Assessing the new European Interoperability Framework

Yesterday, the European Commission finally published the new version of the European Interoperability Framework [pdf]. We at FSFE have been working on this document for a long time. When it was published yesterday, we gave it a welcome despite some reservations.
Whether to welcome EIFv2 or not is a question of what you take as a baseline for comparison, and if you view the document isolated or in context. A lot will also depend on how the EIF is implemented.

But let’s take the issues in turn.

WIPO CDIP/6: Moving the glacier

Progress sometimes comes very gently. Last week’s session of the WIPO committee in charge of implementing the Development Agenda (CDIP) was a case in point. As in previous sessions, a lot of the discussion still revolved around procedural issues. Member states are battling over the question of how much power the committee should have, and Read more »

Standardisation for the 21st century & my Christmas wish to the EPO

The European Commission is setting out to reform Europe’s standardisation system. About time, too. Standards define what things around us look and behave like, whether soft- or hardware. Standardisation in Europe is currently dominated by a small number of organisations, and they’ve mostly done their business quietly in a corner where not many people cared Read more »

Battling the Hydra: FSFE’s work on Open Standards

On Friday we published an FSFE analysis on patents and standards, and shared it with the European Commission. This was in reaction to a  letter [pdf] which the Business Software alliance (BSA) had written to the Commission in a last-ditch attempt to eradicate the last traces of Open Standards from the European Interoperability Framework. We Read more »

FSFE’s statement on the relation between standards and patents at WIPO SCP/15

Summary: Software standards must be implementable in any software or business model, including those based on Free Software. When patents are included in software standards, they need to be licensed in a manner that doesn’t restrict their implementation in any way. Besides the absence of any other restriction, that means royalty-free licensing to any party Read more »

FSFE’s statement on patents at WIPO SCP/15

Statement to the 15th session of WIPO’s Standing Committee on the Law of Patents Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) (Geneva, 13 October 2010) We applaud the committee and the secretariat for commissioning the study led by Professor Bently, which provides a useful overview of a complex field, and represents a starting point for future debates. Read more »

FSFE’s opening statement at WIPO SCP/15

FREE SOFTWARE FOUNDATION EUROPE (FSFE) STATEMENT TO THE 15th SESSION OF THE STANDING COMMITTEE ON THE LAW OF PATENTS (Geneva, 11-15 October 2010) Thank you Mr Chairman. We should like to thank you for the opportunity to take the floor during this very important meeting. The agenda includes several items of great interest to the Read more »

IGF: Dreaming the cloud

This year’s Internet Governance Forum in Vilnius, Lithuania, was a huge event. There were about a hundred sessions, some with several topics crammed into them. In the session on “Data in the cloud: Where do Open Standards fit in?”, I shared a panel with Vint Cerf and the W3C’s Daniel Dardallier, among others. It turned Read more »

Power, Freedom, Software: SFD2010 in The Hague, Netherlands

For this year’s Software Freedom Day, I went to give a talk at the Royal Library in The Hague. Five groups had got together to organise an event for the day. Software Freedom Day is a good opportunity to take a step back and remind ourselves of the larger picture. That’s why I spoke about Read more »