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."
Re:How hard is it? (Score:5, Interesting)
not sure how "open" PDF really is but its pretty universal
Wikipedia says "Formerly a proprietary format, PDF was officially released as an open standard on July 1, 2008, and published by the International Organization for Standardization as ISO/IEC 32000-1:2008". It also says Adobe has patents on it "but licenses them for royalty-free use in developing software complying with its PDF specification".
even if that wasn't the case there has long been a lot of fully compatible implementations of it (unlike Word).
Re:How hard is it? (Score:3, Interesting)
You may well want to check out scribus.
Re:How hard is it? (Score:2, Interesting)
There has been a lot of compatible PDF viewers, but the pool of PDF creation software is limited. Most OSS solutions implement a subset of the features. Even now, there really is nothing to complete with the feature level in Adobe Acrobat.
I'm not sure what all the features are, what I need (and probably what 99% of the population needs) is "convert some non-PDF document to PDF". Mac OS X does this natively, and I have used several free/cheap PC utilities to do the same. I've never had a document they couldn't do. They generally plug in through the print utility, so if you can print it you can convert it to PDF.
Re:How hard is it? (Score:2, Interesting)
which is why if your the eu you adopt an open format and declare that it doesn't infringe on any patents.
Stop being cynical (Score:3, Interesting)
I see it more as an anti DMCA.
AKA: "We won't force you to be open, but if someone figures out your proprietary protocol, or someone writes a program that supports your proprietary file format, well... c'est la vie!"
Re:How hard is it? (Score:5, Interesting)
PDF is pretty open, but that's not open enough for my liking. The standard mandates that any implementation honour the dopier "protections" in PDF documents ("Conforming readers shall respect the intent of the document creator by restricting user access to an encrypted PDF file according to the permissions contained in the file.") Honour them means you're bound to write a stupid implementation of DRM; fail to honour them and you get sued.
For example, I have a PDF file on my computer for which I do not have permission to save a copy (or print, etc.). That's right, I don't have permission to save the file. Fortunately I have a ready work-around for "saving" the file (i.e. copy it within the Finder), but seeing the Finder itself is (or, embeds) a capable PDF reader, I wonder if Apple isn't in violation of the standard by allowing their OS (which can interpret PDFs) to copy such files.
A file format is a structure for exchanging information between programs; a standard should be limited to describing that structure. The problem is that Adobe &c have extended the notion of "file format" to cover their intentions for behaviour of programs making use of that format.
Now I really wouldn't care if there was simply some kind of branding/trademark that allowed Adobe and mates to honour DRM within PDF readers and writers. If I want to make my own PDF reader/writer that doesn't fully honour the standard, then I have the option and can't use the trademark... but the fact that patents could be used to enforce the intent of the standard author means that the standard is not open enough. The GP's requirement needs to be that the standard not be patent encumbered in any way whatsoever.
Re:How hard is it? (Score:3, Interesting)
If Apple's PDF viewer does not allow to ignore DRM restrictions, maybe you should just use a different one that allows to do so?
Obviously. Until Adobe starts suing people, it's a theoretical threat. But it is reasonably likely that at some stage in the next 15 years or thereabouts, Adobe goes all SCO-like... self-destructive perhaps, but painful for all concerned.
For me as an individual, it makes sense to take my chances and "get it done" using software that might be in a technical breach of patent law. But it is irresponsible for the EU to expose themselves in the same way.
So my point is that a file format should only be considered acceptably open if the parties that establish it make an unconditional promise never to enforce patents concerning it. You obviously can't know about independent patent trolls, but that is a different problem and I think reasonably likely to be fixed through legislation.
Re:Are you serious? (Score:1, Interesting)
How can you implement legally Pantene in GPL source code?
Re:They don't say what you accuse them of saying (Score:5, Interesting)
Thank you. I would have modded you as Informative, but you're already at 5, and I wanted to respond anyway. I'm getting really sick at how often not just the headline is inflammatory and just plain wrong, but even the summary. I can't believe how far some people will go to twist the true nature of a thing until they can claim it stands for its exact opposite. What's even worse is that it gets by people whose only job is to check this stuff out before posting it to the front page of a widely read website. If this is the answer to print journalism dying, then maybe I should start up a subscription to my local newspaper, because the alternative is apparently much worse.
Also, I turned off the classic index just so that I could vote this story down as 'stupid' and tag it as both 'badheadline' and 'badsummary'. I suggest others do the same. Next to just not reading slashdot anymore, it appears it's the only feedback we can supply.
Re:Doublespeak and Redefining (Score:3, Interesting)
Where did the gp even indicate that he believed in an afterlife let alone God?
Being bound by ethics is the dilemma of the civilised free man. Without civility, man has and can only extended the animal characteristics into new dimensions. This is meaningless too. With civility man is able to dream of improving both one's own progeny and the progeny of others. *
While obsessing with "better future" is meaningless to the individual, in evolutionary terms it makes sense to spread the wealth so that both progeny and future progeny potential partners have a better chance of survival. After all, keeping the genetic pool wide is a good thing in terms of survival of the species; look at the number of species on the endangered list that are mostly because they don't have a large genetic pool to draw from.
* Original 'research' (come on, let me have some dreams of grandeur!)
Re:Well, actually ... (Score:5, Interesting)
No, the article looks like a troll.
An openness scala needs to have two extremes to be useful, which is why it also needs to included the worst of the worst in closedness, which reflects the minimum of openness.