The Tragedy of EIF

Trond's Opening Standard - Something is rotten with the state of EIF. Sophisticated designer language is about to enter the body of EIF this week. It is alien indeed. After serious cleaning and precaution, this language was believed to be dead. But two months dead!--nay, not so much, not two.

The rot came from inside, although who is to say where it originally came from. This is not at all the noble rot. It carries the contagion of the simple RAND disease. The one that, if applied blindly to software, leads to monolithic thinking, blindness, shortness of breath and a brutish life where only the monopolists survive. For years now, the European Commission has attempted to issue an update to its hotly debated European Interoperability Framework version 1.0. I have told this story several times on my blog so I won't repeat it (see From EIF 1.0 to EIF 2.0). Honestly, I am a bit bored with the whole thing. But rotting text gets my attention.

Here's the rub. Most Member States have advanced significantly since this whole process started. For those who have cleaned up, the future is open and free of lock-in. Industry solutions and dynamics have moved light years. The only thing that remains the same is the need for open standards (see Defining Open Standards). The EC gets it. Mostly.