Call for letters to ISO re: OpenXML

Posted on 25. January, 2007 by Georg Greve

Following up on the articles "Novells ‘Danaergeschenk’", "Is OpenXML now a standard?", "OpenXML wrap-up after D12K" and "Why criticise OpenXML now?" I would like to make sure that everyone has had a look at the Groklaw article "Deadline Looms to Express Concerns about ECMA 376 Office Open XML."

Microsoft is currently trying to push its Ecma 367 OpenXML format through the "fast track" procedure in the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) to give it false credibility as a standard. The Groklaw article explains many of the problems, why the OpenXML format should never be accepted by ISO and also highlights the urgency of the issue as the fast track procedure allows only for a 30 day evaluation period, so time is of the essence.

If you want an overview and reference of the many problems with the OpenXML format, here is an overview on Grokdok. But since that list is very long, I think it might be more useful for most people to have some examples of formal objections to the ISO. Here is an excellent one that has been posted to the discussion mailing list of IFSO, FSFE‘s Irish associate organisation:

Re: Objections to JTC-1 Fast-Track Processing of the ECMA-376 Specification

 

To whom it may concern,

I, Gareth Eason, write on behalf of the committee and members of the Irish Linux User Group to voice our collective concern regarding the Fast-Track Processing of the ECMA 376 Specification by the ISO JTC-1 committee.

 

As more and more of our critical paperwork gets stored in electronic form, the ISO body recognise the requirement for an open standard for storing this data — one with which multiple software vendors may comply. This avoids a monopoly situation emerging whereby a single supplier may control access to information simply because only they can understand the format it is stored in. This is particularly true for legacy documents — old documents produced and ‘saved’ by an older version of software.

As a predominantly technical body of people within Ireland, we feel it important to highlight our concerns to the fast-track processing of this proposed standard for the following reasons:

  • The ECMA specification runs to some 6,000 pages, impossible to review in any meaningful fashion within the 30 days permitted.
  • The concept of the standard potentially conflicts with the ISO body’s own stated goal of "one standard, one test, and one conformity assessment procedure accepted everywhere." ECMA has been publicly slated as an alternative to an already existing and ratified open document standard, ISO/IEC 26300:2006.
  • There appears to be internal inconsistencies within the proposed standard and significant conflicts with existing ratified ISO standards, including ISO8601 (Representation of Dates and Times), ISO639 (Codes for the representation of Names and Languages), ISO/IEC 8632 (Computer Graphics Metafiles) and more.
  • There are numerous references to proprietary applications and behaviours which may be impossible to reproduce without potentially infringing patents granted to, in particular, Microsoft. No documentation as to proprietary behaviours is offered in many cases and no legal indemnification appears to be granted for either reverse engineering or re-implementation of these behaviours. This renders it legally and technically impossible for any organisation other that Microsoft to implement this standard, essentially prohibiting competition — the antithesis of ISO standards.

We would suggest that it is inappropriate to fast-track the processing of this proposed ECMA 376 standard and that it should be diverted from its present fast-track processing and should be remanded to Ecma International for: (i) harmonization with ISO/IEC 26300:2006, the OpenDocument standard; and numerous other standards that it contradicts; (ii) development of more suitable intellectual property documents that actually grant rights to implement the specification.

More information on this proposal, and an analysis to date of the document can be found at http://www.grokdoc.net/index.php/EOOXML_objections

Yours faithfully,

Gareth Eason B.Eng, MIET, (Chairperson) , for an on behalf of the Irish Linux User Group.

There are probably other good letters out there and FSFE is also working on a letter of its own right now, but this example is very good for various reasons, including the right tone, the right style and some of the strongest arguments. Please consider writing a letter yourself, with your company or organisation. If you do, I recommend including the following arguments:

  • OpenXML violates various ISO standards
    A list of the standards violated can be found at http://www.grokdoc.net/index.php/EOOXML_objections#Ecma_376_contradicts_numerous_international_standards

  • There is already an ISO standard for office documents
    The usefulness of ISO is largely based on its stated principle of "one standard, one test and one conformity assessment procedure accepted everywhere." By accepting the OpenXML format, ISO would violate its own principles and undermine itself.

  • OpenXML depends on undocumented, proprietary information
    As documented here, Ecma 376 OpenXML depends on undisclosed, proprietary information of Microsoft.

  • 6000 pages in 30 days
    It is absolutely impossible to parse 200 pages of technical documentation per day with the diligence necessary for an organisation such as ISO.

The first three are very strong to explain why ISO should never approve OpenXML and instead give the format back to Ecma to be harmonised with the real and approved standard ISO/IEC 26300:2006, also known as Open Document Format (ODF). The last point shows that even if ISO is not willing to make this decision immediately, it should at least not be fast-tracked.

Microsoft is currently working very hard on many groups and organisations to bring just that about and make ISO accept OpenXML as an ISO standard through the fast-track. It is up to all groups and companies that value Open Standards to object to this now.

So please check this page for more information, advice on how to get in touch, and contact details of the various parties that need to be informed about the objections.

Spread the word!

 

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Why criticise OpenXML now?

Posted on 13. December, 2006 by Georg Greve

Some people raised the question why I have chosen to become verbal about OpenXML and Novell’s activities to include support for it in OpenOffice.org, and whether this has to do with the MS/Novell deal and the related public outcry. The answer is no.

The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is not against Novell, we’re not against Microsoft, and we’re not against any other company. There are actions by these companies that we disagree with, and there are actions that we agree with. Naturally the percentage of that agreement and disagreement varies between companies and over time.

FSFE and Microsoft

When studying the relationship with Microsoft, there were indeed many interactions — owed to the fact that Microsoft currently has a desktop monopoly and its business practices have been questionable to the extent that SUN and Real Networks filed antitrust complaints against Microsoft with the European Commission. Similar complaints have been filed by various parties all around the world, and generally these were considered valid by the relevant competition authorities, although the countermeasures taken were generally not effective.

When the European investigation began, FSFE worked together with the Samba Team to supply technological information about how Microsoft had abused its desktop monopoly to leverage it into the workgroup server market, actions which also impacted negatively on Sambas ability to write interoperable software.

It should be noted that the relationship between Microsoft and Samba was initially very good and characterised by cooperation and trust. Microsoft gave the Samba Team technical specification for their software, and the Samba Team wrote interoperable software. The reason for Free Software’s part in the antitrust case was that Microsoft unilaterally stopped the cooperation once they had sufficient leverage into the workgroup server market and even stopped participating to the underlying Common Internet File System (CIFS) process that Microsoft initially launched.

FSFE’s role in this case was — with the help of the Samba Team developers — to represent the interests of the Samba Team and other Free Software projects, and restore the ability of Free Software developers to write interoperable software. We continued with the case when SUN and Real Networks, the initial parties to this case, decided to drop their engagement after settlement with Microsoft. We continued because the offers that Microsoft has been making on its interoperability information will not allow a Free Software implementation. Once that information is released in ways that will allow competition by interoperable Free Software, we will have done our job.

But even while we were (and still are) pursuing that issue, we gave them the benefit of the doubt when they changed their portfolio of Shared Source licenses. Naturally, we realise that most of their Shared Source licenses are still proprietary and they have yet to release any significant software under the more free licenses. But we still gave them positive recognition for it.

It was unfortunate that only very short time later FSFE caught Microsoft red-handed manipulating the outcome of a UN contributory conference. Because it was FSFE’s work that Microsoft was having misrepresented, we informed people about it immediately. Do people really think we should not have publicised this?

Nonetheless we keep discussing with Microsoft about when and how Microsoft will become a Free Software company, because we know that one day they will. They will be the last to adopt Free Software broadly, and although one of their representatives tried to explain to me that the Microsoft/Novell deal was such a change, it is still too early for that, really.

So we will see more attempts by Microsoft to save its old business model, which necessarily involves damaging Free Software and Open Standards. Since we cannot allow that to happen, we will prevent that whenever we can.

But we also realise that one day they will be willing to make more substantial steps towards Free Software, and at that time we will be helping them to make them. But as long as we are waiting for that moment we will keep in mind that Microsoft is a very shrewd player in the field that has historically managed to judo much larger players into difficult situations. Today they also have vast resources at their disposal.

 

Better not forget that they are a crocodile, and not a lamb, and this crocodile is not yet a vegetarian.

FSFE and Novell

Having been very limited before, the interaction between Novell and FSFE became more intensive when Novell bought the SuSE distribution. FSFE’s representatives had regular discussions with employees of Novell and the connection was always friendly and cooperative.

Indeed, if one asked for my opinion on Novell buying SuSE, up until the Microsoft/Novell deal the answer was always positive. Novell cleaned up SuSE quite a bit and finally released YaST, SuSE’s setup and installation tool, as Free Software under the GNU GPL. Of course last time I checked SuSE still was one of the messiest distributions in terms of mixing proprietary and Free Software, but the overall influence of Novell seemed positive.

When Novell announced its deal with Microsoft, we were outright surprised. It seemed to make no sense, and my second thought was that they were either bedazzled by Microsofts judo, or desperate for fast cash. And yes, FSFE remains critical of that deal, although we did not add much to the global outcry because we felt that most of the relevant points were being made well enough by others.

However, disagreement with that deal is not why I have chosen to criticise Novell for their announcement to add support for OpenXML to OpenOffice.org, and why I have added another more generic OpenXML wrap-up with additional points and depth. I criticised that particular decision only because I consider that very action harmful to Free Software.

I don’t know whether Novell will have 150 developers working for the next year to include OpenXML support in OpenOffice.org for a release in early 2008. Because this is what will be needed for a competitive implementation according to a calculation by Andrew Shebanow of Adobe, based on Microsoft’s own numbers. I also don’t know how much additional work would be required to fully implement the proprietary infrastructure that will be needed around OpenXML to make use of its non-standard formats and how Novell is planning to do that job.

The core problem is that adding OpenXML support to OpenOffice.org does not provide additional value to anyone except Microsoft, because standards are a field where more choice means less value. Before we had the Open Document Format (ODF), the norm was to have a large amount of incomplatible proprietary formats for which support needed to be coded into every application. That made adding support to central programs such as OpenOffice.org a useful activity.

Now that we have a truly universal internationally approved ISO standard Open Document Format, the calculation changes dramatically. Deviating from that standard, helping to establish other formats that do no hold up to the same criteria, will only serve to undermine the Open Standard — to the detriment of users, vendors and economy at large.

So if Novell had 150 person years to invest into better office integration and interoperability, they should have spent it on perfecting the ODF functionality in Microsoft Office. In fact, if they are serious about their stated committment to ODF, they should have tried to put into their deal with Microsoft that they will be allowed to put the result of those 150 person years into Microsoft Office directly, ideally as the default native format.

That would have been an investment to give customers more choice and improve the marketplace — their decision to put OpenXML into OpenOffice.org was not. And since there was lack of critical analysis, and provided that Microsoft raised the stakes with the help of ECMA, it became increasingly urgent to point out why this is a bad idea, so all of us could then work together to support the truly open international ISO standard, the Open Document Format (ODF).

And this work for Open Standards is something that FSFE has been doing for many years now, be it during the UN World Summit on the Information Society, the DCOS coalition at the UN Internet Governance Forum (IGF), or the Scientific Education and Learning in Freedom (SELF) project.

We plan to continue that work and if you want, you can join us in it.

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Groklaw: The Way Forward (on Open Standards)

Posted on 12. December, 2006 by Georg Greve

As a pleasant surprise this morning, I received news from PJ of Groklaw who unexpectedly picked up on my OpenXML wrap-up after D12K, which is based on feedback to “Novell’s Danaergeschenk” and also “Is OpenXML now a standard?“.

Thanks to the wonders of Attribution-ShareAlike, she was able to put some additional material and quotation into the article:

http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20061212025314700

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OpenXML wrap-up after D12K

Posted on 12. December, 2006 by Georg Greve

Publication of my article "Novells Danaergeschenk" on Groklaw.net has spurred quite some interesting reactions, like this interview with the Futurezone of the ORF, Austria’s national public-service broadcaster, titled "Streit ums Dateiformat der Zukunft" ("Controversy about the file format of the future" — sorry, German only). But there was also a very lively discussion on Groklaw with some very interesting and good comments, some of which I’d like to pick up and/or reply to.

Additional information

Many of the comments were focussed on exploring all the angles of the problems caused by and related to OpenXML, such as:

Fidelity of implementation

This comment points out that the article could also have highlighted a very common practical problem: Even if the specification is commonly known, the dominant player can easily introduce small incompatibilities that will break interoperability for competitors, strengthening the "Incompatibility is always the fault of the competitor" mechanism that I outlined in the article.

This is indeed quite common, and Microsoft’s treatment of Kerberos is good evidence that such a behaviour can be expected for OpenXML. As this comment points out, Microsoft appears to have reserved the right to take legal action against competitors that implement the actual instead of the published specification. But that may not be the only legal angle. Since the OpenXML format contains DRM "functionalities," this comment fears there might be ways to bring up TRIPS/DMCA/EUCD-like legislation against reverse engineering of the true format.

I did not examine these issues in depth for two reasons: I wanted to keep the article as short and simple as possible and to keep it as OpenXML specific as possible. That being said, there is significant economic gain for the dominant player in "not quite" adhering to any standard, and few sanctions for such behaviour. Precisely for this reason establishing and maintaining Open Standards is so difficult.

In my view, this experience makes a strong point for mandating Free Software reference implementation(s) as one of the criteria for Open Standards in software, as I have also explained in my article "Sovereign Software" for the first UN Internet Governance Forum (IGF):

    The only way to prevent this sort of thing seems to add one more criterion to the definitions above: ”The standard must have at least one Free Software implementation and all implementations that seek to be compliant with the Open Standard must be regularly tested against the Free Software implementation(s), which act as the common reference base.”
    Because Free Software is, inter alia, defined by the freedom to study its implementation, this allows all players in the market to study the common reference base not only in specification language, but also in language, and regular tests against that base can help curb deviations from the Open Standard.
    Free Software also provides the freedoms of use, modification and distribution, therefore most vendors can also simply include that implementation in their own software, further reducing interoperability barriers.

 

More examples for wanting only one standard

As Groklaw reader Toby Thain points out in his comment, the internet itself could also have served as an example for why having more than one standard for any given purpose is harmful. This is quite true and you might want to keep this in mind for debates. In the article I avoided it deliberately, though, as I sought to use an example that was closer to daily life for non-technical people.

Doing the math on OpenXML

This comment on LWN.net points to a blog entry by Andrew Shebanow of Adobe, titled: Is Office Open XML A One-Way Standard? Ask Microsoft. Based on the article by Microsoft’s Rick Schaut that explains why the Mac version of Microsoft Office will not support OpenXML until sometime next year, Andrew Shebanow does the math and comes to the conclusion that implementing OpenXML amounts to 150 work years.

In conclusion, Andrew Shebanow not only questions the economic viability, but also voices scepticism about the chances for a truly compatible implementation that maintains fidelity between the implementations of different vendors. So overall it seems that Rick Schaut has essentially confirmed the issues raised by IBM’s Bob Sutor about OpenXML being a one-way standard for migration to Microsoft.

Principles of standardisation

Another insightful comment was this explanation by Diehl Martin about why Open Standards are important to break the vicious cycles of forced upgrades.

There were also some comments that are better described as related or follow-up articles, and very good ones at that. This anonymous article deals with standardisation on a more philosophical level, from the article:

    I don’t, however, think that it’s inappropriate to ask a vendor to change their software to comply with a standard. Do we seriously give MS Office the standing of a national language? The standing of English, or French, or Spanish, or Chinese, or Japanese? Do we really have no right, in the standards process, to ask Microsoft to change their software? Well, not so much change their software, but to implement the standard the other way around – for MS Office to implement the standard, not for the standard to implement MS Office, which is obviously why it’s 4000+ pages, and getting bigger.

 

Difference to .doc import?

Related is also this comment that discusses how OpenXML (unlike ODF) has never been meant to be a universal document format. Putting OpenXML up against the Open Document Format is described as pure marketing spin, and referring to OpenXML only being incremental change to the old ".doc" and ".xls" formats.

The comment continues that importing an OpenXML file will be no different from importing ".doc" and ".xls" files into OpenOffice or some other program. In fact, I also received a few questions asking why I consider it a good thing for OpenOffice.org to support reading .doc files, while I disagree with the notion of adding OpenXML.

The answer is simple: The two questions have entirely different backgrounds and situations. Before there was an ISO standard universal document format, all applications had to try and support as many formats as possible, because this was the only way to achieve interoperability. And while there were some file formats that would have allowed better interoperability, e.g. the Rich-Text Format (RTF), they were not used by default by the dominating vendor. So writing import/export filters for OpenOffice.org was the only way to get a foot into the door, and has helped the technology field arrive at a truly universal Open Standard: Open Document Format (ODF).

Now an Open Standard exists, is ISO certified and supported by many different applications. It should be the only format used by governments and companies — for all of the reasons outlined in the Groklaw article and this one. And while it is good to maintain support for legacy formats from the time when there was no standard, including ".doc," adding support for OpenXML only serves to help undercut the existing Open Standard by use of market power, technological tricks and political efforts.

Additional reading

Of course some comments also suggested additional reading, such as this comment, which references an article by Nicholas Petreley that is based on an Information Week article by Cory Doctorow, discussing the wider picture in which this debate is taking place.

Ways forward

Creating public discussion and awareness of a problem is often the first step in solving it, but it is not sufficient. In the comments there were several practical suggestions, which I’d like to support and encourage people to participate in.

Support Open Document Format (ODF)

As several people have pointed out, constructively supporting the use, spread, adoption and legislation for truly Open Standards, such as the Open Document Format (ODF), is one of the most useful things people can do. This includes using ODF yourself for cooperating online with others, as this LWN.net comment proposes.

Funny enough, all of this brings to mind RMS’ essay We Can Put an End to Word Attachments of 2002, only that it would need updating to recommend the Open Document Format, boiling down to: I am very sorry, but I could not read your attachment because it was saved in a format that my office could not read. Could you please resend the document in the universal document format "Open Document Format" (ODF), the international ISO standard for document exchange?

Naturally the message should be adapted to the situation, recipient and context in order to have the right tone. If people feel attacked or criticised for having used the "wrong" format, such reminders may end up being counterproductive. But discarding the possibility of changing social habits is no less counterproductive, and ignores evidence to the contrary: Just ask all the people who are now sorting their garbage for recycling and compare that to the position they took 30 years ago.

Support ODF plugin for Microsoft Office?

Although it might seem strange to suggest that anyone should improve a Microsoft product, we should also consider the usefulness of improving the ODF plugin. Making it very easy for all users of Microsoft Office to interact via ODF would provide a major advantage for ODF over OpenXML.

Community comments to the ISO process

Another comment on Groklaw proposes to turn the incorporated denial of service attack that is OpenXML back on Microsoft by extensively commenting on each of the 6000 pages of specification during the review process prior to the ISO vote.

Preventing ISO acceptance of OpenXML could indeed be an important step, and while one might have sufficient confidence in the ISO process to work better than that of ECMA, some support on this side might be very helpful.

Linguistics

Finally, I was (for the most part positively) surprised by the interesting discussions that arose from my usage of the terms "Danaergeschenk" and "Salomonian," including Bob Sutor making Danaergeschenk the word of the day on his blog.

Danaergeschenk

Although I think some people might have taken this a little too seriously, there was some interesting discussion regarding my use of "Danaergeschenk" in my article.

Some people felt that I should have used "Trojan Horse", which is a common expression in both German and English, but that never really occured to me for various reasons. I checked this page for a translation of Danaergeschenk, and ruled out Trojan Horse for various reasons: The Trojan Horse wasn’t Trojan, it was Greek, for which Danaer or "Danaos" is original Latin term. It also isn’t common to return horses to the stores around christmas. And as some people right pointed out, the terms have different connotations and emphasis.

So after some consideration, I decided to go with "Danaergeschenk", even though I knew this was entirely unknown to English speakers, which is why it was briefly introduced in the beginning. Given that words like "Fahrvergnügen" made it into English, I thought this might prove to be a fun addition, even if people followed this advice and simply called it D12K.

Salomonian

As far as "Salomonian" is concerned, I did not expect it to be that difficult, as king Solomon is a very common reference in German. For those who’d still like to know how it was meant, I believe this comment explains it quite well.

I guess that usage of both these words are owed to my humanistic education, which had me study Latin for six years. My apologies to all who felt I subjected them to the pain of that education subsequently.

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Is OpenXML now a standard?

Posted on 8. December, 2006 by Georg Greve

Today we learned that ECMA International has accepted Microsofts OpenXML as an ECMA standard, and that it did so against the vote of IBM. This is bad news for Open Standards, Free Software, competition and consumers.

As explained in my article Novells "Danaergeschenk" (also on Groklaw), it is close to impossible that anyone would be able to create an implementation of OpenXML that would be competitive to Microsoft’s. IBM does not consider it technologically or economically feasible, as Bob Sutor explained in his personal blog. This is also why IBM voted against accepting the OpenXML format in ECMA.

A specification of 6’000 pages is like a diet of 10’000 kilocalories per day. If Weight Watchers were advocating that as a recommended diet on request of McDonalds, people would wonder what is going on. Yet this seems quite similar to what he majority of ECMA’s general assembly apparently has just decided to do.

Just like there could be (and are) whole flight simulators hidden in Microsoft’s Office products, there is no telling what kind of hooks are hidden in this vast amount of documentation. But some hooks are already known: The containers do not use industry standards, such as SVG, they are catered to Microsofts proprietary world. So any attempt to implement OpenXML would require to implement large parts of Microsofts proprietary world — and possibly some of its internal working, which is no doubt heavily patented.

So can OpenXML be a standard? Wikipedia defines standardisation as

Standardization or standardisation, in the context related to technologies and industries, is the process of establishing a technical standard among competing entities in a market, where this will bring benefits without hurting competition.

The emphasis here is mine to highlight why OpenXML does not qualify as a standard, much less an Open Standard: OpenXML is singularily defined and driven by Microsoft. In this it has entered into complex agreements with other companies that have become dependent partners of Microsoft on OpenXML — and are thus no longer competing on this market.

 

So OpenXML is neither open, nor is it a standard. It is a one-way street of migration to Microsoft Office with the promise of dependency on that proprietary format and implementation in the future.

Other office packages would be well-advised to stay far away from it, as OpenXML will make their users second-class citizens in a Microsoft world where they will need to save as OpenXML, and will encounter numerous problems with documents they get from Microsoft users.

If given the choice between that scenario and one in which people send around ODF documents which Microsoft Office cannot open, but which work perfectly with any other office suite as well as online services, I know which one I prefer.

It may be time to readjust the receiving end of incompatibility issues that were forced upon all users by Microsoft.

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Novells “Danaergeschenk”

Posted on 8. December, 2006 by Georg Greve

The following article has just gone up on Groklaw, one of my favorite news sources, and is mirrored here for convenience. Permanent URLs for this article are:

 

German is an interesting language, and many of its words have made it into English. Novell’s recent deal with Microsoft is begging to add another one: Danaergeschenk. The term translates to "Gift by the Danaer" and has the same roots as "Greeks bearing gifts," which goes back to the siege of Troy.

Novell’s Danaergeschenk to the world is the recent announcement to implement OpenXML support in OpenOffice.org.

Bob Sutor, IBM’s Vice President of Standards and Open Source has written a good analysis why the specification is more akin to a denial of service attack than an Open Standard. OpenXML basically represents a change of strategy: Instead of trying to hide information by not telling anything about their products to anyone, they’ve apparently now switched to hiding information in noise, which is by far the more effective method.

This is consistent with Microsoft’s strategy in the European antitrust case, where the interoperability information for the workgroup server communication at the time of the hearing in April 2006 was said to amount to 12.560 pages and counting, put together by hundreds of people working "day and night" according to Microsoft. During the court hearing, Microsoft made clear that it would be impossible to make use of this documentation unless one had access to their specific form of representation, which was patented by Microsoft and would require a patent license, which they were not planning to give any time soon.

So in the case of OpenXML, Microsoft now seems to be using Novell to put a pro forma implementation of OpenXML into OpenOffice.org, which will make it easier to migrate from OpenOffice.org to Microsoft Office but can never be sufficient to read all Microsoft Word Documents.

One reason for this is the sheer size of the implementation; another reason relates to the containers used within OpenXML, which make use of Microsoft’s proprietary implementations instead of industry standards such as SVG. Moreover, there is really no knowing what kind of hooks Microsoft has put into the specification that people will not detect at first reading. Indeed, it is quite possible that OpenXML will allow what Bruce Perens refers to as "Predatory Pratices" in his definition of an Open Standard.

And while there will be a migration path from OpenOffice.org to Microsoft Office, Microsoft avoids opening the inverse path to any other ODF-compliant Office program, by neglecting ODF support in Microsoft Office.

It appears that with the help of Novell, Microsoft has found a way to use the freedom to modify the software against Open Standards and the Free Software community.

Two of the mechanisms I expect they will seek to employ in this attempt to undermine Open Standards are well-known and comparatively powerful:

    1. Incompatibility is always the fault of the competitor
    2. Weaknesses in political decisions regarding technology

 

Point one is well-known as the fear of not being able to interoperate with colleagues, family, or other companies. This is a common fear especially among non-technical users today, who often feel (and are!) helpless in case of incompatibilities, no matter who caused them or for what reason.

With OpenXML, it appears as if there will be interoperability on paper only, but in reality people will experience numerous difficulties unless they use Microsoft Office. Because most users rightly fear and loathe incompatibilities, out of a sense of false security and lack of technological background, they will often choose the dominant product, effectively punishing the competitor for the behaviour of the dominant player.

The second point is slightly less obvious to people who have not had much interaction with the legislative process. The criteria of what constitutes an Open Standard are under permanent debate in various regions of the world and generally conclude at a set of principles that should be adhered to, but mostly without compliance checking.

The OpenXML specification was written to fulfill these criteria in theory, but in reality, will it prevent Open Standards? If so, it will undermine the expressed will of the political debate, which was intended to serve interoperability.

But understanding this and reaching a correct conclusion requires some grasp of technology, and the apparent strategy behind OpenXML obviously counts on the fact that politicians either are isolated from technology or not interested in the technological background and will apply a "the truth must be somewhere in the middle" approach instead of considering the technical facts.

The result of this then is the "mistaken salomonian solution" of accepting both ODF and OpenXML as sufficiently Open Standards, which is no solution, at all.

A common joke about Open Standards is that they are great because there are so many to choose from. In fact, a situation where each vendor has their own "Open Standard" is a situation in which there is no Open Standard, because having a standard means that multiple competing vendors all use the same protocol, format or specification.

As the various standards for power plugs used around the world demonstrate, standards are an area where too much choice can be detrimental to competition and society at large. That is why standard setting efforts generally try to arrive at only one standard for any given purpose.

From a naive stance, having two standards for documents may not seem so bad. But when considering that only ODF really is an Open Standard fully supported by multiple office applications and that the OpenXML format will be pushed with all the power of the dominant desktop vendor, it becomes obvious that accepting both ultimately means undoing the political efforts on Open Standards that have been undertaken in the past years.

Given that the strategy to undermine Open Standards and freedom of choice is comparatively clear and obvious, what is there to do?

On the governmental side, in my view it will be necessary to continue the debate on Open Standards and review the current policies to do assessment of levels of interoperability, and to come to one preferred standard for each purpose.

Criteria that should be used for making such a preference are the number of independent programs providing a complete implementation of that standard and length of the specification with a strong preference for concise definitions.

From a vendor’s side, it will be necessary to provide clear, concise and understandable information on why OpenXML is not truly a standard and have default settings that discourage its use.

OpenOffice.org should refuse to add OpenXML to its main branch, and we should avoid OpenXML while spreading information about the problems as far as we can.

And finally, we will need to enlarge the global multi-stakeholder discussion about the subject of Open Standards. The Dynamic Coalition on Open Standards (DCOS) that FSFE helped initiate at the recent UN Internet Governance Forum (IGF) may be a first step for that.

Let us return this Danaergeschenk to the store.

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Media merchant media atrocities and their parody

Posted on 3. December, 2006 by Georg Greve

One of the most remarkable features of the German language is that it makes it very easy to create words that are generally understood and come with clear connotations to people who speak the language. One such word that has been going around is the word "Raubkopierer", which combines the words "Raub", meaning robbery, and "Kopierer", meaning a person that copies. So the most literal English translation would be "Copy-Robber."

While the German term sounds much less ridiculous, it isn’t: In German law, the term "Raub" is a combination of stealing with coercion, generally physical violence or threat thereof. That is why many people correctly point out that by the meaning of the word, a "Raubkopierer" would be someone who points a gun at people asking for copies of their CDs. Here is one of them.

But this does not stop the reproduction rights merchants to run campaigns like "Hart aber Gerecht: Raubkopierer sind Verbrecher" ("Tough but fair: Copyright thieves are criminals") which launched spots in cinema and tv to threaten young people with jail-rape as a consequence of making copies. More recently, they offered visitors of the IFA exhibition in Berlin the chance to test life in a real prison cell. While all these activities are generally labelled as "information", that "information" generally ignores "details" such as the German right to make private copies.

There are various reasons that people are rightly upset about this behaviour. This is mainly a campaign to protect the interests of the merchants, which are too often not those of artists, authors, from which the merchants try to buy as cheap as possible, often at ridiculously bad conditions, as has been pointed out repeatedly over the years. These interests are generally also not equivalent to that of society at large, to which media merchants try to sell as expensive as possible by increasing artificial scarcity beyond the socially accepted levels, creating the need for such overdone campaigns.

So it comes as little surprise that people create counter-campaigns to represent the interests of society at large against the aggressive campaigns of the media merchants, such as: Raubkopierer sind keine Verbrecher, which explains some of the background, and the difference between legal and illegal copies. Another initiative is Rettet die Privatkopie! ("Save Private Copying!")

Besides these more serious campaigns, there is also quite a bit of parody about such copyright merchant monstrosities, such as the "Raubkopierer sind Verbrecher" posters by studium.mescalinum.de. Here are some of my favorites for a good Sunday evening laugh:

 

Crappy movies stay crappy movies!

Nobody outside Germany knows this guy.
I wish I also didn’t.

 

I see dead "Copy-Robbers"

"Copy-Robbers" are being haunted by ghosts

 

 

Cinema seats are more comfortable.

Who says only the British know dark humor?

 

 

Warning: German language hack!

For non-German speakers: Pun on the similarity between "Raupe" ("Caterpillar") and "Raub" ("Robbery"), changing "Raubkopien" in "Raupkopien." I guess this closes the circle.

 

If you want to see more, including some more borderline-funny posters, check out the web site.

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International Free Software Contest: 3rd Trophées du Libre

Posted on 2. December, 2006 by Georg Greve

Thursday, 30. November 2006, I found myself in the beautiful city of Soissons, France, as a jury member of the 3rd Trophées du Libre. The contest is organised by the Centre Européen de Transfert et de Recherche en Informatique Libre, the European Free Software Transfer and Research Centre, which is funded from public and private funds to promote Free Software and its commercial adoption.

This year’s patron was Michel Rocard, former French prime minister, current Member of the European Parliament, and one of the most important critics against the introduction of software patents in Europe. If you’re interested in who won, the official press release with the winners of 2006 is online as PDF here.

Personally I think this is a very important event. The Free Software community needs such awards to show appreciation and give support to important Free Software projects. I consider this a very important part of the feedback mechanism in our community, and I very much hope that for the next edition there will be many more applications from all over Europe and the rest of the world.

Some changes on the web page could probably help to make that happen, so could some more communication when the next edition is being started. I’ll keep you updated.

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Back from GPLv3 conference in Tokyo, Japan

Posted on 27. November, 2006 by Georg Greve

Today is my first day back in office after the GPLv3 conference in Tokyo, Japan. Great thanks and compliments go to the Free Software Initiative Japan (FSIJ) for organising such a professional and interesting conference in Akihabara, where dead geeks reincarnate.

If you are interested in more information, all the presentations are available in PDF from the conference web site and Ciaran already transcribed the talks of RMS and himself on FSFE’s GPLv3 project page. More transcripts coming soon.

The international attendance at this conference was quite exceptional, including people from Latin America, India, Japan, Europe, and the United States, so there were many interesting discussions and exchanges about Free Software activities in the various countries and regions.

To me, it was most interesting to see how promoting Free Software all over Asia plays a major role in the International IT Strategy of Japan, and how the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) supports Free Software activities in Japan. So while the Japanese market is rotating very fast and quite oriented towards short-term benefit at the moment, there is a growing interest in Free Software.

Another very interesting discussion was with Arun M of FSF India who does some very interesting work in the state of Kerala. He had some copies of a very nice brochure about "Free Software Projects in Public Enterprises of Kerala" by the Society for Promotion of Alternative Computing and Employment that he co-ordinates. Unfortunately I do not know of a URL for this brochure, otherwise I’d provide it. Once Arun puts it up, I’ll make sure to link to it.

As to the country itself, my love for Aikido has always connected me to Japanese culture, so I regret that I once more had to leave so early. In case you’re interested, here are two reading suggestions for the holiday season

with links to Bookzilla.de, an online bookstore that donates its commission to the FSFE to support the ongoing work.

 

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Free Software ecosystem changes: SUN announcing Java under GPLv2 and FTF

Posted on 13. November, 2006 by Georg Greve

November 2006 might be remembered as a deciding month for Free Software: Novell and Microsoft agree that Novell should pay Microsoft for every single SuSE distribution they sell, a deal that is potentially in conflict with the GNU General Public License (GPL) and that raises questions about the long-term survival of Novell. Shortly after, SUN Microsystems finally makes the long-awaited announcement to release its Java technology as Free Software under the GNU GPL, releasing millions of users from the Java trap — and on the same day, the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) announces its Freedom Task Force (FTF).

Contrary to possible perception, there is no connection in timing between the latter two events, but there is a connection between all of this: We are witnessing the next transformation of the Free Software ecosystem, with all the changes that will bring. Why does this change happen now?

Free Software has grown substantially, and that growth makes frontal opposition unsustainable in various ways: Microsoft’s denial of the success and strength of Free Software increasingly was percieved publicly as a denial of reality, and the pressure on them was increasing.

In particular the work of the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) in cooperation with the Samba team to support the antitrust investigation of the European Commission and its court case has greatly increased the pressure on Microsoft and has done so with a remarkable efficiency: Even while operating on a very small budget of around 100k EUR per year, FSFE has managed to bring the Samba team to the table to provide the necessary technical advice to the European Commission, resulting in a record fine of roughly 500m EUR, and another fine of 280.5m EUR when Microsoft refused to release the required interoperability information.

Microsoft furthermore spent around 2bn EUR to convince SUN to leave the case, as well as 500m EUR on Novell and 20m EUR on the CCIA. FSFE was one of two groups involved in this from the beginning, and standing strong the entire time, causing Bloomberg crediting FSFE with having had a 500m EUR impact on Microsofts stock. Given that the Microsoft case is only one of many activities that FSFE has been running throughout the past years, the efficiency seems unrivalled.

So trying to get one Free Software vendor to sign a deal with Microsoft made sense in various ways: It allows them to look a little more resonable in the evaluation of Free Software in the marketplace, it allows them to weaken a potential competitor, and it could help open attack venues that did not exist before. So Microsoft’s move was a logical consequence of the increasing success of Free Software.

The same is true for SUN Microsystems, only in a good way. SUN has gone a long way in understanding that entering the race on proprietary standards and technologies is a race that can only know one winner, and it won’t be SUN. So finally releasing Java under a Free Software license, and in particular the GNU GPL, will allow them to enter the necessary transformation towards a company in a Free Software economy, based on customer value, service, and freedom of choice.

Even more significant than OpenOffice.org for the desktop, Java is a fundamental technology with a very large install-base around the world and a rich ecosystem of products and companies. All of these are going to benefit from SUNs move, and they will do this at a time when Microsoft apparently has problems gettings its Vista and .NET technologies fully under control.

In consequence, the Free Software ecosystem is undergoing transformation. It becomes larger, faster and more complex, but also much, much richer. And this is where the Freedom Task Force comes into play.

While FSFE has always engaged in political and legal activity at the highest level, the FTF supports the stability and growth of the ecosystem by its fiduciary licensing activities, and helps legal professionals and enterprises navigate this rapidly changing environment.

Miyamoto Musashi once said that success comes from doing the right thing at the right time, and in the right way. I see the Freedom Task Force fulfilling all three criteria. With its flexible, cooperative and multi-cultural approach it will go a long way towards bringing Free Software to the next transformation — the dominance of the Free Software model.

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