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

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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 to look. Except the ones with a lot of money at stake, of course.

That explains why standardisation today is still a game that’s mostly played by big corporations. At the same time, much innovation is happening elsewhere, coming from individuals and small and medium-sized companies (SMEs). Their numbers are large, but they don’t really have a voice in standardisation. Where they could participate, they often lack the time, money and specialised expertise to do so.

On Monday November 22, the European Commission organised a conference on standardisation reform together with the European Patent Office. They deserve some credit for this, since they brought in a broader range of stakeholders than usual. That made their life harder, since now they’ll have to deal with a huge variety of opinions that people put before them during the event.

I was invited to speak (slides, pdf) about how standardisation affects Free Software, sharing a panel with HP’s Senior Counsel Scott Peterson. We quickly got to the discussion on the right way to license those patents that are essential for implementing a standard. We agreed that for standards concerning software interoperability, those patents need to be licensed free of royalties or restrictions.

For the benefit of the many people from the European Patent Office in the room, I included a slide on patents. This argued that patents are only one tool in a whole toolset to encourage innovation, and that they’re economically harmful for software. Scott said the night before that Free Software and standards are both areas where innovation isn’t motivated by exclusion. I couldn’t agree more.

As a bonus, our panel chair asked us towards the end of the panel whether there was anything we wanted to ask for from the EPO. So I smiled at the EPO people sitting in the first row and said: “Dear EPO, please stop granting patents on software. If you’re prepared to consider this change in policy, let’s talk.” While hardly subtle, this got me several very open and interesting conversations with those same people after the event. Maybe there really is a chance to change things for the better.

My biggest quibble is that the EC’s DG DIGIT comprehensively failed to provide Internet access in its own building. One extraordinarily helpful EC staffer (thanks! you rock!) spent a full 45 minutes trying to get me connected in many different, increasingly adventurous ways – no such luck.

On the whole, the event was very interesting and rewarding. It’s only an early step in the long process towards creating a standardisation system that’s fit for the 21st century (hey, let’s hope we’re done before the century is over), but it was a good beginning.

India boosts IT companies with Open Standards – Europe to be left behind?

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It’s not often that we get to celebrate a full-blown victory in Free Software policy work. Tuesday was such a day, as India’s government announced its policy on Open Standards.

The government’s decision is the end of a three-year battle between Free Software advocates and proprietary software vendors. The document (pdf) is short and sweet. The policy’s objective, in full:

The Policy provides a framework for the selection of Standards to facilitate interoperability between systems developed by multiple agencies. It provides organizations the flexibility to select different hardware and software for implementing cost-effective e-Governance solutions. It, therefore, promotes technology choice, and avoids vendor lock-in. It aims for reliable long-term accessibility to public documents and information in Indian context.

(Emphasis added)

Some crucial points:

Mandatory Characteristics

  • 4.1.2 The Patent claims necessary to implement the Identified Standard shall be made available on a Royalty-Free basis for the life time of the Standard.

That’s pretty clear. They could have added that the standard must have no restrictions that limit its implementation by anyone, in any business or software model.

  • 4.1.3 Identified Standard shall be adopted and maintained by a not-for-profit organization, wherein all stakeholders can opt to participate in a transparent, collaborative and consensual manner.

Sound familiar? We’ve been saying something similar for quite a while

  • 4.1.4 Identified Standard shall be recursively open as far as possible.

Same here.

And what if no standard exists yet for a particular area? Well, Free Software to the rescue. The government’s first preference in such cases will be to establish an interim standard based on the specifications of a mature Free Software reference implementation.

This policy is pretty much exemplary. And it’s a far cry from the sad state that the European Interoperability Framework (EIF) is in. Where the Indian document improved between revisions, the EIF has only got worse.

India’s public authorities will now be able to choose freely between suppliers, instead of being locked into proprietary formats and protocols. India’s citizens will now be free to use any software they wish to connect with their government, including Free Software.

Anyone who wants to supply software to India’s government will now have to wisen up about Open Standards. The country’s eGovernment market has a size of ten billion USD. With this prize dangling before them, I predict that the country’s IT companies will be quick to catch on, along with international Free Software vendors.

The European Commission now has to make a choice. It can continue to pour our tax Euros into a software market that is locked down by a few dominant companies. Or it can do what India just did: Use a strong Open Standards policy to open the market for competition from all suppliers out there. Glyn Moody sums up the consequences:

As a result, free software would be more likely to flourish in India than it would in Europe, since it would not be shut out of some government contracts constrained by proprietary standards, with all that this means for lack of choice and higher costs. India will end up with a richer and more dynamic software ecosystem than Europe, which will further disadvantage European coders struggling with economies that are not of the healthiest.

Put another way, India’s software developers just scored big time on competitive advantage. Will the European Commission and the member states provide us with the same advantage? Or will they continue to stand by and watch Europe’s software companies be overtaken (and, eventually, taken over) by those firms that will hone their skills in a highly competitive Indian market?

Over to you, Brussels.

Fighting software patents at WIPO

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At FSFE, we work in some committees of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). From October 11-15, WIPO’s Standing Committee on the Law of Patents (SCP, for short) had its 15th session. We participate there because the committee discusses questions related to patents (duh) and standards. Our main goals in the committee are:

  • convince WIPO member states (that’s virtually every country in the world) and WIPO staff why software shouldn’t be patentable.
  • explain to member states and WIPO staff the relation between standards and patents from the perspective of Free Software, and make them understand how rules must be shaped so that their countries can get the most out of Free Software.

When you’re travelling to a WIPO session you often don’t know what you’re going go get during the week-long meeting. There is an agenda, but it tends to change as the meeting goes on. You also never know when, whether and how often you’ll be allowed to speak. Observers like FSFE have to cede priority to member states and international organisations.

This time round, we got lucky. The main topic of the meeting was an “Experts’ study on exclusions from patentable subject matter and exceptions and limitations to the rights“, prepared by a team of outside academics and led by Lionel Bently, an “IP law” professor at Cambridge, UK.

Looking at WIPO’s recent history, the fact that such studies exist in itself is something that FSFE helped achieve. When we started participating in the discussions on a Development Agenda for WIPO, the organisation was extremely inward-looking. It thought its job was to increase the reach and of copyright, patents and trademarks, and it was bound almost exclusively to the interests of rights holders.

We helped to change this by backing the Development Agenda. Adopted by WIPO in 2007, it binds the organisation to considering the views of all stakeholders in copyright, patents, trademarks and other monopolies on ideas, rather than just seeking to maximise benefits for rights holders.

This has led to some visible change in WIPO. In 2008, Carsten Fink was recruited from the World Bank to become WIPO’s Chief Economist. For the first time, the organisation started basing its rule making on empirical evidence and differentiated discussions, rather than “a definite perspective – that IP is good”,1 the viewpoint of former WIPO Director General Kamil Idris. (It’s worth noting that WIPO’s financial affairs during his tenure still make for entertaining gossip in the organisation’s hallways these days.)

Explaining software patents & standards

This week’s meeting of the SCP was mainly supposed to discuss the study prepared by Professor Bently and his team of experts, in particular the section on software. On the agenda was also further discussion of the relation between patents and standards. That’s a topic which FSFE has long been working on in various fora, including the European Commission and the Internet Governance Forum.

We got to make three statements. The first was a general statement, outlining FSFE’s viewpoint on the issues on the agenda. The next two were more detailed.

In our second statement, we talked about the relation between standards and patents. This has been a topic for the SCP for several sessions. We argue that software standards need to be implementable by anyone, whether in Free Software or otherwise. Free Software licenses don’t allow you to impose additional conditions on the person you give the software to. You can’t say “you’re free to use, study, share and improve the software, but when you pass it on, you have to pay for a patent license”. That’s why patents included in software standards need to be licensed royalty-free to anyone who implements the standard.

The third statement talked about excluding software from patentability. Professor Bently’s study discusses at some length the practice of the European Patent Office (EPO) to grant patents on software, even though this contravenes the letter and spirit of European law, namely the European Patent Convention’s Article 52, which says that software “as such” is not patentable. Our statement discusses this in some detail.

Such detail in fact that the EPO, which also has a seat in the WIPO plenary, felt compelled to make a rare intervention quoting EPC Article 52 that software should not be patented “as such”. To which I can only say that patening software as cakes or oranges would be a lot less problematic. A lot of member state delegations were very interested in what we had to say. Hardcopies of FSFE’s statement on patents were quickly snapped up.

After long deliberations in informal sessions, the committee finally gave itself a work program. Among other things, the committee will work on exclusions, exceptions and limitations to patenting. So we managed to keep the topic on the table, and will now have an opportunity to discuss the matter in greater detail. The committee’s next session is scheduled for May 2011.

Slow and steady

Working at WIPO takes time, money (prices in Switzerland make most foreigners weep) and, above all, persistence. FSFE’s involvement has wrought some changes over the years, and there’s more to come. When we get to explain our views in the plenary, we are after all speaking to 200-300 diplomats and specialist policy makers from around the world. You don’t get many opportunities to explain to such a crowd why software patents are a bad idea, or why patents in software standards must be licensed royalty-free and without restrictions on their use.

That’s why we do this work. It’s a very large lever, and takes a long time to pull. We don’t always have results to show right away, or even anytime soon. But looking back on the last five years, FSFE has clearly made a difference. And I can promise you that we’ll keep on making a difference, at WIPO and elsewhere.

Battling the Hydra: FSFE’s work on Open Standards

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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 replied to the BSA’s arguments, picking them apart one by one.

Why Open Standards matter for Free Software

Here’s a bit of perspective to this episode. Open Standards are important because they can be implemented in any software model, whether Free or proprietary. Where Open Standards are used, programs compete on their merits rather than on the number of users they manage to lock in.

For a standard to be open means, among other things, that it can be implemented without restrictions such as an obligation to pay a licensing fee to the patent holder for every copy that’s made of the software. Such “running royalties” are a typical feature of patents licensed under so-called “(fair,) reasonable and non-discriminatory” ((F)RAND) conditions. Glyn Moody has a great introduction to the topic, and here’s an in-depth discussion of the relation between patents and standards. To be sure, zero royalties vs running royalties is just one of several issues when it comes to standards that involve software, but it’s certainly an important one.

That’s why FSFE puts a lot of effort into promoting Open Standards in different fora, such as WIPO, the Internet Governance Forum and the European Commission. We also organise Document Freedom Day each year at the end of March. We read the lenghthy documents from the European Commission, WIPO and any other relevant policy fora. We analyse. We publish. We form alliances where it serves to strengthen the Free Software message, without ever compromising on substance. Sometimes we coordinate with industry groups such as Open Forum Europe. If we have a common agenda, we work together. If we disagree, each party goes their own way. Such is the business of policy work.

A global campaign against Open Standards

Recently, the Business Software Alliance and its friends have been waging an all-out campaign against Open Standards. Last week’s letter was only the latest instance of what looks like a co-ordinated international effort by the BSA and its friends to get their message out to policy makers. Like the legendary many-headed Hydra, people pushing out the party line are seemingly everywhere. Over the past month or so, I kept hearing the same routine wherever I went, always in similar words.

A few quick words if you’re unfamiliar with the BSA: Prominent BSA members include Microsoft, IBM, SAP, Adobe, Siemens, and many others. The BSA is perhaps best known for everybody’s favourite stats on illicit copying of software, which routinely claim that everyone who uses unlicensed proprietary software would have bought a licensed copy if the unlicensed one hadn’t been available – an error known as the “lost sale myth”.

This time, the BSA argues that most Free Software licenses are compatible with RAND licensing of patents as we know it. That is clearly bunk. More than 85% of Free Software projects are distributed under licenses that are incompatible with RAND licensing. The exception are non-protecting MIT and BSD-type licenses.

Microsoft’s Wilfried Grommen argued at the Internet Governance Forum 2010 that RAND licensing is compatible with Open Standards. A week later, at the Westminster eForum in London, Francisco Mingorance, the BSA’s Senior Director Government Affairs, made the same point (have a look at Glyn Moody’s article on the event here).

Last week at WIPO, during the 15th session of the Standing Committee on Patents, a side event took place to inform WIPO delegates on the relation between patents and standards. Two figures on the panel were Benoit Mueller, formerly the BSA´s Director of European Software Policy; and Jonathan Zuck of the “Association for Competitive Technology“, a group that pushes for software patents. Both of them argued that RAND licensing of patents in standards was compatible with Free Software, and that governments shouldn’t express even the mildest of recommendations for Open Standards in software.

Somehow we weren’t surprised to see exactly those arguments repeated in the BSA’s letter to the European Commission, signed by Francisco Mingorance.

False flags?

Then there’s Florian Mueller, who is a bit of a special case. He claims credit for opposing software patents in Europe back in 2005, which used to buy him some credibility in the Free Software community. Recently, however, he has been running around the web as an “independent software developer” (here’s a typical quote), echoing the same message as Microsoft and the BSA in his blog, and in various comment threads. When challenged, he admits to being paid, but won’t say by whom:

What I have done is some work in connection with competition cases, which is explicitly exempt under the European Commission’s transparency rules. You’re not in a position to ask for more of a disclosure than the Commission does.

While I have no problem in principle with people lobbying for whatever they care about – hey, free speech –, doing it without disclosing who’s backing you strikes me as morally challenging. (You can find FSFE’s list of supporters here.)

In it for the long run

The European Interoperability Framework is just one battle among many. Besides the topic of interoperability in the public sector, there’s the task of reforming standardisation systems so that they produce Open Standards, and educating policy makers about the importance of the issue. I’m sure we’ll meet the BSA and its friends many times during this long-term effort. We’ll have to keep dealing with the Hydra’s heads for some time yet.

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

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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 implementing the standard.

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FSFE’s statement on patents at WIPO SCP/15

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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. We would like to thank the experts involved, both inside and outside WIPO, for their work.

We however regret that the study and the mandate which this committee provided did not include systems of open innovation, of which Free Software is the most established example.

We agree with the distinguished delegation of Brazil in highlighting that the patent system must strive for the equilibrium of rights among its users, which should, accordingly, not only comprise patent holders, but also the society as a whole, so that the welfare of the society as a whole prevails. They all constitute legitimate “clients” of the system.

In particular we note that the study highlights the wide-spread consensus that computer programs should be excluded from patentability. We applaud the study for considering the economic context in which we must consider the costs and benefits of patents on computer programs. The study concludes that the costs of patenting in this particular area far outweighs any conceivable benefits.

Indeed, the damage that software patents do to innovation and economic development strikes at the very heart of the digital society. They create an incalculable business risk for anyone engaging in the development of software. Due to the fact that reliably identifying prior art in software goes far beyond the capabilities of even the best-equipped patent office, software patents are routinely granted on inventions which have long existed, and are in fact not innovative at all.

This dovetails with the conclusions drawn by leading independent experts in the field, such as the Results of the 2008 Berkeley Patent Survey conducted by Pamela Samuelson et al. 1 The startup executives interviewed in the survey stated that patents generally provided only weak incentives to engage in innovation. The Samuelson study finds that that “a large share of startups, especially in the software industry, opt out of patenting altogether. ” While patents aid startups in the areas of hardware and biotechnology to capture competitive advantage, the Berkeley Patent Survey concludes “that for software and Internet companies, patents generally serve a much less important function in almost all of the entrepreneurial activities”.

Moving on to the debate about exclusions and exceptions, we note that for the particular area of software, the substance of Professor Bently’s study strongly suggests that the cost-benefit calculation of patenting will not be improved by granting exceptions to patentee’s rights. Contrary to the comments made in this room yesterday by Professor Bently, after considering the matter in depth, we arrive at the conclusion that exceptions, which are merely defensive, do not suffice to mitigate the damage done by patents on software.

As stated on Monday by the distinguished delegation of Brazil on behalf of the Development Agenda group, we must never lose sight of the fundamental trade-off at the root of the patent system: In order to provide an incentive to innovate, we award a monopoly. If we do not very carefully monitor the attendant risks for innovation and competition in the market, we will quickly find ourselves in a situation where the market is dominated by only a few companies. This is already the case in software today.

We agree with the statement made by the distinguished delegation of Iran that exceptions carry with them the dangers of restrictive interpretation and private ordering. For these reasons, we consider exceptions to be unsuitable as a tool to stimulate software innovation. Instead, exclusions should be used, and their implementation strictly monitored. In this area, SMEs and individuals are having to fight a pitched battle against overwhelmingly powerful corporate interests and entrenched monopolies in the software market. We should not needlessly put them on the defensive.

In the area of software, exclusions work in favour of SMEs because they provide clarity if properly implemented. Exceptions work in favour of the incumbent monopolies, which have the legal firepower to shape jurisprudence in their own interest.

A case in point is the fact that while the study considers at length the practice of the European Patent Office, it neglects to point out that the EPO’s practice is in direct contravention to the letter and spirit of the European Patent Convention’s Article 52, which states that programs for computer are excluded from patentability.

We agree with the Development Agenda Group that patents should be granted only in areas where there otherwise existst a market failure to provide innovation. On this issue, we would like to refer delegates to the “three step test for inclusion in the patent system” which we first proposed to this committee during its 13th session in March 2009.

This three-step test argues that for any subject matter to be included in the patent system, there must be

  1. a demonstrated market failure to provide innovation,
  2. demonstrated positive disclosure from patenting, and
  3. demonstrated effectiveness of the patent system in the area to disseminate knowledge.

Software fails all three steps of this test. Innovation in the software market is more vibrant than ever. Experience shows that patent-related disclosure is practically useless in the case of software. The patent system in this field impedes the dissemination of knowledge instead of promoting it. It follows that software should be excluded from patentability.

We support the proposal of Brazil contained in document SCP/14/7 and the concrete suggestions therein for a work programme for this committee to carry out a debate on exceptions and limitations to patentability. However, we request that exclusions from patentable subject matter should also be included in this debate, alongside limitations and exceptions. We will be happy to provide expertise on the matter to anyone requesting our help.

Thank you, Mr Chairman.

Footnotes:

1 Stuart J.H. Graham, Robert P. Merges, Pam Samuelson, & Ted Sichelman: High technology entrepreneurs and the patent system: results of the 2008 Berkeley patent survey. Berkeley Law Journal, April 16, 2010. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1429049

FSFE’s opening statement at WIPO SCP/15

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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 Free
Software Foundation Europe, and the Free Software or open source
community at large. Free Software relies on licenses to give users the
freedom to use, study, share and improve a program. These licences in
turn rely on copyright.  Free Software is, however, fundamentally
incompatible with patents on software.

Free Software underpins an economy the worth of which is approaching
50bn. It has come to be widely used not only in general purpose
computers, but even more so in embedded devices such as cars,
televisions and elevators.

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. Free Software Foundation Europe brings practical experience
in this matter to the table, as we were a key participant in the
collective effort to convince the European Parliament to reject the
proposed software patent directive in 2005.

Contrary to our respected colleague from the International Chamber of
Commerce, we do believe that the relation between standards and
patents is a problematic issue which needs to be addressed by this
committee. In the area of software, patents by themselves are already
problematic enough. Including patents in standards on RAND terms adds
to the problem by discriminating against companies which have based
their activities on Free Software. The vast majority of these
companies are SMEs, which form the backbone of most economies around
the world. In this scenario, inventors have already received an
incentive in the form of a government-granted monopoly on their
invention. It should not be necessary to provide further incentives by
handing them control over the market.

However, this is a complex issues, and we will reserve our comments
for the time when this committee deals with the related agenda item.

We would also like to remind those which argue against state
intervention in the market for patents that a patent in itself is an
intervention of the state, limiting and directing the free flow of
knowledge.

We are looking forward to the discussion on exclusions from
patentable subject matter and exceptions and limitations to the
rights. Our view here is that in the field of software, only
exclusions provide the security which software companies
need. Exceptions will not suffice here.

Indeed, we propose a three-step test for inclusion of a subject matter
in the patent system:

If a subject matter is to be included in the patent system, there must
be

– a demonstrated market failure to provide innovation,

– demonstrated positive disclosure from patenting,

– and effectiveness of the patent system in the area to disseminate
knowledge.

We note that software does not pass any of these tests.

But again, we would like to reserve our detailed comments on this
topic to the discussion of the agenda item itself.

For the time being, Free Software Foundation Europe would like to
thank you for the opportunity to take the floor. We assure you of our
commitment to support this committee, and you as its chair, in giving
itself a proactive work program.

Thank you, Mr Chairman.

Get going already! On the dire state of Free Software and Open Standards in the UK’s public sector

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What can Free Software do for the UK’s public sector? That was the topic of a Westminster eForum seminar in London yesterday. The answer is: Pretty much everything, if the public sector lets it.

Britain is the sick man of Europe in terms of Free Software adoption. There are few large deployments to speak of. The fine policies and action plan of the previous Labour government remain all mouth and no trousers, along with the current government’s pre-election promises. Those public bodies that do try to migrate are confronted with massive lock-in across the public sector, as everyone else uses proprietary file formats for document exchange.

Bristol’s city council is a case in point. They put a lot of effort into a pioneering migration, but eventually found the lock-in pressure more than they could bear. To their credit, they haven’t given up. When Bristol’s city councillor Mark Wright took over the responsibility for the city’s IT, “I made it clear that we would move away from open source over my dead body”, he said yesterday. On Wednesday, the council announced that it was migrating parts of its systems to Free Software, but would have to stick to proprietary operating systems on the desktop. It’s also installing OpenOffice on all desktops side-by-side with the monopoly product. This way the council makes sure that everyone there can read and write documents in Open Standards.

According to Mark Taylor of Sirius IT, 80% of government IT spending in the UK goes to only five companies. The comparable figures in the US are ca. 50%, and 20% in the Netherlands. This means that the UK’s market for IT services is enormously centralised, with very little competition. Or, as one speaker put it: “Proprietary software companies just love doing business here in the UK, because the margins are great.”

The new government may just shake things up a bit, though mostly inadvertently so. To combat Britain’s massive deficit, government organisations are facing brutal budget cuts of about 30%, so everyone is currently scrambling to identify possible savings.

While this might lead some IT departments to think about using more Free Software, the big stumbling block is the lack of an Open Standards policy. Without it, anyone attempting a desktop migration will continue to be affected by the lock-in of that blights the public sector.

It’s also necessary to change the way the public sector buys software and IT services. Public bodies need to specify outcomes rather than brands. All too often, public calls for tender say “we want 100 licenses for groupware from vendor X”. The correct way to do it is to say “we need groupware for 100 workers”. This way, anyone can submit an offer for a solution, whether Free Software or not. Otherwise, only the sales partners of the named vendor can participate. That excludes any number of competitors, which is the reason why the practice of naming brands is illegal under European procurement rules.

The Conservatives, now in government together with the Liberal Democrats, made noises in this direction before the election, but haven’t shown any activity on the topic since then. If the coalition government is serious about pulling Britain out of its gigantic budget hole, then public sector IT spending is a good place to start. Free Software and Open Standards bring strategic independence and save money. If yesterday’s seminar is any indication, Britain’s private sector is eager and more than ready to take on the challenge.

IGF: Dreaming the cloud

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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 out to be an extremely interesting time. A transcript of the session will hopefully become available in due time.

(This is the first of two articles from the IGF. In the second one, a couple of days down the line, I’ll be dealing with the state of the discussion on Open Standards.)

Vint Cerf described the situation succinctly, by saying that cloud computing today is in a similar place as the Internet was in 1973: Dominated by a few large nodes, just as mainframes were the dominant model back then. He jokingly called cloud computing “just time sharing on steroids”.

He duly added that this was oversimplified. For the operator of a cloud, the nice thing is that it can run applications independently of the physical machines in the datacenter. Any process can be shifted between different machines.

He made another very important point: On the Internet, all end devices are equal. The network doesn’t care whether you connect to it with a mobile phone or with a supercomputer. Clouds should work the same way.

With the audience thus prepared, I could spin some ideas that I’ve been discussing with many different people recently. They’re appropriately cloudy, and the only way to make them more concrete is to share them, have them criticised, identify the part that’s nonsense, discard it, and get to work on the rest.

When you get down to it, cloud is a question of power: If we put all our data and computation in centralised systems, the owner of hte system will have power over us. So the idea that’s been floating around (e.g. Eben Moglen here) is that that we could use small, cheap servers to build our own cloud. So why not build a Free Software stack for these servers that’s easy to install? Fill in a few fields, and it sets you up with servers for web, mail, Jabber, microblogging, social networking, and whatever else you’d like, all pre-configured. Instantly, you’d become part of those respective networks, with your own little node. Small, but fully capable. A distributed search engine like YaCy, which we’re using on the FSFE website, adds another key element.

That’s still fairly conventional. So why not add a layer for distributed data storage? We could have a program that encrypts your data, breaks it up into hundreds or thousands of small chunks, and stores those chunks across many machines on the Internet. You are the only person who has the key, and the only person who can pull all this data back together and decrypt it. The more storage capacity you provide, the more you receive on the machines of others.

That’s a bit farther off. Projects like Gnunet or Angel Application are still in the early stages of development. But I have no doubt that if developers focus their effort here, they’ll make progress very soon.

So with that done, how about tying all those machines together so that applications can move seamlessly between them? There are all sorts of challenges here, such as:

  • How can you keep your data private if it’s processed by an application on a remote machine, and needs to be decrypted for that purpose? Good question. A social trust layer could be part of the solution.
  • How do you manage the overhead that comes with so much encrypted and distributed communication? The fact that the Internet hasn’t collapsed under the weight of online video as predicted a few years ago gives some grounds for hope. So does my new 25 mbit VDSL line.
  • And how do you achieve anything like reasonable speeds on such a system? I’d say that depends on your value of “reasonable”, for the time being.

The reactions I got were quite interesting. Some people gave me rather vague looks, which was hardly surprising. Others were enthusiastic. It certainly made for a good debate.

Why shouldn’t we build distributed systems that are owned by all of us? I wish that today’s big nodes – Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and so forth – would get onto the topic together with the Free Software community, and add their considerable engineering resources to the effort of developing both the technology that will let us run our computers in freedom, and the business models around it.

A lot is currently happening in this field. At this year’s FSCONS in Gothenburg, Sweden, FSFE is organising a track on distributed systems under the heading “Divide and Reconquer“. I’m very much looking forward to seeing the discussion take another step forward there.

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

Posted by gerloff on 0

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 power, software and freedom: In a world that runs on software, being able to control that software is not only the key to power, but also the freedom to choose your own destiny.

The talk was well received, and the event itself was thoroughly enjoyable. There were some projects that I hadn’t come across before (such as Soleus, a community-driven hoster, or Bitcoin, a P2P currency. And of course lots of  great people from the Dutch Free Software community!