BSA Wants EU Open Standard Policy Reconsidered

XeRXeS-TCN writes "Benoît Müller of the BSA has written an open letter to the EU, criticising their focus on open standards for interoperability, as this would exclude things like DHCP, 802.1X and GSM. He also says that framework "shouldn't imply a link between open source and open standards"."

Comments

EU Icon?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, how about a shiny new EU icon? With so many stories about it wouldn't it be nice?

Re:EU Icon?

[modge]

The register did an article about just this: Here

Re:EU Icon?

[skahshah]

In fact, the 12 stars do not represent the 12 fouding members.

In 1955, The European Community had only 6 members, and no flag. That flag was the European Council's flag, and that organization had nothing to do with what would become the CEE. The European Council had more than 12 members, yet had chosen to have 12 stars on the flag because the number 12 was a symbol of completeness, and the circle a symbol of unity. The European Council then offered to all the other european organizations to share that same flag, and they adopted it one after the other.

Re:EU Icon?

[BenTels0]

This is a nice thread. Not so much because of the content (which is slightly inane) but since it sort of embodies the underlying idea of open source (software, science, knowledge, etc.) that involving many voluntarily in the process of bringing about a thing will gradually lead to improvement of that thing and in fact movement towards an optimal form of that same thing. The constant wonderment at seeing this process in action is one of the things that so attracts me to initiatives like the Wikipedia.

At this point, let me offer one final revision: in 1955 the European Community had no members. It was founded in 1957. In 1955, the European Coal and Steel Community has six members.

eNough

[Anonymous Coward]

eEurope? eGovernment? The 90's called, they want their e's back.

Re:eNough

[0x461FAB0BD7D2]

Apparently about 25million have returned an 'e', thanks to Firefox.

Sounds of Victory

[Doc Ruby]

The BSA is Microsoft Marketing's enforcement division. We can now see, from the emerging chorus of consistent PR, the new frontline in the proprietary/open/free IP war. The proprietary companies have retreated to "open standards", to relieve the "open source" pressure that would otherwise crush or abandon them. It's a major victory - for users and developers on both sides of the lines. But it's not yet in hand: winning "the peace" will mean keeping the standards open, and not letting these slimy weasels turn closed, undocumented "Office 2003" file formats into an acceptably "open" standard, because it's merely "standard", and not open. The momentum of interop'ing closed with open systems will turn more of the systems open - their source as well as their formats.

Re:Sounds of Victory

[aendeuryu]

Funny, isn't it? We just recently had to hear Bill Gates talk about Microsoft's commitment to interoperability, and then here we have the BSA trying to basically destroy open standards, which can help guarantee interoperability.

I'm having trouble understanding all this. Hopefully, one day, one of these two corporations can explain it to me, preferably in a nice, simplified language with all the unnecessary words removed. That'd be double-plus helpful.

How surprising!

[bigtallmofo]

Not surprising. The business software alliance which is funded by proprietary closed-source software companies wants proprietary standards instead of open standards. They also want proprietary closed-source software instead of open-standard open-source software.

If open standards and open source software were to become prevalent, how would they shake down companies?

Best quote ever

[Raul654]

The BSA's main objection to the EIF is that it requires a standard to be "irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis" and impose no constraints on "re-use." Such restrictions don't allow standards that, for example, rely on patents for which a royalty may be charged, according to Müller.

Oh yes, I'm crying my eyes out over that one.

Re:Best quote ever

[craXORjack]

My favorite quote:

But the use of patented technology in standards is "the reality today," he said.

But it won't be the reality tomorrow, Müller. So get back in your horse and buggy and go tell Bill that the slaves are revolting, that the chains of legal chicanery are being broken, and a new Age of Reason is dawning.

Re:Best quote ever

[amokrun]

Additionally, the following sentences are also relatively amusing.

"allow standards to include patented technology as long as the patent owner licenses the patent claims on reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms, he said. "

I think the "nondiscriminatory terms" here means that everyone gets hit just as bad. I guess it's just fine if you charge everyone equally.

Still, the quote is pretty nice. He could have just summed it up by saying "how can we make money out of this?".

Re:Best quote ever

[Raul654]

Take the converse of that arguement - what if the government requires everyone who does buisness with it to use a patented, royalty-requiring format. Now everyone is effectively paying a tax to whomever the patent owner is. And guess what? 999 out of 1,000, it's some megacorp. So no, I am not crying my eyes out over that one.

Re:Best quote ever

[jez9999]

The EU surely aren't trying to block patents altogether? However, patents should be for a novel, physical device; not a software implementation. It's too much like trying to patent a notion, or a word, or something. It's a great idea to say that you *cannot* have patents for software, only physical devices.

Re:Best quote ever

[psykocrime]

Maybe you would be crying your eyes over if you had this really cool non-generalistic invention that you didn't get credit ($$$) for.
I'm against software patents, but blocking patents altogether seems like a pretty bad idea to me.

You don't need a patent to make $$$. Like the old saying says - "You don't need a patent on bread to make a living as a baker."

Re:Best quote ever

[mickwd]

"And guess what? 999 out of 1,000, it's some megacorp."

And 990 out of 1,000, it's some American megacorp.

Now I've not got anything against American companies as such, but one of the reasons for the formation of the EU is to unite Europe into a trading bloc to match the size of the USA, to be able to compete with it on equal terms.

So why should the EU pass laws that would tend to favour large American companies to the detriment of (often smaller) European ones ?

Sadly, there is a reason why it might - political corruption. Witness the EU software patent debate.

How to prevent it ?

Make your views known to the decision-makers concerned, let them hear an alternative view to the lobbying by vested interests, and ensure they are aware of the level of scrutiny their decisions are receiving. Politicians are less likely to try and slip things through the back door if they know there is a large crowd of people - voters - watching what they're up to, and willing to make a fuss about it to an even larger crowd of people.

Unfortunately, the EU's democratic accountability is far from what it should be.

Re:Best quote ever

[craXORjack]

Unless you dream of being free you will never escape, even were they to leave the cage unlocked. The world is constantly changing, faster now than ever before. If you live an average lifespan you will see major changes, some good, some bad. We have the opportunity to influence what shape the future will take.

Patents & Open Standards

[thrashbluegrass]

So the BSA wants to say that open standards mean open source? Does this mean that they're afraid that they can't compete with F/OSS initiatives on an equal footing? That they need to leverage proprietary standards in order to keep market share?

As for the inclusion of patented IP in open standards, it's pretty much an oxymoron: if it's an open standard, there should be no strings attached (e.g., cisco's vrrp, Sun's elliptic curve cryptography in OpenSSL). Open should mean open, not we'll-let-you-play-with-this-until-we-decide-other wise.

DHCP is not open?

[Zocalo]

Could somebody please explain what the problem with DHCP is? There certainly seem to be plenty of documents to enable open implementations to me. Or are they talking about some proprietary Microsoft extension to DHCP that is rightly being ignored by everyone else?

Re:DHCP is not open?

[drinkypoo]

There are no proprietary Microsoft DHCP extensions anyway. Microsoft makes use of the natural extensibility of DHCP like everyone else, and they define several of their own DHCP options which are duly implemented by ISC DHCP. The only other special thing about Microsoft DHCP is the use of dynamic DNS.

Re:DHCP is not open?

[moreati]

That was my reaction also. TFA refers to the BSA letter containing DHCP as an example, so it's probably in there; but a quick google search turned up no obvious references to patents on DHCP - only some that use it.

Anyone have a link to the BSA's letter itself?

Re:DHCP is not open?

[berzerke]

...The only other special thing about Microsoft DHCP is the use of dynamic DNS.

The ISC DHCP software also supports dynamic DNS. Nothing special here.

Re:DHCP is not open?

[Zocalo]

Anyone have a link to the BSA's letter itself?

I've not found one yet, although that it would clarify what specific issues might be is somewhat remote I think. Either it's not been posted anywhere yet because it's the weekend or this "Open Letter" is "open" in the same sense that Microsoft's shared source is "open". They don't understand the concept of open source code, so why should we expect them to understand the concept of an open letter? ;)

Open standards

[Anonymous Coward]

Open standards will guarantee that your data is safe. What happens if the company that makes the software goes out of business? If the format is open you will at least be able to retrieve the data. I don't think that all software has to be completely open, but the data formats need to be open. This gives the customer the choice of what software to run and lets them update when there is a need to update, not when they are told they have to update.

Re:Open standards

[jesterzog]

What happens if the company that makes the software goes out of business?

...or simply decides to stop supporting their own format. I have a sizable number of Microsoft Works files from the early 1990's that I just can't open anymore. The earliest Microsoft software that I can now find won't open versions earlier than 4, and it seems that they're too old for anyone else to care about supporting them.

Luckily I can get some text out by viewing the raw file or using tools like 'strings', but I'd much rather have all of the original marked up formatting.

Re:Open standards

[calidoscope]

or simply decides to stop supporting their own format.

An all too frequent occurence - happened to a few co-workers when Lotus stopped supporting Manuscript. One of them commented that some of the stuff he wrote in the early 1990's is basically unreadable, but the stuff he did in TeX in the 1980's is maintainable.

One of the smartest things Sun did in regards to StarOffice/OOo was to GPL the core engine (meaning that the files should be readables decades from now) and documenting the file format.

Open Standards are Best for Economic Growth

[reporter]

Open standards are best for economic growth because such standards encourage competition and drive prices downward and quality upward in the relevant markets. One of the best examples is the specification for the IBM PC when it debuted in 1981. Although this standard was not open per se, we can consider it to be a de facto open standard because IBM allowed other companies to build clones. Then, many other companies (e.g. Compaq, AST, and others) joined the market, and the ensuing competition grew the market and drastically decreased prices and raised quality. The personal computer on which you are reading this SlashDot article would, today, run much slower and cost much more if IBM were the sole maker of personal computers. Note that the IBM PC with its de facto open standard spawned a multi-billion dollar industry in relatively short time, affirming the value of both open standards and Yankee ingenuity.

Another good example is the de facto open standard called the x86 instruction set. When Intel was the sole producer of microprocessors based on this standard, prices tended to be higher than what they could be. However, competition from AMD forced Intel to slash prices and to drastically raise the bar on performance. Hence, if Intel were the sole producer of x86-based microprocessers, your computer would probably still be using the 80386, and the Pentium 4 with EMT64 with be a century down the road while Intel continued to reap monopoly profits.

Open standards are great -- for the consumer!

Re:Open Standards are Best for Economic Growth

[Antique Geekmeister]

Open Standards are not the same as Open Software: there are numerous "Open Standard" compliant tools and operating systems that do proprietary, broken, unfixable things that customers or code developers cannot fix because of the closed source. Solaris tried this, although they seem to be learning.

Re:Open Standards are Best for Economic Growth

[drinkypoo]

If the latest intel processor were still the 386, we'd all be using MIPS or PowerPC processors. MIPS was still going strong when the 386 was out, and PowerPC wasn't around yet (by about seven years.) Sparc was always expensive, and probably always will be.

Anyway the point is that intel would have been pushed by competition in other markets, because otherwise the PC would die and the world would move on to a superior architecture. Of course, the PC architecture is finally showing some signs of evolution. Personally I would be happiest if PCs went to Open Firmware but intel certainly won't want to let that happen.

Closed standards bad

[NigelJohnstone]

Closed standards are exclusory, open standards aren't.

An open standard can be freely used by the closed standard company (e.g. Microsoft can use HTML), whereas the closed standard can't be used by the rest of the world. (e.g. the Microsoft patented XML formats need a license to use).

For example, Microsofts XML document format is patented. To use it you need a product that has licensed from them or Microsoft's own product.
So if the EU publishes in that format, then they have set a precondition that the reader has to accept Microsofts terms for use of that document format.

If you choose not to accept those Microsoft terms then you are excluded from reading the EU document.

Their constitution forbids them from being exclusory so by definition they must opt for the open standard.

What exactly is the problem with MS using open standards and competing with the rest of the companies? Why hide behind the BSA?

It's very simple

[jav1231]

If M$ and the BSA had their way everyone would be using .xls and .doc formats. It's just not wise for a government to be beholden to a company for access to their own data. From a simple security standpoint it just makes sense for a person, a company, a state to have ready access to their data despite the application and open standards do that. In effect, Muller is saying, "You're taking our chance to profit from your insecurity away from us." Notice that he doesn't seem to be advising these proprietary companies to adopt open standards which would in the long run give them the access to government bids that they covet. That should cause any head of state to be alarmed.

Let me expand on this

[NigelJohnstone]

Suppose:

EU decides that European citizens can sue Software companies for bad software and publishes that law in some proprietary Microsoft format.

Microsoft EULA for the program to read that document says users accept they can only sue MS for a maximum of $10 damages.

By publishing in that proprietary format they have let a company tack on a rider onto that law.

The government should do this more often

[cortana]

Massachusetts, for example, has a policy intended to mandate the use of open standards and open file formats, although the state recently reached an agreement with Microsoft allowing Office 2003 file formats to be defined as "open" for the purposes of the scheme.

The government should do this more often. By simply rewriting the dictionary so that words now mean the opposite of what they did before, we can solve all the world's problems! War, famine, poverty, disease...

Best of all, since I have patented this method of problem solving, it is now an Open Standard; this means it is free for anyone (who I choose not to sue) to use!

Re:The government should do this more often

[Max von H.]

The government should do this more often. By simply rewriting the dictionary so that words now mean the opposite of what they did before, we can solve all the world's problems! War, famine, poverty, disease...

Have you been living in a cave for the past five years? They've already rewritten "democracy", "freedom", "elections" an "justice"... One more, one less, do you think the mass will notice?

BSA spreads FUD

[KontinMonet]

Two and a half years ago, in June 2002, European heads of state adopted the eEurope Action Plan 2005 at the Seville summit. It calls on the European Commission "to issue an agreed interoperability framework to support the delivery of pan-European eGovernment services to citizens and enterprises". This framework would address information content and recommend technical policies and specifications to help connect public administration information systems across the EU. The Action Plan also stipulated that the Framework would "be based on open standards and encourage the use of open source software".

The blurb goes on:
To attain interoperability in the context of pan-European eGovernment services, guidance needs to focus on open standards. The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an open standard:
- The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties (consensus or majority decision etc.).
- The standard has been published and the standard specification document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a nominal fee.
- The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty free basis.

This approach was adopted by the parliament in April 2004 (nearly 11 months ago). And only now are BSA making noises?

Seems to me, that as the BSA is a front for software patent pressure that they have released this letter to muddy the waters after the (almost) non-software-patent decision taken by the EU Thursday.

RAND licencing is not procurement neutral!

[earthforce_1]

The term "Reasonable" is nebulous, (what is reasonable to you?) and non discriminatory is incorrect as it shuts out all open source software.

This needs to be clearly brought to the attention of EU politicians and media. There are certainly standards the EU cannot control, (DHCP, 802.11, etc.) but they must stick to their guns for standards that they can control. As for the IEEE adopting standards that include restrictive patents, well that is something I am trying to change from within, unless they are willing to open the relevent patent for use in FOSS as IBM has recently done.

If you want to bid on contracts with proprietary software, go ahead - but the file formats and protocols must be kept open in order to avoid vendor lock-in, and allow for interoperability. After all, this Bill Gate's latest big spiel wasn't it?

Link between Microsoft and BSA

[internet-redstar]

Well I think the link between MS and the BSA has always been very strong.
Financially the BSA is by far the most funded by Microsoft (Adobe is a distant far second if I recall correctly).

As Microsoft's biggest 3 competitors are:
1) itself and her older versions (seriously, MS looks at this in that way)

2) piracy, hence their involvement in creating the BSA and funding it

3) Linux (which we will not discuss here :)

On another note they also use the BSA in Europe to lobby for software patents and to say that MS's XML is an 'open document format enough' (at least in Belgium, out of personal experience).

I guess it must be like that out/in own pocket operation of Mr. Gates with his 'Foundation' helping poor children in the third world by buying MS licenses for them...

favorite banner ad to ever run on /.

[bersl2]

http://a1767.g.akamai.net/v/1767/2939/30d/imageser v.adtech.de/images/Ad247098St1Sz225Sq1Id1.gif

Whatever would we do without the BSA?

Ironic...

[Anonymous Coward]

..that they would post an Open letter criticising open standards and open source.

Software patents in EU?

[Oli Gustafsson]

Since when did EU adapt software patents?

So if there are no software patents in EU (and hopefully never will be), what can hinder EU to use standards that are presumambly encumbered with software patents?

what incentive does the EU have to listen to MS?

[victorvodka]

One has to wonder in all of this what incentive the European Union has to pay any attention to Microsoft. MS is a corporation based in the United States, a competitor. Microsoft has a functional monopoly on several forms of essential software. One of only a few possible leverages against Microsoft is the establishment of requirements of the data allowed by your political entity. I can't understand why the EU would think twice about this matter. What possible benefit could there be to caving to Microsoft's demands? For a small political entity like Massachusetts it might make sense (at least in the short term) to cave, since such a small government market couldn't expect to have any leverage. But the EU can make all sorts of demands. They can kick this bully all over the playground if they want to.

Also culture Re:Open standards

[Anonymous Coward]

Europeans are also fairly interested in preserving culture. With open standards like "pen", "paint", "paper", "rock", and "chisel" the Romans and the people of the Renaissance and countless others have been able to create a rich cultural history.

Just imagine what would have happened if early Europeans used DRM protected media to record their culture? We'd still be in the Dark Ages because nothing would be readable.

Technology makes media and media formats obsolete. Those 8" disks you bought two and a half decades ago aren't usable today. Neither are 8 track tapes or 5 1/4 inch disks. The only ways those works will live on is if they get copied onto new media. Unfortunately, a lot of things didn't make it. Many classic cellulose silent films from the Golden Era are gone because celluose film was too fragile and it was. The Alouette satelite of the 60s did an enormous amount of research on the upper atmosphere and stored it on tapes that can only be read by old mainframes. That research is important for o-zone study but because there are only a few such mainframes in existence, it would take years to transfer all that data onto modern media. In the mean time, much of that research will die.

The last thing we need is for DRM and DRM laws to quicken the rate which "data rots".

Progress and culture depend on a DRM-free future.

Imagine an unfolding situation

[NigelJohnstone]

Imagine the game of cat and mouse.

EU ponders and conjutates for 3-4 years: "Software companies are liable for bad software."

Microsoft lawyers the next day: "Change the EULA to say we are only liable for $10 worth"

EU ponders and conjutates for 3-4 years: "Software companies cannot set limits on the liability"

Microsoft lawyers change the EULA the next day:
"By not returing this product in the first 30 days you are agreeing the product is defect free".

EU ponders and conjutates for 3-4 years...."EULAs are contracts *after* a sale and hence unenforceable".

Microsoft lawyers the next day, "sellers of Microsoft software must get the buyer to sign the EULA before taking the payment".

Re:Imagine an unfolding situation

[henrik]

The EULA is not a recognized contract from start, so Microsoft can change their EULA all they want. It is no more legally binding because of that.

Whatever they write in their EULA, it is not enforcable unless you have signed it with ink on paper.

Re:Imagine an unfolding situation

[henrik]

Also, there is consumer law which regulates the sellers obligation to you as consumer and your rights as a consumer. This law cannot be signed away in any contract.

Patents won't help you, small inventor

[po8]

Legendary electronics hobbyist Don Lancaster has what I consider to be the must-read page on why patents never help the individual inventor: Patent Avoidance.

I wondered about that one too

[einhverfr]

I am guessing it is just a scare tactic.

Lets look at the others:

GSM: Formerly proprietary. Iirc, patents have expired. The GSM codec, for example, is commonly used in asterisk implimentations.

802.1x: IEEE standard. Unclear about patent encumbrances though. Won't take off IMO if too encumbered. Many standards are not really unencumbered and so are not readily employed.

Re:I wondered about that one too

[aminorex]

802.1x is an open IEEE standard describing port-based access control for MAC bridges operating in the manner of 802.1D. I'm amazed that anyone would give Benoit enough credibility to parrot his claims since they seem to be utterly incoherent. Is 802.1x a crucial interoperability standard? No. Is its implementation patent-encumbered? No. Is it in any way relevant to or illustrative of his argument (if he had one)? No. Does he have any argument at all? No.

Move along, there's nothing to see here. The clothes have no emperor.

Re:Definitions

[Mister Transistor]

It would have been funnier if you had said:

BSA: Creates cash cows in Seattle which causes sickness in humans.

See, it rhymes...

Open response

[erroneus]

Hey BSA, if your customers want to enjoy the freedom to use any product they want to service their data (which is really what computing is about) then you'd better get with the program. Your customers don't want to be dependant on you as a sole provider any longer. Either give the customer what he wants or die. It's that simple.

Rather, what's the problem with Open file formats?

[khasim]

Open standards will guarantee that your data is safe. What happens if the company that makes the software goes out of business? ...

I agree completely.

But the question I haven't seen asked (or answered) anywhere is ... what problem(s) would a commercial ISV have with supporting Open file formats?

This discussion really cannot progress until Microsoft's people can explain EXACTLY what functionality they would lose IF they supported Open file formats (as the default format).

I hear a lot of crying about "patents" and "IP" and "innovation" and "don't give Open Source an unfair advantage", but I haven't heard what the technological problem would be with supporting an Open file format (without any patent restrictions or other IP problems).

Microsoft, are you going to step up and say what the technological problem is?

=============
Yeah, I know what the real problem is and it ain't tech. It's all about control of your data and making it as expensive as possible for you to switch.

Re:Rather, what's the problem with Open file forma

[Lehk228]

the problem with open standards is they prevent closed source vendors from fucking over customers and competitors with screwy file formats that only work in their software

Re:The charge slip is probably signature enough

[henrik]

Sure, but it takes years to change laws like that, and currently ink on paper is what is says in contract law.

Yeah, you can always go to your bank and say you didn't do the purcahse recorded.

There is nothing dishonest about it. EULA/click-wraps are not a valid agreement in the EU. Hence you can ignore them. You are not being dishonest, you are just ignoring "information" that is not relevant to you. You never enter into any agreement, as the form is not recognized as a legal form of contract.

I see your latter point, but that is not the current situation. The situation may change, but that day is the day to start worrying about clicking on EULAs. Until the law is changed, EULAs are just to be ignored, the toilet paper they are.

The EU is smart to use open standards

[Eric Damron]

I work as a programmer for the State of Washington. It really surprises me that State and Federal governments do not advocate the use of open standards more.

We in the US unfortunately were lead down the patent path where anything we code could easily violate another's patent. I'm pretty sure that with the thousands of patents being applied for by Microsoft alone in any given year it will be very difficult not to violate some of them.

If you follow open standards you may avoid some problems. I does NOT surprise me that the BSA doesn't want open standards. After all, they are in the business of bitch slapping people who use proprietary software and proprietary software will typically use proprietary "standards."

If the EU really gets a clue (and I believe some members have.) they will avoid any kind of proprietary lock-in and anything like proprietary standards and patents that promote that. It may take a few years but if they stay the course we here in the US could lose any edge we have in the software sector simply because the laws bought and paid for my monopoly interests will stifle innovation here.

The EU will be able to sit back and watch as small US software companies give up because they don't dare release software that may violate patent laws. Small companies don't have the resources to hire the army of attorneys required to do the research needed to ensure that they don't violate patent laws. No doubt about it. Patent laws do NOT help small to mid size software companies. Software patent laws do exactly what they were designed to do: stifle competition for the corporate monopolies. hehe... I seem to have digressed but it all fits together.

Sun and OpenSSL

[thrashbluegrass]

The ECC in OpenSSL is a 'patent grant' from Sun.

From research.sun.com:

"Why the additional "covenant" language in the Sun license?

The OpenSSL's standard BSD style license does not address patent issues explicitly. Sun added a "patent peace provision" language to clarify its patent grant."

This is why OpenBSD ships with an ECC-less OpenSSL.

http://research.sun.com/projects/crypto/Frequenl yA skedQuestions.html