EU Calls For Use of Open Standards

fondacio writes "In a speech that is being reported as taking a swipe at Microsoft, EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes has called for businesses and governments to use software based on open standards. While not mentioning Microsoft by name, Ms. Kroes referred to the fact that '[t]he [European] Commission has never before had to issue two periodic penalty payments in a competition case' until this befell Microsoft. The things she told a conference in Brussels will not come as a surprise to Slashdot readers, but it's encouraging to hear the following quotes from someone in her position: 'Where interoperability information is protected as a trade secret, there may be a lot of truth in the saying that the information is valuable because it is secret, rather than being secret because it is valuable... we should only standardize when there are demonstrable benefits, and we should not rush to standardize on a particular technology too early... I fail to see the interest of customers in including proprietary technology in standards when there are no clear and demonstrable benefits over non-proprietary alternatives.'"

ha!

Neelie Kroes rules. She makes me proud to be Dutch. That does not happen too often. Soccer be damned.

Re:ha!

Never mind - that perl script he gave you looks quite useful.

Well it was inevitable really

Time is clearly the legislatures of the world of old men who think the Internet is a series of tubes and they are being replaced by people who at least slightly more tech savvy.

Insightful Troll.

Parent might be worded as a troll, but it is also insightful -- it is scary as hell that the people (Ted Stevens) most directly responsible for legislating the future of the Internet are so completely clueless as to the nature of the beast.

I don't mean that every congressman needs to become an expert on every niche domain of knowledge humans have ever dreamed of -- but at the very least, if you're going to legislate something, learn something about it, or delegate to someone who has.

Interesting.

Europe does a lot of stupid things, but it also does some amazingly brilliant things. This speech is brilliant, let's hope the follow-up isn't stupid. It's definitely a jab at Microsoft, but it's also a jab at ISO in the comments about not rushing things. I think Europe is most displeased with what is going on, or at least some senior figures within it. This does need to translate to action. Possibly on more than one front. If the European Courts are presented with evidence that Microsoft hijacked the ISO standards procedure in an effort to "comply" with prior rulings in a dishonest way, I imagine the court would not be pleased. Could it be considered contempt of court to attempt to mislead the court over compliance? Does the EU court system even have such a concept? If not, can/will the judges increase the fines to reflect the seriousness of the situation? Or given Microsoft's continual appeals and non-payment, are there any other penalties they can exact, such as suspending the business license for Microsoft's European branch?

It's the whole world.

No one likes corruption and everyone is fed up with Microsoft. Kroes has done a fine job of expressing some of the world's contempt, but anywhere there's technical competence people are angry about the ISO hijack. South African, Brazilian and Indonesian citizens have all piped up. World wide corruption has produced world wide derision which will be followed by rejection.

Re:Interesting.

Or given Microsoft's continual appeals and non-payment, are there any other penalties they can exact, such as suspending the business license for Microsoft's European branch?

Say: It was a real blow with a diplomatic Commissioner who did not mention the elephant in the room. The European political class is pissed by Microsoft's lobbying against open standards and interoperability, its software patents agitation, the OOXML debacle and its disobedient treatment of the Commission. Microsoft has public affairs problems in different parts of the Commission. Lobbying for Microsoft is generally perceived as working for Tobacco lobby groups.

a) Nelly indirectly endorsed the OFE Open Parliament petition [openparliament.eu] and the Hague Declaration [digistan.org].

b) Nelly spoke of proprietary vs. non-proprietary standards, a terminology not used by the Commission before.

c) Nelly recommended Munich and the Netherlands as best practice.

There is much to learn from other public bodies such as Munich - and I am delighted to have the Mayor of Munich here this morning to tell us about his experience. But Munich is not alone: there is also the German Foreign Ministry [switched to Linux and open standards], and the French Gendarmerie. The Dutch Government and Parliament are also moving towards open standards [ososs.nl].

d) Munich's Mayor Christian Ude took the floor and explicitely condemned OOXML after her speech and spoke of the 'free software' used in his municipality. Original reason: no extended support for Win NT 4

e) Ditmar Harhoff, an economist, called for patent reform. Europe would be well advised not to follow the US

g) Graham Tailor from Open Forum put emphasis on the Freedom to Leave.

From the speech of the Commissioner [europa.eu]:

The Commission must do its part. It must not rely on one vendor, it must not accept closed standards, and it must refuse to become locked into a particular technology â" jeopardizing maintenance of full control over the information in its possession.

This view is born from a hard headed understanding of how markets work â" it is not a call for revolution, but for an intelligent and achievable evolution.

But there is more to this than ensuring our commercial decisions are taken in full knowledge of their long term effects. There is a democratic issue as well.

When open alternatives are available, no citizen or company should be forced or encouraged to use a particular company's technology to access government information.

No citizen or company should be forced or encouraged to choose a closed technology over an open one, through a government having made that choice first.

These democratic principles are important. And an argument is particularly compelling when it is supported both by democratic principles and by sound economics.

I know a smart business decision when I see one - choosing open standards is a very smart business decision indeed.

and:

Non-proprietary standards avoid the need for licence agreements and royalties. They avoid the need to ask permission if you want to use or develop the technology â" follow-on innovation may be easier. They avoid subjecting the future development of the standard and the technology to the commercial interests of the technology's originator.

Re:The Netherlands and FOSS

Actually this doesn't matter at all as the ministries as users are irrelevant.
http://www.ososs.nl/noiv/en [ososs.nl]

The Netherlands will create a governmental lobby platform.

It is all about the domino effect, Microsoft is very afraid of it. The critical mass to get a massive shift. Microsoft will combat it and further worsen its position.

Re:

"Strict gun-control, stupid "hate speech" laws"

Only an american could list those as bad things.... *sigh*...

Re:Interesting.

Hmm. Gun control laws... I thought it was mandatory that every able citizen keep a fully automatic weapon+bullets in Switzerland. But we dont see the violence levels there as we do in America. I wonder if we can attribute that to American Media? (I would, due to Bhutan- look it up on wikipedia).

Guns/weapons do not make violence. Violence comes from people who act violent. Stopping the majority of this violence will require reviewing the source of the violent actions in people, regardless of preconceptions. Is it from the media? Is it from less religious influence? Is it from single parent households? Is it from the disparity of wealth?

And Hate speech, according to whom? Should we not allow vitriol that some people spout be public, for surely intelligent people would realize it for what it is? I mean, we in the USA have the KKK, who hates blacks and Catholics. Fair enough. We even allow them to demonstrate *peacefully*, even though everybody knows what they say is just wrong on all points. We view that they have a point, even if horridly invalid.

Determining "Hate Speech" is just like "Obscenity Laws". Ill know it when I see it.

Re:

Switzerland is not part of the European Union.

Re:

Strict gun control & Hate Speech laws *ARE* bad things. If you can't see why, you are too far wrapped in the warm and fuzzy feel good of these do-nothing-but-make-you-a-victim laws. Otherwise you might have taken a look at the world around you and n

hey, the minister took a swipe at evil weasels.

should Microsoft decide to step straight into the fist as it's flying, that's their right. but then don't come whining about being decked by a girl.

Some Choice Quotes

The Commission must do its part. It must not rely on one vendor, it must not accept closed standards, and it must refuse to become locked into a particular technology - jeopardizing maintenance of full control over the information in its possession. When

Richard Stallman

Many of us benefit from his contributions, and I am grateful for that, but RMS is also a crack-pot and his statements must be taken with a grain of salt.

It is interesting how most people today point at political and religious fanactics and all agree that fanaticism is never good, while many here worship at the feet of a fanatic.

I'm all for advocating freedom, open source, and open standards. I also believe that these causes are best fought by level-headed folk. Acting like a crack-pot only makes the whole cause look bad.

Search your feelings Skywalker, you know it to be true.

Re:Richard Stallman

I have to take issue with you there on a couple of points. Stallman is a fanatic and he has entered crack pot country before. I happen to think he's right much of the time.

I take issue with:

It is interesting how most people today point at political and religious fanactics and all agree that fanaticism is never good, while many here worship at the feet of a fanatic.

1. Equating Stallman's fanaticism for free software, with the popular view of religious fanaticism is nothing but trolling. He isn't violent and he doesn't threaten bombings or beheading.
2. Fanaticism in the sense that Stallman portrays it is a good thing.
3. Demonstrably some people disagree with 'fanaticism is never good'. The fanatics quite like the idea for a start. Non-violent fanatics are a good thing, if only to remind us where we could do better/go further toward a goal.

Alex.

Re:

Not all fanatics are violent, but fanaticism is often unhealthy behavior. Fanaticism is often illogical. For instance, even when Jack Thompson has a point (little kids likely shouldn't be playing GTA) he can't really get credit for being correct because

Re:

RMS is also a crack-pot and his statements must be taken with a grain of salt.

Indeed, I rather suspect he's another one of Twitter's sockpuppets. The man is everywhere!

Re:

Off topic again. No problem. I wanted to give you a chance to explain before the trolls came in. I don't see eye-to-eye with you on a lot of things but flaming people doesn't really contribute anything to the discussion.

Re:

I'm not sure how Microsoft is destroying peoples' careers. I mean, I'm a .Net developer and get offers for Java, C++, etc positions, so I can't imagine how Microsoft could kill someones' career unless they do not keep up with the latest technologies.

Adver

Re:Profit? Crime has not paid.

Simple...

It's no longer possible to write a commercial desktop or server OS and expect to turn a profit from it... BeOS was great, but it wasn't compatible with microsoft and ultimately doomed.
Open source is barely competing, despite the obvious price advantage.

Similarly, you can't write a commercial office suite, just look at wordperfect, once the dominant player, now pretty screwed...

Novell faced a similar fate...

It's come to the stage that commercial competition with microsoft simply isn't viable... The only way to compete is very slowly through open source, leveraging the lack of cost and advantages of distributed development. Even then, the process of winning market share over from microsoft is far too slow to make a business selling competing software.

Re:Profit? Crime has not paid.

Unix and C has been with us since the beginning. Anybody who didnt realize that fact shouldn't be in computers, period.

C will cannibalize any prior language on any platform (from stamps to supers). After that, Unix will not be long to follow, due to simple methods of controlling hardware/software.

Also, the MacOS is dead. Dead through and through. Unix and Windows are the only 2 choices. Just so happens that a company used the FreeBSD base and added a snazzy GUI.

Even since that, guess what is next to die? Microsoft. Why? OSS people need only make the 90% solution, because that "90% @ free" is better than "100% @ big_money" according to many many people. When people realize that one doent need a 200$ operating system to take care of most tasks, they will switch. Acer, Dell, IBM, Asus, and the rest of the gang will make sure of that.

Re:the MacOS is dead

OSX is not an operating system, it's a whole heap of (very well done) toolkits and apps bundled with a *nix operating system.

Read your Tanenbaum son.

Re:Profit? Crime has not paid.

I wouldn't call a recruiter that recruits programmers for languages they're not experienced in morons. Maybe they're one of the few recruiters who realizes that a good developer can learn new technologies. And thats my point.

No technology lasts forever in its current state. Even the Linux now is different from the Linux 10 years ago. Good developers and admins keep learning and adapt. Bad ones don't. If you cannot work in the IT industry because the technology you learned is no longer used, then you destroyed your own career, not anyone else. You're responsible for making yourself marketable.

Re:Profit? Crime has not paid.

The statement about monetary incentives is wrong because what the Commission just expects compliance with its rulings. Usually companies do comply. The competition authority acts similarly to a court. Competitors file a complaint, then the Commission rules, then the convicted monopolist complies. This is the way is works. Microsoft broken the rules and refused to comply, it delayed the process, bullied the Commission, lobbied aggressively, even let foreign nations intervene on their behalf.

The penalties are just for non-compliance, the difficulties of the myriads of Microsoft lobby outfits to "understand" what the Commission wants. When Microsoft sued the Commission it won just another enemy. Microsoft acted like a bully, bought politicians, harassed the Commission. This made so many people fed up. Parliament members file parliament questions on Microsoft. Lobbying for Microsoft got a pretty bad smell if you care about your career in public affairs.