Open Source, Open Standards Under Attack In Europe

Glyn Moody writes "A battle for the soul of European IT is taking place behind closed doors in Brussels. At stake is the key Digital Agenda for Europe, due to be unveiled in a month's time. David Hammerstein, ex-Member of European Parliament for the Greens, tweeted last week: 'SOS to everyone as sources confirm that Kroes is about to eliminate "open standards" policy from EU digital agenda; Kroes has been under intense lobbying pressure from Microsoft to get rid of interoperability and open source goals of EU.' This is confirmed by the French magazine PC Inpact (Google translation), which also managed to obtain a copy of the draft Digital Agenda (DOC). It's currently supportive of both open source and open standards — but for how much longer?"

Comments

Desperation?

[TheSovereign]

Is it me or does Microsoft seem to be getting more and more desperate for control?

Re:Desperation?

[alexborges]

No bro, I do not concur. You see, if they can get anyone to actively reject other formats, then they can make their docx shit a defacto standard, and from that position, secure their monopolistic power in the IT office space.

If they let governments choose standards they would HAVE to comply with, they only need to use them (it would cost them close to nil, it would be payed the first three days of any government contract), but the competition could then actually compete with them.

And THATS what they are afraid of.

Re:Desperation?

[phantomfive]

It's you. They've always been desperate for control. It was the thing that motivated them to build IE, they didn't want to let someone else control the internet. .Net was initially motivated by the same thing: it was going to be a kind of cloud computing thing, where all applications in the world ran on Microsoft's cloud. Which is why it was called .net in the first place, and why it compiles to byte-code instead of machine code, even though it only is ever run on one architecture and one operating system (yeah, Mono, but that wasn't in Microsoft's plans).

On the other hand, Microsoft HAS gotten more involved in politics, and that may be what you are observing. They've gotten involved more and more ever since the anti-trust case. I read an article a decade ago discussing how Microsoft realized that to stay out of problems with the government, it helps to 'donate'. They are very equal opportunity givers, giving both to Republican and Democrat, depending on who they think is more likely to win.

Engineering new jobs

[gilesjuk]

With the global slump politicians are under pressure to spend money on software, not use open source.

Of course, the layman doesn't always understand that open source software is sold commercially as well.

Under freedom of information laws surely we're entitled to see information in a format anyone can read?

Acta related?

[solune]

I wonder if the ACTA plays into this?

Seems to me open standards would hinder a closed-sourced DRM scheme designed to limit communication.

Supportive?

[Qubit]

"...which also managed to obtain a copy of the draft Digital Agenda (DOC). It's currently supportive of both open source and open standards — but for how much longer?"

Why am I even surprised that the agenda is in MS-Word's old binary file format? Maybe they're just supportive of open standards for other people, or for hypothetical people in a hypothetical world, perhaps.

Re:Importance

[h4rr4r]

Who cares if they are?
This is not some commie no money ideology. This about me not having to pay rent to MS to interact with my government.

Re:War

[erroneus]

It is terribly exciting and worrisome at the same time. Microsoft has dominated the world with Windows and by leveraging the OS, they are dominating is many other areas as well. They are unquestionably an abusive monopoly. With software patents and other intellectual property types creating road blocks and toll roads to innovation and less expensive solutions.

Open standards is one way to make sure things are fair to ensure that competition is alive and well. Microsoft cannot compete with others using open standards and expect to win every time. (I would have no problem if they conformed to open standards and actually offered a better product.) But instead of competing on the basis of quality, they lobby for laws and policies to change in their favor.

Microsoft is a corrupt company catering to corrupt politicians. I hope many EU leaders start to take offence to Microsoft's tactics and push back hard.

Re:Spin doctor much?

[grcumb]

The fact that proprietary solutions will be considered is not a threat to OSS, nor a guarantee that Microsoft will be chosen. Finally, proprietary solutions often use OSS projects if it is beneficial (not GPL, but that's not the issue here).

What does any of this have to do with open standards, which represent the topic of this discussion?

Open standards allow us to ignore these kinds of argument completely, because they essentially guarantee that, no matter what kind of software you choose, I can continue using the software of my choice, provided that the two of us can agree on the standard to be implemented.

I choose my favourite software for my own reasons; you choose yours. Everyone's happy.

Now, if someone were to refuse to follow open standards and instead chose to say, "My way or the highway!" when it came to technical implementation of certain document formats and communications protocols... well, I might be a little miffed. I might even say that this is not fair and that it's ultimately dangerous because it causes public data to be locked into proprietary formats.

Re:War

[MartinSchou]

I'm sure Alabama feels the same way? They're having dictated social, educational, health, economic etc politics from DC.

While it is rather difficult to leave the EU, it's not impossible, whereas secession is apparently against the constitution of the US.