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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.
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.
First of all, 'open' formats has nothing to do with source code.
Second, "open source" is not synonym with "free software" (like software that uses the GPL as license). This has nothing to do with the discussion. And open source does not even means giving work away for free. If somebody sells their code, it is open source, for example.
Creative commons is another example of "opening" stuff that is not code.
I agree that there is a continuum from completely closed to completely open, but any format demanded by governments should be open and non encumbered by patents or other licenses.
There is nothing stopping someone or some company form writing a proprietary piece of software to read/write some open format. But in many cases it is not possible to have a open/free/whatever version of a software to read/write some closed format. This causes an artificial restriction on access to the information made available in that format, what should be inadmissible in certain scenarios.
Why should someone need to license or buy a piece of software form specific companies to have access to government data? This is unacceptable.
-- SouNerd.com
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.
Alternative viewpoints are great. Alternative definitions, however, are intentionally misleading. This is an alternative definition.
You see, the viewpoint that closed-source and proprietary standards are great already exists. The viewpoint that open-source and non-encumbered standards are great also already exists. There is no new viewpoint being proposed here. That's beacuse this is not a matter of viewpoint. It's a not-so-subtle attempt to blur the definitions that distinguish two existing viewpoints. There is only one reason for accidentally doing this: sheer incompetence. There is only one reason to deliberately do anything like that: the desire to equate things which are inherently distinct; that is, the desire to confuse. It's either incompetence or it's deception and neither of those are worth defending.
Whether you're offended that some people care about the GPL more than you would like them to has nothing to do with it. Whether commercial/proprietary software gets a bad rap more than you want it to also has nothing to do with it.
That's absolutely correct. I can develop a program, or a protocol, or a format, and I can lock it away in a safe and bury it if that's what I feel like doing. I can copyright it and restrict it on that basis, or I can try to patent it. I can hoard the source code and release it only as a black-box binary. However, if I do that and then refer to it as "an open standard" then that would make me a liar. This is really simple.
I never understood why you and so many others want to equate the desire that things be called what they are with telling others what they should do with their work. They are not remotely the same. If I don't want to use a program because it's proprietary, I am not forcing that program's author to do anything. Nor am I telling him how he should use his programming talents. He is free to find someone else who does want to use his program. This is just another thinly-veiled "accept this thing and like it, or else there's something wrong with you" and I'm not buying it.
There is also a question about the morality of governments releasing public information in proprietary formats. My tax dollars have already paid to produce whatever documents the government releases. It belongs to we the people. Why should I have to pay a second time to obtain a proprietary program to access this public information that my tax dollars have already paid for? I celebrate the right of private citizens and private businesses to use whatever format pleases them, whether it's freely available or not. But when we are talking about governments there is a perfectly valid objection to the use of proprietary software, whether or not anyone finds that convenient.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
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.
Scrapping and replacing it would be less sophisticated than what is being done here. You could say they are extending it, or you could say also that they are blurring it. If it were a great unknown, or new territory, or something like that for which there were not already clear and well-understood definitions, then that may make it excusable or at least understandable. However, that's not the case here.
It wouldn't apply there because paper is not inherently free. Someone has to cut down the trees, someone has to process the wood into paper, someone has to ship that paper from the paper mill, and someone has to print on it. The printed copies are a limited resource. If you have 100 printed copies, you cannot sell or give away 50 of them and still have 100 copies. Any that you sell must be replaced with more or else you will run out and be unable to sell or give away any more.
Electronic records are nothing like this. The government already has computers and Internet access because it has used tax dollars to pay for those. Now that it owns them, those can be reused to distribute infinite perfect copies of electronic records at no additional charge. There is no ongoing cost of acquiring more paper and using more ink.
Yet people around the world are willing to release both those formats and software that can work with them for free. Maybe those individuals are taking one for the team and bearing that cost themselves. The end result is that all of the rest of us do have formats available that don't cost us anything at all. The people who produced those formats and that software have specifically and deliberately taken steps to make sure of that, examples of which include their decision to use open licenses and their decision to seek no patents for their creations.
There's something about taking a moral stand that makes many people uncomfortable. I suspect that's because it goes against their beliefs that convenience is everything by providing a counter-example. Can I prove that? No. Does it seem rather obvious to me? Yes, it does. Just as people who follow a religion can fail to adhere to its tenents without deliberately and consciously deciding "hey, I think I'd like to be a hypocrite," people can believe that immediate convenience is the only worthy criteria for decision-making without necessarily being aware that their choices reveal this pattern. This means you must use introspection and cannot correctly assume the reality of your stated intentions, however sincere and heartfelt they may be. It's the reason why all of the differing views about wisdom and what it actually is generally agree on one thing, and that's the importance of truly knowing yourself.
If you really want a mundane response, I will say this much. A government that is wasteful when it is capable of not being wasteful is, in fact, taking advantage of its people. This is much worse when it behaves this way because of financial and political interests that stand to profit from said waste, because then it is no accident. However, it's still pretty bad when it's an innocent mistake, and we the citizens should expect better. I believe this to be the morally correct, or if that is really an obstacle for you, I also believe it to be ethically correct.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
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.
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!"