EU Wants To Redefine "Closed" As "Nearly Open" 239
Glyn Moody writes "A leaked copy (PDF) of Version 2 of the European Interoperability Framework replaces a requirement in Version 1 for carefully-defined open standards by one for a more general 'openness': 'the willingness of persons, organizations or other members of a community of interest to share knowledge and to stimulate debate within that community of interest.' It also defines an 'openness continuum' that includes 'non-documented, proprietary specifications, proprietary software and the reluctance or resistance to reuse solutions, i.e. the "not invented here" syndrome.' Looks like 'closed' is the new 'open' in the EU."
Well, actually ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Looks like 'closed' is the new 'open' in the EU.
Actually, it looks like "corrupt" is the same old corrupt that it's always been. Gotta wonder just what changed hands to make that happen.
How hard is it? (Score:5, Insightful)
A) Open specs
B) An open implementation of those specs both on
C) Not patent encumbered
For just about everything there is a suitable open format. Lets see here:
Images? There are many
Audio? Ogg Vorbis
Video? Ogg Theora
Document? ODF or PDF (not sure how "open" PDF really is but its pretty universal)
There isn't a single thing that governments really need that isn't open or can be created for less cost than contracting it to proprietary vendors.
Continuum (Score:2, Insightful)
" also defines an 'openness continuum' "
So - just like Creative Commons, then?
(IHNRTFA)
Doublespeak and Redefining (Score:4, Insightful)
The older I get the more I realize how powerful those in power are. Not a conspiracy, just a bunch of greedy SOBs who will do whatever they can get away with to control and own more. From marketing being used to dilute meanings to out and out bribery of committee members to swing votes or bypass procedures. The worst part is that they get their power readily from another group, far more numerous than they, of individuals too lazy or too overwhelmed to pay attention to what is being done to them.
Our history is full of cycles. Are we approaching another age of the Robber Baron in another form? Did the age ever truly leave? Nah. The rich and powerful and greedy have always been and always will be the rich and powerful and greedy. Only now, they are immortal corporations. They can die, but not in ways we can, nor are they truly limited in years. The funny part, like a good tragic comedy, is that the greed that makes them so powerful and dangerous is often the very thing that kills them in the end.
But the carnage they leave behind.
Re:How hard is it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Continuum (Score:1, Insightful)
Yes, thank you. Part of being open is being OK with alternative viewpoints. People don't have to give their work away for free if they don't want to. And recognizing proprietary developers who nevertheless take care of their community is better than turning up your nose and saying NOPE NOT GPL COMPATIBLE GET OUT
Re:Doublespeak and Redefining (Score:2, Insightful)
It sucks to have to face the reality that in an almost infinite universe, a spiral galaxy's arm (one of many) of which an insignificant blue planet, (third from the sun), spins that there are such small minded individuals that are incapable of seeing future generations and simply not caring for the inhabitants that they're borrowing resources from. All to get a few material possessions or to feel that they have importance. Yes, they even think that digital watches are still pretty neat.
To the future generations we leave a legacy of distrust, distaste and disgust. They in turn will do the same for the next, until the life-form known as Homo Sapiens will be no more.
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“Believing in Father Christmas is important,” says Pratchett. “It trains our imaginations on the little lies so we can believe the big lies like justice [and] truth.” - UK Times.
Re:Continuum (Score:5, Insightful)
First of all, 'open' formats has nothing to do with source code.
Second, "open source" is not synonym with "free software" (like software that uses the GPL as license). This has nothing to do with the discussion. And open source does not even means giving work away for free. If somebody sells their code, it is open source, for example.
Creative commons is another example of "opening" stuff that is not code.
I agree that there is a continuum from completely closed to completely open, but any format demanded by governments should be open and non encumbered by patents or other licenses.
There is nothing stopping someone or some company form writing a proprietary piece of software to read/write some open format. But in many cases it is not possible to have a open/free/whatever version of a software to read/write some closed format. This causes an artificial restriction on access to the information made available in that format, what should be inadmissible in certain scenarios.
Why should someone need to license or buy a piece of software form specific companies to have access to government data? This is unacceptable.
Re:How hard is it? (Score:3, Insightful)
PDF is very open -- although there are still extensions that are difficult to work with without proprietary software. As an electronic document medium, PDF is pretty much what I demand from people who send me formatted documents; it is, in my opinion, something of a lingua franca for formatted documents. There is also DVI, though it is not as popular, and if all else fails, Postscript (which can, in the worst case, simple be sent to a printer).
"There isn't a single thing that governments really need that isn't open or can be created for less cost than contracting it to proprietary vendors."
True, but sadly, it is not something we will see here in America. Proprietary software is so deeply ingrained in our government, and corporate interests are so powerful, that I would be very impressed if it could all be shaken off within my lifetime. Further compounding the problem is the level of understanding of technology that key decision makers seem to have, which is a level that can only be described as "complete ineptitude."
Open is the pinnacle of ambiguosity. (Score:3, Insightful)
Open standards committees inhibit innovation (Score:5, Insightful)
The previous version required that interoperability standards be owned by non-profit committees. Having worked with a number of such organizations I can tell you that as a customer, being locked into a committee-owned standard is as great an obstacle to innovation and efficiency as is a closed de facto standard, especially when the government is involved.
It will continue to be far better for the customer over time when the customer can pick and choose which standards and vendors they will use. This allows customers to choose the balance they want to strike between compatibility and richness of functionality.
I do agree that a reasonable criteria for use by government agencies is that a standard specification be free and unencumbered, but no thank you to design by committee.
Re:Continuum (Score:5, Insightful)
Alternative viewpoints are great. Alternative definitions, however, are intentionally misleading. This is an alternative definition.
You see, the viewpoint that closed-source and proprietary standards are great already exists. The viewpoint that open-source and non-encumbered standards are great also already exists. There is no new viewpoint being proposed here. That's beacuse this is not a matter of viewpoint. It's a not-so-subtle attempt to blur the definitions that distinguish two existing viewpoints. There is only one reason for accidentally doing this: sheer incompetence. There is only one reason to deliberately do anything like that: the desire to equate things which are inherently distinct; that is, the desire to confuse. It's either incompetence or it's deception and neither of those are worth defending.
Whether you're offended that some people care about the GPL more than you would like them to has nothing to do with it. Whether commercial/proprietary software gets a bad rap more than you want it to also has nothing to do with it.
That's absolutely correct. I can develop a program, or a protocol, or a format, and I can lock it away in a safe and bury it if that's what I feel like doing. I can copyright it and restrict it on that basis, or I can try to patent it. I can hoard the source code and release it only as a black-box binary. However, if I do that and then refer to it as "an open standard" then that would make me a liar. This is really simple.
I never understood why you and so many others want to equate the desire that things be called what they are with telling others what they should do with their work. They are not remotely the same. If I don't want to use a program because it's proprietary, I am not forcing that program's author to do anything. Nor am I telling him how he should use his programming talents. He is free to find someone else who does want to use his program. This is just another thinly-veiled "accept this thing and like it, or else there's something wrong with you" and I'm not buying it.
There is also a question about the morality of governments releasing public information in proprietary formats. My tax dollars have already paid to produce whatever documents the government releases. It belongs to we the people. Why should I have to pay a second time to obtain a proprietary program to access this public information that my tax dollars have already paid for? I celebrate the right of private citizens and private businesses to use whatever format pleases them, whether it's freely available or not. But when we are talking about governments there is a perfectly valid objection to the use of proprietary software, whether or not anyone finds that convenient.
Re:Well, actually ... (Score:5, Insightful)
nothing has to change hands... this is how the lobbyist sycophants work. "Open Sources" was the new buzzword the pleb bureaucrats want.... so lobbyists continually re-spin words until something sticks... like little kids begging daddy for candy it goes from "no candy" to "how many pieces to get you to shut up so I can work". Unfortunately lobbyists aren't treated like begging children.
Re:How hard is it? (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. Governments are the one entity that can actually defend an open standard by simply saying that no patents apply to it. If someone thinks they have a claim, then they can raise the issue before it gets that far. But even then, if given the choice between denying someone a sanctioned monopoly (patent) or denying the entire world a viable standard, it's hard to justify the monopoly. Even reasonable patents are generally more an inevitable result of the state of technology than of some unique, singular leap. People are denied patents all the time. For every granted patent, there are any number of people doing equivalent work that are not only denied the patent but may be denied even the right to use their own work since it then violates the patent. Limiting patents as they apply to open standards hardly seems like a high price to pay.
It is pretty clear that the real impediments to open standards are a matter of "follow the money".
Re:Well, actually ... (Score:5, Insightful)
USA! FUCK YEAH!
How's your education system going? Any improvements?
They don't say what you accuse them of saying (Score:5, Insightful)
By placing open on one and of the spectrum, and closed on the other, they very clearly are stating that the two are opposites. And to me, that seems like a perfectly fair and accurate description of the range of openness that exists in information systems and standards. Moreover, they conclude the section on openness with this recommendation:
Do you not see that by distorting their words to advance your own agenda, and attributing to them malicious intent without any basis in fact, you undermine the very cause which you pretend to champion? Is that what you want to do? Do you really want to undermine the credibility of those who advocate for free and open standards, especially in the public sector?
Here is the full text of the section on oppenness, so that everyone can see it in its entirety, and draw their own conclusions.
Re:Continuum (Score:5, Insightful)
Scrapping and replacing it would be less sophisticated than what is being done here. You could say they are extending it, or you could say also that they are blurring it. If it were a great unknown, or new territory, or something like that for which there were not already clear and well-understood definitions, then that may make it excusable or at least understandable. However, that's not the case here.
It wouldn't apply there because paper is not inherently free. Someone has to cut down the trees, someone has to process the wood into paper, someone has to ship that paper from the paper mill, and someone has to print on it. The printed copies are a limited resource. If you have 100 printed copies, you cannot sell or give away 50 of them and still have 100 copies. Any that you sell must be replaced with more or else you will run out and be unable to sell or give away any more.
Electronic records are nothing like this. The government already has computers and Internet access because it has used tax dollars to pay for those. Now that it owns them, those can be reused to distribute infinite perfect copies of electronic records at no additional charge. There is no ongoing cost of acquiring more paper and using more ink.
Yet people around the world are willing to release both those formats and software that can work with them for free. Maybe those individuals are taking one for the team and bearing that cost themselves. The end result is that all of the rest of us do have formats available that don't cost us anything at all. The people who produced those formats and that software have specifically and deliberately taken steps to make sure of that, examples of which include their decision to use open licenses and their decision to seek no patents for their creations.
There's something about taking a moral stand that makes many people uncomfortable. I suspect that's because it goes against their beliefs that convenience is everything by providing a counter-example. Can I prove that? No. Does it seem rather obvious to me? Yes, it does. Just as people who follow a religion can fail to adhere to its tenents without deliberately and consciously deciding "hey, I think I'd like to be a hypocrite," people can believe that immediate convenience is the only worthy criteria for decision-making without necessarily being aware that their choices reveal this pattern. This means you must use introspection and cannot correctly assume the reality of your stated intentions, however sincere and heartfelt they may be. It's the reason why all of the differing views about wisdom and what it actually is generally agree on one thing, and that's the importance of truly knowing yourself.
If you really want a mundane response, I will say this much. A government that is wasteful when it is capable of not being wasteful is, in fact, taking advantage of its people. This is much worse when it behaves this way because of financial and political interests that stand to profit from said waste, because then it is no accident. However, it's still pretty bad when it's an innocent mistake, and we the citizens should expect better. I believe this to be the morally correct, or if that is really an obstacle for you, I also believe it to be ethically correct.
Cut out the "Idiocracy" tag, guys. (Score:5, Insightful)
Goddamn! Who are the idiots who keep tagging everything idiocracy? It's pretty annoying. Is it supposed to be clever?
I'm checking "No Karma Bonus" since I'm posting off-topic on purpose. Sorry, but after the last few articles randomly tagged "idiocracy", I couldn't hold it in anymore. Mod me how you will.
Re:Are you serious? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Well, actually ... (Score:3, Insightful)
The U.S. has the freest internet access in the WHOLE WOILD!
If true, that's pretty sad.
Fortunately, I'm pretty sure it's not true.
Re:How hard is it? (Score:3, Insightful)
Is there a reason "print to PDF" isn't sufficient, for anything you'd use a Word document for?
Re:How hard is it? (Score:3, Insightful)
The non-Adobe PDF creators do not implement feature that no-one uses.
Re:EU "Union" As "Country"? (Score:5, Insightful)
They are not out of touch. But people seem to think they are, this comes in the combination with the fact that the general population has a very bad knowledge of how the Union works.
I saw one comment in the line of: "damn the commission for forcing the Lisbon treaty on us", while it was in fact the European Council consisting out of the prime-ministers of the member-states who 1) took initiative for it and 2) signed the document.
Now, the other rather amusing thing is that, during previous EP elections, there was a poll in Sweden, where they asked people of whether they wanted the EU to grow into a sort of USE or whatever, in any case, the yes sayers where in the line of 15% for this (not really a majority, but still way over a million people), but when you start asking questions on the specifics and how they think the EU should be run, the solutions are almost always federal in nature.
The main point here is that people has in general no idea what they are talking about, and that the "out of touch" thing being that the top are using fancy words that their opponents have managed to get very charged from a political point of view. This include for example the word "federalism". In the now defunct constitutional treaty, the word "federal" was used in an early draft, but some head of state (think it was Tony Blair) in the negotiation got them to change the word to "supernational", technically they mean exactly the same thing, but the f-word is so charged with some people that they would not be able to stomach seeing it in a treaty.
You may of-course say that this just mean that the council is even more out of touch, but ask yourself:
The council consist of ministers from the member-states (executive officials who suddenly are law-makers), who are indirectly elected, do you think it is better that the directly elected parliament have more to say about any formed law?
Most people, even those who are opposed to an USE type organisation, say yes to the question I just wrote down, this is rather interesting, as that is basically support for a federal EU. A powerful council on the other hand makes the Union a more confederal styled organisation.
Re:EU "Union" As "Country"? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:How hard is it? (Score:3, Insightful)
here isn't a single thing that governments really need that isn't open or can be created for less cost than contracting it to proprietary vendors
How about project management software, 3d rendering tools, Production Ready video editing tools, and automated translation middlewear?
There are definitely needs out there which are non-trivial and which Open Source software hasn't fulfilled. There are a lot that are, and many times better than paid options. But you can't just broadly blanket mandate OSS on principle.
Original article is misrepresented (Score:3, Insightful)
This post is simply wrong. The poster has completely distorted the message in the original text by using unfair citing methods.
If you actually read the article, it defines the openness continuum as the range *between* "freely [---] accessed, reused and shared" and "non-documented, proprietary software". Not very groundbreaking or controversial.
Boring.
On the other hand, it is obvious that nearly all responders with strong opinions on the matter also have not bothered to read the article.
Interesting?
Re:Stop being cynical (Score:4, Insightful)
Which begs the question of whether or not it should be illegal to implement technological measures to prevent others from doing so, or to intentionally remove access/compatibility that once existed.
Re:Well, actually ... (Score:5, Insightful)
[citation needed]
And If you start a sentence with "in fact", [citationS needed]. Do you really mean to say that you believe your Bush family today isn't at least as nepotist as "our (hidden, because I can't say I can think of too many offhand) old elites? I'm curious, what do you call buying a representative's allegiance through "campaign contributions"? Because I suspect that if you were to correlate donations with voting behavior, you'd be pretty shocked and appalled. And yet, the fact that that happens has nothing to do with "big government", just with people creating rules that are to their own advantage rather than to another's, and nobody caring enough to protest as long as they keep it hidden from view.
In any case, "The libertarians amongst us" are a bunch of twits who use banal stereotypes in order to support their own beliefs, fearing to actually look for sources for their idiotic claims about "Europe" or "communism" because all they're interested in is pushing their own agenda, and for that you need fear of government. You rail against this "socialism" shit, yet you're afraid to look for confirmation from sources other than Glenn Beck's writing (because fuck knows he's the poster child of academic rigour in his research). If you want to see what deregulation did for the American consumer, go read Elizabeth Warren's "The Two-Income Trap". If you deregulate banks, they're not suddenly going to be nice to you, as though the 2500 year old usury laws/taboo was utter nonsense. They're going to try to suck you dry for all you're worth, and even if they don't succeed with you, they will succeed with your friends and neighbors. Only they won't talk about it because they feel it is their personal failing that they couldn't get better rates from the bank. Yet "libertarians" suck it all up and say "this is a risk of the free market. What the fuck is free about it? The relative bargaining power of the bank vis-a-vis the lone consumer is enormous. Of course there's going to be abuse of power there, resulting in terrible deals for the consumer. Remember that slogan "everyone is equal under the law"? You need regulation to enforce that. The open market won't create it. [hanover.edu] Why would they? There is no incentive whatever to do so, as there is nobody who can check their power except the government.
Have you not been watching the news in your country? How, pray tell, do you maintain this idiotic notion that the USA doesn't suffer from high prices? Try talking to anyone who's needed to go in for some sort of medical treatment, and see if they didn't go bankrupt afterwards because of lost income, or somesuch. as for high unemployment, again, [citation needed]. You kept the entire automobile industry alive through huge tariffs and subsidies, not least of which through actually subsidizing gas prices so that manufacturers didn't feel the need to try for better mileage. That industry's dead now, and you've got at least 10-15% unemployed atm. Think they'll be going away soon?
Re:How hard is it? (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want to take advantage of the advanced PDF features like embedded javascript or forms that submit to the web, you're basically SOL without Acrobat and even if you could create them, most of the OSS readers don't support the advanced features.
How are those "features", advanced or otherwise, in a format that was supposed to be about making sure the document looks like it's supposed to anywhere it's viewed?
Just because adobe wants to hang a bag on the side of it doesn't mean that if they're trying to use that crap, they're using the wrong tools.
Re:Doublespeak and Redefining (Score:0, Insightful)
There are no ideals.
Know what you want.
Claim it your "right".
Adjust it enough so that majority of others either can identify with you directly or hypothetically, or can believe that supporting your case will boost their well being.
Using the supporters, fight those whose interests are contrary to what you want.
Win.
Eradicate remnants of your opposition as "evil" or "traitors".
Instantiate tradition and rituals to celebrate your victory and indoctrinate the newcomers, newborn as well as foreign-born, to perpetuate new status quo. Demand gratitude!
Occasionally instantiate a witch-hunt against "enemy agents", as any new opposition appears. Of all people, you know they aren't any better then yourself.
If opposition is reasonable, close deal with them to stage fake "revolution", to relieve the tensions and buy some time before the public sees through it.
Re:They don't say what you accuse them of saying (Score:2, Insightful)
Ok, my conclusions:
1. You should put the previous version's text too, if you want people to "draw their own conclusions"
2. The definition of "openness as a feeling of persons" still makes waters. It uses deliberatively weak wording - "willingness to share knowledge" doesn't actually mean that they are legally obligated to do it, for example.
3. They have invented one new euphemism ("on the other end of the openness continuum") to replace a very valid existing word: "closed" - which is not used a single time on the text that you pasted.
Re:Well, actually ... (Score:3, Insightful)
"Punishing the wealthy" is a strawman perpetraited by those born with a silver spoon in their mouth who never had to do any real work in their life.
Get a clue. It's about leveling the playing field. The goal isn't to make everybody equal, it's to give everybody a fair shot at success as far as this is possible.
And you're deluding yourself if you think Europe is any more corrupt than the US.
Open Standards not Open Source (Score:2, Insightful)
The biggest hurdle was to support "open standards" with an objective definition that didn't cut the European Standards Organisations (ESOs) out of the institutional picture. Of the three ESOs, two of their business models are based on selling copies of their standards to make money - which flies in the face of the part of the "open standard" definition that requires free access...
The issue of a "spectrum of openness" is only a secondary issue, invesnted to help around that dilemma: instead of a boolean "this is | is not an open standard", the compromise was to have instead a scale. Who gets to judge where something sits on the spectrum? Well, that now is the sticking point. Best bets would be for an agreed set of criteria, but let any agency who wants to use a particular standard make up their own mind.
This will mean that some will conclude that MSFT Office OOXML is totally open and others that it sucks; or that IETF RFC 2616 is totally open and others that it's managed by a non-recognised standards body, and therefore is not a standard....
This will run and run...
Re:open standards and closed source (Score:3, Insightful)
The simple fact is - that if the source ain't open then the 'standards' can't be open.
Yes, you can have open standards implemented with closed source. TCP/IP, for example, was a closed source open standard before KA9Q and others implemented their own versions.
An open standard, however, can't be defined by a closed source implementation (eg, OOXML), and an open standard can't require licenses for documentation or distribution. And it's the latter that this particular change is aimed at... letting European standards bodies that make money from licensing standards play in the sandpit along with kids who really DO share well with others.