Leaked Letter — BSA Pressures Europe To Kill Open Standards 156
An anonymous reader writes "The Business Software Alliance is trying to kill open standards. Free Software Foundation Europe has gotten hold of a letter in which the BSA tries to bully the European Commission into removing the last traces of support for open standards from its IT recommendations to the public sector. FSFE published the BSA's letter (PDF), and picked apart its arguments one by one."
Seems pretty simple to me (Score:5, Insightful)
The documents the BSA is complaining about apparently give preference to "open specifications" that don't have the complication of software patents, that are freely implementable without licensing fees, etc. They aren't saying that software or standards with software patents and licensing fees are excluded from competition, only that the open ones are given preference over ones that aren't.
It's all about saving money and avoiding unpleasant surprises (patent trolls) after a standard is deployed. What the hell is wrong with that?
Re:Seems pretty simple to me (Score:5, Funny)
Don't start being reasonable about it... You'll spoil everyone else's fun.
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That's part of the answer.
The other part is that open standards (and open source) have significant advantages: no vendor lock-in, archived material remains accessible (even if you have to write a converter to a newer format - which may well be worth it for government archives), competition between vendors means lower prices (free markets always work better for the buyer), etc.
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s / government / large /
i.e. if you've got a large (however you define the length of that piece of elastic string in a variable gravity field) archive, then it may become worthwhile to write your own converter.
But on the other hand, if the file format "from" and/ or "to" are popular and Open, then there's likely a conver
Re:Seems pretty simple to me (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Seems pretty simple to me (Score:5, Informative)
The international association of patent trolls takes offense at any legal moves that complicates the business of their clients. This is what this article is about.
You got it "twice conversly" wrong (Score:2)
The international association of patent trolls takes offense at any legal moves that complicates the business of their clients.
Really? I always though it took offense at the moves which simplified the business of their non-clients.
Generally speaking, big companies love flat per-company costs, since relative to size it hurts small companies the most. Second to that, they love fixed percentage-of-revenue costs, since it amplifies the per-company flat costs (they're bigger relative to the remaining funds). Searching for patents and getting licensed where appropriate seems to be one of these (or a mixture of the two).
So big companie
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The only difference between an open and a closes specification is that the you usually have to pay patent license fees to implement a closed one. Whether a specification is closed or not does not protect you from patent trolls.
Re:Seems pretty simple to me (Score:5, Insightful)
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However, the EU could easily solve the patent troll issue when it comes to software: they could simply not recognize software patents.
They don't. Why do you think shits like Microsoft and Apple are always paying off European politicians to vote for them. Durrr!
Re:Seems pretty simple to me (Score:5, Informative)
Fortunately, since the Lisbon Treaty came into effect, circumvention of (elected) MEPs by (unelected) Commissioners is not so easy. The European Parliament handed the Commission its ass on a couple of major points very quickly to educate them about the changed situation. If memory serves, ACTA is up this coming week, so it will be interesting to see whether it happens again (though it sounds like most of the really bad parts of that have effectively already been dropped as the by-the-back-door politics failed).
As for software patents, the situation is not as straightforward in Europe as some people describe. There is no Europe-wide formal recognition of "software patents" as some sort of category, but numerous patents have been granted by European nations that you or I might describe as "software patents", and as with most such things, whether they are deemed enforceable isn't something we'll know until the court case comes up, and the potential chilling effects are there anyway.
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The members of the comission are elected by the EU council, which is composed by prime ministers of member states. So they aren't random burocrats. However I would prefer too if they would be elected by EU MPs.
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In many European countries the Parliament is elected and in turn appoints the government.
These governments can fall when the parliament so desires, not only during the next election.
The EU Commission is appointed by the democratically instituted governments of the member states.
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FSF: The Internet is an example of an open standard that has helped innovation. The World Wide Web is another.
Re:Seems pretty simple to me (Score:4, Interesting)
It's all about saving money and avoiding unpleasant surprises (patent trolls) after a standard is deployed. What the hell is wrong with that?
Uh... While that statement sounds logical on the surface, there's one slight flaw in this "insightful" comment. The members of the BSA ARE the patent trolls.
http://www.bsa.org/country/BSA%20and%20Members/Our%20Members.aspx [bsa.org]
Repugnant (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm looking at you BSA and cell phone makers that use weird plugs.
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First they came for the BSA. I did not speak up because I do not hold any software patents.
Then they came for the makers of cellphones and their weird plugs...
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Except being whacked by cell phones or garroted with cell phone charger cables...
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First they came for the BSA. I did not speak up because I do not hold any software patents.
Then they came for the makers of cellphones and their weird plugs...
I did not speak up, because I too was tired of a drawer full of chargers.
Then they came for the ISPs promising fast unlimited connections.
I did not speak up, because my connection was neither fast or unlimited.
Now they come for some other shyster hiding behind terms and conditions in ambiguous legalese..
And I say good on em!
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To the uninitiated:
The phrase "[...] will be first against the wall when the revolution comes" is from HHGTTG (grep through http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_in_The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_to_the_Galaxy [wikipedia.org]).
Also, its author, Douglas N. Adams, has written a piece in which he complains about "Little dongly things", at http://www.douglasadams.com/dna/980707-03-a.html [douglasadams.com]
So the parent refers to a geek culture hero in more ways than one.
(Also, I hear they have a job opening at XKCDexplained.com, and I'm thinking about
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To the uninitiated : be sure of your sources when talking to the uninitiated.
When I was listening to that on the radio in it's first broadcast (yes, remember that HHGTTG was first of all a radio series, and it was only the TV series that messed up the colour balance before the books introduced better sound
Re:Repugnant (Score:5, Insightful)
Well said. Open source software is one thing, but open standards, (especially when it comes to hardware) is so critical in saving billions of pounds from the scourge of UWS (Unnecessary Work Syndrome).
I feel that we're 'lucky' to have say, USB as a standard in connectors. It saves an untold amount of time, development and hassle. I think very long and hard before I buy a device these days which doesn't support charging through USB.
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micro-USB will be a EU standard in January and it seems this is not just a dead-letter law: All major phone manufacturers have already agreed to go along. EU is a market of half a billion people so in practice this _will_ be a global standard, unless some other major market area starts to actively fight this by standardizing on something else.
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Taiwan passed the same law a few years ago, because Asians go thru phones like shoes they had stacks and stacks of old chargers and wanted it to end a while ago. The side effect is that all the Taiwanese OEMS have had to switch over anyway and they're not going to make something "just" for export outside Asia, that would be a joke.
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I think they only charge pennies for that though. Not ideal, but by no means bad.
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My non-Apple USB charger and my Apple iPhone (non-jailbroken) beg to differ with your misinformed opinion.
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He said it had to be Apple-approved, not made by Apple. Not sure if that's true or not but don't you think Apple have design patents on the connector that have to be licensed?
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What connector? The USB connector?
I use the regular cable that came with my iPhone (which has the 30 pin dock connector on one end and a USB connector on the other) and use it with a cheap generic USB charger (a transformer with a USB port on it) when I'm away from home. It also charges from any USB port I plug it into on any computer I have used. I charge it sometimes from a friend's Dell laptop (which does not have any Apple software installed at all [iTunes/Quicktime etc]) and from the USB port on my car
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What connector? The USB connector? I use the regular cable that came with my iPhone (which has the 30 pin dock connector on one end and a USB connector on the other)
He "probably" means the Apple, propriety non-usb end of the connector cable, also the system for connecting any other device to almost any iPod, not the actual device that takes electricity and puts it into a female connector that accepts a male usb inserter: you know, since almost everyone calls the cable that comes with iPods "the charger".
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On slashdot, I think that is the equivalent of calling the monitor "the computer" or the desktop case "the cpu".
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it has a circuit that really wants up to a whole 1000mA. If the charger won't respond to the signal, then the iDevice stays in "trickle" mode.
It's one of those things that is technically "standard" as USB is only SUPPOSED to provide 500mA max (so you don't fry the motherboard), but Apple calibrates EVERYTHING (even the ports on their laptops) to stick strictly to the standard, but then allows their OWN stuff to cheat with a bit of wiring. Motorola phones do the same thing too, even though they have a proper
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So what's wrong with that?
I would think that conforming to the official spec was a good thing, and then "cheating" with two devices that can identify each other as "safe to exceed 500mA".
If Apple used non-standard USB ports, we'd never hear the end of the rage about "subverting the spec and making their own proprietary USB".
USB was never designed for high power delivery - it's one of the reasons Firewire was so much better as a high bandwidth, high-power serial port: 18-30V at 1 amp available if the device
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because most modern WinPCs allow USB to take up to 1000mA now, as long as they don't overload things. Of course that also causes goofy issues on "whitebox" machines because people that buy cheap hardware don't realize what's going on. I have machines a few years old that won't charge an iPod because the iTunes software was needed to trick the USB into allowing the higher amps for iPods to charge, it was a real problem, but everybody basically set all their ports for Apple's little trick and moved on.
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There is a 'trick' to it, but it's more of a hack around USB's limitations than an explicit lockdown ploy by Apple. There's not a cryptographic lockout chip in the Apple chargers or anything. They signal the charge current (as high as 1-2A, while the USB spec only allows 500mA) by tweaking the pull-up resistor values on the D+/D- lines which ordinarily allow the host to identify lo/full/hi speed devices.
If you have an older/unofficial/DIY charger which shows 'Unsupported', you can add 4 ordinary resistors t
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Steve Bell ~1983
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Steve Bell [belltoons.co.uk]
Hmm he has a web site now, great... should be in there somewhere then! (Look for Lord Young hunched over a desk pronouncing his EU vision).
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There's a name for the kind of people who want to make the world worse. It is "successful".
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As I have gotten older I have lost a lot of interest in Open Source. Seeing it as Astroturf solution to the real problem that specifications need to more open. Source Code isn't really that valuable, the Specification and architecture are. Having the source in time you can come up with the architecture and specifications (if the code is reasonable) however that is the long way around.
When making applications that can talk to each other and share data open specifications are key.
I Personally don't care for
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And as I've gotten older, my interest in and support for Free/Libre/Open Source has only grown, but my interest in and support for open standards has grown even faster. Thus, ultimately, we agree on the extreme importance of open standards (and the inherent wrongness of the BSA's position on this matter) despite the fact that our opinions on FLOSS are moving in different directions. :)
Kick the patent trough and the hogs squeal (Score:5, Insightful)
That doesn't mean only open source can participate, it means if you're not willing to waive your patent protections your products can't be included in the specs. There's nothing in the rule that prevents closed source from participating except their own short-sighted greed.
Wow, talk about a sense of entitlement. Change the rules so we can play the way we want to or we're going to take our toys and go home.
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talk about a sense of entitlement
Should this surprise you? Think about the group of people you are talking about.
Patents vs. Publication (Score:1)
Reasonable and non-Discriminatory isn't (Score:5, Insightful)
Any royalty above zero is inherently discriminatory against small companies and startups. The FSF correctly point out that the amount of capital needed to start a software company is very small, so having to pay a royalty on top of that significantly increases the amount of capital needed. This is just an attempt by large companies to maintain their monopolies and prevent competition from even entering the playing field.
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[...]Any royalty above zero is inherently discriminatory against small companies and startups. The FSF correctly point out that the amount of capital needed to start a software company is very small[...]
Did they? My experience tells me it takes a lot more capital and resources to make good software than what most, especially small, companies invest. Not the point, I know, but I feel that's a grossly misleading claim.
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So you are trying to say a company made up of a sole developer cannot make good software? The capital requirement in those scenarios is likely zero as the person that goes this route is likely developing at home, off hours from his "real" job, already has a computer and perhaps the only additional expense is keeping the lights and computer on longer. I also know of a few 2 and 3 person companies that perform in exactly the same manner. So your claim of it being a "grossly misleading claim" is exactly tha
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But most commercial software projects take more manpower than one or two or three developers can accomplish, and then you will need a project manager to coordinate them. That's where small companies often fail, just by not being willing to invest in one who actually has any clue about management.
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You wouldn't, by any chance, happen to be a project manager, would you? :)
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Did they? My experience tells me it takes a lot more capital and resources to make good software than what most, especially small, companies invest.
Or talent... Throwing money at software doesn't necessarily make it better...
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Compare the amount of usefulness per dollar input versus people that buy boxed solutions? That's the real measure, yes there is big money there, but could you find a Software Company that could do the same thing with the same funds for the same Quality? There's a reason big software companies are willing to throw Apache and Linux developers big money because no single one of those companies could do ALL of what the big OSS projects do in their own house... and they definitely couldn't do it for the amount
Hope (Score:5, Interesting)
As if there were any doubt (Score:5, Insightful)
The BSA, just as their brethren the RIAA and MPAA, lie and deceive to press their clients' agenda. Open standards are to the benefit of all and that should be clear and easy to see for even the uninitiated. Open standards are very similar to units of measure in this respect and we can all imagine what things would be like if we didn't operate from the same ones... even worse if a third party controlled the meaning and use of those standards of measure. (weak analogy, I know, but easy enough for the layman to understand)
Re:As if there were any doubt (Score:4, Interesting)
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1. Julius Caesar was reckoned to be a direct descendant of Venus, so, as a divinity himself, he was pretty much right at the head of the "priesthood".
2. There was no "proprietary calendar". There wasn't any kind of useful calendar at all. That's why he needed to create one.
3. He was killed because some people didn't like his dictatorship and wanted to restore the Republic.
Airplanes will fall out of the sky! (Score:2)
Open standards are very similar to units of measure in this respect and we can all imagine what things would be like if we didn't operate from the same ones...
I can imagine airplanes falling out of the sky. As can Air Canada, if they remember the Gimli Glider incident (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider [wikipedia.org])
You can also hear Dan Klein tell a story about it (and software testing in general) at http://www.usenix.org/events/usenix05/tech/mp3/klein.mp3 [usenix.org]
Dear BSA, the liability is yours.. (Score:5, Interesting)
ISO standards are in principle open as well (well, they more or less were until Microsoft showed us just how easy it is to bribe leadership, but I digress). Following the BSA logic, this should prevent competition.
Just how many different makes of child seats are there? Should we stop this too? And the checking of how secure they are according to OPEN specifications that can be validated for quality?
These people are *so* blinded by their desire for control that they don't just ignore the collateral damage they cause, they actively don't care. Let's give them the benefit of their idea of "innovation" and send them to live in caves to write their next memo on a stone with a blunt chisel.
Another recommendation.. (Score:4, Interesting)
If this is their stance, are we not talking about cartel building? With this sort of letter I would be most curious to know just what other actions have taken place behind the scenes to make that BSA stance reality. Or, in plain English: maybe an anti-trust investigation could well be in order..
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Follow the money AND beware (Score:4, Insightful)
Seldom do profit and "best for country" align.
The BSA is a sponsored organization - sponsored by payments from commercial software makers. It works on their behalf and in their interests. The BSA also allows the commercial software makers to avoid getting their company shown in a negative light as they fight against anything that would reduce profits for the sponsor companies.
Open formats reduce profits for commercial software companies because we (our governments) don't need to pay for expensive "consultants" to create integrations. Integrations are where the consulting cash rolls in. Special requests that can be sold over and over again are another way they make money. With free software and open file formats, customers can most easily switch between different softwares and use different vendors against each other. With closed formats, only 1 software can work with the data. That is want the commercial software vendor wants everyone to believe.
The main issue with open specifications is they don't mandate open file/data formats. That means the details of the implementation can be interpreted by different vendors in very different ways, while still complying with the spec. That basically makes each implementation proprietary and achieves what the commercial software makers want.
That is not a way for governments - and all of us - to get what we really want.
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Seldom do profit and "best for country" align.
I'm as anti-BSA as one can be without being someone like RMS, but...just playing DA here...profit means a company stays alive longer, which means stability, which means cost-savings of not having to rework everything and retrain everyone...
now, in an ideal world one would be using open standards so that wouldn't be a problem in the first place...
its really quite simple... (Score:2)
As an end user and computer user I do not want my data held hostage nor do I want what I can do to be more productive with computer, to be falsely constrained.
I am also very aware just how much the software industry in general applies such hostage situations and false constraints. Open source software has proven itself, the developers of, to be a large improvement in teh direction of users freedom but there is plenty to improve upon, such a development tools and methodologies which allow more end users to a
"End users" as developers (Score:5, Informative)
The BSA folk have trouble with the very concept of libre software; it is a case of "not getting it." The idea that users can share software with each other is foreign to these people, and it goes against everything they believe is true of software development. They have an easier time with "open source," since at least they can still categorize people in a way that is comfortable to them; but when it comes to software freedom, when it comes to actually prioritizing the rights of non-developers, they have trouble with the very concept. "Open source" is something the BSA can compete with, attack, and so forth, because they can wrap their minds around it; "free software," on the other hand, is too different from the world as they understand it, and the best they can do is write it off as "academic."
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The BSA folk have trouble with the very concept of libre software [...] They have an easier time with "open source"
I suspect they will have a hard time articulating the differences.
If you want to know what they are, look at the two definitions, by the FSF and OSI, respectively, and compare. They are very minor.
IIRC, the TeX license is open source but not free software, because it places a restriction on the naming of changed files in redistributed derived works. That's the only example I know. (IANAL, TINLA)
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A good example of the difference is the TiVo issue. For someone who follows the free software philosophy, what TiVo did was wrong; TiVo prevented users from hacking their own devices. On the other hand, there is nothing specifically wrong about TiVo from an open so
Look at the member list (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.bsa.org/country/BSA%20and%20Members/Our%20Members.aspx [bsa.org]
Some pretty big players in overpriced hardware and software in there. Adobe, Microsoft and Quark being three who are big players in proprietary document creation software.
W3C sets Internet standards? (Score:2)
Wait, fsfe claims "W3C, the standard setting organization (SSO) that governs the Internet standards". Tthe "World Wide Web Consortium" just works on web stuff. The IETF does Internet standards.
Just in case ... (Score:3, Informative)
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Enemies of open standards... (Score:3, Insightful)
... are basically enemies of society as a whole. I think it may be time to contain these evil scum permanently.
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Don't worry, your software will never become a standard.
Hmmm (Score:2)
Interesting (Score:2)
In its letter, the BSA argues that "[I]f the EU adopts a preference for royalty/patent-free specifications, this undermines the incentives that firms have to contribute leading-edge innovations to standardization - resulting in less innovative European specifications, and less competitive European products."
Firms not contributing to standardization will face being irrelevant! Any firm that does not want to contribute to standardization faces less name recognition as well. Had Microsoft opened its Active Directory protocols from the beginning and sought to make it a standard, all kinds of other products with full compatibility would have been produced and Microsoft would be seen as the reference implementation. Microsoft could have charged large amounts of money for developer support and still
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Actually, it is a somewhat customized version of LDAP as well, as far as I've seen. Usable, but certainly not without its quirks.
BSA vs Tolkien version of The Hobbit (Score:3, Funny)
The BSA (Score:2)
I would put more trust in BSA motorcycles, which should never be out after dark, or the Boy Scouts of America than the wretched BSA in question.
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Leaked Letter -- BSA Pressures Europe To Kill Open Standards
I LOLed at that. I saw the Penn and Teller B.S. expose of the boy scouts of america and my first reaction was now those same goofs have messed up the BSA "Computers" badge, heckuva job guys...
Eeeht eez ahn oowtrehge! (Score:5, Insightful)
Despite all the jokes about Belgian nonexistence and French cowardice the European Commission will never capitulate to bullying.
However flattery, bullshit, and bribery have all been proven to be very effective.
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Speaking of corporate stooges, I'm pretty sure you are paid by Microsoft. The amount of attacks you make on a company seem directly related to how much they contribute to the open source ecosystem.
Concern Troll is a Troll (Score:5, Informative)
Also check out the instant +5. Campaigning on /. is unethical.
Florian Mueller is a professional PR man, advocate of Orwellian-named (F)RAND licensing and OOXML. In case anybody here doesn't know (unlikely), OOXML is Microsoft's misleadingly-named attempt to lock in the world's official documents. The fight against it was the good fight; only the most deluded and the paid disagree. Florian is the "corporate stooge" here.
He is not a friend of FOSS. He is a paid advocate for Microsoft's and the BSA's policy goals.
Never too late to change, Florian. Tell everyone who you work for, call off the mod brigade, do something good. This is not an abstract or esoteric debate to most of us here, it affects our lives directly. Leave the technology policy to us, go play soccer or something.
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Re:Concern Troll is a Troll (Score:5, Interesting)
Ah yes, you're not advocating OOXML, you're just suggesting that unencumbered document formats are an IBM conspiracy. And oh how you wish there was a better way than RAND! But there isn't, so the best thing for us to do is sign licensing agreements with Novell, Oracle, and Microsoft.
Since it's all too unreasonable to comment on, just address one point: Categorically deny that you are being paid for this PR campaign, and that your posts and the the obscene moderation thereof are part of said campaign (not that I have any hope for an honest answer).
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Ignore the troll Florian, you are doing a great job. I salute you!
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No, I think there is a basis. I chased your links..
TurboHercules asked to license IBM's OSes for production use on an emulator running on unspecified hardware. IBM's main selling point for those systems is extreme reliability. Did IBM ever raise so much as a mild objection to Hercules themselves? Not that I can see. "We think [...] you will understand that IBM could not reasonably be expected to license its operating systems for use on infringing platforms" is as far as they go, even when prompted on th
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FlorianMueller is a EuroTrash Douchebag... (Score:2)
That part is in the public domain already.
I see why YOU post anon.
Douchebags all...
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Re:Some open standards lobbying in EU isn't credib (Score:5, Interesting)
Who's talking about FOSS licenses?
This discussion is about open standards. And whoever is pushing the open standards (no, it doesn't matter a jot whether it's big blue, redhat, google and what ethical issues they may have or even if they implement the standards properly) the BSA's move here is unethical and just plain wrong.
And please don't mention OOXML opposition in the same ... universe as money and corruption when we all saw how that utter abortion of a non-standard was pushed through.
Re:Some open standards lobbying in EU isn't credib (Score:4, Interesting)
Good points, but there may be some cases where a file format is actually patented (despite exclusions in patent law).
In that particular situation, I think the EU should actually do what the BSA letter suggests, and refrain from using that particular technology for its public standards. In the probably most relevant field for government bureaucracies, formats for office documents, there is already a good enough open standard in the form of ODF.
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It's robber barons time again: society stands to benefit a lot from building a new infrastructure, which naturally some companies and individuals are trying to hijack, monopolize...
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Veering sadly off-topic here (but I can afford the potential karma hit): if "America" is not the US, then what is it? There's no continent with that name. There's a continent named "North America" and another one named "South America, and collectively they are referred to as "the Americas" (note plural), but nothing on this Earth is simply named "America".
Using "America" to refer to the US may not be 100% unambiguous, but that's only because of a tiny percentage of idiots in North and South America who fo