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Lobbyists Attack UK Open Standards Policy
superglaze writes "The Business Software Alliance, a lobbying organisation representing the likes of Microsoft, Adobe and Apple, has laid into the UK's recently-adopted policy of mandating the use of open standards wherever possible in government IT systems.The policy describes open standards as being "publicly available at zero or low cost" and having "intellectual property made irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis" The BSA said this would "inadvertently reduce choice [and] hinder innovation", and even went so far as to claim open standards would lead to higher e-government costs, but open-source advocates say the policy reflects how much the European Interoperability Framework is weighted in favour of the proprietary software companies."
I'm personally full supporting a move away from proprietary software in government, it can only be a move for the good.
Leave it to lobbyists to come up with their own unique and twisted logic....
Proprietary = choice
Openness = restricted
Freedom = anti-competitive
Free cost = expensive
Closed = innovation
I am sure the governments will do the "right" thing, and do whatever the lobbyist push on them, as has been seen time and time again.
the otherwise good policy means some of the BSA's members will lose their monopolies, and opportunities to create new ones in the future.
We can't have the public interest taking precedence over someone's profits, can we?
So what happens then if a particular "open" standard is abandoned and the existing viewers for the content grow insecure?
The same thing that happens when a proprietary standard is abandoned, except that the source code is freely available so the government can hire someone to maintain it.
Sounds a bit like extended warranties on consumer electronics. If the deal is really a benefit to you and not some money-grubbing scheme, then why do they try SOO hard to sell them to you?
Ultimately, the BSA should just STFU and go away. Open Source reduces costs to the tax payer because the software plus licenses do not have to be purchased. In these economic times, it makes sense to cut costs in this way. Additionally, open source takes fewer people to support because it is generally more reliable. If Windows XP and Server families are any indication, it takes a veritable army of support personnel to keep it operational. Save money, ditch Microsoft!
Notice how keywords appear in corporations' or their lobbyists', or their lackey politicians speeches : "jobs, innovation, choice, market, consumer, economy"
sprinkle a few keywords in roundspeak, and you can issue a corporate statement portraying you as the innovator, despite you are doing everything in your power to feudalize intellectual activity on the planet through patents and make everyone pay to you as overlords.
gotta love roundspeak.
it is possible to crap in the middle of your granny's living room and then defend the action as an act of choice, liberty and act of cleanliness. (because you didnt crap in the fridge, instead of crapping in the middle of living room. that could be much worse - so, see, your better off !! )
Read radical news here
This is standard operating procedure for Microsoft. They use BSA or CompTIA to attack any open standards policy that is worthy of the name "open".
One way to point out the absurdity of their logic is to replace the reference to standards with references to any other useful technology that a government might adopt, like electrical standards.
For example:
http://www.robweir.com/blog/2008/04/embrace-reality-and-logic-of-choice.html
Can I blame them for blatantly lying?
:(
Yup.
Can I charge them for ethics violations?
no..
Are open-source advocates somehow NOT "lobbyists"?
Let's not pretend there's not money to be made by open source supporters. Windows admins might be replaced by Linux admins, but the money would still be spent. It's just going to someone else, and I'm not going to accept for one second that Linux admins somehow "deserve" to have a job more than Windows admins. As for licensing... just about any IT department can tell you that the license cost of a major software system is by no means the biggest cost of deploying and maintaining that software, particularly when scaled to the levels being discussed.
I'm not saying open source is "better" or "worse"... there are completely valid philosophical arguments in both directions, as well as completely valid financial arguments. What I am saying is that the automatic knee-jerk demonizing of any and all proprietary commercial software has no place in policy-making, particularly when the money you're trying to tell people how to spend is taken by threat of force from everyone around you. You do what works best, not what feels fuzziest.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
<SARCASM>
Have they confirmed that all that FLOSS was properly licensed? Do they have the receipts as well as the COA's?
</SARCASM>
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Including lie?
You assume your clients are, and always will be, uninformed. But if this isn't the case, you'll just poison the relationship and most likely lose future business that you could have had.
Have gnu, will travel.
The BSA said this would "inadvertently reduce choice [and] hinder innovation",
You mean the choice for big companies to gouge others on the price of royalties? You mean like hinder the innovative ways that big companies come up with ways to gouge others on the price of royalties?
Sure Apple's consumer software is all closed up & proprietary, but come on most of OS X is Open Source & relies on open standards - that's one of the reasons that my government employer bought into Apple's enterprise offerings. Heck, even the text editor that is built into OS X supports the OpenDocument Text format (.odt).
Considering all of the other BSA members, this seems to me like it should have been posted in a different category...
But they don't try everything in their power. They don't try to make their product the best possible thing for the consumer at the most appropriate price. If they did, very few people would have ever considered to choose the FOSS path. They tried with FUD and who knows what other deals, instead.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
The BSA said this would "inadvertently reduce choice [and] hinder innovation", and even went so far as to claim open standards would lead to higher e-government costs, but open-source advocates say the policy reflects how much the European Interoperability Framework is weighted in favour of the proprietary software companies."
The BSA inadvertently choose the right letters for Bull Shit Association. Was it on purpose or just a coincidence? You decide!
I rarely respond to comments. Also, don't ask for clarifications: a brain and Google are faster, believe me!
The problem is all about training people on how to use the new software.
The issue is NOT cost of the software, cost or difficulty of the training, or difficulty of operation.
The issue is whether bureaucrats, for their own convenience (or pocket-lining), can be allowed to lock up government documents and government interactions in the proprietary format of a US corporation.
Doing so puts the government and the people, from then on, at the mercy of the corporation. The entire population is faced with the choice of paying ongoing tribute to the corporation or suffering a severe impediment and competitive disadvantage when dealing with their own government or attempting to access its records. (They call certain licensing fees "royalties" for a reason.)
With open formats and FOSS tools there might be a learning curve and (if the corporations are to be believed) some reduced functionality or slightly increased difficulty of operation. But nobody is excluded or unnecessarily handicapped and all records stay accessible to all forever.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Because actually competing is far less profitable, they would need to invest a lot of money into updating (their codebase is years old and probably very difficult to maintain), take big hits on pricing...
Meanwhile, open source competitors would still be improving at a gradual pace, and sooner or later will reach "good enough" status if not feature parity, at which point it all comes down to price and you cannot compete with free.
Don't underestimate the power of "Good enough", when the product is much cheaper (ie free) or well marketed it doesn't need to be the best, it just needs to be adequate... That has always been the MS selling point against proprietary unix, novell, wordperfect etc.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
The problem is all about training people on how to use the new software. Using OO Writer instead of Word for example
Applause for choosing the worst possible example. You don't really believe that yourself, do you? I have been writing documents for well over 30 years, using text editors, BRIEF, WordPerfect and practically every version of Word. These days I prefer to use OpenOffice for 3 reasons:
- it just works. It's slow to start, but it keeps working.
- it can handle corruption. I use OOo as a recovery tool when I get sent docs written by people using especially the latest version of Word. The "X" in .docx must stand for "scrameble at will", because the longer the docs get, the higher the probability that it'll crash, which is IMHO a result of cut & paste residue, a known Word problem
- its interface has remained stable, which is why I am looking with dismay at reports that some idiots are planning to copy the ribbon.
The MS Office ribbon has IMHO cost more productivity than all the other UI changes over the last decade put together
As for Open Standards in general, I was there when the first ones were established, and I also know why they were creatively "forgotten/adjusted" a few years later. Those who advocate Open Standards are right - it will save money.
Put bluntly, Open Standards were abandoned so consultancies could turn a profit recycling proprietary code. It's as simple as that.
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