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UK: Open Standards Must Be Restriction Free
Glyn Moody writes "There has been a big battle in the UK over whether open standards should be Restriction/Royalty-Free (RF) or Fair, Reasonable and Non-Discriminatory (FRAND). That matters, because open source can't in general implement FRAND standards (there are legal hacks that can be applied in a few special circumstances.) First it seemed that RF had the upper hand [.pdf], but later comments from officials cast doubt on that. Now we have the definitive answer from the UK Minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude: 'The Government require that their ICT should be built on open standards, wherever possible, to improve competition and avoid lock-in to a particular technology or supplier. Fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) specifications may present some difficulties for the open source software development model in terms of patents and royalties. To deliver a level playing field for both open source and proprietary software, open standards are needed.' Will UK government use of open source finally take off, or is this a hollow victory?"
While both discussions are worthwhile to have.
Opensource vs closed source and open standards vs proprietary they not the same discussion.
As archivist I am a full supporter of open standards but don't really care whether my software is opensource or closed... as long as I can still look at my archives in 10-20-50 years.
organised by Microsoft and their little weasels subvert this measure... Just ask Brazil about what Microsoft was up to in their fight against .odt usage by Brazilian government departments... Just remember what Microsoft got up to when the State of Massachusetts wanted to mandate open formats for documents... Just watch Microsoft start their little tricks to get OOXML manddated in UK Government because it's an ISO standard... a standard which is impossible to implement by third parties because of the legacy backwards compatibility required by the binary blobs that they were able to get away with and an ISO standard which should never have been accepted in the first place if it hadn't have been for Microsoft's behind the scenes shenanigans in perverting national standards bodies.
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
A good place to start would be with ISO. Few know that most ISO standards are licensed products: http://www.iso.org/iso/licence_agreement Yes, you technically need to pay if you want to use standard country codes.... *K
You're asking if Open Source will "take off" in the UK government but last time I checked Linux servers were already heavily used within UK government organisations (although, granted, Windows Server is also).
As archivist I am a full supporter of open standards but don't really care whether my software is opensource or closed... as long as I can still look at my archives in 10-20-50 years.
And how useful is that standard to you if no one can afford to pay for the license required to implement the software to read your archives?
Why can't open source be fair, reasonable, and non-discriminatory? All of those adjectives apply to any open source license better than they apply to any proprietary license.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
I don't care about open-source so much (despite being a heavy advocate for its use and even contributing myself). That's neither here nor there in terms of government projects and it's hardly likely to make a difference either way.
But when you define a standard, say a document interoperability format, etc. then you should damn well be able to do what you like to implement it, and shouldn't have to license anything or pay any money to use it.
I don't care if we standardise on Word 2000 format - so long as there is a way for EVERYONE, even Joe Bloggs who works in government department X and is sick of dealing with the software's inconsistencies, to knock up something that can do a better job because he has a copy of the standard and EVERY POSSIBLE VARIATION that could occur in a file like that. I don't care if he then goes on to leave government, start a company and sells the software he makes back to government - that's just healthy enterprise.
Schools have a "common transfer format" file for telling other schools which pupils they are sending there. It's a simple standard, works perfectly and everywhere and it doesn't matter one iota what software is on the other end. I've seen the file import straight into large management systems, and hand-edited some of my one to pipe through batch files. The point is that it's either standards-compliant or not. If my utility/application can't handle a standard-compliant format, then it's NOT standards-compliant. If it can, it doesn't matter WHO made it or how much it cost.
What I care about is that the standard should exist and do what a standard should do - be a definitive, complete, reference to a particular way of doing things that ANYONE can become compliant with. It really wouldn't matter if every dentist in Britain used a different piece of healthcare software (as they no doubt do for finance, PAYE, taxation, etc.) - if they stuck to the standard, it would all just work and then you'd have some true competition to get into dentist's surgeries form software companies.
Open source is another matter entirely, to do with transparency and code-security (both arguments of which have a point but are really things that matter infinitely less than just giving the locked-in proprietary vendors a kick-up-the-arse by making them deal with standards-compliant competitors).
Open standards, however, are a no-brainer. The only reason NOT to have an open standard is to give one of the bidders an unfair advantage. That's it.
Before I even consider your grammar (or lack there of) the answer is simple. They are still the worlds 6th largest economy. They are also the part of the european union, and has some say in how that is run. If enough countries in the EU say that open standards are required by law - guess what? All the countries in the EU will use open standards. Considering the EU is the largest economy, even bigger than the States. So yes, they are still relevant.
Population of 62 million. Imports of 750 billion USD. They do better on the Ease of Doing Business Index than the U.S., plus they'll probably be the last European country to sever ties with the U.S. as the E.U. moves to become a larger economic power than the U.S. and China. That's assuming the E.U. survives another 10 years of course (and assuming the U.K. stays in the E.U.).
By the way, that import statistic (probably the most important in this case) means they import nearly twice as much per capita as the U.S. In addition, their trade deficit is 10% of their imports. The U.S. trade deficit is 33% of their imports.
So yeah, their decisions on standards like this are pretty important, economically speaking.
The right to protest the State is more sacred than the State.
They're related in this case due to the licensing involved in implementing a standard that includes patented components. Under FRAND licensing, patent-holders pool patents and agree to license them in a uniform way, but not for free. This makes it impossible to distribute software that implements the patents for free, which makes the general way open-source projects are run impossible.
I suppose it depends in part on what you define as an "open standard" to begin with. Is something really an open standard if it cannot be implemented without paying patent licensing fees?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Opensource and open standards are different things
But closely intertwined. In particular "open" standards can be divided into two main categories.
Open and unencumbered standards where anyone can implement the standard without having to sign license agreements or pay royalties.
Open but encumbered standards where anyone can buy and read a copy but to implement the standard legally you have to sign a patent license agreement and pay license fees.
Of couse there is the further complication that thanks to how patents work it is impossible to be sure a standard is completely free of patent encumberenaces. You can only say that there are no known encumberances. Even being older than the typical lifetime of a patent isn't surefire protection in some countries.
as long as I can still look at my archives in 10-20-50 years.
And the best way to maximise the chance of that is to have the widest support possible for said standard. FOSS projects generally can't afford to pay patent license fees and even if they could the patent licenses are generally incompatible with major FOSS licenses. Sometimes FOSS projects implement encumbered standards anyway (either illegally or through basing the project in a country where the encumberance doesn't apply) but a few legal threats could easilly cause the project to pull the feature (yes you can go on using the old version for a while but as the underlying platforms move on that is likely to get harder and harder).
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
Open source software means that if the original developer goes out of business, then somebody else can take it over. Also it means that the software can be ported to whatever devices people use in 50 years, instead of having to keep alive an archaic 2011 PC.
Open source has huge implications for archiving.
SURELY NOT!!!!!