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."

Comments

Logical

[markdavis]

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.

Re:Logical

[pieterh]

The fight over what this goes back ages and is intensely political, given the sums of money involved. Internet, open standards. GSM, captive standards. No argument which generated more value, but which was more profitable for the people controlling the technology?

Here is an analysis of why firms like those the BSA represents want to capture computing standards, and how they do it.

IOW,

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:long term security?

[0123456]

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.

Re:Free Software in Government

[digitig]

The problem is all about training people on how to use the new software. Using OO Writer instead of Word for example. Sure, sounds simple, the nerds can probably fgure it out without blinking, but it is all the NON-NERDS who make it a very expensive idea to test. They all have to be trained, they lose some productivity for a while, they have to learn how to do new tricks that might be application specific and the like.

How do you think the cost of cross-training from Word 2003 to OpenOffice.Org (or LibreOffice) Writer would compare to cross-training from Word 2003 to Word 2007?

Re:To be fair...

[canajin56]

Learn your terminology. An advocate is somebody who speaks in favor of something. A lobbyist is somebody who bribes politicians so they vote in favor of something.

Re:Free Software in Government

[gandhi_2]

In my experience, no one trains anyone on shit, which may be your point.

New computer, new OS, new office suite. It looks different? Tough shit, get back to work. Whether it was XP to Vista or 7. Or from Office03 to Office07 or Office2010... It may as well be OpenOffice, the same grumbling about menu items and behaviors that gradually subsides as people get back to work.

Hell, I deployed a bunch of ubuntu boxes in elementary schools for student use and purposely didn't tell anyone anything more than the logins just to see what would happen. They just figured it out, teachers and students alike. Not like they are doing VBA programming or something.

The "training" thing is a red herring MOST of the time.

The issue is NOT training, cost, or difficulty.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

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.