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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"."
Ok, how about a shiny new EU icon? With so many stories about it wouldn't it be nice?
eEurope? eGovernment? The 90's called, they want their e's back.
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.
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make install -not war
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?
I'm a big tall mofo.
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.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
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?
r wise.
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-othe
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?
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
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.
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!
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?
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.
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. 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!
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.
Did he inhale?
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?
My rights don't need management.
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...
http://a1767.g.akamai.net/v/1767/2939/30d/imageser v.adtech.de/images/Ad247098St1Sz225Sq1Id1.gif
Whatever would we do without the BSA?
..that they would post an Open letter criticising open standards and open source.
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.
The flag just makes more sense than the constitution. - Judas Gutenberg
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.
But the question I haven't seen asked (or answered) anywhere is
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?
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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.
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.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-