Open Standards Consultation Nearing Close
- Open Standards Consultation Nearing Close May 18, 2012
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ComputerWorldUK - Simon Phipps - The final round-table for the government's Open Standards Consultation is now open for booking - consider attending as much is at stake for UK ICT procurement.
As part of its ongoing consultation on the role of open standards in software procurement, The government has announced the date for the re-run of the first open standards round-table as Thursday May 31st. Anyone with an interest is invited to attend, either in person or (for the first time in this consultation) by phone. Places once again need to be booked in advance.
The first attempt at holding this meeting resulted in an unusually positive view on on the acceptability of standards that can only be implemented after gaining permission from patent holders, under so-called "FRAND" terms. Given one of the primary goals of the consultation is to make it easier for government entities to procure open source software, the widely-recognised incompatibility between FRAND terms and open source made this view surprising and anomalous.
The meeting was later voided by the Cabinet Office after the discovery of an undisclosed conflict of interest for the meeting moderator, who failed to advise them of a commercial relationship with Microsoft. It may be that the anomalous outcome was the result of domination of the meeting by opinions derived from the telecoms industry rather than the computer software industry.
This final round-table meeting will cover the aspects of the consultation regarding Competition and European Interaction. The Cabinet Office is seeking answers to these questions:
- UK government may miss cloud computing targets May 18, 2012
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BBC - The government may miss its cloud computing targets because of a lack of enthusiasm from public sector IT staff, a report has found.
The G-Cloud plan calls for 50% of new government IT spending to move to cloud computing services by 2015.
A government "app store" called CloudStore was launched in February to offer such services to the public sector.
G-Cloud aims to reduce government IT costs by £200m per year.
- Senior civil servant Ian Watmore to leave Cabinet Office post May 18, 2012
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BBC - One of the UK's most senior civil servants, Ian Watmore, is to leave his post, it has been announced.
Mr Watmore is the top mandarin at the Cabinet Office and head of the unit tasked with cutting waste and making Whitehall more efficient.
He first joined the civil service in 2004 and is leaving next month to pursue non-executive and charity roles n the North West of England.
Ministers said he had helped to deliver billions of pounds in savings.
- Thoughts on the certification May 17, 2012
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Moved by Freedom - Powered by Standards - A weblog by Charles-H. Schulz - On the 7th of May 2012 The Document Foundation has announced its first certification program. This certification is aimed at professionals who are interested in having their skillset certified in order to provide professional services to their customers. The program is currently being rolled out, in fact the first official certification meeting will take place at the LinuxTag next week. I would like to explain what we are trying to achieve in a bit more details by shedding some light on the reasons such a program came into existence.
Historically, OpenOffice.org has been one of the most downloaded Free Software out there and one of the most used (the real market share was estimated to be around 15%, far higher than the estimates based on the shipment of MS Office) all around the world. But for all its user base, OpenOffice.org proved incapable to growing a vibrant ecosystem of support and service providers, value-added resellers, OEMs and integrators. Initiatives had been launched with mixed success. Judging by its yield and popularity, OpenOffice.org was a complete business failure – and not just to Sun’s own bottomline.
- Lacking support from other administrations, Freiburg ends use of open source office May 17, 2012
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Joinup - The German city of Freiburg will end its use of OpenOffice, an open source office suite, and go back to a proprietary office suite, according to one well-informed source. The source blames a lack of support for open document standards by other local, regional, federal and European public administrations as the main reason for the failure of the project.
The city board on Friday approved a suggestion made by external consultants to move all nearly 2000 desktop PCs back to a proprietary office suite. The city council will be informed next month.
The source says the consultants' main argument for the reversal are the problems with interoperability.
The city's IT department over the past few years repeatedly pleaded for German and European administrations to use the Open Document Format (ODF) when exchanging electronic documents. The city's civil workers faced too many interoperability problems receiving and handling documents sent by their counterparts in other public administrations saved in the proprietary vendor's formats.
- How Microsoft Fought True Open Standards V May 15, 2012
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ComputerWorldUK - Glyn Moody - Ten years ago, people were saying that open source would never be able to best proprietary software. But what they overlooked was the fact that Apache had already beaten Microsoft's IIS Web server offering back in the mid-1990s, and had never lost that leadership once.
Since then, we've had GNU/Linux trouncing Windows in the area of supercomputers, and arguably winning in the mobile space with Android. And so the refrain became: yes, but open source will never succeed on the desktop. Against that background, this news is significant:
VideoLAN would like to thank VLC users 1 billion times, since VLC has now been downloaded more than 1 billion times from our servers, since 2005!
In case you haven't come across it:
VLC is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files as well as DVD, Audio CD, VCD, and various streaming protocols.
- Google walks away from pioneering website linking Scotland’s schools May 15, 2012
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Scotsman - Fears have been raised over the future of a world-leading website used in Scotland’s schools after Google pulled out of the race to develop it.
A procurement process is currently under way to find developers for the next phase of Glow, the national intranet site for school pupils, which became a world first when it was launched in 2006.
Google has pulled out of the competition for Next Generation Glow, saying that the Scottish Government’s procurement process was at odds with its company philosophy on how the internet should be used to provide education in schools.
- Ubuntu 12.04 vs. Windows 8: Five points of comparison May 14, 2012
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ZDNet - 2012 has already seen a major update of what’s arguably the most important Linux desktop: Ubuntu 12.04 and we’re also seeing the most radical update of Windows with Windows 8 Metro coming since Windows 95 replaced Windows 3.1. So, which will end up the better for its change?
- Open source suites go beyond Microsoft Office May 14, 2012
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InfoWorld - Simon Phipps - Open source desktop productivity suites are experiencing an injection of enthusiasm, as recent burst of news releases confirms.
In my blog post last week, as well as showing a cool video of Ubuntu for Android in action, I asserted that open source makes the perfect foundation for innovation. A sequence of news releases about open source desktop productivity suites have shown up over the last few weeks to add to the assertion. With this amount of energy, open source suites are looking more and more like interesting alternatives to Microsoft Office.
- Dutch net neutrality to become reality after Senate approves law May 10, 2012
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PCWorld - The Netherlands is the first country in Europe to adopt a net neutrality law, and the second country in the world, after Chile. The Dutch Senate adopted the net neutrality provisions in a new Telecom Law approved on Tuesday evening.
The changes to the law were approved unanimously, according to the Senate website. The net neutrality law will ensure that access to the Internet is neutral and it is forbidden to filter the Internet.
The law aims to prevent telecom providers from blocking or throttling services such as Skype or WhatsApp, an Internet SMS service. Internet providers will also be prohibited from making prices for their Internet services dependent on the services used by the subscriber. ISPs may throttle traffic to prevent congestion or protect the network -- but only if they treat all traffic of the same type equally -- and they may not block traffic unless it is necessary in order to protect the integrity and security of the network or users' terminals.
There is one notable exception which allows Internet users to request an ISP to filter their Internet traffic by blocking certain services and applications based on ideological grounds, according to the approved changes in the law.
- Why Patent Injunctions Are Even Worse For Open Source May 10, 2012
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Innovation - Glyn Moody - The damage that software patents cause to innovation in the computer world is a constant theme here on Techdirt. But as a fascinating new paper by James Boyle explains, the threat to open source, particularly from patent injunctions, is even greater because of the special characteristics of that software development methodology:
- Apple's HTML5 bet against Android extermination May 10, 2012
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The Register - Matt Asay - Open ... and Shut - Harvard professor Clayton Christensen has more than 500 billion reasons to think he's wrong to suggest Apple is in for rough sailing, but he's not backing down. The father of disruption theory - a theory that Apple's former chief executive Steve Jobs claimed had a huge impact on his thinking - believes that Apple's end-to-end, integrated approach to innovation is susceptible to disruption from a more modular, open approach like that of Google's Android.
He could be right. But then, we've heard this before. (Proving that I can be consistently inconsistent, I've argued both for and against Apple's strategy.)
It takes a bold person to predict Apple's downfall even as it continues to grow from strength to strength, but Christensen is comforted by having the weight of history on his side:
The transition from proprietary architecture to open, modular architecture just happens over and over again. It happened in the personal computer, and although it didn't kill Apple's computer business, it relegated them to a minor player.
- Apache releases new OpenOffice build, promises faster upgrades May 09, 2012
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The Register - The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has released an updated version of the OpenOffice free software suite, with enhanced graphics and better encryption support.
Version 3.4 of the office suite has had major changes in the graphics capability of the package. OLEObject handling has been improved, thanks in part to volunteer coder Armin LeGrand, as well as support for scalable vector graphics and better chart rendering. Line cap graphics have also received an improvement that should improve the look and feel of the code.
Other new features include a speeding up of the boot process and better support for ODF, notably ODF 1.2 encryption, as well as multiple images within the format. The entire software suite is now also under the Apache License 2 regime.
- UK Open Standards consultation - workshop on IPRs May 08, 2012
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Jochen Friedrich's Open Blog - It was shortly before last week's second workshop organised by the UK cabinet office in the context of their consultation on open standards when the announcement was made that the first workshop would not be considered. The reason for this nullification was a potential conflict of interest of Dr. Andy Hopkirk who had been moderator of the workshop.
The workshop itself last week was pretty straight forward. The majority of the people were clearly in favour of openness, of open standards and of enabling a level playing field for open source technologies via a clear open standards procurement policy. Cabinet office reconfirmed that the policy is about software interoperability only and that they intend to follow the principle of "Comply or declare"; thus they indicate the basic direction and give recommendations but do not dictate.
One of the points that came across most clearly at the meeting is that the telecommunications sector thinks and operates very different from IT. And it could be clarified that all the concerns that were raised out of the perspective of the participants representing telcos are not applicable for software interoperability.
- Software industry reclaims open standards debate May 04, 2012
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Computer Weekly - Software heavyweights filled the first meeting of the UK's extended public consultation on open standards last Friday, closing down telecoms patent advocates whose arguments had threatened to derail government policy.
Deputy government CIO Liam Maxwell had the night before extended the consultation for a month after discovering Microsoft, lead opponent of the UK's open standards policy, had been paying an independent Cabinet Office facilitator to help formulate its case. Government supporters had till then shown a lacklustre response to the consultation, while the policy, and open standards, had looked lost for the UK.
By Friday lunchtime the tables had turned.
Linda Humphries, Cabinet Office official, told a meeting of around 30 mostly software experts that the fields from which the government's opponents had been drawing their evidence was out of bounds for the consultation.
"The consultation is focusing on open standards in specifications for software interoperability, data and document formats," she said, with Maxwell looking on.
"It doesn't go into hardware, telecoms or software IP. There are some people concerned we are trying to run away with [their] IP. That's not the point at all. What we are talking about is standards," she said.
The meeting nevertheless dwelt for a significant time on just those things as the software industry staked its territory in what seemed like a pivotal moment for both it and the coalition government's ICT strategy.
- Key questions in the UK’s shift to open-access research May 04, 2012
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Nature - Soon, we’ll all be reading publicly funded UK research free of charge. That momentous change has been in the works since last March, and in December the British government explained why and how it would happen (yes, although you might not guess it from recent media reports, the UK open-access shift was underway well before what the Guardian has called this year’s ‘Academic Spring’).
- Jimmy Wales Backs Government Scheme To Free Academic Research May 03, 2012
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TechWeek europe - Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is to help the government in its initiative to make all academic research funded by the taxpayer, freely available online.
Wales only joined forces with the government last month, when it was announced that he would be unpaid adviser across all government departments to help civil servants develop “innovative” new technology.
- Law change opens UK public data for re-use May 03, 2012
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ZDNet - UK Parliament has amended UK information law in an attempt to make open data easier for developers and companies to use and commercialise.
The Protection of Freedoms Act, which contained amendments to the Freedom of Information Act, was passed by royal assent on Tuesday. The amendments will see public sector bodies present open data in standardised, re-usable formats.
"The information will be available in machine-readable form, using open standards, which enables its re-use and manipulation — for example, in a spreadsheet or .csv format (a common readable computer format that allows you to manipulate and transfer data easily)," a Cabinet Office spokesman told ZDNet UK in an email exchange on Wednesday. "Examples of documents not in a re-usable form include Adobe PDF documents."
Data will not be presented in raw form, Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude said in a statement.
"At present, the data issued by public authorities is raw and often unformed," said Maude. "Under the new Protection of Freedoms Act, datasets should be released in a form that can be used and re-used, so it will no longer be necessary to make a separate approach to public authorities to re-use a dataset.
- Tim Berners-Lee: Corporations Would Benefit From Releasing Their Data May 03, 2012
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TechWeek europe - Tim Berners-Lee has called on businesses to be more giving with their data.
The open data concept closely follows the ideas of open source, arguing that certain information should be freely available for everyone to use and republish as they wish, without restrictions from copyright, patents or other mechanisms of control.
The father of the Web, Tim Berners-Lee, is a vocal proponent of the open data movement, having helped the UK government launch data.gov.uk, a project to make almost all non-personal government data available online. Our colleagues from silicon.de caught up with Berners-Lee in Dublin last week, to talk about the benefits of sharing.
- Software functionality not subject to copyright: EU court May 03, 2012
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The Register - In a far-reaching decision for the software industry, the European Court of Justice has decided that the functionality of software – as distinct from the actual code – is not covered by copyright.
The decision concludes a long-running court case first brought by SAS against World Programming Limited (WPL).
WPL had gotten under SAS’s skin by buying a copy of its software and creating a feature by reading the description of the feature in the manual, and writing its own code.
- How Microsoft Fought True Open Standards IV May 02, 2012
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ComputerWorldUK - Glyn Moody - Yesterday I looked at the first part of a long document that Microsoft sent the Cabinet Office in October last year. Here I'd like to explore one of the other sections, which is headed as follows:
The revised definition [of open standards] would not advance the government’s underlying interoperability objectives, nor would it advance the government’s underlying cost saving objectives.
This part begins:
While standards are clearly an important part of a government interoperability program, it is important to remember that standards alone do not guarantee interoperability and that they are merely one piece of the puzzle towards fostering better interoperability.
Some of the others, Microsoft suggests, are "clear drafting, robust interoperability testing of implementations, widespread market acceptance."
As for that clear drafting, here's what someone wrote the day after Microsoft's OOXML was accepted as an ISO standard:
- Swedish schools confused about document file formats and applications May 02, 2012
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Joinup - Björn Lundell - Sweden's schools teachers and students seem unable to separate the digital formats of their documents from the software they use to write and read such documents, concludes Björn Lundell, a researcher from the University of Skövde. Based on preliminary figures from a survey of schools in the country, he sees " significant IT vendor lock-in."
The researcher collected a first round of answers from an email-based survey sent to 290 municipalities that together support about 5000 primary and secondary schools. Based on these results Lundell shared some early conclusions, in a presentation during the ODF Plugfest in Brussels earlier this month.
Many of Sweden's schools expect their teachers and pupils to use a variety of proprietary file formats, Lundell summarises. He says that is exactly the opposite of the country's policy's. "Students should expect to be able to use open file formats in public sector schools."
- Accommodating Telecoms May 02, 2012
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ComputerWorldUK - Simon Phipps - I attended the 3rd round-table meeting for the UK Government Consultation on Open Standards last Friday. The meeting was well attended although not completely full. In particular, perhaps because of the controversy that broke the same day involving their back-room activities, a number of seats that people supporting FRAND had booked at the sold-out meeting remained empty.
In the absence of those friends of FRAND, input on the supposed necessity of FRAND was made by only by spokespeople from the telecommunications industry. Their history is of participants in a market where a legally-constituted cartel of suppliers commission specifications for key shared standards. Technologists contribute freely on the expectation they will recoup their costs through royalties for licensing the patents on their contributions. In their market, it is reasonable to expect and tolerate FRAND terms. I believe understanding that is critical to progress on a rational policy for the UK Government.
- How Microsoft Fought True Open Standards III Apr 30, 2012
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ComputerWorldUK - Glyn Moody - In my first two posts about Microsoft's lobbying against true open standards, I concentrated on a document sent to the Cabinet Office in May 2011. Here, I'd like to look at another, sent in October 2011 (available in both html and pdf formats.)
The document has three main sections. The first is headed:
The revised definition would preclude the use of practically all standards that governments (and private sector, including citizens) currently use because no standards are “made irrevocably available without restriction on a royalty free basis.”
Here's the nub of the argument:
- Cabinet Office Acts On Discovery Of Undisclosed Conflict Of Interest Apr 27, 2012
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ComputerWorldUK - Simon Phipps - In a remarkable development last night resonant of the revelations in the Leveson inquiry, the Cabinet Office voided the findings of the first open standards consultation round-table on the grounds that it's facilitator had a previously undisclosed relationship with Microsoft. The news posting on the Cabinet Office web site also announced that an extra month has been added to the process, so that the consultation meeting can be run again.
As both ComputerWeekly's Mark Ballard and ComputerWorld's Glyn Moody have discovered, there has been extensive behind-the-scenes manoeuvring to re-open the Government's position on open standards and protect the incumbent suppliers to the government, so the discovery of an over-cozy relationship in this area of the government's business too is no real surprise.
The extra time will be welcomed by many, but I expect to see a renewed push for the sophistry that claims standards with restrictions on who can implement them are somehow preferable to standards anyone can freely implement. That's clearly untrue, as I wrote on Wednesday. The extension also means you're extra time to submit your responses; please do.
- Open Standards consultation – important update Apr 27, 2012
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Governmnet Digital Service - On 4th April 2012, Dr Andy Hopkirk facilitated a roundtable on behalf of ICT Futures on Competition and European Interaction. Liam Maxwell, Deputy Government CIO, examines the appropriateness of this facilitation based on information which has since come to light.
Those in the Open Standards community will be aware of our recently re-launched consultation on which we have been soliciting your views since 9th February 2012. One of our first discussion roundtables held on the 4th of April (Competition and European Interaction) was facilitated by Dr Andrew Hopkirk who blogged about the event for Computer Weekly and who was engaged by Cabinet Office as an independent facilitator on a pro-bono basis.
Dr Hopkirk is a respected advocate for “openness and interoperability of systems, of people, processes and information technologies”.
However, at the time he was engaged to facilitate the Open Standards roundtable, while we were aware that he represented the National Computing Centre on the Microsoft Interoperability Executive Customer Council (along with 40 other CIOs/CTOs across the public and private sector who participate in a voluntary capacity) he did not declare the fact that he was advising Microsoft directly on the Open Standards consultation.
- US government deploys open data standards created in Ireland Apr 27, 2012
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Silicon Republic - The open data movement is in full swing and tools and standards created in Ireland are to prove pivotal to open data employed by the US government. It emerged today that agencies in the US Government have adopted a set of web tools and standards developed in Ireland by researchers at NUI Galway’s Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI).
DERI’s technologies are being utilised by Data.gov, a portal developed to bring an unprecedented level of transparency to the US government. DERI’s research, which is funded by Science Foundation Ireland, focuses on enabling networked knowledge, using the latest semantic web and linked data technologies.
- FOI shows bureaucratic bungle behind open standards u-turn Apr 26, 2012
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Computer Weekly - Standards institutions persisted in their opposition to the UK's open standards policy after Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude reassured them their fears about it were unfounded, according to letters released to Computer Weekly under Freedom of Information.
The revelation raises questions about the minister's subsequent withdrawal of the UK policy, on 30 November, which was by then under no substantial pressure bar lobbying from large US software companies and, bizarrely, the record industry.
A letter sent by Maude in June last year, and obtained by Computer Weekly, showed how he had even then already extinguished threats and fears raised by opponents of the UK open standards policy in official standards bodies in Chiswick and Geneva.
The International Standards Organisation and its UK franchise, the British Standards Organisation, had threatened that the coalition government would be in breach of international agreements if it persisted with the policy. This would have meant expulsion from the international standards community, a threat so severe that it sent the Cabinet Office into a tailspin of public consultations.
But the standards bodies had got it all wrong - and this they later admitted.
The letters now obtained by Computer Weekly suggest they either misunderstood the policy because their executive officers did not understand software standards issues, or they wilfully misinterpreted it to protect their business interests. Neither organisation was available for comment.
- Support for ODF from the Hungarian government Apr 26, 2012
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The H Open - The Hungarian government has committed to invest just over a million pounds (370 million HUF) in the development of applications that use the open document format (ODF), according to a report on the European Union's Joinup web site. Two organisations will benefit from the funding: the Department of Software Engineering at the University of Szeged and the open source development company, Multiráció. In December of last year, the Hungarian government announced that from April 2012 all official documents would need to be prepared in internationally recognised open-standards-based formats
- OSI Supports Open Standards Apr 26, 2012
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ComputerWorldUK - Simon Phipps - The Open Source Initiative agreed what made a standard open back in 2006 and today collaborated with the Free Software Foundation on a press statement about it.
Back in 2006, a detailed discussion at the Open Source Initiative - where I am today a director - led to the creation of a statement about what makes a standard open, and a set of criteria for determining if the requirement was met and a standard compliant. Both are very simple as well as fully explained.
To save you the click-through, here's the OSI Open Standards Requirement and Criteria in full:
- UK Open Standards experts publish joint statement on Government consultation Apr 25, 2012
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At a meeting yesterday, hosted by the British Computer Society's Open Source Specialists Group, We the Undersigned called upon the Government to do the following:
- Not do anything which will result in the imposition in a stealth tax upon citizens, for example by requiring them to purchase specific products for interacting with online public services
- Ensure that anybody and everybody be able to participate in public sector procurement, regardless of their businesses model
- Leverage truly open innovative technologies to achieve long term savings
Commitment to these points is critical if The Government is to achieve its stated aims of a more competitive and diverse market for public contracts, reduction of barriers to participation in public sector IT affecting small and medium size enterprises, and realisation of the potential benefits of its existing Open Data strategy.
We believe that it is important that The Government moves quickly from setting Open Standards policy to practically implementing it, and we look forward to participating in the next steps of this process.
Sincerely,
Howard Thomson, Martin Houston, Free and Libre Open Source Software UK,
Sam Tuke, Free Software Foundation Europe,
Graham Taylor, Open Forum Europe,
Gerry Gavigan, Open Source Consortium
- The debate about the UK open standards policy – is it a story like the one of the spider and the bee? Apr 25, 2012
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Jochen Friedrich's Open Blog - A fierce debate is going on about the UK open procurement policy and the open standards consultation that was issued by the UK government and where final submission is due by end of this month. It is the same (old) debate about open versus closed that we have seen so often before. It is discussed in almost every organisation around the globe, it seems, and culminates in a series of workshops around the topic to which the UK cabinet office has invited.
And as we have seen before, there is a good deal of confusion around and a good deal of FUD is created. There are some articles and blog posts from the workshops that give a bit of an idea of the debate. On ComputerWeekly Mark Ballard published an article where he did some research on how the first workshop went: “Open standards supporters who attended complained it was stacked with opponents who easily dominated a meeting motion against the government's open standards policy.” This was, in a way, countered or put into more balance by a statement from Andrew Hopkirk, moderator and facilitator of the round table – also published in ComputerWeekly.
In a blog post Linda Humphries, member of the UK cabinet office, asks “Are open standards a closed barrier?” And she outlines in some detail what the actual objective of the UK policy makers is:
- Interview with Charles-H. Schulz on Open Standards Apr 25, 2012
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ComputerWorldUK - Glyn Moody - As you may have noticed, open standards are a hot topic currently. One person who deals with them all the time in a variety of ways is Charles-H. Schulz.
That's because he's one of the leaders of The Document Foundation, home to the LibreOffice fork of the ODF-based OpenOffice.org, and he's also on the board of the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS). The following is an interview exploring his views about standards - open and not so open.
- UK Government Open Standards Consultation closes soon Apr 25, 2012
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The H Open - The UK Government's Open Standards Consultation period will come to an end soon and open standards advocates are calling on interested parties to submit their comments as soon as possible. The debate has predominantly centred around the question of FRAND (Free Reasonable And Non Discriminatory) and RF (Royalty Free) patent licences, with proprietary software companies reported to be lobbying for the former. Open standards advocates are calling for an RF patent policy as this allows open source developers to implement the standards without having to pay for patent licences.
The Open Rights Group (ORG), the UK non-profit digital rights group, is among those calling on people to respond to the consultation before it closes on 1 May. According to ORG Campaigner Peter Bradwell, the new consultation process, which began as the result of the UK Government withdrawing its previous recommendations, has already come under "intense lobbying" since it started in early February.
The consultation itself is organised into three chapters: criteria for open standards, open standards mandation and international alignment. The first section covers a proposed specification policy which describes, among other things, how patents should interact with open standards. The second section discusses how the government should mandate open standards within the public sector. The final section asks questions about how the policy will align with international standards bodies and other organisations outside the UK.
- Local government needs to create a culture of openness Apr 23, 2012
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The Guardian - "In our rhetoric, we should separate the politics of public accountability from the technologies of open data," tweeted Princeton scholar Harlan Yu.
His latest paper, written with academic partner David Robinson, is a worthwhile read. The gist of Yu and Robinson's argument is that there are two separate, often confused, open government discussions taking place: one about transparency and the functionality of government; the other over public sector information that is both politically neutral and very useful to the public.
Though the British government believes that the latter can help boost economic innovation and cut the cost of delivering public services, I believe we should be talking about the former.
- Why RAND Is Bad For Open Source Apr 20, 2012
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ComputerWorldUK - Simon Phipps - Here's an easy guide to the core issue in the UK Government's Open Standards Consultation so you can participate more easily. Please do - your country needs you!
By now, you're hopefully aware that there's a consultation in progress by the UK government on certain key aspects of their procurement strategy. Specifically, lobbying has re-opened the question of how "open standards" should be defined by the government for procurement purposes. The emergence of this zombie issue appears to be related once again to office productivity documents - yes, the OOXML vs ODF issue isn't over.
While this appeared to be settled following earlier work by the Cabinet Office, Glyn Moody has uncovered evidence that shows first how Microsoft, the BSA and associated companies have argued that it is unfair to their proprietary software business to require mandatory standards to be free from patent encumbrances placed by the authors of the standards, and second that this opposition appears to only applies to cases where the standards in question disadvantage proprietary interests.
- Does Microsoft Office Lock-in Cost the UK Government £500 Million? Apr 20, 2012
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ComputerWorldUK - Glyn Moody - In may last column, I wrote about Microsoft's efforts last year to derail any possible adoption of ODF. That's very telling, because in a way it's quite separate from the issue of open standards, and it shows that one of Microsoft's chief fears is losing the extremely lucrative office suite business. But just how lucrative is it? An email from Microsoft that is apparently circulating around the Treasury department sheds some interesting light on this. Here's what it says:
As a strong supporter of openness and inter-operability in software and systems, Microsoft feels there would be risks associated with a narrow definition of an open standard or a restrictive single standard mandate. Moreover, we believe that this would actually the increase costs of procuring IT right across the Government estate rather than reducing costs.
Microsoft a "strong supporter of openness"? Well, that's an interesting claim given that it has spent the last fifteen years spreading FUD about the horrors of openness. But maybe it's seen the light now, so let's look at the second part of the above. Notice that it moves from open standards to restrictive single standard mandate: as far as I am aware, nothing in the current open standards consultation talks about single standard mandates - it's another of Microsoft's straw men.
The email goes on:
- Microsoft Adds ODF, Short UK, 300MB file Uploads To Skydrive Apr 20, 2012
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ITProPortal -Microsoft has added support for the Open Document Format (ODF) which is more widely accepted than the proprietary Microsoft Office formats (docx, xlsx, pptx etc) to its online cloud storage solution, Skydrive, ahead of the impending launch of Google own solution, Google Drive.
Microsoft said in a release that it will add Share to Twitter, 300MB file uploads in the browser as well as a short URL (sdrv.ms) for Windows Phone images sharing via Twitter. In addition, the team has confirmed that they have "some really big things coming soon" without dishing out more details on what to expect.
- Red Hat cautiously optimistic about Microsoft's Open Technologies Inc Apr 20, 2012
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ZDNet - Linux leader Red Hat today applauded Microsoft’s recent launch of an open technologies subsidiary but is clearly taking a wait and see attitude.
Naturally. In the past, Microsoft described Linux and open source as a “cancer” on the software industry. Red Hat pointed out that the path to openness was not without opposition. With that it mind, Red Hat today penned a cautiously optimistic response to the news.
Here it is, verbatim:
- Internet needs no 'digital handcuffs', says Kroes Apr 20, 2012
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ZDNet - Open standards in procurement, less restrictive copyright regimes, and net neutrality can all play a part in freeing internet users from potential 'digital handcuffs', according European Commission digital agenda chief Neelie Kroes.
Kroes reiterated a number of strands of European Commission thought on the 'open internet' at the W3C Conference in Lyon on Thursday. To illustrate her point, Kroes talked of a pair of handcuffs sent to her by the Free Software Foundation lobby group.
"Let me show you, these handcuffs are not closed, not locked," said Kroes. "I can open them if and when I want. That's what I mean by being open online, what it means to me to get rid of 'digital handcuffs'."
Open data from governments "could benefit consumers, inform voters, help policy-makers, stimulate web innovators, and boost the economy," said Kroes. The NAO called on the UK government to improve the quality of public sector open data in a report on Wednesday.
The European Commission is working on guidance for open standards for government procurement, said Kroes. In February the UK government denied that the influence of proprietary software lobbying had caused the government to rethink its definition of open standards.
- BSA Wants Business Software Licences To Be Checked in VAT Audits Apr 19, 2012
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ComputerWorldUK - Glyn Moody - In my last post, I wrote about my Freedom of Information request to find out how Microsoft had been lobbying against true open standards that mandated RF licensing. In fact, I made another at the same time, asking a similar question about the Business Software Alliance's contacts with the Cabinet Office. There turned out to be only two meetings, and one email, so clearly the BSA played less of a role than Microsoft in this area.
The BSA did, however, repeat Microsoft's inaccurate claim that RF-based open standards would "cause there to be whole classes of product which would not be available to be procured if this was the case." As I explained in my previous post, this is not so, since there are two clear exceptions to the original RF open standards policy that would allow FRAND-based standards to be adopted.
In fact this very point was made at the meeting between the BSA and Cabinet Office on 23 September:
- Microsoft bigs up open source, then stuffs it under the sofa Apr 19, 2012
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The Register - Matt Asay - Open ... and Shut Microsoft's new Open Technologies subsidiary may be many things, but one thing it's not is "further demonstration of Microsoft’s long-term commitment to interoperability, greater openness, and to working with open source communities", as Microsoft has positioned it.
While it's true that Microsoft's self-interest has increasingly aligned with open source and open standards like HTML5 over the years, it's not true that isolating its open technology efforts will somehow help the software giant engage more in this world. If anything, openness will increasingly be "what our subsidiary does" for Microsofties still hoping to win a 21st-century battle using a 20th-century strategy.
When I tweeted as much, Microsoft's Peter Galli was quick to email me to suggest I hadn't understood; that "open source does, and will continue to, permeate Microsoft". I am sure Galli and the rest of the open-source crowd at Microsoft sincerely believe this, but it's hard to see how Microsoft can hope to embrace open source and other open technologies while sidelining them to a subsidiary.
- Sizzling open vs. proprietary debate heats up the cloud Apr 19, 2012
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NetworkWorld - It's turning into a mud-slinging affair in the cloud computing industry.
The familiar debate of open source vs. proprietary IT offerings now seems in full swing in the cloud, and the rhetoric shooting back and forth between some of the major vendors is intensifying. The most recent round really picked up a few weeks ago when Citrix announced it would bring its CloudStack cloud building platform to the Apache Software Foundation, creating a competing model to OpenStack. Before that, OpenStack had been gaining momentum in the open source cloud worlds. While Citrix's move was initially seen as a competition to OpenStack, both companies have more recently taken aim at a common foe: VMware.
- How Microsoft Fought True Open Standards II Apr 18, 2012
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ComputerWorldUK - Glyn Moody - In yesterday's post about Microsoft's lobbying of the Cabinet Office against truly open standards based on RF licensing, I spent some time examining the first part of a letter sent by the company on 20 May last year. The second part concentrates on the issue of open standards for document exchange. This touches on one of the most brutal episodes in recent computing history - the submission of Microsoft's OOXML file format to ISO for approval.
That story is told in unmatched depth and authority by Andy Updegrove on his Standards Blog, and for those who want the gory details, I strongly recommend looking through some of the literally hundreds of posts Updegrove has written on this extremely complex subject.
I won't go into the details of that story here. Instead, I want to concentrate on just one aspect, as revealed in this post by Updegrove:
- Dear open standards lobby: SHOUT LOUDER!! Apr 18, 2012
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Computer Weekly - There is a hugely important debate taking place in the UK IT community at the moment, one that will have equally huge significance for almost everyone who buys IT in this country.
It's about open standards - and in particular, what definition the UK government will use for the open standards policy that will determine much of the future of public sector IT procurement. But this isn't just an issue for IT chiefs in government - the longer term implications will affect every IT leader in every sector. With government being such a major influence on IT suppliers, the policy it adopts will have a big input into the product development of any vendor that wants to sell to the public sector, and hence to the products they sell to the private sector too.
It's a complex and often emotional debate.
For the layman, when software types start talking about patents and intellectual property and throwing around jargon and acronyms such as RF (royalty free) and FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory), there's a natural tendency to switch off.
Don't worry - I'm not going to get into that sort of detail here, although if you read on I will point you to other articles on Computer Weekly and elsewhere that will help to explain some of those finer points.
Instead, I want to point a finger at the supporters of open standards and open source - simply because they need to make their opinions heard more widely and loudly in this critical debate.
Let me explain.
- ESOP - Portuguese Open Source Business Association - publishes studies on the laptop retail oligopoly Apr 18, 2012
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ESOP has just made available two studies with a focus on the retail oligopoly dominating laptop sales. The artificial exclusion of Linux-based laptops amounts to 3 to 5 Million Euros in direct impacts in the Portuguese economy. Indirect impacts may be much higher.
The first study analyses the national economic impacts of introducing a series of locally-assembled laptops with an Open Source system and applications. This study measures the effects on GDP, employment, trade balance and discretionary income.The second study analyses this market behaviour, which is typical of retail oligopolies. The analysis derives a probability model for retail markets and addresses several malfunctioning phenomena in the frame of the existing European legislation for competition.
- Microsoft – carefully – edges closer to the open-source community Apr 18, 2012
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PCA - Despite a rocky historical relationship with the open-source community, Microsoft's recent decision to create a specialized Open Technologies spinoff is the latest phase of its recent rapprochement with the open world -- as well as a canny defensive measure.
Jeffrey Hammond, a principal analyst for Forrester Research, says that the aim of the Open Technologies announcement is twofold.
"I think the big idea is that Microsoft wants to get more involved in the open-source community. And in order to do that they need to set up some firewalls to protect IP that they have in their corporate environment," he says. "Basically, what they want to be able to do is have a way that their lawyers will allow them to participate in open-source communities and even work with [them] without potentially infecting existing products."
The current crop of developers -- which Hammond refers to as the "Github generation" -- is heavily focused on working within open-source software communities, whose importance to the business software marketplace has grown rapidly.
"Those [communities] are now the planets around which vendors spin," he says.
- UK open government data: the results of the official audit Apr 18, 2012
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The Guardian - This should be a good week for open government data in the UK. The British government is one of the key drivers in the Open Government Partnership, presently meeting in Brasilia, where it is being lauded for the way it has released a "tsunami of data".
And yet, according to the National Audit Office, all is not entirely rosy. Read between the lines of its report out today, Implementing Transparency, and you will see a government which has been chucking out tonnes of data, that no-one looks at and without a complete strategy. Oh and it's cost an awful lot of money.
Crucially, it found the Cabinet office seemed to have no idea of how much the transparency agenda would cost or what it would do:
- How Microsoft Fought True Open Standards I Apr 17, 2012
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ComputerWorldUK - Glym Moody - Regular readers may recall that I was not a little taken aback by an astonishing U-turn performed by the Cabinet Office on the matter of open standards. As I pointed out in a follow-up article, this seemed to bear the hallmarks of a Microsoft intervention, but I didn't have any proof of that.
So, without much hope, I put in a Freedom of Information request through the wonderful WhatDoTheyKnow site (highly recommended), asking for details of all the meetings that Microsoft had had with the Cabinet Office on this subject. To my utter astonishment I was sent a real cornucopia of briefing notes and emails that Microsoft used to lobby against Restriction-Free (RF) open standards and in favour for standards based on FRAND licensing of claimed patents.
Over the next few days I shall be presenting some of the astonishing things that Microsoft has been saying behind closed doors in its attempt to derail truly open standards. These are extremely timely given the current UK government consultation on open standards, which I've already urged you to respond to several times.
- EU Asks for Help on Regulating the Internet of Things Apr 17, 2012
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PCW - The European Commission is calling for opinions on how to regulate wirelessly connected devices, as legal experts say the current Data Protection Directive is not up to the job.
Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes last week launched a public consultation on the so-called "Internet of things" to try to find the right balance between privacy and convenience.
"The current directive is certainly not designed with this technology in mind," said Kathryn Wynn, senior associate at legal firm Pinsent Masons, adding that it is likely that a lot of the more intrusive communications (such as alerts to devices or device-tracking) would not be considered to be "personal data" under the existing legislation.
Household devices, most obviously smartphones and laptops, are already connected wirelessly but the number of devices that can connect to the Internet is set to grow dramatically in coming years. The Commission estimates that currently the average person has two devices connected to the Internet, but expects this to rise to seven by 2015.
- IBM, Red Hat help form OpenStack Foundation Apr 17, 2012
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ZDNet - OpenStack, the open source infrastructure-as-a-service platform that has been adopted by the industry as the David to Amazon Web Service's proprietary Goliath, has signed up 19 major technology companies to steward the development of the technology.
The 19 initial supporters of the OpenStack Foundation were announced on Thursday. Initial 'Platinum' members include AT&T, Canonical, HP, IBM, Nebula, Rackspace, Red Hat and SUSE, while the 'Gold' members are Cisco, ClearPath Networks, Cloudscaling, Dell, DreamHost, ITRI, Mirantis, Morphlabs, NetApp, Piston Cloud Computing and Yahoo.
- Why Open Source Is the Key to Cloud Innovation Apr 16, 2012
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PCW - In the 25 years since Richard Stallman wrote the GNU General Public License, free and open source software (FOSS) have become pervasive in computing: Linux, Apache HTTP Server, MySQL and more can be found in large numbers of enterprises across the globe. And open source is now increasingly undergirding cloud computing as well.
"Open source is certainly at the foundation in terms of building out cloud technologies," says Byran Che, senior director of product management at Red Hat and responsible for its cloud operations offerings, management software and Red Hat Enterprise MRG, (Red Hat's Messaging, Real-time and Grid platform). "If you take a look at market share in the server space, as you look at traditional data centers, about 70 percent are running on the Windows platform and about 30 percent are running Linux. As you take a look at what operating systems people are choosing to build applications on in the cloud, the ratio flips completely."
The reasoning is simple, Che says: With a fresh start, you get to build a whole new architecture from the ground up, and open source gives you the best value.
"You can't get to the Amazon scale or the Google scale and pay the license fees," he says.
- Microsoft Launches A Whole New Company To Deal With Open Source Apr 16, 2012
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Business Insider - Microsoft has spun off a subsidiary just to deal with its work on open source software and standards.
The new company is called Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc., and it will be run by Microsoft's long-term open source advocate, Jean Paoli. The group will manage all the work that Microsoft does with standards bodies as well as the contributions Microsoft makes to open source projects.
Microsoft has had a stormy relationship with open source developers over the years -- embracing open source in some ways and antagonizing its proponents in others.
The issue is open source licenses, which govern how the code can be used.
- Proprietary lobby triumphs in first open standards showdown Apr 16, 2012
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Computer Weekly - Software patent heavyweights piled into the first public meeting of the Cabinet Office consultation on open standards on 4 April, conquering the meeting ballot with a resounding call to scrap the government's policy on open standards.
Open source and open standards campaigners complained they hadn't been invited to the Round Table event, the proceedings of which Cabinet Office will use to decide the fate of its beleaguered open standards policy.
Government supporters felt a growing sense of urgency over the consultation. Scattered and underfunded, they looked incapable of standing up to the big business interests that induced the consultation with backroom lobbying and have stepped forward now the debate has been brought out into the open.
Linda Humphries, Cabinet Office open standards official, said yesterday in a blogged report of the meeting: "The consensus was that the... proposed policy would be detrimental to competition and innovation."
Graham Taylor, chief executive of Open Forum Europe, which has worked closely with Cabinet Office IT policy makers, said he was "disappointed" the meeting hadn't been "representative".
- Are open standards a closed barrier? Apr 13, 2012
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Government Digital Service - Fresh out of a roundtable discussion on the Open Standards: Open Opportunities consultation, Linda Humphries discusses whether open can really mean closed.
Ask a seemingly simple question, ‘So what exactly is an open standard?’ and a multitude of variations and interpretations are likely to head your way – a quick scan of Wikipedia will give you a flavour. So how do we decide which definition is right for the Government when we are applying it to our IT?
The trick is to look at what we’re trying to achieve.
- Whitehall needs to dump 'unacceptable IT' – outbound G-Cloud chief Apr 13, 2012
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The Register - Outgoing government G-Cloud programme director Chris Chant has harangued civil servants and tech vendors telling them times are a-changing and so must they.
Chant, a career Whitehall civil servant, has warned his fellow CIOs they are “hiding behind the comfort blanket” and must change how they buy IT.
“That blanket is on fire,” Chant said.
According to Chant, CIOs like himself have been guilty for years of taking the easy path by signing expensive contracts with big IT suppliers, of failing to innovate and thereby causing end users to suffer.
“We have done the #unacceptable and thought we were doing a great job,” he said.
- The expanding need to protect innovation in Linux Apr 13, 2012
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ZDNet - Anyone scanning the technology news will likely be struck by the number of intellectual property deals and lawsuits going on at the moment. From Google and Motorola to the ongoing saga of Nortel and Microsoft, and the recent news around Yahoo suing Facebook, intellectual property is turning out to be a dominating story for the tech space at the start of 2012. While money remains one major reason for this, a more positive aspect is the tremendous growth and increasing importance of Linux and other open source software systems.
A coterie of innovation like that of the open source community, benefits everyone from the vendors to the end user who is consuming ever evolving technology. This cooperation and the sharing of ideas are fundamental to the success of the open source community. However, the revenues at stake lead to continual streams of disputes and negotiations. With each big lawsuit that hits the headlines, so the freedom to innovate is ever more potentially constricted as developers grow nervous.
- UK Gov IT: Whitehall announces Liam Maxwell as new deputy CIO Apr 12, 2012
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The Information Daily - formerly eGov Monitor - Whitehall has a new deputy chief information officer (CIO), Liam Maxwell, who has been promoted from within the government ranks.
Maxwell joined the UK government last year as director of ICT futures and his new appointment fills the post left vacant by Bill McCluggage earlier this year.
In his previous role, his responsibilities were to find new ways to use technology in the public sector in order to increase efficiency and reduce cost. Maxwell championed the use of more SME’s in the central government supply chain and called for greater use of open standards in public sector technology.
In his new role he will be driving the information and communication technology (ICT) reforms across government in tandem with keeping his role as director of ICT futures.
- Of Microsoft, Netscape, Patents and Open Standards Apr 11, 2012
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ComputerWorldUK - Glyn Moody - I still remember well the day in October 1994 when I downloaded the first beta of Netscape's browser. It was instantly obvious that this was a step beyond anything we'd had until then, and that it was the dawn of a new Internet era.
Netscape went on to become the key Internet company - indeed, its highly-successful IPO probably did much to establish the credibility of this new-fangled cyberspace thingy with the business world. Of course, after just a few years of glory, Netscape's management made a series of missteps, and the company gave up its leading position in the browser world to Microsoft, which retained it until Mozilla came along to claim back the crown that its progenitor Netscape had lost.
Against that background, this news is pretty rich:
Here’s a deal that would have made many minds explode back in the 1990s: Microsoft is buying Netscape. Or at least most of the important parts of the company that used to be synonymous with “Internet.”
- EU Legal Package on Standardisation: legal process taking up speed - some key issues for the ICT part Apr 10, 2012
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Jochen Friedrich's Open Blog - Since the European Commission presented the EU legal package on standardisation in June last year (see my blog post from then) the legal process has taken place in the European Parliament, where the IMCO committee has the lead, and in the Council, where a working group of the competitiveness council deals with the topic. .
Both institutions recently finalised their positions. Once both institutions have given their chair or rapporteur, respectively, a mandate to negotiate the formal trialogue discussions between the Parliament, the Council and the Commission will take place. For the time being informal probing talks are held.
- Open Standards Open Opportunities Apr 05, 2012
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The Open Sourcerer - Flexibility and efficiency are perhaps not two words that have been traditionally associated with the public sector in general, and certainly not with government IT. This might change though, and you can help nudge it in the right direction. Last week, just before the budget was announced in front of a packed house of commons there was this little exchange:
- Motorola hit by two EU antitrust probes over patents Apr 05, 2012
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ZDNet - Europe's antitrust authorities have opened two investigations into possible patent misuse by Motorola, following complaints lodged by Apple and Microsoft.
The first probe covers Motorola's alleged failure to honour its promise to license certain patents on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms, while the second "will examine whether Motorola's behaviour amounts to an abuse of a dominant market position", the European Commission said in a statement on Tuesday.
Apple and Microsoft both complained to European regulators in February that Motorola was breaching its FRAND obligations. The authorities said they will now look into the charges, which centre on article 102 of the EU's competition rules, "as a matter of priority".
- Intel outlines open source development projects Apr 04, 2012
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The Register - Collaboration Summit 2012 The director of Intel's Open Source Technology Center Imad Sousou outlined the chip giant's plans to invest in the open source community and provided an update on two key projects, speaking at the Linux Foundation's Collaboration Summit in San Francisco.
Intel is fully committed to open source, Sousou explained, because it wants the maximum number of people using its hardware to the best advantage. The best way to do this is to join the community, and he said Intel was now the second biggest corporate sponsor of Linux, behind Red Hat, as well as being a board member of The Document Foundation, which produces the open source office suite LibreOffice.
"We want to end up with Linux supporting your hardware better than anyone else, so that we coevolve," he told his keynote audience on Tuesday. "Historically, we believe as technology gets better and more used, then the more Intel grows."
- Microsoft flees Germany over patent disputes Apr 04, 2012
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ZDNet - On Monday, Microsoft said it is in the process of moving its European logistics operation to the Netherlands. The decision has meant severing its distribution deal with Bertelsmann subsidiary Arvato, which is based in the German state of Nordrhein-Westfalen.
"We have a great relationship with Arvato, and we are pleased with the quality of their service. But Motorola's refusal to live up to its patent promises has left us no choice," Microsoft said in a statement. "We would have preferred to keep our European distribution centre with Arvato in Germany as it has been for many years, but unfortunately the risk of disruption from Motorola's patent litigation is simply too high."
Motorola is suing Microsoft in Germany over H.264 video compression technology. It has accused the software maker of using its patents in Windows 7, the Xbox gaming console, Internet Explorer 7 and Windows Media Player without permission, and the Mannheim Regional Court is due to rule on the matter on April 17.
- Linux boss: We're number one where it counts Apr 04, 2012
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The Register - Collaboration Summit 2012 At the start of the 6th annual Linux Foundation's Collaboration Summit, chief executive Jim Zemlin is in buoyant mood. Attendance has never been better, open source code is becoming more popular in new areas of the industry, and Linux is number one in all the sectors that count.
"We want to continue our trajectory in every corner of the industry," Zemlin told The Register. "We're seeing Linux as the primary platform for greenfield sites in large enterprises, the primary operating system for cloud computing build outs, and we're seeing tremendous growth in mobile and the embedded markets."
While some in Redmond might point to the fact that Linux is still not king of the corporate desktop, Zemlin said that that battle isn't particularly relevant anymore. People use a wider variety of computing devices to use computers, and the browser is the becoming the most common interface for most users.
- Government caps most IT projects at £100m Apr 03, 2012
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ComputerWorldUK - The government has delivered a procurement policy notice (PPN) to all departments and agencies mandating that future IT projects are capped at £100 million.
In 2011, the government said projects of over £100 million would be monitored closely by the Major Projects Authority, but the cap will now prevent any projects of that size unless a strong case is given.
Forming part of its wider ICT Strategy, the government is attempting to move away from its traditional approach to procurement where large vendors are given expensive, lengthy IT contracts, and deliver projects that use multiple SMEs over a shorter period.
- Europe has to take centre stage for cloud benefits Apr 02, 2012
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CBR - Cloud computing revolution has to happen with Europe, not to it, says Neelie Kroes
Cloud computing could help propel Europe out of the economic strife it finds itself in, according to a speech by Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission responsible for the Digital Agenda.
Speaking at the European Internet Foundation event on Cloud Computing she stressed that the cloud revolution has to happen with Europe, rather than to it. This means Europe has to take an active role in ensuring everyone gets the full potential the cloud offers, rather than just sitting back and waiting for it to develop around them.
Kroes said that today information and communications technology represent half of Europe's productivity growth. By 2016, she said, the EU Internet economy could be over €800bn; over 5% of GDP.
- Microsoft redeploys OOXML in open standards battle Mar 30, 2012
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Computer Weekly - Microsoft has been trying to persuade the British government to break its promise to back a single document format, Computer Weekly has learned.
If Microsoft's lobbying succeeds it will require the Cabinet Office to erase yet another crucial element of its flagship ICT Strategy, giving the software giant trump cards over the standard that set the terms of competition for its competitors.
Microsoft advised the UK Cabinet Office to appoint two official document standards, one of which should be its own Microsoft Office Open XML format. The other, Microsoft said in private lobbying, should be the one government officials have favoured and has been widely assumed to be the one sure thing in the coalition government's technology policy: the Open Document Format.
The government's ICT strategy made a single, open document format the primary objective of its open standards policy when it was published last year.
- Red Hat becomes first $1bn open-source company Mar 30, 2012
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ZDNet - Red Hat has become the first open-source company to surpass a billion dollars in yearly revenues, with the Linux specialist's earnings helped by broader use of its software in the public and financial sectors.
The company reported fiscal 2012 revenue of $1.13bn (£711m) on Wednesday, and fourth-quarter revenue of $297m, up 25 and 21 percent year-over-year respectively. The quarter's net income of $36m was marginally down on the previous quarter's $38.2m, but up on the previous year's $33.5m.
"Red Hat has become the first pure-play open-source company and one of a few select software companies to have ever achieved this [$1bn] milestone," the company's chief executive, Jim Whitehurst, said on an earnings conference call.
- Google opens Campus's doors in London Mar 30, 2012
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ZDNet - Google has opened the doors of its start-up incubator, called Campus, based in the 'Silicon roundabout' area of Old Street, London.
The seven-storey building will serve as a "co-working and events space" in the heart of London's 'Tech City' in Old Street. The scheme is run by Google with support from other partners experienced in nurturing start-ups such as Seedcamp, Springboard, Central Working and Tech Hub.
- Munich's mayor claims €4m savings from Linux switch Mar 30, 2012
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The Register - Christian Ude, the mayor of Munich and occasional political cabaret artist, is trumpeting the cost savings made by switching from Windows to Linux, claiming his city has saved over €4m over the last year alone.
Ude claims that Munich's IT department saved about a third of their total budget last year by dumping Windows and Microsoft Office in favor of Linux and OpenOffice. Buying new Windows software and upgrading systems so they could actually run it would have cost over €15m, with another €2.8m due in 3 to 4 years of license renewal, according to official figures.
- Oracle deal promises £75m in savings for government Mar 30, 2012
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ZDNet - The Cabinet Office has signed a new contract with Oracle, one of the government's largest IT suppliers, which it says will generate savings of more than £75m by 2015.
It said on Wednesday that the agreement with Oracle, which runs until the end of the current parliament, contains four areas where the savings will be made:
- Neelie Kroes Vice-President Of The European Commission Giving Europe's Scientists The Tools To Deliver Mar 28, 2012
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eGov - When I look at the many troubles we face today, it can be dispiriting. Our citizens worry for an uncertain future; our young people especially face horrific unemployment; governments confront impossible-seeming deficits.
But then I remember what we're good at here in Europe. And that gives me hope.
Europe has long been the smart continent, with a history of invention and innovation. We are the home of so many advances, from DNA to the SMS.
Today I want to talk about how we can support this changing world of science. And how we should invest in infrastructures for innovation.
Because one thing is clear: if we're going to give our economy the pick-me-up it needs, we're going to have to make most of our strengths.
That means we must do the best science, and innovate. For almost any question we face today, science and technology will help with the answer: from halting harmful climate change, to caring for an ageing population, to delivering the growth that secures future jobs.
But science itself is changing, too. We need to change with it. How?
Here are three trends in particular - trends we need to support.
- Top innovation expert launches European industrial forum Mar 28, 2012
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ScienceBusiness - Prof. Henry Chesbrough, the leading scholar of ‘open innovation’ management, is launching a European industrial forum to discover, discuss and share the most effective ways to organise business innovation.
The European Innovation Forum is a by-invitation gathering of senior innovation managers at leading companies across industries in Europe. The forum, launched with Prof. Wim Vanhaverbeke, is in collaboration with ESADE Business School in Barcelona, and the Science|Business Innovation Board, a Brussels not-for-profit association. First meeting of the forum is in June, at ESADE in Barcelona.
Open innovation is a term, first coined by Chesbrough in 2003, for one of several approaches to managing innovation. With it, big companies collaborate openly on R&D in networks of universities, small companies, suppliers, government institutes and other parties - both to get ideas out of the company labs and into the marketplace, and to get new ideas into the companies.
- Urgent: Defend a Balanced UK Approach to Copyright Mar 28, 2012
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ComputerWorldUK - Glyn Moody - Copyright consultations seem to be like buses: you wait for years, then several come at once. In the wake of the Hargreaves report, and the follow-up UK government consultation, we have another one, albeit rather different in emphasis.
It comes from the grand-sounding All Party Parliamentary Intellectual Property Group (APPIG). You might think this is yet another of those rather dull but worthy Parliamentary committees patiently trying to get to the bottom of things in some forgotten room deep inside Westminster. But upon closer inspection, we find the following background:
- Open Source Group Urges EU Parliament Staff to Reject Microsoft 'bribe' Mar 26, 2012
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PCW - The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) is urging workers at the European Parliament not to accept free licenses to Microsoft programs, saying it would be a breach of ethics.
Microsoft is offering home-use licenses for Microsoft Office, Project (project management software) and Visio (a diagramming tool) through the Parliament's administration office. Such offers are not unusual in Microsoft's contracts with large organizations, but, said FSFE's Karsten Gerloff, "political institutions like the European Parliament are bound to higher standards."
The offer is for Parliament staffers only and will probably not be extended to elected members. However, "staffers are the ones who make the wheels turn. They're the ones who do all the legwork, and they control access to the MEPs," pointed out Gerloff.
"Competition and procurement issues aside, it doesn't seem proper that the people making the rules for the European market should accept gifts from the very companies they're regulating," he continued.
- "What's an open standard?" says ISO Mar 23, 2012
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Computer Weekly - The International Standards Organisation has admitted it doesn't know what an open standard is, despite trying to have the UK's open standards policy quashed.
The situation has left ISO and its franchise partners, such as the UK's British Standards Institution, looking a lot less authoritative. While open standards are being branded onto statutes around Europe, and after more than half a decade of controversies so great it caused street protests against ISO's treatment of the open standards issue, the legal authority on standards now refuses even to acknowledge its existence.
Yet ISO and its partners had so successfully lobbied against the UK open standards policy last year that the Cabinet Office withdrew it. And its lobbying, like that of all those who opposed the policy, concerned one specific question: what is an open standard.
ISO and its partners said the UK had got the answer wrong. So what then should it be? That's what Computer Weekly has been pressing ISO to say since January.
"ISO does not have a definition of 'open standard'," is what ISO said finally this week.
It sounded incredible. But it exposed how frail ISO's position had become.
- The new Portuguese strategy for ICT Mar 23, 2012
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ESOP has recently become acquainted with the Global Strategic Plan to Rationalize and Decrease ICT Costs in Public Administration, a document made available by the Portuguese Government [1]. This effort is lead by Project Group for Information and Communication Technologies (PGICT), a special project group created by a resolution of the Council of Ministers ( 46/2001).
Whether or not the strategic plan exists only as a consequence of the Portuguese financial situation ESOP considers this to be is an ambitious initiative which, generally speaking, points in the right direction. The concept of ICT optimization must be kept, whatever the financial conditions are.
Having taken part in preliminary consultations, ESOP wishes to take a stand with regards to the contents of this plan, as well as underline the public nature of its own agenda for the IT sector. This press release addresses both responsibilities.
- Iceland’s public sector IT moves towards open source Mar 23, 2012
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The Inquirer - Open Source Software is finding favour on the Icelandic government scene with the announcement that all of its public administration organisations will adopt it.
Tryggvi Björgvinsson is the head of the project and said that Iceland's adoption of open source software will start in major cities like the capital, Reykjavik and include all government ministries and the National Hospital.
It is likely to be a gradual move and build on work already done, while fostering an environment full of cooperation and knowledge sharing.
- Welcome to the Open Data User Group Mar 21, 2012
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ComputerWorldUK - Glyn Moody - Back in October I wrote about a UK government consultation on the subject of the proposed Public Data Corporation. The government has now responded with one of its well-written documents [pdf]. Here's part of the executive summary:
- New commission to agree open data protocol Mar 20, 2012
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Place North West - The government has announced new funding and structures to enable greater release of data from agencies including the Land Registry, Ordnance Survey and Companies House.
The open data movement, led by digital media businesses, calls for release of public information to use for such products as mobile phone applications and online maps. Campaigners say data should be released in raw, so-called open source, form which allows it to be re-used in fresh formats.
The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said on Monday a new independently chaired Data Strategy Board will advise ministers "on what data should be released and has the potential to unlock growth opportunities for businesses across the UK. At least one in three members of the DSB will be from outside government, including representatives of data re-users."
- Latest Linux kernel 3.3 comes with added Android Mar 20, 2012
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The Register - The latest kernel update for Linux has been released, and features supporting Android are back for the first time since 2010, along with improved processor and networking support.
- Ice Cream Sandwich for Android rolling out Mar 19, 2012
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USA Today - While the launch of the new iPad is grabbing headlines worldwide this month, its chief software rival, Android by Google, is also undergoing a series of sharp changes that have not been heralded as widely.
Google's strategy — to develop the same operating system software that every phone and tablet maker could share and create a uniform experience for users — has largely worked.
Android is quickly becoming one of the most popular operating systems, embraced by some of the largest smartphone makers worldwide.
- Euro watchdog: Telcos ARE strangling VoIP and P2P traffic Mar 19, 2012
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The Register - EU telecoms companies are commonly using 'traffic management' practices to block Voice over IP (VoIP) traffic and peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing activity online, an EU regulator has said.
The Body of European Regulators of Electronic Communications (BEREC) said it had established the "common" use of the practices as part of its "preliminary findings" in analysing data on traffic management collected from approximately 400 telecoms operators across the EU. BEREC is made up of representatives from each of the national telecoms regulators in the 27 EU countries, including Ofcom in the UK.
- Open data must not be neglected by local government: Nigel Shadbolt Mar 19, 2012
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The Guardian - The public sector's open data revolution will not fully succeed unless more is done with local data, according to professor Nigel Shadbolt, founder of Data.gov.uk.
The open data agenda is not as far as advanced within local government as it is within central government, perhaps due to the fact the open data push originated from within Whitehall, Shadbolt said.
The disparity is "a shame", he told Guardian Government Computing at the Digital London Summit, as data from local authorities - such as information relating to people's environments, schools and workplaces - is often the most important and useful type of information to citizens.
- A golden age of open source innovation? Mar 16, 2012
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The H Open - Glyn Moody - Open source's ability to innovate has been challenged many times. But Glyn Moody argues that open source innovation is actually going from strength to strength, creating new opportunities to deliver cheap computing to people corporations would not normally consider.
One of the most persistent criticisms of open source is that it is not innovative, but is simply a re-working of other people's ideas. Here's a famous statement of that view by Microsoft's Jim Allchin from the first Halloween Document
- Microsoft's Open Standards Fairy Tale Mar 16, 2012
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ComputerWorldUK - Glyn Moody - Regular readers of this column will know that I often write about the issues of open standards and FRAND vs. RF licensing. One particular column that explored this area appeared back in October 2010.
I was interested to see that it was quoted in a paper written by Stephen Mutkoski, Global Policy Director, Microsoft Corporation. That paper was referenced and discussed briefly in a new post by Mutkoski entitled "Public Procurement of ICT: Debunking Myths around Open Source Software and Royalty Bearing Standards" (provocative, lui?). You will not be surprised that I have a few comments to make on these.
Here's the abstract of that post:
- Apple, Microsoft free to flex Nortel patent muscles Mar 16, 2012
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Macworld - Apple, Microsoft and a handful of other tech companies are now free to license $4.5 billion in patents they bought at auction last year from bankrupt Nortel, which could open up a can of worms for companies using technology covered by the patents.
Working together as Rockstar Consortium, the companies have waited out the U.S. Department of Justice review period on the purchase and plan to pursue licensing agreements with companies it thinks are using what is now their intellectual property.
- Maude praises UK progress on open data but private sector sees work to do Mar 15, 2012
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The Guardian - An "open data" revolution kicked off by a Guardian campaign is gathering pace in the UK. The Cabinet Office minister, Francis Maude, is trumpeting the UK's success in making government data freely available - and pointing to examples of companies that have sprung up to create commercial businesses around free data from public bodies.
Maude says that "companies including SMEs [small and medium-sized enterprises] and startups are using open data to improve public services and create innovative products." But, he adds, he wants both "data holders" in government and new data-driven businesses to "promote the open data revolution".
- European countries aligning their interoperability policies Mar 14, 2012
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Joinup - Seventeen out of 29 European countries now have national guidelines on interoperability, a recent case study shows. Nine of these seventeen national interoperability plans are well-aligned to the European Commission's Interopability Framework (EIF).
The case study, a collection of 29 factstheets, is one the results of the NIFO (National Interoperability Framework Observatory), a project by the European Commission's ISA work programme (Interoperability Solutions for European public administrations). The observatory is hosted on ISA's collaborative platform, Joinup.
- Jimmy Wales: Wikipedia chief to advise Whitehall on policy Mar 13, 2012
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The Telegraph - Jimmy Wales, the Wikipedia co-founder, has been appointed as a British government adviser on how Whitehall can make policy decisions more transparent, The Daily Telegraph can disclose.
The American internet entrepreneur, 45, will become an unpaid adviser across all government departments to help civil servants develop “innovative” new technology.
Under his role, it is expected that Mr Wales will also advise civil servants on how the public can be better engaged through the internet as part of its "open government" initiatives.
A Whitehall source told The Daily Telegraph on Sunday night that Mr Wales was one of a number of “unpaid advisers” who would provide help to civil servants rather than ministers.
Mr Wales, a former futures traders who lives in Florida, will "help to deliver new ways that we can (harness) the internet and technology", they added.
- EU antitrust bigwig offers Apple, publishers ebook truce Mar 13, 2012
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The Register - The EU is willing to consider settling its differences with ebook publishers and Apple if they're willing to make some sacrifices, the European Commission's antitrust chief said.
The commission is in the midst of an investigation into whether Apple colluded with five major publishing houses to fix prices for digital books in an attempt to rescue the book sector and sock it to Amazon - at the expense of customers.
European Commissioner for Competition Joaquin Almunia told Reuters and others that the "possibility of a settlement is only open" if publishers are ready to address "all our objections".
The investigation is important to regulators “because the ebooks market is growing very fast and we have an interest to avoid collusive practices”, Almunia added, according to Bloomberg.
The heat is on Apple and the publishers as they face the EU investigation, a class-action lawsuit in the US and threats of further court action by the US Justice Department.
- ISPs and mobile operators regularly throttle traffic, report finds Mar 13, 2012
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V3 - Internet service providers (ISPs) and mobile operators regularly use traffic management policies such as blocking or throttling to restrict access to certain services, according to a new report by the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications (BEREC).
The European ISP watchdog announced the findings after a three-month investigation in conjunction with the European Commission (EC) that involved discussions with some 400 operators on how they handle large demands placed on their networks.
Chief among the services regularly limited include peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) tools, with operators admitting to using deep-packet inspection technology to detect when these technologies are in use.
"About one quarter of respondents provide justifications for certain traffic management practices based on what could be described as "security and integrity" concerns (eg controlling "spam" traffic), though some of these traffic management measures are best described as congestion management techniques," the report noted.
Jérémie Zimmermann, spokesperson for citizen advocacy group La Quadrature du Net, said the revelation that firms use management policies, including (DPI), proved European commissioner for the Digital Agenda, Neelie Kroes, must introduce net neutrality laws.
- Nvidia''s embrace of Linux Foundation highlights open source's growing status Mar 12, 2012
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ITWorld - The announcement this week that chipmaker Nvidia is among the latest crop of companies to join the Linux Foundation is a sign of the growing importance of open source to the business sector -- and a reversal for a firm that, traditionally, hasn't been counted among the stalwarts of that community.
The GPU manufacturer may actually have contributed to the difficulties that Linux has had in breaking into the desktop market, says 451 Research senior analyst Jay Lyman.
"Nvidia comes to mind as one of the influential technology leaders that's really lagged in terms of supporting Linux," Lyman says, though he adds that, in the past, this disinterest in the platform was not uncommon.
Times change, however, and the analyst points out that Nvidia even has a vice president of Linux platform software now. "That's a testament to how far Linux and open-source software have come, not only in the eyes of big corporations ... but also in terms of their place in the market," he says. Of late, for a variety of reasons, "we see a realization of the need to participate [in] Linux, because it is increasingly a factor in the market," he adds, pointing out that the server, embedded and mobile (in the form of Android) markets have proven fertile.
- IT contracts to be capped in fresh push to make public sector SME friendlyThe Guardian Mar 12, 2012
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The Guardian - The government is to introduce a limit to the length of IT contracts, starting with application software and hosting IT deals.
The move, announced by Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude, is part of a range of measures aimed at making public procurement more accessible to SME suppliers.
From now on, hosting deals will be limited to 12 month durations, while application development deals will be reassessed every four months.
It is also introducing break point into IT contracts, so "less money is locked into the large, lengthy contracts that are actually the bane of our lives in a whole lot of areas of government, making it more difficult to drive value", Maude said.
The government is looking to disaggregate contracts across IT in favour of smaller and more flexible deals.
- Open-Source A.W.S.: Creating a Thousand Clouds Mar 12, 2012
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NYT - Amazon Web Services, the cloud computing service of Amazon.com, has sparked a boom in powerful and flexible computing over the Internet. Now the same technology is entering the corporate mainstream, through open-source cloud computing.
In the past few years, companies and organizations like Open Nebula; the Open Stack alliance; Cloud.com, which is part of Citrix; and Eucalyptus have been offering various forms of the kind of software that works inside A.W.S.
The idea of these free versions is to create smaller versions of the cloud, so people can do more with the computers in their own homes, institutions and businesses. If the company is big enough to have lots of partners, employees, and strong engineering talent, its open source cloud could amount to a supercomputer with lots of different capabilities, on the cheap.
- European Commission Concerned About Android App Data Violations Mar 12, 2012
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WSJ - A study by research consultancy MWR InfoSecurity for U.K. Channel 4 News shows many of the most popular free Android apps are passing personal information to advertising networks without the user knowing. It is a practice Viviane Reding, vice president of the European Commission, is reported as saying is concerning and “against the law.” Technology correspondent Benjamin Cohen writes in the Channel 4 News blog:
- Google's Schmidt: Don't Let the United Nations Rule the Internet Mar 12, 2012
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Forbes - Google‘s Eric Schmidt is warning against a United Nations proposal to give regulation of the Internet to International Telecommunications Union (ITU).
The proposal, believed supported by China and Russia, would deal traditional Internet regulators, such as ICANN, out and replace them with the ITU, a UN agency. ZDNet tells us that Schmidt warned against an ITU takeover:
- The benefits of sharing new technology and networks across the public sector Mar 09, 2012
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The Guardian - The government's internet shopping site for public sector Information Communication Technology (ICT) services had 23,605 visitors within 10 days of its launch last month. The G-Cloud – which offers buyers 1,700 applications from nearly 300 different suppliers - is a key plank of the government's ICT strategy published last year. Ministers hope that cloud computing along with the more shared networks across different public sector organisations, under the banner of the Public Services Network (PSN), will save around £1bn in ICT costs alone by 2014 and improve public services. Minister for the Cabinet Office Francis Maude says: "Effective and efficient ICT is critical to delivering world-class public services that offer value for taxpayers' money. The actions we are taking will reduce waste, avoid costly project failures of the past and see smart technology systems being used to improve the way that services are delivered."
- A Digital Single Market by 2015 - European High Level Conference Mar 08, 2012
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Presentations from the recent conference in Copenhagen:
Welcome to the Conference Videos. Watch all 50+ presentations including slides from the two conference days in Copenhagen.
The closing session (Making the Digital Single Market a reality) includes the revealing of the 4 key messages of the conference (download as PDF).
For more information on these and the conference in general, please visit www.dsm2012.dk.
- The open source movement enlarges its shield Mar 07, 2012
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CNN - An alliance of technology corporations, including IBM, is expanding the scope of patent protection it provides to developers, vendors, and users of open source software such as Linux. The move cuts against the grain of major companies going after each other, filing suit over patent infringement.
The consortium, known as the Open Invention Network, already provides an array of patent protections to certain Linux and open-source applications found on corporate data-center and back-office servers. Today's announcement will extend those protections to more than 700 additional open-source software packages, including Android, Google's (GOOG) smartphone operating system; OpenJDK, a popular programmers' development kit; and applications relating to network management and security. "As the Linux community expands," says the network's CEO Keith Bergelt, "we've had to broaden the aperture of our protections."
- Open source helicopters trivialize Europe's ODF troubles Mar 07, 2012
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Computer Weekly - While technocrats in Westminster and Brussels cringe over the question of open document formats, the US military is planning a generation of open source helicopters.
This is not just a generation of helicopters. It is the next generation of US military helicopter. It'll be built on open standards, and will actively court open source systems suppliers.
The US Army issued an official request for information on the proposal last week, formally kick-starting a procurement that will make the pedestrian kerfuffle over document formats in civvy street seem, well, pedestrian.
It has already shone an unforgiving light on the question of royalties - one that has undermined every civil administration that has attempted to implement an open standards policy in Europe.
- FSF fandroids fight to 'free' Android from Google's forepaws Mar 07, 2012
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The Register - The Free Software Foundation in Europe is taking a swipe at Android with a campaign to help punters wrestle their phones and data from Google's paws.
The foundation has flagged up seven pieces of software or services it reckons you'll want to use with your Android handset and possibly help develop. These will stop you being “spied on” and give you more freedom, the FSFE says.
While the average punter thinks of "free" as "no cost", the FSFE has a broader concept. It considers "free" software to be programs for which you can get hold of the source code and thus rebuild to your heart's content, safe in the knowledge that you're aware of what your gear is doing. Although Android is billed as open source, not all its source code is available leaving its internal operation a mystery, which gets the FSFE's back up.
According to the group, software and the drivers for most Android devices aren’t freely available, and phones and apps “frequently work against the interests of the users, spy on them and sometimes cannot even be removed”.
- Interoperability, Standards and Market Power Mar 06, 2012
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The Standards Blog - Andy Updegrove - Yesterday the European Commission issued a brief press release (reproduced below) announcing that it has opened a formal investigation:
...to assess whether The MathWorks Inc., a U.S.-based software company, has distorted competition in the market for the design of commercial control systems by preventing competitors from achieving interoperability with its products.The press release states that the investigation was triggered by a complaint, but does not disclose which company alleged that it had been denied a license for reverse-engineering purposes.This latest investigation arises in the context of a broad array of litigation, investigations and policy announcements in the EU focusing on the importance of standards in achieving interoperability, principally involving mobile device manufacturers and technology owners, such as Motorola Mobility and Samsung. It also highlights the different strategies that dominant companies may adopt in relation to market demands for interoperability, and also the divergent positions that U.S. and EU regulators sometimes take in response.
- CeBIT 2012: Open source and Linux Mar 05, 2012
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The H Open - Open source and Linux will, for the fourth year in a row, have a presence at this year's CeBIT trade show. Free and open source software (FOSS) projects and organisations from around the world will be represented in Hall 2 at the upcoming event, taking place next week from 6 to 10 March on the world's largest fairground in Hanover, Germany. Open Source CeBIT 2012 is organised into three areas: the Open Source Park, the Open Source Project Lounge and the Open Source Forum.
- The bright future of LibreOffice Mar 05, 2012
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InfoWorld - A year ago, the storied quest for a viable open source office suite was in peril. The LibreOffice project turned all that around -- and exciting new innovations promise another leap ahead
February 2012 was a coming-of-age for the LibreOffice open source productivity suite. Multiple announcements show the project is well-supported and thriving. But what of the future?
February saw multiple significant events. The most important was the release of LibreOffice 3.5, full of subtle improvements and a few larger features such as support for Microsoft Visio files. InfoWorld's Neil McAllister summed it up in his review:
- Google revises privacy policy despite EU protests Mar 02, 2012
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ZDNet - Google has introduced a new privacy policy that applies across its dozens of services, despite repeated pleas from European data protection authorities to wait for a proper impact assessment.
The move on Thursday is designed to allow Google to share users' personal data between services such as Google Search and YouTube, partly for user convenience and partly so Google can tailor its ads better. It forms part of a broad drive by Google to bake identity into its entire portfolio.
- Industry accepts responsibility for security fears over cloud Mar 02, 2012
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Euractiv -Threats to cyber security and privacy are real and must be addressed by industry as cloud computing pushes technology into a hyper-connected phase, senior telecommunications executives warned at the Mobile World Congress.
In a session on cloud computing at the Barcelona conference on Tuesday (28 February) senior executives said the cloud was unleashing a new phase of technological development that would usher a ‘hyper-connected world’ and the so-called Internet of Things.
The Internet of Things describes a future in which every object and the minute details of people’s lives are tracked, enabling huge efficiencies of organisation and energy.
- New ISO brochure focuses on force multipliers of ICT standards innovation Mar 02, 2012
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ISO - ISO (International Organization for Standardization) has just published a new brochure providing a concise overview of how information and communication technologies (ICT) standards can be a force multiplier for achieving positive results. It focuses on the work developed by the joint technical committee of ISO and IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission), ISO/IEC JTC 1, Information technology.
Information and communication technologies (ICT) pervade all sectors of economic activity and the daily lives of most people worldwide (business, industry, home, administration, education, charity, etc.). They are key components of economic growth, offering significant employment. The effectiveness and growth of the ICT industry are determined by the ability of the component parts to "talk" to each other – to interoperate.
The 24-page brochure is entitled The force multiplier for ICT innovation – ISO/IEC JTC 1 Joint Technical Committee 1, Information technology, standards. It explains how ICT standards developed by ISO/IEC JTC 1 are absolutely essential to the interoperability of different component parts and products from different manufacturers.
OpenForum Academy is an independent programme established by OpenForum Europe. It has created a link with academia in order to provide new input and insight into the key issues which impact the openness of the IT market.
OFA Invitation - Openness in the Cloud - 23rd of May
On behalf of OFA we would like to invite you to two Breakfast Round Tables on “Putting the 'Open' into Open Innovation” for Cloud computing on the 23rd of May.
The debates come as the European Commission is putting the final touches to its long-awaited cloud computing strategy for Europe. The EU recognises that it needs to become not only cloud-friendly, but cloud-active, if it is to take full advantage of the benefits cloud computing offers. This is especially true for Europe's public sector. We believe this is the right moment to debate the merits of a pro-competitive cloud computing environment that is both global and open.
ROUND TABLE 2: Who do you Trust with your Data in the Cloud?
When : 23 May 2012,
8.00-10.30, Sofitel Brussels Europe,
We hope that you will be able to accept this invitation and we are sure that your participation will provide valuable contribution to our discussion, particularly at this sensitive time.
OPEN GOV SUMMIT - 30th May
Although open source is finally gaining ground, the UK’s public sector is leading from behind when compared to the US and many parts of Europe. UK public sector accountability is high and IT leaders must be confident that projects will adhere to security, accessibility and flexibility requirements.
The good news is that there are now many inspiring and proven open source success stories in some of the UK’s highest profile organisations. At the Open Gov Summit, you learn how the Government Digital Service, The Home Office and the Met Office have improved operations and saved money with open source technology.
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Keep the Internet open
European Public Policy — May 18, 2012 06:33 AM
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Daily links for 05/16/2012
Bob Sutor — May 17, 2012 06:50 AM
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Thoughts on the certification
Charles-H. Schulz — May 18, 2012 06:33 AM
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Daily links for 05/12/2012
Bob Sutor — May 14, 2012 06:43 AM
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Championing Free Expression - The Hay Festival in Hungary
European Public Policy — May 11, 2012 06:30 AM
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W3C GLD Working Group opens first public working drafts for comments
European Commission Joinup News — May 11, 2012 06:30 AM
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e-TrustEx: An open-source platform made available by the European Commission for Public Administrations in Europe to easily exchange digital information
European Commission Joinup News — May 11, 2012 06:30 AM
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German city of Dortmund contemplating open source strategy
European Commission Joinup News — May 11, 2012 06:30 AM
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Slovak textile import firm appeals VAT fines because of vendor lock-in
European Commission Joinup News — May 11, 2012 06:30 AM
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Un vocabulaire pour les mta-donnes dcrivant les logiciels paru pour appel commentaires
European Commission Joinup News — May 11, 2012 06:30 AM
2007-2012
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Innovation the loser if ICT standards are wrapped in red tape
Article published 17th May 2012 - European Voice - by Paul Meller, Advisor OFE
An institutional turf war over ICT standards may make Europe an innovation backwater for years to come.
It is hard to think of any environment as conducive to innovation as the internet. With a good idea and the motivation to follow it through, anything is possible. Look at Wikipedia, the Google search engine and Facebook, to name just a few success stories.
Behind them are thousands of less famous web-based innovations that are also having a huge impact on society. These include many thousands of small firms and individual web developers based in Europe.
Collaboration is vital. Technologies do not emerge out of the blue. They are built on innovations by others – building-block technologies that are offered up as industry standards.
These standards are vital if future innovators are to avoid having to re-invent the digital wheel all the time. Nowhere is this more true than in the information and communication technology (ICT) domain, where innovation happens at breakneck speed.
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