Today is the first day of the inauguration meeting of the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) in Athens,
Greece. The IGF is an outcome of the second phase of the United
Nations World Summit on
the Information Society (WSIS) and follows up on its Working Group on
Internet Governance (WGIG). While not having a policy setting
mandate, the IGF is a global policy discussion forum, including issues
that might greatly affect Free Software, such as Spam regulation,
Cybercrime and knowledge monopolisation.
First impressions
When arriving last night, the first positive impression was the
general availability of gratis wireless internet access everywhere,
including the hotels. Not quite so pleasant is the massive presence of
Microsoft advertisement everywhere: The internet cafe runs entirely on
Microsoft Windows, the beamers show large Windows XP logos in the
background, and the official IGF
website has the IGF synthesis paper exclusively in Microsoft Word
format. This seems consistent with the experience of the UN WGIG and
the process leading up to the IGF.
Indeed, the synthesis paper has something to say about this:
63. Many submissions stressed the need to differentiate between two
distinct issues: how to define and uphold open standards on the one
hand and the debate over proprietary versus free and open source
software (F/OSS) on the other. The proponents of F/OSS argued that
the Internet and free and open source software went hand-in-hand. It
was F/OSS that made the Internet and the World Wide Web possible and
continued to shape and develop it. The contribution regretted that
F/OSS and its representatives had been all but excluded from the
debate on Internet governance so far, first in the framework of the
Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) and subsequently in the
IGF processes.
It seems this is mainly what's left of the
Sovereign Software: Open Standards, Free Software, and
the Internet submission I wrote for this first meeting of the
IGF.
This is somewhat disappointing as the submissions were invited with
the additional information that they would be made available to the
delegates here in Athens in original and translated form. In fact, I
was even asked for translator guidelines on my submissions, including
a Free Software Essentials Reference Sheet which
appears to have disappeared entirely. Worse is the misrepresentation
of what was submitted, though, as the paper takes care to explain how
Open Standards and Free Software are not connected in theory, but very
connected in practice.
Where to from here?
Many of the discussions -- as well as many of the main hall
meetings -- seem to be struggling with the question of where the IGF
will be heading, what it will discuss, and how that will be carried
forward. So this is probably a central question to answer here in
Athens. If you want to follow what's going on, the IGF does have a
timely transcript of statements in the plenary and a live video stream
from Athens on its official web page.
So the next days will be filled with plenty of discussions, and on
1 November I'll try to bring in at least some Free Software
perspective at the high level panel on "Access" here at the IGF.
