Slashdot Mirror
EU Wants To Redefine "Closed" As "Nearly Open"
Glyn Moody writes "A leaked copy (PDF) of Version 2 of the European Interoperability Framework replaces a requirement in Version 1 for carefully-defined open standards by one for a more general 'openness': 'the willingness of persons, organizations or other members of a community of interest to share knowledge and to stimulate debate within that community of interest.' It also defines an 'openness continuum' that includes 'non-documented, proprietary specifications, proprietary software and the reluctance or resistance to reuse solutions, i.e. the "not invented here" syndrome.' Looks like 'closed' is the new 'open' in the EU."
Looks like 'closed' is the new 'open' in the EU.
Actually, it looks like "corrupt" is the same old corrupt that it's always been. Gotta wonder just what changed hands to make that happen.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
How hard is it to define open as
A) Open specs
B) An open implementation of those specs both on
C) Not patent encumbered
For just about everything there is a suitable open format. Lets see here:
Images? There are many
Audio? Ogg Vorbis
Video? Ogg Theora
Document? ODF or PDF (not sure how "open" PDF really is but its pretty universal)
There isn't a single thing that governments really need that isn't open or can be created for less cost than contracting it to proprietary vendors.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
" also defines an 'openness continuum' "
So - just like Creative Commons, then?
(IHNRTFA)
You are not a brain: http://books.google.com/books?id=2oV61CeDx-YC
The older I get the more I realize how powerful those in power are. Not a conspiracy, just a bunch of greedy SOBs who will do whatever they can get away with to control and own more. From marketing being used to dilute meanings to out and out bribery of committee members to swing votes or bypass procedures. The worst part is that they get their power readily from another group, far more numerous than they, of individuals too lazy or too overwhelmed to pay attention to what is being done to them.
Our history is full of cycles. Are we approaching another age of the Robber Baron in another form? Did the age ever truly leave? Nah. The rich and powerful and greedy have always been and always will be the rich and powerful and greedy. Only now, they are immortal corporations. They can die, but not in ways we can, nor are they truly limited in years. The funny part, like a good tragic comedy, is that the greed that makes them so powerful and dangerous is often the very thing that kills them in the end.
But the carnage they leave behind.
Freud might say that Intelligent Design is religion's ID.
Butt-head: Uhhh, well, if nothing sucked, and everything was cool all the time, then, like, how would you know it was cool?
Essentially, that's what they're saying here. They include closed software on the "openness" spectrum because it's necessary as a basis for comparison. Zero openness is still a value of openness.
Maybe there's an attempt to redefine open source software to the benefit of companies who sell proprietary software, but this particular bit isn't the proper evidence for it.
Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation have championed the use of the word free to make sure user freedom stays in sight as the primary goal. Free is ambiguous as it can mean free of cost or free as in freedom and there are lesser known meanings(sugar-free) but those two are the main ones. RMS, the FSF and others have chosen the word free to rally around for a reason. Its the best choice in having a debate about user freedom. Open on the other hand means many things to many people. It might mean that your backside is open to corporate exploration. It might mean that a store is open for business. It might mean that something exists somewhere on the spectrum from opaque to transparent. If you're going to care about something, care about freedom, not openness. Don't support legislation that attempts to define open, ouvert, etc. Support legislation that upholds free, freedom, libre, etc.
I see it more as an anti DMCA.
AKA: "We won't force you to be open, but if someone figures out your proprietary protocol, or someone writes a program that supports your proprietary file format, well... c'est la vie!"
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
The previous version required that interoperability standards be owned by non-profit committees. Having worked with a number of such organizations I can tell you that as a customer, being locked into a committee-owned standard is as great an obstacle to innovation and efficiency as is a closed de facto standard, especially when the government is involved.
It will continue to be far better for the customer over time when the customer can pick and choose which standards and vendors they will use. This allows customers to choose the balance they want to strike between compatibility and richness of functionality.
I do agree that a reasonable criteria for use by government agencies is that a standard specification be free and unencumbered, but no thank you to design by committee.
is right on time?
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
By placing open on one and of the spectrum, and closed on the other, they very clearly are stating that the two are opposites. And to me, that seems like a perfectly fair and accurate description of the range of openness that exists in information systems and standards. Moreover, they conclude the section on openness with this recommendation:
Do you not see that by distorting their words to advance your own agenda, and attributing to them malicious intent without any basis in fact, you undermine the very cause which you pretend to champion? Is that what you want to do? Do you really want to undermine the credibility of those who advocate for free and open standards, especially in the public sector?
Here is the full text of the section on oppenness, so that everyone can see it in its entirety, and draw their own conclusions.
I agree. I simply can't believe that it's gone this far. Is the current generation so hung up on entertainment that they can't band together and lobby (harass) their respective representatives? I see the next generation flaunting the "rules" whenever and wherever they can, but it's not in the spirit of Jefferson who commented that "a little rebellion now and then is a good thing" to Madison in regards to Shay's Rebellion.
No longer do I see earnest learning with the spirit of improving oneself, instead I see profiteers.
The very institutions of learning; Universities and Colleges are _giving_ out sheepskins for dollars. Some still value their grade points and will refuse to pass, but others...
I realize that "Joe Six-Pack" is alive and well, that issues with a technical bent are beyond a certain group of technophobes, but I just can't understand when it equates to a loss of the very freedoms and liberties that our forefathers held dear being tossed by the very individuals that are elected to protect them for mere piddling material gains.
I'm sickened.
Truly.
Want to know who the next President of the USA/USR/EU is? Just ask the corporations, they'll tell you with their special vote: Monetary Units of whatever currency the candidate prefers.
What will happen when China weighs in with their marker? The future isn't looking very bright...
Yeah, joke about overlords. Pass off the Draconian measures to an antiquated business system. Explain that the new sharing isn't theft but a system of "Nottingham redistribution of wealth". I don't think those that have and will continue to consume the power base will permit it for much longer.
The bottom line is money.
For government contracts:
Scribus does not do certifiable signatures.
It does not do US-government accepted encryption.
It is not FIPS-140-2 compliant.
For publishing gigs: no Pantone, no QuarkXPress imports, and no proper Unicode.
Goddamn! Who are the idiots who keep tagging everything idiocracy? It's pretty annoying. Is it supposed to be clever?
I'm checking "No Karma Bonus" since I'm posting off-topic on purpose. Sorry, but after the last few articles randomly tagged "idiocracy", I couldn't hold it in anymore. Mod me how you will.
Nearly Smart, Nearly Sexy, Nearly Sauve, Nearly Adequate, Nearly Famous, Nearly Infallible, Nearly Safe, Nearly There....
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
They are not out of touch. But people seem to think they are, this comes in the combination with the fact that the general population has a very bad knowledge of how the Union works.
I saw one comment in the line of: "damn the commission for forcing the Lisbon treaty on us", while it was in fact the European Council consisting out of the prime-ministers of the member-states who 1) took initiative for it and 2) signed the document.
Now, the other rather amusing thing is that, during previous EP elections, there was a poll in Sweden, where they asked people of whether they wanted the EU to grow into a sort of USE or whatever, in any case, the yes sayers where in the line of 15% for this (not really a majority, but still way over a million people), but when you start asking questions on the specifics and how they think the EU should be run, the solutions are almost always federal in nature.
The main point here is that people has in general no idea what they are talking about, and that the "out of touch" thing being that the top are using fancy words that their opponents have managed to get very charged from a political point of view. This include for example the word "federalism". In the now defunct constitutional treaty, the word "federal" was used in an early draft, but some head of state (think it was Tony Blair) in the negotiation got them to change the word to "supernational", technically they mean exactly the same thing, but the f-word is so charged with some people that they would not be able to stomach seeing it in a treaty.
You may of-course say that this just mean that the council is even more out of touch, but ask yourself:
The council consist of ministers from the member-states (executive officials who suddenly are law-makers), who are indirectly elected, do you think it is better that the directly elected parliament have more to say about any formed law?
Most people, even those who are opposed to an USE type organisation, say yes to the question I just wrote down, this is rather interesting, as that is basically support for a federal EU. A powerful council on the other hand makes the Union a more confederal styled organisation.
"Civis Europaeus sum!"
Out of touch, to me, is a result of seeing them push the same stupid pro-lobbyist things over and over in the face of popular opposition. Basically, the way things are set up, the politicos seem more accountable to bribery than the populace. Not that we're better or anything.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
Bush: It's a different kind of war! They, 're a different kind of people!
Jon (Bush impression): They... they wear shoes on their hands! They eat with their butts! They call their Jesus Mohammad. Makes no sense...
I don't know how to turn that into a comment that is critical of this newspeak redefinition though...
How about you? A nice +5, Funny waits for you... coomee... catch it... ;)
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Guess where the EU is now.
They went after the p2p format, now its on to "open source" Linux.
Amazing what can be pushed after a stay at a Rothschild family villa in Greece.
Did an American record executive put in a good word for US computing interests?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
This is disingenious. The document actually says the OPPOSITE of what one might think if reading only the slashdot-introduction. It says that open-ness is not a binary proposition, but a continuum where (and I quote)
Specifications, software and software development methods that promote collaboration and the results of which can freely be accessed, resused and shared are considered open and lie at one end of the spectrum while non-documented, proprietary specifications, proprietary software and the reluctance or resistance to reuse solutions, i.e. the "not invented here" syndrome, lie at the other end.
This very clearly doesn't claim that proprietary software is open. Infact it does the oposite, it says directly that it lies on a spectrum, where ONE end can be called "open", and this lies at the *other* end. It doesn't directly say what that other end is called, but a reasonable guess would be "closed".
This post is simply wrong. The poster has completely distorted the message in the original text by using unfair citing methods.
If you actually read the article, it defines the openness continuum as the range *between* "freely [---] accessed, reused and shared" and "non-documented, proprietary software". Not very groundbreaking or controversial.
Boring.
On the other hand, it is obvious that nearly all responders with strong opinions on the matter also have not bothered to read the article.
Interesting?
(Before modding this post as Offtopic, please read it to the end. It is relevant; you just need to read the whole thing in order to see how it is)
Just in the last 24 hours, on another forum site that I read regularly, I know a guy who has private messaged me about migrating to FreeBSD.
He has done that because, in the past, he was using either Windows, or certain Linux distributions which were heavily GUI oriented and which, for various reasons, had a much less transparent and orthogonal design. He was having a lot of problems with those systems, in terms of both hardware driver and application stability.
He has started, as I mentioned, using FreeBSD, but despite X, he is also now using primarily text-based applications as well. One of his messages to me about this expressed his degree of happiness at having found such a greater level of reliability, speed, and flexibility, and thanking me for gradually causing him to become interested in FreeBSD.
My point, quite simply, is this. Openness, and openness as it specifically applies to UNIX design philosophy, has visible, tangible, practical benefits, and ultimately sells itself.
Corporations and government institutions can say whatever they want; we don't need to worry about it one way or the other. There is a certain demographic of users, who are increasingly becoming more and more derisive of every element of the practice of open source methodolgy, as well. Compilation from source, and use of text-based applications are considered by that group, to be anachronisms from the 1970s.
The point is, that when the proverbial crunch comes, FOSS proves itself, and suddenly the laughing stops; to generally be replaced by mute awe. Whether it's backpackers setting up an emergency c3 system in southeast Asia with gnuSense after the latest tsunami, Helios continuing, day in and day out, to build free PCs with Mint for underpriveleged kids, or a corporate sysadmin with a lone OpenBSD box, who along with his boss, watches Puffy dive into a phone booth and save the day when the local intranet has gone feet first, and business is threatening to grind to a halt entirely.
So if the EU's government have somehow been living in caves for the last two decades, it's not something any of us really need to get upset about. Let them voice whatever skepticism, or even outright condemnation they want.
If they want to find out the actual truth for themselves, however, the web and FTP sites are there, and they can replicate the benefits that other people have derived from FOSS UNIX, for themselves.
It's all German to me. Or do I mean French. Or Czech. Or Polish...
You'd think the EU would understand that you can't translate without the dictionaries. You can't interoperate without the specifications.
A fairly minor TV station did a (funny) disquieting gig a while back, about France's P2P 3-strikes law: they roamed the hallways of our national assembly, and asked congressmen what "peer-to-peer" was... that was right when the p2p law was being discussed and making daily headlines, mind you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXHuxNeasvw&feature=related , very approximative translations, for fun
- "peer to peer is being able to talk directly to people in the same situation as you, so it's very good"
- "I don't know... I speak French, you'll have to excuse me"
- "protecting creativity via internet"
- 'I don't know, but my sons do, I'm wondering what they're doing on my PC, by the way"
- "It's downloading videos, like streaming but the bits get to you hard drive"
I'm guessing Euro MPs are getting heavily lobbied, and are more confused than purely evil. What can we do to change that ?
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Analogous to the EIF's definition of Open Source Software (OSS), paying taxes is the willingness of persons, organisations or other members of a mixed source community obtaining salaries to share information about their financial status and to stimulate a debate with the revenue authorities, having as ultimate goal a mutual understanding of the situation and a strong basis for a healthy debate. In that sense, paying taxes leads to a quick turnaround of our fiscal status and strengthens the economy.
Also, I turned off the classic index just so that I could vote this story down as 'stupid' and tag it...
*facepalm* Thanks. I was wondering why I could no longer tag stuff!
It's this kind of thing that's keeping me trying to be more humble as I age. :-)
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
"This post is simply wrong. The poster has completely distorted the message in the original text by using unfair citing methods. If you actually read the article .."
..
..
I read both the article and the original and my reading is that the EIF went from supporting an open standard maintained by a not-for-profit organisation to a redefinition of 'openness' as meaning organizations willing to debate. And the only 'OPen Source Software' allowed is under a new EUPL license. Which I presume specifically excludes all other Open Source licenses.
The strategy is clear; It's not about 'open source' but about 'open standards'. Then get 'open standards' to mean proprietary closed source companies get control of the process and get real Open Source Software shoved off into a backwater.
"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.)"
--
"Within the context of the EIF, openness is the willingness of persons, organisations or other members of a community of interest to share knowledge and to stimulate debate within that community
Specifications, software and software development methods that promote collaboration and the results of which can freely be accessed, reused and shared are considered open
For the specific case of Open Source Software, the European Commission has set up the Open Source Observatory and Repository (OSOR) 14 and developed the European Union Public Licence (EUPL)"
Just who exactly was involved in drafting the 'European Interoperability Framework' ?
The document defines openness as companies/organizations collaborating, sharing and debating. No mention of who owns the knowledge. The simple fact is - that if the source ain't open then the 'standards' can't be open.
..'
..
'Open source doesn't just mean access to the source code. The distribution terms of open-source software must comply with the following criteria: Free Redistribution, Source Code, Derived Works, Integrity of The Author's Source Code, No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups, No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor, Distribution of License, License Must Not Be Specific to a Product, License Must Not Restrict Other Software, License Must Be Technology-Neutral
--
Minion: We can't compete against open source
Boss: lets promote a paradigm shift and say it's not about 'open source' but about 'open standards' and then get 'open standards' to mean using our software.
Minion: That's so evil boss !
Boss: I know
Ubersoft
The biggest issue for the European Interoperability framework is that its first version pissed nearly everyone off by failing at every definition.
The biggest hurdle was to support "open standards" with an objective definition that didn't cut the European Standards Organisations (ESOs) out of the institutional picture. Of the three ESOs, two of their business models are based on selling copies of their standards to make money - which flies in the face of the part of the "open standard" definition that requires free access...
The issue of a "spectrum of openness" is only a secondary issue, invesnted to help around that dilemma: instead of a boolean "this is | is not an open standard", the compromise was to have instead a scale. Who gets to judge where something sits on the spectrum? Well, that now is the sticking point. Best bets would be for an agreed set of criteria, but let any agency who wants to use a particular standard make up their own mind.
This will mean that some will conclude that MSFT Office OOXML is totally open and others that it sucks; or that IETF RFC 2616 is totally open and others that it's managed by a non-recognised standards body, and therefore is not a standard....
This will run and run...
I do not think they are out of touch, I do think that some have received a boatload of money, in whatever form.
If you read TFA you'll see that it envisages a continuum of primocity, ranging from frist to totally failing it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Ahmen. I'd very much like to se an EU governed the same way e.g. Sweden is governed. That is:
A _short_ constitution (= a few pages), readable and understundable and read by the majority of the population.
A directly elected assembly with all the power (no council, no comission).
The constituition should only be changeable with two votes with absolute majority, with a general election in between.
As an addition to how Sweden works, the constituition should also directly govern what powers belong to the individual states.
So far, all the nasty surveilance laws have come from the council.
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
in 3, 2, 1 ....
Read radical news here
Welcome, welcome sir to the Ministry of Sharing! Here you can see our top programmers at work on the next version of Digital Rights Management. We're giving people an amazing amount of freedom with this. And over here... this is brilliant. One of our most cunning works to date if I may say so myself. It's a server, but wait... with no open ports!
Well, I hope you've enjoyed your visit. Please come back and see our open facility again! Oh no, carry on, nothing more to see here. We really must be going. No, put that down... You can't... SECURITY!
Look, this isn't an argument. ... it's just contradiction.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
Microsoft Word has a 100% membership in the proprietary software set and 0% membership in the open source software set. See, no problem!
I think it would be more accurate to say that a recent administration in the USA thought the rest of the world was a colony and treated them as if they were.
"The constituition should only be changeable with two votes with absolute majority, with a general election in between."
That is interesting. I find the problem here in the US is how difficult it is to change the constitution. The big problem being that in only the elected officials can do it. There needs to be a way for the people to directly make and throw down laws like many of the U.S. states have. Elected officials have vested interests (generally serving the interests of the wealthy) and there are some things that will never happen with them at the helm.
Correct; however, the USA generally thought this way for generations not just since the Regan revolution or Bush regime. Arrogance just made it more overt.
The game has changed; nations are not the dominant powers any longer.
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