

So I wrote a guest commentary for Heise.de, titled "The Converter Hoax" which is online now. The core sentence is probably this one:

If these converters were actually able to do what they promise to do, they would be unnecessary.

The converters ultimately establish a one-way street into vendor lock-in on MS-OOXML, so they end up helping promote lock-in and dependency instead of supporting interoperability and freedom of competition.

BBC: Questions for Microsoft on open formats

Mi, 11 Jul 2007 13:39:44 +0200

The BBC just put an article by FSFE media coordinator Joachim Jakobs and myself online in which we respond to an earlier article on a "time bomb" in the UK National Archives.

What Microsoft carefully sought to avoid mentioning in that article is that they themselves placed that time bomb in the UK National Archives which now threatens to cause a "digital dark hole" according to Gordon Frazer of Microsoft UK.

You can find our response online here.

Massachusetts: thumbs up for lock-in

Mi, 04 Jul 2007 14:41:12 +0200

While FSFE was busy holding its 2007 general assembly in Brussels, Belgium, the world kept spinning. In this case backwards, unfortunately. After the state of Massachusetts had become famous for its clear-sighted move towards Open Standards in general and the Open Document Format (ODF) in particular, recent news is that state officials now plan to go back to accepting vendor lock-in.

There are various reports on the issue, including Andy Updegrove's blog and Groklaw, which has a cleaned up and highlighted version of the definitions of the Massachusetts' government "Designation of Standards/Specifications as Enterprise Standards."

Since the Massachusetts state officials correctly identified MS-OOXML as a proprietary, vendor-specific format, they introduced another category on top of Open Standards: Enterprise Standards, which are being defined as either Open Standards and/or "de-facto industry standards," with a reference to this Wikipedia article that is ironically marked "This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards."

As pointed out during the 2006 Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Athens, "de-facto standards" means that one player has become so dominant that its proprietary format seems to be used everywhere. It boils down to a euphemism for monopoly.

Since standards are about allowing competition on the merits between different vendors, such "de-facto standards" are therefore not only no standards, they are in fact quite regularly the opposite of standards.

So what the Massachusetts government really says is that it is okay to be locked into monopolistic software and data formats, that governments should help convicted monopolists to perpetuate their stranglehold over the local population, and that freedom of competition is nothing a government should be concerned about.

That sounds quite different to what I understood the role of a government to be. It also contradicts previously declared policy, like the statements of September 2005 by Eric Kriss, Secretary of Administration & Finance for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts:

"What we've backed away from at this point is the use of a proprietary standard and we want standards that are published and free of legal encumbrances, and we don't want two standards."

But maybe the current local administration is simply afraid to make the same experience that Peter Quinn had to go through in November 2005. In case you don't remember, here is a wrap-up from CIO.com that has all the typical elements of political drama: A monopolist lobbying massively for its interests, a CIO that stands up for the interests of the public against the monopolist, and a public smear campaign for which the monopolist neither denies nor confirms its involvement that ends with the resignation of the CIO who dared to oppose their interest.

Seen in this light, the latest news appear to be the continuation of the saga with the new CIO now handing Microsoft a carte blanche for whatever proprietary format they wish to force upon the people in Massachusetts through the state government.

It sounds like this might be a case for the new Lawrence Lessig.

But we cannot hope for any single person to fix all problems for us. All of this makes it even more important to raise the public awareness for standardisation issues, because data lock-in causes software lock-in, and that lock-in has become the most severe problem for migration to Free Software.

We need public attention for these issues. Public scrutiny is the only widely available countermeasure. Without the public pressure there will be no counterweight to the industrial and financial power of the monopolist.

The most important issue in this area right now is the attempt of Microsoft to get its MS-OOXML format rubber-stamped as an ISO standard. While this is not exactly the same as an Open Standard, that difference is theoretical only, as most governments have policies of accepting ISO standards.

So please take a look at the Six questions to national standardisation bodies and help us spread the word

which you can do by inserting this HTML code into your web page:

<a href="http://fsfeurope.org/documents/msooxml-questions" border="0"><img src="http://fsfeurope.org/graphics/msooxml_small.png" /></a>

Six questions to national standardisation bodies

Di, 26 Jun 2007 10:55:30 +0200

It seems that many people have been confused by Microsoft's attempt at trying to portray MS-OOXML as an Open Standard, which includes methods such as paying bloggers to manipulate Wikipedia or trying to confuse people about competition on the basis of a common standard, which is generally good for competition, vs competition of multiple standards, which is generally bad for competition.

Since this confusion exists in many national standardisation bodies, it is not surprising to also find it on the net and in various online sources. If they are not outright manipulated, that is. So it comes as no surprise that journalists have a hard time to see through the smoke, and not everyone does as good a job as the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ).

We therefore decided that it was time to help people working with the national standardisation bodies and journalists inform others about the issues in a way that would not require more than 5-10 minutes on the receiving end. The result has just gone online: Six questions to national standardisation bodies by the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE), also available in a PDF for pretty printing. These six questions, namely

Application independence?
Supporting pre-existing Open Standards?
Backward compatibility for all vendors?
Proprietary extensions?
Dual standards?
Legally safe?

raise issues that every national standardisation body should have satisfactory answers for, otherwise it must vote No in the ISO/IEC process and request that Microsoft incorporate its work on MS-OOXML into ISO/IEC 26300:2006, the Open Document Format (ODF).

In order to counter the misinformation that is currently floating around on the net it is important to spread the word far and make sure that these six questions are submitted to every single national standardisation body and used as widely as possible to inform people in politics and media.

In case you want to link the page, you can use this button

to link to the page, which exists in two versions:

250x98 pixel version, code:
<a href="http://fsfeurope.org/documents/msooxml-questions" border="0"><img src="http://fsfeurope.org/graphics/msooxml_small.png" /></a>
500x195 pixels version, code:
<a href="http://fsfeurope.org/documents/msooxml-questions" border="0"><img src="http://fsfeurope.org/graphics/msooxml.png" /></a>

Please help us spread the word.

[update]

And while you're at it, you should also consider to sign the online petition against MS-OOXML.