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."

Comments

Well, actually ...

[ScrewMaster]

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.

Re:How hard is it?

[danlip]

not sure how "open" PDF really is but its pretty universal

Wikipedia says "Formerly a proprietary format, PDF was officially released as an open standard on July 1, 2008, and published by the International Organization for Standardization as ISO/IEC 32000-1:2008". It also says Adobe has patents on it "but licenses them for royalty-free use in developing software complying with its PDF specification".

even if that wasn't the case there has long been a lot of fully compatible implementations of it (unlike Word).

To quote Beavis and Butt-head

[Dachannien]

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.

Open standards committees inhibit innovation

[dirkdodgers]

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.

Re:Continuum

[causality]

Part of being open is being OK with alternative viewpoints.

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.

People don't have to give their work away for free if they don't want to.

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.

Re:How hard is it?

[SuperAlgae]

Agreed. Governments are the one entity that can actually defend an open standard by simply saying that no patents apply to it. If someone thinks they have a claim, then they can raise the issue before it gets that far. But even then, if given the choice between denying someone a sanctioned monopoly (patent) or denying the entire world a viable standard, it's hard to justify the monopoly. Even reasonable patents are generally more an inevitable result of the state of technology than of some unique, singular leap. People are denied patents all the time. For every granted patent, there are any number of people doing equivalent work that are not only denied the patent but may be denied even the right to use their own work since it then violates the patent. Limiting patents as they apply to open standards hardly seems like a high price to pay.

It is pretty clear that the real impediments to open standards are a matter of "follow the money".

They don't say what you accuse them of saying

[maxfresh]

With your selective quoting, and careful omissions, you have distorted and misrepresented what they have actually said. They never defined, nor attempted to redefine closed as open. In fact, they fully recognize and accurately define what constitutes "Open" and carefully noted that closed, propietary software and standards lie on the opposite end of the spectrum, or continuum. Here is the full, fair, non-distorted quote:

Specifications, software and software development methods that promote collaboration and the results of which can freely be accessed, reused 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.

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:

Recommendation 5. Public administrations should favour openness when working together to establish European Public Service while taking into account their priorities and constraints.

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.

2.10 Underlying Principle 9: Openness

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 of interest, having as ultimate goal the advancement of knowledge and the use thereof to solve relevant problems. In that sense, openness leads to considerable gains in efficiency.

Interoperability involves the sharing of information and knowledge between organisations, hence implies a certain degree of openness. There are varying degrees of openness.

The spectrum of approaches that lies between these two extremes can be called the openness continuum.

European public administrations need to decide where they wish to position themselves on this continuum with respect to the issues discussed in the EIF. The exact position may vary, on a case-by-case basis, depending on their needs, priorities, legacy, budget, market situation and a number of other factors. While there is a correlation between openness and interoperability, it is also true that interoperability can be obtained without openness, for example via homogeneity of the ICT systems, which implies that all partners use, or agree to use, the same solution to implement a European Public Service.

Recommendation 5. Public administrations should favour openness when working together to establish European Public Service while taking into account their priorities and constraints.

Cut out the "Idiocracy" tag, guys.

[bipbop]

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.

Re:EU "Union" As "Country"?

[lordholm]

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.