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

War

[Aphoxema]

This is terribly exciting and I'm not even sure why...

Re:War

[HeckRuler]

You heard the man, time for WAR! Blood for the blood-god. Tear out their eyes and rip their throats as open as the GNU

Re:War

[Aphoxema]

You heard the man, time for WAR! Blood for the blood-god. Tear out their eyes and rip their throats as open as the GNU

It has begun.

Re:War

[Aphoxema]

It's not "war". It's about non-violent totalitarianism, plain and simple. That's what the EU has always been about, and what it will always be about. It's about Germany and France controlling the rest of Europe, without having to resort to destructive wars like in the past. And for the most part, they've succeeded. Germany and France now dictate economic policy for countries like Greece, they dictate social policy, and now they dictate technological policies.

Sounds like a war to me.

Re:War

[h4rr4r]

Considering the GDP differences between Germany and any other EU nation that is not surprising.

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: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.

Re:War

[shentino]

Those leaders will just demand bigger bribes to look the other way.

Re:War

[Shark]

Secession might be, but interposition is what Jefferson came up with as a solution. There are several examples in US history of it getting the job done too. Tom Woods has a pretty good historical speech on the topic if you care to youtube for it.

Re:War

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, ducomputergeek and the person who modded this insightful: What is the "vision of Europe" laid out by Hitler? I've read the book and I thought it was boring rambling without any real vision...

Re:War

[the_womble]

I think dropping the bit about murdering all the Jews and gypsies and enslaving almost everyone else is a fairly significant difference, even if some bits of economic policy are similar.

Re:War

[squizzar]

I thought it was the Americans that won WWII?

Re:War

[SpzToid]

I hope many EU leaders start to take offence to Microsoft's tactics and push back hard.

Well the EU antitrust office did declare Microsoft to be an abusive monopoly in 2004.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=860&dat=20040323&id=BAAgAAAAIBAJ&sjid=8BUFAAAAIBAJ&pg=1269,2934192

Re:War

[Mana Mana]

In accord to your sentiment: Why would any self-respecting European want to be beholden to a foreign mega corporation? One from the USA especially?

I know, masochism.

Analogous. I've always wondered why the ferocity of free marketeers? to protect northwest US old-forest loggers (a commodity business, who wants to be in that racket. Finite one at that, but, yet rail against the car makers, the steel makers and workers. Since the 1980s I've yet ever to see a rational lucid explanation of that one. Less you be facile, they all donated big bucks to Republicans, laissez faire types, at one time. mmm'k), an old tech industry.

Relatively low market cap in relation, low number jobs creation in relation, exportation numbers low in relation.

What is it the macho, frontiersman mystique. That would be my guess.

Re:War

[BitZtream]

You need to lookup the definition of Monopoly. Stop using words you don't actually know the meaning of. MS was never at any point a monopoly at anything other than selling its own products.

Abusive, certainly. Monopoly, never.

This isn't about Open Standards. The OSS world and slashdot in particular don't know the meaning of the word. In this context Open Standard pretty much translates to Our Standard. If it doesn't fit your perfect little world you throw it out as open or standard, while completely ignoring established/defacto standards because its suits you.

Make a better package that customers want.

You can't give it away. Its that bad that even being free, no one fucking wants it. TAKE THE HINT.

Re:War

[muckracer]

> it doesn't even make sense arguing _against_ document standardization,
> nor it makes sense to even immagine a proposal of not having document
> not using an open standard

When your company uses 95% *.doc(x), 4.9% *.pdf and 0.1% oddball formats, then arguing for open standards and OpenDocument in particular, elicits as much as a lookin-at-you-weird-smile.. Then they'll go right back to work, consisting of debating how to best implement Windows 7. As much as it sucks and I personally hate it: DOC *IS* the standard. Microsoft has done exceedingly well in tying up companies in their spiderweb. But hey...at least the EU now bumped up Opera's usage points by a couple percent which really matters so it's all good!

Re:War

[Razalhague]

And remember guys, we don't hate Hitler because of his economic policies.

Re:War

[HopefulIntern]

Amusing, but also sheds some light on the misinformation that spread after the war ended. I am not that old, and even I grew up in Norway being taught that the Americans came to our aide, saved us from torment, and got us back on our feet. The Marshall Plan was useful yes, but why did America go to war? Was it to aide his fellow man, or because after years of war in Europe they finally felt threatened?

Depending on what you consider "the end of the war", it would be just as fair (if not more) to say that the Soviet evil empire liberated Europe. They invaded Berlin and soon after the Reich fell. Nobody taught me that in school. Maybe because of the rape and murder spree that occurred in Berlin after its fall, due to inebriated Russian soldiers. Maybe because of the cold war that ensued.

Re:War

[N Monkey]

> it doesn't even make sense arguing _against_ document standardization,
> nor it makes sense to even immagine a proposal of not having document
> not using an open standard

When your company uses 95% *.doc(x), 4.9% *.pdf and 0.1% oddball formats, then arguing for open standards and OpenDocument in particular, elicits as much as a lookin-at-you-weird-smile.. Then they'll go right back to work, consisting of debating how to best implement Windows 7. As much as it sucks and I personally hate it: DOC *IS* the standard.!

Strange as it may seem, although the company I work for use word and *.doc, whenever I received a .docx file from an external source, it was opened perfectly well by my install of OpenOffice. So well, in fact, I assumed for a while that docx was the Open Office format!

Later I was told there was a plug in for our version of word for .docx files, so I installed it. Ironically, that now sometimes fails!

Re:War

[erroneus]

I guess the US and the EU courts must ALSO look up their definitions of monopoly and reconsider their case history against Microsoft. Your defense of Microsoft is weak. Open standard means a standard that is defined clearly and independent of any particular plaform or implementation. Established/defacto standards? Yes, we know that DOC and XLS are defacto standards for use in business, but are they even fully defined in a way that can be implemented effectively by others? Defacto just means that we're currently stuck with it for better or worse. All this jibber-jabber about open standards is all about trying to get us unstuck. You either can't see a problem with being stuck with a defacto standard that demands you buy and keep buying the same products over and over again from a single vendor (how else can you define a monopoly?) or you are simply denying it.

In very short time since I changed jobs, I have started changing my company's Microsoft-based approach to everything over to allowing and enabling F/OSS at every point where it works well. I now have OpenOffice.org on every PC. I have Firefox on every PC. I have GiMP and Inkscape on a growing number of PCs. I even have alternative PDF printer software installed on every PC. Turns out that for many people, actually most people, OpenOffice's Draw package is the part that people are using. The company is unwilling to buy Visio licenses just so people can make flow-charts and org-charts any more. I have showed them that, for the simple work most people do, OO.o is just fine. Turns out that MSIE 8 doesn't work well with eRoom. Firefox does. And our parent company's VPN will require the use of MSIE8 before long. So we're just being pro-active. Need eRoom? Use Firefox. And while they are at it, Firefox works with just about everything else as well, they find and keep using it. A few people with needs for graphic type work have been sending out order for business cards and the like to an outside company. When I discovered that, I showed the people how to take existing files returned by these "graphic professionals" and modify them for changes needed using those simple tools. The main resistance to that, of course, was the requirement to learn and understand something new. (Humans don't like change, even when it's good for them!) And as for the PDF printer alternatives? Well, most users think they need Adobe Acrobat when all they want to do is print things to PDF. Turns out they can use OO.o to generate PDFs and even edit them thanks to some clever addons and print to PDF from any application thanks to a certain Ghostscript based product.

While the defacto standard is in place at my office, people's eyes are opening up to F/OSS software and are finding it quite useful and adequate. You are preaching to the choir by saying that people don't want change. We all know that. But when change sort of creeps up on you at a convenient pace, I find it works out quite well.

I'm hoping that some government bodies start shifting its output over to open standards more... that'll just make my job all the more easy.

BTW, "Make a better package that customers want."? Seriously? Microsoft was the last company to put serial number and other protections into their software and they pretty much did it after all the competition was crushed. Got any clue as to why that was? Microsoft has often cited "pirated copies" of its software in its market share reports. Market share was more important to them in the early phases of building critical mass than "losses" to piracy. It may be pushing it to say that Microsoft even encouraged piracy in those days, but their lack of security measures seemed to express it pretty well. And the fact that they did it later would seem to suggest they could have done it at any time but chose to wait until they actually achieved critical mass before doing so. Microsoft never has a "better" package. They had the more convenient package. It was installed on their PCs when they bought them.

Re:War

[metacell]

Microsoft is a de facto monopoly in the market for operating systems for personal computers, in the market for office applicatons, and probably a few more. A de facto monopoly is usually defined as having near 100% of the market, not exactly 100%, since the last few % make little difference.

Re:War

[gtall]

Yes, the Soviets did indeed do their part. However, we must never forget the agreement Stalin had with Germany prior to Germany invading Russian having been blocked in invading Britain. Stalin feared Germany way back at the beginning of the 1930's and started increasing military production. Hitler had gone on record later in that decade stating that the Soviet Union was a danger to world peace. Stalin thought that by signing the non-aggression pact with Germany in 1939, he could direct Germany's aggressive behavior, which was fairly obvious at that point, towards the West. It worked....until Britain totally failed to be invaded. So the Soviet Union took it in the neck in 1941-1943, the end of which the Russian winter helped Stalin's remaining commanders (the ones he hadn't had killed) rally the troops with the idea they could either be shot or shoot at Germans.

In 1942, the Western allies invaded Africa, Stalin had been screaming for a Western front and an invasion of Europe. The U.S. wanted to but Britain thought it was suicidal. So they chose Africa. In 1943, Italy was invaded. Not until 1944 did Europe get its Western front. By that time, the Germans were losing badly to the Soviet Union.

The Americans provided the Soviets with some substantial material help while fighting in Africa and Europe and also in the Pacific against Japan. The British fought well above their weight-class.

After the war, the Soviet Union failed to give Eastern Europe their independence leading to decades of failed economies and pollution from heavy industry.

Would the Soviet Union have beaten Germany without the West and the U.S.? I find it doubtful because Stalin was such a Soviet screwup. They'd have fought to a draw at best. Would the West and the U.S. have beaten Germany without the Soviet Union? I find it doubtful since Germany would have complete domination of most of Europe.

What would have happened if Germany stopped at dominating Europe and gone no further. In a world of nuclear weapons, who knows.

Re:War

[mpe]

Microsoft is a corrupt company catering to corrupt politicians.

"Corrupt" is a rather redundant adjective when it comes to politicians. Given that this appears to be the most common kind of politician you find in many places, especially where "career politicians" are vastly overrepresented.

Re:War

[alex67500]

Amusing... I thought the Americans only went to War because they wanted to test their new secret weapon. Actually, as Europeans, we should feel lucky they got spanked by the Japanese in Pearl Harbour, otherwise Enola Gay could well have set course for Europe ! (I'll turn off my conspiracy theory mode now, promise!)

Re:War

[Daengbo]

The U.S. population was self-involved and non-interventionist until Pearl Harbor. FDR had wanted to go to war in Europe for some time, but he couldn't get popular support. Much like George W. Bush's Iraq move, FDR used anger Pearl Harbor to leverage support for going to war with Germany (made easier by the Tripartite Pact).

Re:War

[kubitus]

what do you expect from the son of a lawyer?

Re:War

[vacarul]

loooooooooooool. Dude that vision it's equivalent to "marketing talk". It's one thing to have a vision and another thing to implement a system that will actually deliver what you promised even after you die. From personal experience I can tell you that the communist vision was great! But it had nothing to do with the reality.

Re:War

[vacarul]

Soviet Union failed to give Eastern Europe their independence

they didn't fail anything. Their intentions were to occupy and this is what they did.

Re:War

[Archades54]

Pearl Harbour sorta forced them into the War.

Re:War

[HeckRuler]

Yeah, think about all the good things Hitler did.

Re:War

[garyebickford]

I have read that before the Civil war, even Lincoln expressed the opinion that states had the right to secede. He just believed that it would destroy the Union, and so could not allow it. (There is a long history of Presidents doing things they believed were not constitutional, including Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase.)

There are those who believe that this and other Lincoln policies really began the inexorable slurping of power from the states to the federal government. Prior to the Civil War the government was so small that it was supported largely by revenues from the Post Office (mail was a lot more expensive then than now). The first individual income tax was passed in 1862 to fund the costs of the Civil War. It was later ruled unconstitutional, and in 1913 a constitutional amendment was passed specifically for this purpose.

OTOH, it is not at all obvious that secession is a right:

If one grants that the states had a Constitutional "right" to secede, then after secession the seceded states quickly become hostile belligerents, and those who seceded after the attack on Fort Sumter became traitors. If you have the right, we have the right to come kick your ass. (Mighty generous of us to restore the rebel states to full status and let them resume self-governance!) If one does not grant such a right exists in the Constitution, then it was indeed a "civil war," and falls under the insurrection clause. Which clause itself seems to argue against secession as a right.

Secession and the Constitution

I recall from my childhood that Oregon, which became a state in 1859, had a clause in its1857 constitution, approved by Congress at statehood, specifically giving it the right to secede. (I could not find a reference in my quick online search.) Much to my dismay, in the 1970s or 1980s when Oregonians approved a new constitution that clause was dropped. That leaves open the question of whether in so doing they gave up that right.

Re:War

[MikeBabcock]

Get out of your economics class taught by the underpaid professor who has no real-world data on why his beliefs are right, and look at the facts. Making a better product got dozens (if not more) companies bought out by Microsoft's huge pockets, whose products then disappeared. Making that better product did not actually end up replacing Microsoft's products at all. Microsoft has a monopoly on the desktop and is able to distribute its inferior products to users directly without any marketing energy. That's why they got in trouble, and they deserved it IMHO.

Make Microsoft sell their browser technology like everyone else did back when they came out, and you'd see a different history of IE adoption.

Re:War

[kanguro]

Not so big a difference (2008) Is it? 1 Germany 3,673,105 2 France 2,866,951 3 United Kingdom 2,680,000 4 Italy 2,313,893 5 Spain 1,601,964

Desperation?

[TheSovereign]

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

Re:Desperation?

[alexborges]

Yeah? So why do they want to pressure governments into rejecting open standards as the base line for building IT infrastructure?

Re:Desperation?

[Lunix Nutcase]

Because they want to make money just like the corporations who will sell the software based on those open standards?

Re:Desperation?

[Beardo the Bearded]

Because if there's another format, then they'll have to support it. If they can get everyone to agree on DOCX or MSPF*, then they don't have to do any more programming...

(and now to get modded up)

...because the more programming they do, the more likely it is that they'll fuck it up.

*MS proprietary format

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?

[yossarianuk]

They seem to be 'harmonising' their opposition Chinese Govt style

http://www.katonda.com/blog/922/microsoft-bing-trying-kill-open-office

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.

Re:Desperation?

[Yaa 101]

Not too long ago I was modded troll for saying: while you buy their products, they buy your political leaders.

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1571214&cid=31359062

It is still true!

Re:Desperation?

[obarthelemy]

please do explain to me how byte code gives them more control than machine code ? especially with mono around ? and how the ARM in phones is the same as x86 ?

Re:Desperation?

[phantomfive]

Well, it doesn't particularly, but I think you misunderstood my comment, I probably wasn't clear enough. Java was created with the idea of running on every platform then in existence, and Sun made an effort to make that happen. .Net on the other hand, was conceptualized as something that would run on the cloud (before the word cloud was used in this context), with the idea that it wouldn't matter what hardware the cloud was running on, as long as Microsoft's system was somewhere in there.

However, the cloud concept never got developed, and .net ended up being a system that ran only on one platform, making it pointless to run as bytecode at all. I tried to find a Slashdot article from this time period, but this is the closest I could get. Best quote from the article:

Gates indicated that the company's software Promised Land will be a new version of its Windows operating system code-named Longhorn, which is still at least two years off.

Re:Desperation?

[that this is not und]

Because they want to make money just like the corporations who will sell the software based on those open standards?

Apparently by competing with said corporations in the halls of the bureaucrats, rather than in the open market.

Shame on you, Microsoft. You used to say 'I'm sorry that we have to have a Washington presence. We thrived during our first 16 years without any of this.' Now you're buying governments just like Larry Ellison does.

Re:Desperation?

[phantomfive]

It's probably not important, but I think the reason you got modded troll in the other post is because the first sentence is nigh incomprehensible, and that made it sound like you were trolling. Your current post is a lot more clear. Whenever I got modded troll (at least when it's unfairly, heh), I figure it's because people didn't understand what I was saying, so I examine my post and try to figure out what made them think it was a troll. Sometimes it's just that people don't have the background knowledge to understand what you are talking about, so you need to explain a little more, but always try to write clearly.

Re:Desperation?

[Bert64]

To the absolute detriment of everyone else...

MS would compete using open standards if they were forced to, but keeping everyone locked in benefits them at the expense of everyone else. The EU does not exist to ensure MS makes profits, they should be working for the benefit of the majority of people (you know, how democracy is supposed to work) rather than harming the majority to help a select few.

Re:Desperation?

[BitZtream]

.NET had nothing to do with moving everything to the MS cloud. They hadn't even dreamt up Azure yet, I don't think anyone had even considered the cloud computing retardedness going on now. It was purely the marketing term for the public to know it as. It was riding the height of the .COM boom. But good for you for pretending to know what you're talking about.

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

... does that even make sense in your head? They made it portable ... so they could run it on ... one architecture type? No, the reason its compiled to byte code has very little to do with the processor architecture and a whole hell of a lot to do with having a dynamic runtime. Kind of like ... well pretty much all other dynamic runtimes in existence. The architecture independance is a nice and intentional side effect. It means that they can make it a lot easier to run it on multiple OSes on multiple processor architectures. You do realize that MS has implementations of .NET for at least 4 different processor types? x86, ARM, PPC, and MIPS. They currently have public implementations for 2 major OS classes, Windows as you know it and WinCE/Mobile/Phone/Dash. Which while they share a similar API, they are most certainly not the same OS. It also runs on OS X, though I'm not aware of when it will become publicly available. Certainly will be when the next Office for Mac is released, and portions of it have been available with Moonlight since at least July of last year.

(yeah, Mono, but that wasn't in Microsoft's plans)

Actually ... yea, it was. You do realize that the CLR and C# are open standards right? You realize that MS released an open source reference implementation almost 10 years ago now ... right? I literally ran .NET code on my FreeBSD machine before a Windows machine. I presume you think they did all of that and figured that no one every would possibly consider making their own implementation?

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'.

Again, contridicting yourself in a single sentence. I guess you think 'donating' isn't being involved in politics? Well either way, nothing is new, they've been the same for over 20 years, you just never noticed. For reference though when you're going to say 'they've changed recently' don't follow it up with an example from 'a decade' ago of them doing the exact same thing.

I think you should read your posts before you post if you actually care. For reference: I don't.

Re:Desperation?

[BitZtream]

You're so witty and insightful.

You've realized MS is just like every other company on the planet.

Congratulations, you've discovered something everyone knew about before MS was even founded.

I'm really not sure why you seem to think this is unique to MS? Read Google News for a few days you'll quickly realize its how the world works. Let me go ahead and political it up some more by pointing out a great example elsewhere: The health care bill. Now I don't care if your for it or against it as it stands, I'm not trying to debate the bill. Just point out that there is one group you never saw bitching about any plan. That would be the insurance companies. What you will find if you do some digging is plenty of congress critters who were enjoying themselves along side ... insurance company (wait for it ... heres the kicker ... ) lobbiests.

Thats right, they have a name for people who do what you're talking about. Its that common. Its called lobbying.

So good for you, 10-20 more years, you might be qualified to vote. Probably not.

Re:Desperation?

[hitmark]

.net got started, partially, as a single sign on system for online services. Never got much traction beyond msn.com and related services. Funny enough, facebook and twitter seems to be heading much the same way, with more "positive" (eye of the beholder) results.

Re:Desperation?

[Yaa 101]

wow you got some issues now don't ya?

I know exactly how corps work, besides the solution is is my answer, don't buy their stuff if you don't want their political influence.

Re:Desperation?

[Yaa 101]

It is not really incomprehensible, the topic was about politicization of the software, I merely said that we (the OSS/FS) were dragged into that by the corps.
Besides, it's my writing style to be concise, direct and to the point.

Re:Desperation?

[phantomfive]

Well, whatever, but if you keep finding yourself modded troll unfairly, you might want to look at it. When I said incomprehensible, what I meant is that it took me a few readthroughs to figure it out, which often does make it incomprehensible to many mods. No one's willing to do the work.

In AD 2010

[PenisLands]

War was beginning.

Re:In AD 2010

[Brett Buck]

TAKE OFF EVERY ZIG!

Re:In AD 2010

[boarder8925]

I laughed when I first saw this meme eight fucking years ago. Can't people let this die?

Re:In AD 2010

[xonar]

2101 = 2010! The japs got it wrong!

Re:In AD 2010

[BenoitRen]

What happen?

Re:In AD 2010

[HopefulIntern]

What you say?

objection

[Trepidity]

IT, whether European or otherwise, has no soul

Re:objection

[chickenarise]

Judge: Sustained!

Defendant: Overruled!

From the movie "The Ten", here's the clip

Re:objection

[alexborges]

It FLOPS fast as hell if you've got the dough.

Re:objection

[juliusbeezer]

I think European IT has less soul (or at any rate less coherence in its culture) than does the US flava. And dibs where dibs are due: when the Americans put their mind to something (like IT) they really can be rather competent. But there's a lot of German hackers out there who would not agree that they lack soul. And logiciel libre can have une certaine elegance.

Re:objection

[Pflipp]

IT has lots of soul. You have been in IT too long. Now it has your soul, too.

Re:objection

[muckracer]

> IT bought Microsoft's soul a long time ago.

No...quite the opposite!

Importance

[Dthief]

I dont know much about this and am curious why it is so important. Wont open source continue to be open source independent of what the EU decides? Or is this saying that the EU gov'ts will only use open source programs, and that is defined by this document? More info would be appreciated, the article didnt really touch on the importance.

Re:Importance

[ThePhilips]

BSA tries to ensure that EU bureaucracy would use the software of the companies it represents, in the case mainly Microsoft and namely M$Office. Wanna send a paper to a ministry electronically? Gotta buy the WinWord.

One has to carefully weigh all the factors: bribes one can get off M$ right now + bribes one can get off M$ later vs. ... On second thought, forget about the open thing we have discussed before.

P.S. FSFE take on the case.

Re:Importance

[alexborges]

Governments make up for MOST of the IT market if you meassure it in dollars. A government unfriendly, by mandate, to open source solutions, and obvlivious as to why precisely in that market is Open Source so important, is a danger to the comercial viability of open source software.

Re:Importance

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

I dont[sic] know much about this and am curious why it is so important. Wont[sic] open source continue to be open source independent of what the EU decides?

First this is more about open standards than open source software. Some organizations certainly will use them regardless, but lacking a clear directive, the status quo rules, and that tends to be proprietary formats and protocols now dominating the industry and harming interoperability and reducing competition.

Or is this saying that the EU gov'ts will only use open source programs, and that is defined by this document?

Originally this document established a preference for more open formats that are more likely to be usable to later generations and which provide more choice of both IT vendors and clients going forward. This was a recognition of the importance of open and documented protocols and formats. Note, nothing in this was pro or con of any given vendor. Rather it was in favor of open standardization where all vendors could compete instead of just one vendor (read Microsoft). The idea was that it is important for say word processing in EU governments to standardize on a format where any company could create an interoperable solution so governments could take competitive bids on a level playing field.

Re:Importance

[chrb]

The leaked "Digital Agenda" doesn't appear to be so bad.. it mainly aims to promote cross-border interoperable electronic ID, health systems, and open standards in general. This will make it easier for European citizens to trade and physically relocate across borders (the existing systems are different in every country, and moving between countries is a PITA). The reason this kind of stuff is important is that the aims and details will be hammered out at a European level, then implemented as policy by the various counties of Europe. Once a few of the more powerful countries (Germany, France, UK) establish a common framework for digital ID or whatever, it will be required to interact with government online services in those countries, a software ecosystem will develop around these protocols, and the other countries will follow within a few years. The EU will provide funding for development of software platforms that implement these open standards. The potential risk here is that Microsoft and other companies will twist the definition of "open" to include proprietary patented protocols (which are "open" because you are free to license them at some cost), and then they can lobby countries and companies taking part in public sector procurements to choose closed standard solutions, which would obviously be a bad thing for cross-border interoperability. The relevant parts of the document are:

The Digital Agenda outlines a set of crucial policy actions, including legal measures and programmes that must be launched or upgraded to get the Union on track. The actions are clustered in six areas:
(1)Very fast internet access;
(2)A digital single market;
(3)A sustainable digital society;
(4)Trust and security;
(5)Research and innovation;
(6)Open standards and interoperability.

Use CIP support seamless cross-border public services, based on open and internationally recognised standards, and a European eID management infrastructure;

An "EU eHealth Passport" could give citizens secure online access to their personal health data. On such a platform, improved medical services can be developed raising efficiency and patient empowerment. The Commission will work with the competent authorities to equip 15% of Europeans with such passports by 2015. The eHealth Lead Market Initiative1 will promote standardisation and interoperability testing and certification.

Electronic identity (eID) technologies and services are key to trust in electronic transactions and in e-payment systems, including mobile payments. A European framework for eID and authentication, and internationally agreed standards and practices can help the cross-border recognition of eID and increase citizens' trust and confidence. A European eID and authentication framework by [.] is the headline target for this action area.

Promoting more open standards
The headline target for this action area is to reform the EU standardisation regime by 2015 to reflect the rise and growing importance of ICT standards developed by various fora and consortia, in particular as regards the internet.
Another challenge is to ensure that public authorities – including the EU institutions – can make the best use of the full range of existing open standards when procuring hardware, software and IT services, for example to adhere to technology neutrality and to avoid technological lock-in to legacy ICT.
Transparent disclosure rules for intellectual property rights (IPR) and licensing conditions in the context of standard-setting can contribute to lower royalty demands for the use of standards and thus to lower market entry costs for SMEs. This can be achieved without a negative impact on the owners of IPRs. Therefore rules for ex-ante disclosure of essential IPR and licensing terms and conditions will be promoted.
Key actions
Reform the governance system for ICT standards in Europe to recognise ICT fora and consortia standards;
Issue a Recommendation to streamline the use of open standards in p

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:Importance

[h4rr4r]

No, I can use free as in beer software or write my own. I can even use an OS not from microsoft with such software!

Re:Importance

[mirix]

I don't know WTF you're on about. Open. Do you understand what that means? Big companies (or individuals) are free to make pay, gratis, or open source software that works with the standard, and we can use whatever we'd like. It's a win for consumers all around.

The alternative is a proprietary standard is implemented, the owner definitely profits. If you want to implement a alternative program, it's a pain in the ass to reverse engineer compatibility, and generally lags the proprietary version. Less choice for the consumer, not something I'd want enacted in law.

Re:Importance

[Anonymous Coward]

It`s you. They`ve heard about you and they prefer to avoid you so that they don`t have to institute rationing to ensure sufficient supply. If you ever start to show signs of self control and decorum, they may reconsider. You may think posting anonymously helps, but they know who you are. Heck, after the last incident, everybody in your city knows who you are.

Re:Importance

[SD-Arcadia]

But you not having to pay rent _is_ an essential part of commie no money ideology. Remember that surplus value is typically seized from those who produce it, i.e. workers, in the form of profit (industry), rent (land) and interest (money).

Re:Importance

[Bert64]

While IBM may have some influence over open standards like ODF, they do not control it and are not the only company with influence...

MS formats are created by a single company for the sole benefit of that company... Like a dictatorship, where it's easy for changes to be made which are detrimental to everyone else.

ODF is created by many companies and non profit organizations with competing goals, so the end result is a compromise between all the different goals... Having something in here which benefits one company to the detriment of everyone else is far less likely to happen because "everyone else" actually has a say in the process. This is more like a democratic process, where compromise is necessary.

Re:Importance

[shnull]

They can't really force private companies and users so it looks as if ms is just trying to secure a deal to get teh win on all government machines

Re:Importance

[ThePhilips]

True, they can't force it.

But imagine all the pains everybody would have to go though - for *not* using software/file formats compatible to state's one.

There were already examples from European countries where you either send a paper in the WinWord format and it is handled by state quickly or you send it on paper and it would be handled as usually in a few months time...

The initial goal of the initiative was precisely to avoid that while harmonizing file formats across the EU. Now it seems all but a pipe dream.

Re:Importance

[MikeBabcock]

Open standards like the ones used for wiring your house to keep electrician errors down. Like the ones used for insulation, or bridge construction. Open standards like those traffic lights that aren't random colours in different cities.

Open standards have a purpose, and enlightened people, whether financially driven or not can see what they are.

Meanwhile, you can go sell your municipality on buying blue stop lights for the city because they're better somehow, and then have a sole license on replacing the parts for a while.

Re:Importance

[shnull]

I'll be the last to say that Europes government is perfect but lobbies are everywhere. Evolution is at work on all levels of existence. It's all about adaptability. Say every government computer uses the win-office combo you can still use openoffice on any platform it runs on at home. As far as i know it can handle all office fileformats. Even my favourite tool from the last years lets you download as .doc and .pdf. You can even upload word documents. I'm pretty sure google and sun will keep up with whatever miserysoft will throw at them. Also, i think the only windows version i would actually want to pay for would be some sort of light-strippeddown windows for gamers because i personally only really boot into windows to run games.

Spin doctor much?

[Lunix Nutcase]

That's clearly very positive about open standards and open source. And then, back in November of last year, a draft version of the revised EIF was leaked [.pdf]. It revealed a staggering re-definition of what openness meant by suggesting that “closed” was part of the “openness continuum”:

Except that your claimed new definition doesn't claim that proprietary software is considered "open" and actually spins proprietary software in a very bad light:

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 definition is funny because one can come up with a number of examples of poor or non-existant documentation, NIH syndrome, a resistance to code reuse within OSS.

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:Spin doctor much?

[isorox]

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.

The term "open standard" often includes standards which must be licensed on a reasonable and non-discriminatory basis. Mpeg for example, is an "open standard", the specs are published, you can buy them and implement them as much as the next guy. That's fine for companies like Microsoft or Sony, who make proprietary software and hardware, but not for Free (libre, open source) software.

Unfortunately, this often confuses the issue at a senior level, or adds to the spin that's possible. Look at this recent statement on "open source" "products" like h264 from the BBC - http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2010/03/bbc_iplayer_content_protection.html

In the past, I'd blame senior management for this kind of post, but Erik Huggers actions since he joined the BBC have surprised everyone, although after Ashley Highfield he didn't have to do much ;) I think the problem is lower down. It's not at the top, it's not at the bottom (the engineers behind iplayer know exactly what open source, open standards, and drm are), it's somewhere in the middle, the level that managers get wined and dined at, but don't get the scrutiny that senior public figures do.

(disclaimer, I work for the bbc, although nowhere near iplayer, views are mine and nothing to do with my employer)

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?

Re:Engineering new jobs

[moteyalpha]

There is a point there, what politicians want is a revenue stream to support them. Open source does not provide that. There is an advantage for slaves layman in open source or open technology, as they work less to achieve the same effect with open source, but this is counter to the interests of government. I doubt that anything that people say will be heard as the one common interest all political parties have is to keep the revenue stream and companies that sell products can take money from people and give it to them and in return they support monopolies and those who keep them in power.
If open source simply established a trust that sold compiled versions of open source software and used the money to <strike>bribe</strike> pay sales tax and place ads, they could possibly supplant Megalosoft..

Re:Engineering new jobs

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahem. Tilting over to proprietary software won't create more jobs. It will simply just allow vendors to A) sell more copies, and B) increase the amount of money that *leaves* the economy, since most of it would go to out of EU businesses, as opposed to if local companies handled the open source job opportunities. So common sense would dictate that if what you're suggesting, the proprietary vendors should be given the finger. Unfortunately they can pay for better dinners, and more wine.

Re:Good

[mangu]

Case in point: HTML.

As opposed, I suppose, to Silverlight(TM)?

Re:Good

[Lunix Nutcase]

The less "open standards" clusterfucks designed by committees of self-righteous idiots the better.

And how "open" is a standard really when the only people allowed in the committees are the representatives of multinational corporations? And let's not even get into the fact that if you want to get a copy of this "open" standard you usually have to pay hundreds of dollars.

Well for...

[alexborges]

... fuck sakes, somebody stop them!

Even europeans can be bought this easily?

Re:Good

[binarylarry]

Correct.

HTML = Widely used around the globe
Silverlight = Used at Microsoft HQ and a small number of prefailed web projects

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.

Re:Acta related?

[h4rr4r]

And then it would no longer fit the open standard. Hmm, almost seems like you should have thought of that.

So are you a troll or a shill?

Re:Acta related?

[that this is not und]

So are you a troll or a shill?

He comes here to stir things up and try to get over his anger that they won't let him into Mensa.

Cry Havoc And Let Slip The Dogs Of War

[mindbrane]

"The military order Havoc! was a signal given to the English military forces in the Middle Ages to direct the soldiery (in Shakespeare's parlance 'the dogs of war') to pillage and chaos."

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.

Complaints, anyone?

[kubajz]

So, as a person living in the EU - any ideas where I should go (preferably online) to complain and raise my voice against this?

I told y'all, I'm right again, dang it!

[OldHawk777]

EU is more like US than y'all think.

The EU Corporate-Welfare government is against you.
The US Corporate-Welfare government is against us.

Government politicians and appointees are well paid (in trade or money) to provide substantial and legal Corporate-Welfare too FuckUS and FuckEU.

It ain't people democracy or merit capitalism in the US, EU, RURU, China.... Yep, life is hard, but you can always eat-shit die before or after the next global-recession (that ain't their darn fault).

Great!

[hallucinogen]

Apparently the European Digital Agenda Commissioner (2010-2014) is a 70 year old woman who according to her webpage has "an ongoing interest in mental health issues." Seriously? They couldn't find anyone more qualified? How many 70 year old people are there who even know what open source means? I'm not an ageist nor a sexist, but I'm pretty sure about all of my friends would have been more qualified to this particular job.

Re:Great!

[miquels]

Not just any woman.

Rember that Microsoft got fined hundreds of millions ?
Heard about the windows7 browser selection tool ?

That was all her work, actually.Until last year she was the European Competition Commissioner.

Re:Great!

[Djupblue]

$2.7 billion even. She is very pro open standards and open source. She seems to know her stuff.

Re:Great!

[hallucinogen]

Oh. Well great! Usually I hate being proven wrong. This time it's the opposite :)

Re:Great!

[monoi]

"I'm a PC and the Windows 7 Browser Selection Tool was my idea!"

Re:Great!

[grizzly]

Do your homework. She is a very tough cookie.

Well they don't.

[SmallFurryCreature]

You don't understand the mind of a MS apologist. Bill Gates does not need a reality distortion field like Steve Jobs has. Each MS apologists comes with one pre-installed. No reality can enter their world.

The guy you are responding hasn't read the article because he can't. He sees nothing. It is not even a void. A void is an absence, to him there is not even nothing to not exist.

They pretend Bing is going to kick googles ass, then just a few months later when MS itself says they lost, they ignore it. They ignore everything that doesn't suit them because it doesn't fit into how their world works.

And really, you got to feel sorry for them. At least Jobs fanboys get Apple goodies. What do MS apologists get? The zune. Whee! But don't worry, version X+1 will fix it all. Like windows mobile 7. No multi-tasking (unlike promised) and no copy&past. But don't worry, this is not actually a problem. A true MS apologists can smoothly go from claiming that WM7 is superior because it has multi-tasking to how it is superior because it doesn't.

You got to admire an apologists who can claim in a story were MS is trying to chance favoring opensource and claim they are not worried about it in the same post. Amazing. I for one applaud him. Or pity. Or ridicule. My English is not that good, which is the one where you point and go "HAHA"?

Re:Well they don't.

[Macrat]

Very insightful post.

Europe is in corporate hands

[pydev]

In my experience, Europe, sadly, is more strongly in corporate hands than the US. The EU effectively hands out many billions in subsidies to corporations. (That's in addition to all the agricultural subsidies, which are an evil that is as prevalent in the EU as it is in the US.)

Re:Europe is in corporate hands

[dudpixel]

yes it is a very sad world when companies have more power than the government. I mean, we set up these governments to choose what is best for the people and that is the one thing they do not do. They do what they want and what rich corporations want, and the people get shafted every time. Its not surprising really...but anyone who thinks there is fairness and rightness(?) in the world needs to take a look at this sort of thing.

Is there any government in the world that is not at least partially corrupt? i doubt it. we're all human, and humans are naturally greedy and selfish.

No, not Bill Gates

[Anonymous Coward]

"Bill Gates does not need a reality distortion field like Steve Jobs has"

Bill Gates has very little to do with the running of MS these days.

Re:No, not Bill Gates

[LinuxAndLube]

You don't understand the mind of SmallFurryCreature. He does not need a reality distortion field like Steve Jobs has. SmallFurryCreature comes with one pre-installed. No reality can enter his world.

To him, Bill Gates is very much at the helm of Microsoft. Windows XP is Microsoft's current OS and IE 6 is their current browser. The Zune HD has not been conceived yet. Still, because of the warped nature of his reality distortion field, Windows Phone 7 has been out for a while already and he's very much familiar with its weaknesses.

Amazing.

Re:No, not Bill Gates

[alexborges]

Except in the office space, all of microsoft's products and i do mean ALL of them, lag far behind technology-wise and quality-wise bis-a-bis any other offer in the market.

Re:No, not Bill Gates

[LinuxAndLube]

You are claiming, among other things, that:

• Visual Studio 2008 lags far behind technology-wise and quality-wise bis-a-bis any other offer in the market
• WCF and WPF lag far behind technology-wise and quality-wise bis-a-bis any other offer in the market
• C# lags far behind technology-wise and quality-wise bis-a-bis any other offer in the market
• Microsoft Surface lags far behind technology-wise and quality-wise bis-a-bis any other offer in the market
• Zune HD lags far behind technology-wise and quality-wise bis-a-bis any other offer in the market
• XBOX 360 lags far behind technology-wise and quality-wise bis-a-bis any other offer in the market
• DirectX 11 lags far behind technology-wise and quality-wise bis-a-bis any other offer in the market

Are you sure you didn't get your free drugs?

Re:No, not Bill Gates

[alexborges]

Yes, yes and yes.

Are you sure you dont need a joint to calm down and think it over?

Re:No, not Bill Gates

[LinuxAndLube]

I'm glad to hear that you got your free drugs. Enjoy.

Re:Good

[Macrat]

And they sell themselves at rock bottom prices!!!

Confirmation?!

[harlows_monkeys]

The French magazine cited for confirmation doesn't say anything about Microsoft.

So all that leaves is with is that some guy twittered that the bogeyman^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^HMicrosoft is coming, and when we look at the latest draft of the Digital Agenda document--its still fine.

Re:Confirmation?!

[harlows_monkeys]

Your first quote does not confirm the story. In fact, your first quote has nothing whatsoever to do with the story. You might want to look at dates next time. When a regulatory body is in the middle of a large anti-trust case against a company, it is perfectly normal for their to be email between the head regulator and the chief counsel of the company.

You second quote is from the article that the Slashdot story cites. You can't cite something to confirm it itself.

Re:Good

[AntiDragon]

Irrelevant. How an open standard is defined is not the point (unless it's seriously lacking in functionality - but then it would never be used anyway).

If a standard is open it means that

a:) Somewhere there is publicly available definition of how to implement that standard. Like a list of all HTML tags, what they mean and guidelines on hwo to render them.

b:) No patents or licencing restrictions. A particular library or implementation may be protected (Opera's paid for web browser, for example), but I and others are free to choose other software that also follows the standard or implement our own.

c:) Documents and data based on the standard are interchangeable - I can view an HTML document in nearly any browser and still read and view it.

Ultimately, encouraging the use of open standards limits noone (be it company or individual) and empowers end users and society in general. In the case of a format like ODF for example, nothing at all prevents MS fully supporting it - that they do so half heartedly is their choice.

What a widely used open standard does do, however, is force sofware implementations to compete - be it on value for money, features, reliability, speed etc. That's only bad for those companies or groups that simply lack the ability to compete fairly.

So no, it matters not how the standard was defined - if it's solid, useable and open then it's all good. Needless to say, it's often better to have multiple open standards for certain things to allow competition between the formats themsleves.

Siding up with the enemy?

[sandertje]

Neelie Kroes nowadays is the European Commisioner for Digital Agenda. Up until last year, she was European Commisioner for Competition. If she'd be siding up with MS in the "war against everything 'open'", she'd be siding up with her old enemy. She cost MS billions in the six years she was commisioner for competition. ;-). Besides, this Digital Agenda thingy isn't all too bad. It's in favor of open standards, promotes fast internet (with all european bureaucracy, it's actually saying absolute goals to achieve) and innovation. It doesn't mention a single word about propietary software.

Ok, Microsoft is digging its own grave

[Schoenlepel]

Nelie Kroes is pretty annoyed with them. They got a very, very big fine for misbehaving and tried to get away, using all kinds of tactics, from paying. Now they are trying to apply corruption, to the same person which fought long and hard to give them that fine? I wonder how long it'll take Microsoft to figure out that she's not very charmed by their behavior.

Here's for hoping that "favor open" turns into "require open". It would be consistent with her earlier behavior; making the right choice even when all kinds of pressure are applied to her.

She's the right person in the right place, lets just hope Microsoft applies enough pressure that she gets really pissed.

Re:Socialist propaganda to empower the state.

[Bert64]

Yes, STANDARDS should be decided by the FREE market...
Microsoft however, have subverted the free market by wielding an extremely detrimental level of influence over it, so that instead of a free market you have corporate bullies instead of government bullies...

What the government should should do, is ensure that the market remains free so that we can all receive the benefits that free market competition brings... One way to do this, is to ensure that open standards are used and that no single entity can pervert the free market.

You will notice that there is no pressure to mandate basic networking protocols like IP, why? because we already have an open standard that anyone is free to support and that doesn't unduly favor any particular vendor.
If the government corrects other areas of the market, then we will all benefit. Sure, it's not ideal that the government has to intervene but it's necessary because microsoft are able to bully the free market.

Re:It won't die anytime soon

[boarder8925]

But in those situations some nasty shit went down. Those all had to do with war at some level, and war affecting people. What the fuck is the gravity of "All your base are belong to us"? Nothing. It's just a poor translation.