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Mandatory Use of Open Standards In Hungary
qpeter writes "Hungarian Parliament has made the use of open standards mandatory by law in the intercommunication between public administration offices, public utility companies, citizens and voluntarily joining private companies, conducted via the central governmental system. The Open Standards Alliance initiating the amendment aims to promote the spread of monopoly-free markets that foster the development of interchangeable and interoperable products generated by open standards, and, consequently, broad competition markets, regardless of whether the IT systems of interconnecting organizations and individuals use open or closed source software. In the near future, in spite of EU tendencies the Alliance seeks to make its approach – interoperability based on publicly defined open standards – the EU norm under the Hungarian presidency of the European Union in 2011. To that end, it will promote public collaboration – possibly between every interested party, civil and political organization in the European Union. What do you think: what would be the best way to cooperate?"
It's about time they opened up their goulash recipes.
in the intercommunication between public administration offices, public utility companies, citizens and voluntarily joining private companies, conducted via the central governmental system.
That's the trouble with standards: There's so many to choose from! Government of any kind has always faced the same problem -- how to efficiently communication amongst its many branches and divisions. And I, for one, am quite thankful that the problem won't be solved anytime soon. Nobody truly wants all the government they pay for.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
XML for the win
(and for programmers for the next 50 generations)
The truth about Led Zep should never be told on
Wimmins don't belong on teh intranetz. Get back in the kitchen where you belong and let the men handle this.
How about some following up articles on what has happened before with these incidences or disasters to be more real.
Can anyone find an actual translation of the amendment or a better summary? TFA sounds like it was written in a combination of management-ese and marketing-speak.
What do you think: what would be the best way to cooperate?"
Easy. Github
NEXT
>What do you think: what would be the best way to cooperate?"
Invade?
Open Source Drum Kit, LPLC deve board - mjhdesigns.com
There are plenty of "open standards", and plenty of "closed standards" as well. If you were starting your own country and had to implement government data practices, which would you choose to implement, given:
1) Open standards can be understood and used by anyone/any program that implements them, and
2) Closed standards are locked down and hidden by the vendor that created them, forcing you to use their software?
*Jeopardy music*
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
Takeoff in 3...2...sir, please put the chair down until we've landed...1...
Mandating the use of open standards is anti-competitive and is harmful to taxpayers. Such a regulation prevents software publishers such as Microsoft from competing for government contracts because their standards are not open. Restrictions such as this never enhance competition but instead eliminate it by artificially reducing the number of bidders for any contract. While I understand the desire to embrace open standards, and why it would be a consideration for any government agency seeking bids for a project, it should not in itself disqualify bidders.
www.salvatoreannunziata.weebly.com
1) Open standards can be understood and used by anyone/any program that chooses to implement them
There, FTFY. Not to be an ass, but your point 1 was true of both open and closed standard. The real point is that anyone who chooses to implement open standards can. You can choose to implement a closed standard, but may either not succeed or get sued. Anyway, you get the point.
Depends on how much M$ will pay me, the decision maker. Can I build a house from it?
Who cares if four years later it will cost my country a lot more. It won't be my party that's ruling then. And my new house will be built by then.
I'm am all for open source anything, but I wouldn't think the government really cares how easy a standard is to understand or implement. It's all about money. If closed standards were some how cheaper or even profitable then I would bet Hungary would be using closed standards. Before you ask how could closed standards be profitable I'll try my best to not look stupid explaining my idea: Say you have a huge monopoly organization that creates and implements closed standards (say in the Redmond area), this organization employs thousands (tens of thousands) of people. So if a country or even major organizations that are based in that country implement the closed standards they may have to pay for something that should be free, but the organization that has to be payed also has to pay it's employees and therefore the money goes back into the economy. I'm going to assume that Hungary doesn't have one of these major monopoly organizations to self-profit on, they are just trying to save some money. That being said, I wouldn't bet on any country that has a major monopoly organization that supports closed standards to be switching solely to open standards anytime soon.
Closed source, open source, who cares? If everyone has to use the same standard, it's still a monopoly.
Sadly, most governments choose option 2 by default.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
Closed source, open source, who cares? If everyone has to use the same standard, it's still a monopoly.
You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.
Yes, everyone knows of the tyranny of the metric system! It's lead to nothing but problems for the oppressed masses, unable to squirm out of it's iron maw...
Just like zero is a percent.
We are abound in this kind of monopolies here in Hungary, both global and local:( Still succeeded to push through the amendment:))
Closed, duh. Most "open" things suck donkey cock.
Mr Ballmer,
You've got to stop commenting on Slashdot when you're drunk.
Sincerely,
Your Attorney
Technically Closed standards can be understood and used by anyone/any program that implements them too.
There are plenty of libraries out that that can read and write locked down file formats, such as the Biff-8 fileformat that used to be used by Excel.
oO Nice response Oo
My wife laughed when she read the thread .... and got to your latest response
I applaud you for this. I was trying to point out the majority of monopolies that create closed standards are not from Hungary. I realize that Hungary must be exposed to these monopolies, but in general paying for closed standards has no benefit to Hungary. Which is not nessarly true of other countries like the US because they have such things as Cisco, MS, and other closed source standards giants.
If I am starting a country, I'd ignore the question entirely. My secret police, however, would insure that any companies that used closed source standards would be compliant to my needs on demand.
I jokingly mention this, because this is a good example where you can watch some multinationals butt heads with a state. It will be interesting to see who comes out on top.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
They are the platform that anyone can compete on openly. Their platform is well documented and their formats are widely used. Many vendors compete head to head running from the same operating platform creating an open market that anyone can compete in.
Does it matter that Microsoft owns that market and the apps that access the data? Does it matter that the formats of the data are not open?
Control the apps and the format and you control the data. If that data is public/government data, does that disturb your sleep at all?
Absolute nonsense, all sorts of things HAVE to comply with Open Standards and continue to be developed, it is only in IT that people are so stupid/corrupt that this is disputed. Examples in the IT fields are C++ and JavaScript. You can extend the standard in an Open and RAND way, likewise you can buy parts for your car from a variety of vendors.
Or you can behave like Micro$oft, corrupt institutions, pack delegations and corruptly buy market share while deliberately mis-implementing Open Standards eg ODF Excel.
It is well past time this was firmly stopped, preferably by the DOJ in the US, but Europe is moving quickly moving to more open procurements particularly in Spain, France and Germany.
Well, if I wanted to start a new "country" I would:
1) Keep the standards closed and proprietary. However, at the same time, I would promote the idea of open standards and indicate that the reason why we cannot publish the standards that run the countries government is because they are currently a work in progress, and doesn't exist.
But, we have everyones best interests in mind because we hold open conferences that discuss open standards. (Just not government ones that run the country.)
2) We would invite the world to review our new standards. However, the proprietary panel would be only space we would actually book. The "others" could just go home or stand around in the cold and discuss whatever.
3) Finally, we would publish that the "others" cannot agree on a standard and we where working around the clock to come up with one. Internally however, the proprietary bookings we made would just go ahead an inact a standard, definately not open are you kidding me?
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
(From Wikipedia) Hungarian is a Uralic language (more specifically a Ugric language) unrelated to most other languages in Europe. It is mainly spoken in Hungary and by the Hungarian minorities in the seven neighbouring countries. The Hungarian name for the language is magyar (Hungarian pronunciation: [mr]), which is also occasionally used as an English noun, such as Mighty Magyars.
In short, if you confuse us all enough but let us think the standards are 'open' will we buy the concept? Maybe the Hungarians might decide on Cobol as the country's default programming language and try to ram it down the EU's throat!! I think it's all a secret ploy to make Hungarian the default world language and this is their one shot at it (while being in 'charge' of the EU). This whole open standards thing is a front.
*** Don't be dull.***
Your argument is that a hq of a major global monopoly organization in your country is a handicap. I say we have our own local monopolies proportionally not less harmful and rooted than yours. E.g. our government, which is collecting cca 40% of our gdp.
With Mandatory Closed Standards policy.
That is: ban on the use of open standards (due to their lack of obscurity / good security protected by the secrecy of the standard)
Her profile only tells half the story.
She's a dyke AND a transsexual.
And, while I personally don't have a problem with the mahu persuasion as long as she can pass with flying colors, so to speak, a lot of guys might.
And its not like I'm outing her, she's wearing it proudly as her username...
Successful troll is successful.
She's a dyke AND a transsexual[...]And its not like I'm outing her, she's wearing it proudly as her username...
My dick is a foot long and sitting in the bedroom closet next to the leather harness. Imagine that next time you sit in your mother's basement with the lights off and masturbate -- it is the stuff of hetrosexual male nightmares.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Is this a trick question? Whoever offered the best kick-backs of course.
I'm unable to understand the main post (too much legal and technical jargon for my largely forgotten Hungarian knowledge), but I can read many of the comments.
Someone specifically asked about docx and a comment reply said that docx would be allowed because of the ISO decision (in which Hungary supported making docx an ISO standard). Both the query and response were from ACs, but the response certainly seems plausible to me.
The story of Hungary's ultimate support for Microsoft in the ISO is a long and twisted tale which I was only able to partially follow.
Prime numbers are exactly what Alan Greenspan says they are -S. Minsky
Now would that be a country with 50 states and, for 49 of them closed standards are nothing more than an expensive overhead. Which in turns means that the federal government of that country in continuing to maintain closed standards means they are creating a bias in the system by penalising 49 states to fund 1 state. The reality is as standards open up so does employment and business opportunities. Closed standards just result in monopolies and bloated profits for a handful whilst the rest of the economy suffers.
It is wildly inappropriate for one company to define and change at will the document standards for a whole country, at this stage of computer industry development it has been corruption that has allowed this craziness to last as long as it has.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
Though I like the idea - after all why do I need to buy/download a crap product like MS Word to read a document - there are many "standards" which aren't open. Word .doc format is one. So is .xls and even the commonly used TIFF G-IV (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tagged_Image_File_Format) commonly used by document scanning applications and GIF - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphics_Interchange_Format - used by photographic apps.
There's also DWF format for CAD files and MP3 for lossy sound compression. IIRC, those are not open either, but pretty much universal.
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
I wonder how many engineers or how much money the Hungarian government will give towards open source projects... semms like mandating use of open source software would lead to a mandate to fund or support those projects with funds and personnel. JF
I, for one, am also very hungary for chicken paprikash and Hungarian sausages and stuffed cabbages...
This is my sig.
There is a cost to implementing a particular open file format. You either have to store your internal data structures to match the open format, thereby making it possibly more expensive for you to do those features that are not easily done in other format. Or, you have to build a transformative layer to go to the external open format, causing you to spend money such that you have to drop a feature.
So... the consumer does pay for open formats, and that is why closed formats won out initially. It's just now open systems are "catching up" and vendors of closed system have run out of ideas that makes this difference less important. That, the whole problem of transforming one graph to another is much better understood in the mainstream than it was 20 years ago.
This is my sig.
For example OpenGL has a lot of these and it's an excellent breading ground for the "glacially slow" standard standards.
Yeah, but many gaming houses have dropped OpenGL in favor of DirectX, because OpenGL hasn't kept up.
I see absolutely no issues here with requiring openness. It doesn't stifle innovation one bit.
You have a developer spending time on making a standard compliant file format, or have a developer adding a new feature and dumping it into a file any way he wants. The latter guy will have better tools, and the former guy will be interopable, but with less features.
This is my sig.
... if they could open source their language... =)
MS makes lots of open standards software remmeber?
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
XML is like Lisp, but with uglier parentheses. ;)
This from an obvious expert in the field, no less. :)
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Technically Closed standards can be understood and used by anyone/any program that implements them too. There are plenty of libraries out that that can read and write locked down file formats, such as the Biff-8 fileformat that used to be used by Excel.
But are you differentiating between a file format and a standard, or just using the two terms interchangeably?
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
There I said it! Now mod me down freetards!
it is the stuff of hetrosexual male nightmares.
Not for all of us.
Put identity in the browser.
Remember, for schools? Thought I read that it has been ignored.
Basically, we can predict this will be an "interesting" year for Microsoft Eastern European Sales. Hungary will get a good deal on next year's contract.
This is a double bladed question and the answer is what the government should really be doing. I wish someone else, in Romania too, gets the model and tries to implement it. I also believe that governments should organize a specific yearly budget for opensource community grants and sponsor opensource national communities in a social manner.
They don't say which open format must be used. They just say "explain me how your software represents my information".
I love the way half the commenters seem to be in love with 7-bit ASCII, and seem to confuse a character encoding with a general data transport format and then confuse that with the concept of open protocols.
ASCII is a character set and a corresponding encoding. It is completely inappropriate for use in anywhere but the US, and ridiculously limited even there. Let it just die already.
XML provides one way to encode information using a standardized format. It competes with ASN.1, JSON, s-expressions, and dozens of others. The primary advantage of these over ad-hoc formats is the wide availability of ready-made, well-designed and fully tested parsing/generating toolkits. The cost of a new implementation is typically lower if a protocol uses these, but it is not at all a requirement for openness.
Open intercommunication does not mean XML. Open intercommunication means that protocol documentation is publicly available. You won’t magically make a proprietary protocol open by choosing XML (or any other open format) for the transport—you open it up by fully documenting it. Not all open protocols use XML, and not all XML-based protocols are open.
A protocol designer may choose to use XML encoded in ASCII. Or ASN.1/DER with strings encoded in UTF-8. Or they may make up their own fancy format and character encoding (MIME, anyone?). As long as they provide enough documentation so that anyone can fully implement their protocol, it remains open no matter what technical choices they made.
An "open standard" is publicly available and either 1) royalty-free or 2) licensed in a "reasonable and non-discriminatory" way (RAND).
If you go royalty-free, that rules out H.264 and HE-AAC in the DVB-T digital television standard. Somehow I don't see that happening in Hungary.
In truth, almost all telecommunication standards are royalty-free or RAND licensed. All ITU standards must be.
Any bets they will use "Office Open(sic)" format then?
Oh, please. C++ and JavaScript are languages, this is the equivelent of XML in the document format. The programs written in those languages is the data expressed by the language, ie the data contents and those are NOT standardized.
And parts for a car is a VERY bad example, because other than nuts and bolts, most parts are entirely proprietary, and unique to that car, not standardized.
How difficult is it to understand that if the document format is standardized, and you do not allow any kind of extension to that format, then you can no longer add new features of any kind to it? And when it comes to Office documents, no new document features typically means no new application features.
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I am from Hungary.
We interpret this law as "build all communication over the TCP/IP and you are open enough".
The article uses two phrase "open standards" and "publically-defined open standards" as though they are interchangable, even though there is a significant difference between the two. While making interfaces for IT publically available is a good thing, limiting everyone to a set of government defined standards is really a step backwards as it makes it impossible to innovate new interfaces.
Uhhhh whatever one is easier to use...
It's not rocket science, yet some people treat it as if it is around here.
Especially when the one state is Nevada
There will no doubt be people --people who claim that competition is good-- who will cry foul. This is bullshit! Open standards promote competition. The market is FORCED OPEN. The only people who hate this are proprietary, predatory monopolies who can't compete on a level playing field. They will cry out 'oh noes, its not fair to promote them over usssss' (phrasing sounding like Gollum intentional). They are all for fairness in the market, but are happy and cheerful to use lock-in tactics to keep others out. Really, it should be mandatory worldwide. Businesses always cry 'but the market will figure it out'. BULLSHIT! The market left on its own will fuck up badly (Examples: 1929, 2008). These are bad bad awful fuckups that the government had to fix (and they had to step in and fix a crapload of shit left by the market). The market needs regulation. Those who cry otherwise can take cues from their 1929 brethern, find a really tall building, grab hold of a handful of stock ticker tape, jump from the roof and let the tape save you. Make sure the building is high, more than 100 floors is best. There is no government regulation over milk in China. Look at the glorious results there! Not enough government regulation over captains getting drunk and piloting supertankers. Look at the Exxon Valdez as an example! Farmers can feed cows anything they like, no regulations. Look at Mad Cow disease as a great sign of how we don't need government regulation. But think of the profit!!! cry brainless fools looking for a quick buck. Let us sue your ass off, and make you pay for damages (in full) says me, let me kick you to the curb like Bernie Madoff's wife, and not just you but the whole board too, and see if you are thinking of big profits, or your next meal, and let that be a sign of where things need to go. Government regulations over digital content paid for by the government. Hell yeah.
the hands, not the head.
Still, use the Preview Button.
We lead by following standards - Sape Mullender
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
There Seems to be a retarded debate about competition over open standerards. This doesn't make sense. Here is Why.
Open Standards dont mean open source programs only. Other wise this would be unfair and anti-competetive. It simple means and open file standard. IE. Anyone can freely make/ use a program to use these standards. IE. ODF. Microsoft can use ODF, OpenOffice can use ODF ... etc. Meaning Everyone can use it or more competetion.
This doesn't mean open source forever but it means i can read government documents with out paying microsoft $99 for microsoft word. Witch is important. It keeps people from being locked into a specific program. It doesn't hurt competition becuase there is more to a program than what type of file it saves. Interface is also a huge deal. Thus Open Standards Premote Competition and don't Hinder it.
In the context of the orriginal post I don't see the difference.
If a person understands and is capable of implementing something, of course it can be used in a program, regardless of the open of closed nature of the standard. If it's closed it may be harder to gain that understanding, but once the understanding is gained it can be used.
In the context of the orriginal post I don't see the difference.
I was afraid of that..
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his job depends on not understanding it.
Please, explain the difference in the context of the orriginal post that I replied to.
Oh, please. How difficult is it to understand that if a protocol is standardized, you allow multiple parties to interoperate. If you want to add new "features" submit them to the standards body.
Is that you Bill Gates?