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BSA Wants EU Open Standard Policy Reconsidered

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the well-of-course-they-do dept.

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"."

10 of 191 comments (clear)

  1. eNough by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

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

  2. Sounds of Victory by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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

  3. How surprising! by bigtallmofo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

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    I'm a big tall mofo.
  4. Best quote ever by Raul654 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

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    To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
    --E.C. Stanton
    1. Re:Best quote ever by craXORjack · · Score: 5, Insightful
      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.

      --
      Liberals call everyone Nazis yet they are the closest thing to it.
  5. Patents & Open Standards by thrashbluegrass · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  6. DHCP is not open? by Zocalo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

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    UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
  7. Open standards by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

  8. Closed standards bad by NigelJohnstone · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?

  9. favorite banner ad to ever run on /. by bersl2 · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    Whatever would we do without the BSA?