Report on Open Standards for GISW2008

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Most computer users today remain“digitally colonised” (Bhattacharya, 2008) due to our unquestioning useof proprietary standards. As users of proprietary standards we usuallyforget that we lose the right to access our own files the moment thelicence for the associated software expires. For example, if I were tostore data, information or knowledge in .doc, .xls or .ppt format, myability to read my own files expires the moment the licence for my copyof Microsoft Office expires.

Definition

Unlikethe terms “free software” or “open source software”, the term “openstandard” does not have a universally accepted definition. The free andopen source software (FOSS) community largely believes that an openstandard is:

The controversy

Proprietarysoftware manufacturers, vendors and their lobbyists often provide adefinition of open standards that is not in line with the abovedefinition on two counts (Nah, 2006).

One, they do notthink it is necessary for an open standard to be available on aroyalty-free basis as long as it is available under a “reasonable andnon-discriminatory” (RAND) licence. This means that there are somepatents associated with the standard and the owners of the patents haveagreed to license them under reasonable and non-discriminatory terms(W3C, 2002). One example is the audio format MP3, an ISO/IEC[International Organisation for Standardisation/InternationalElectrotechnical Commission] standard where the associated patents areowned by Thomson Consumer Electronics and the Fraunhofer Society ofGermany. A developer of a game with MP3 support would have to payUSD 2,500 as royalty for using the standard. While this may bereasonable in the United States (US), it is unthinkable for anentrepreneur from Bangladesh. Additionally, RAND licences areincompatible with most FOSS licensing requirements. Simon Phipps of SunMicrosystems says that FOSS “serves as the canary in the coalmine forthe word ‘open’. Standards are truly open when they can be implementedwithout fear as free software in an open source community” (Phipps,2007). RAND licences also retard the growth of FOSS, since they arepatented in a few countries. Despite the fact that software is notpatentable in most parts of the world, the makers of variousdistributions of GNU/Linux do not include reverse-engineered drivers,codecs, etc., in the official builds for fear of being sued. Only thelarge corporation-backed distributions of GNU/Linux can afford to paythe royalties needed to include patented software in the officialbuilds (in this way enabling an enhanced out-of-the-box experience).This has the effect of slowing the adoption of GNU/Linux, as lessexperienced users using community-backed distributions do not haveaccess to the wide variety of drivers and codecs that users of otheroperating systems do (Disposable, 2004). This vicious circleeffectively ensures negligible market presence of smallercommunity-driven projects by artificial reduction of competition.

Two,proprietary software promoters do not believe that open standardsshould be “managed and further developed independently of any singlevendor,” as the following examples will demonstrate. This is equallyapplicable to both new and existing standards.

Microsoft’sOffice Open XML (OOXML) is a relatively new standard which the FOSScommunity sees as a redundant alternative to the existing Open DocumentFormat (ODF). During the OOXML process, delegates were unhappy with thefact that many components were specific to Microsoft technology,amongst other issues. By the end of a fast-track process at the ISO,Microsoft stands accused of committee stuffing: that is, using itscorporate social responsibility wing to coax non-governmentalorganisations to send form letters to national standards committees,and haranguing those who opposed OOXML. Of the twelve new nationalboard members that joined ISO after the OOXML process started, tenvoted “yes” in the first ballot (Weir, 2007). The European Commission,which has already fined Microsoft USD 2.57 billion for anti-competitivebehaviour, is currently investigating the allegations of committeestuffing (Calore, 2007). Microsoft was able to use its financial muscleand monopoly to fast-track the standard and get it approved. In thisway it has managed to subvert the participatory nature of astandards-setting organisation. So even though Microsoft is ostensiblygiving up control of its primary file format to the ISO, it stillexerts enormous influence over the future of the standard.

HTML,on the other hand, is a relatively old standard which was initiallypromoted by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), aninternational community of techies. However, in 2002, seven years afterthe birth of HTML 2.0, the US Department of Justice alleged thatMicrosoft used the strategy of “embrace, extend, and extinguish” (USDoJ, 1999) in an attempt to create a monopoly among web browsers. Itsaid that Microsoft used its dominance in the desktop operating systemmarket to achieve dominance in the web-authoring tool and browsermarket by introducing proprietary extensions to the HTML standard(Festa, 2002). In other words, financial and market muscle have beenemployed by proprietary software companies – in these instances,Microsoft – to hijack open standards.

The importance

Thereare many technical, social and ethical reasons for the adoption and useof open standards. Some of the reasons that should concern governmentsand other organisations utilising public money – such as multilaterals,bilaterals, civil society organisations, research organisations andeducational institutions – are listed below.

• Innovation/competitiveness:Open standards are the bases of most technological innovations, thebest example of which would be the internet itself (Raymond, 2000). Thebuilding blocks of the internet and associated services like the worldwide web are based on open standards such as TCP/IP, HTTP, HTML, CSS,XML, POP3 and SMTP. Open standards create a level playing field thatensures greater competition between large and small, local and foreign,and new and old companies, resulting in innovative products andservices. Instant messaging, voice over internet protocol (VoIP),wikis, blogging, file-sharing and many other applications withlarge-scale global adoption were invented by individuals and small andmedium enterprises, and not by multinational corporations.
• Greater interoperability:Open standards ensure the ubiquity of the internet experience byallowing different devices to interoperate seamlessly. It is only dueto open standards that consumers are able to use products and servicesfrom competing vendors interchangeably and simultaneously in a seamlessfashion, without having to learn additional skills or acquireconverters. For instance, the mail standard IMAP can be used from avariety of operating systems (Mac, Linux and Windows), mail clients(Evolution, Thunderbird, Outlook Express) and web-based mail clients.Email would be a completely different experience if we were not able touse our friends’ computers, our mobile phones, or a cybercafé to checkour mail.
• Customer autonomy: Openstandards also empower consumers and transform them into co-creators or“prosumers” (Toffler, 1980). Open standards prevent vendor lock-in byensuring that the customer is able to shift easily from one product orservice provider to another without significant efforts or costsresulting from migration.
• Reduced cost: Openstandards eliminate patent rents, resulting in a reduction of totalcost of ownership. This helps civil society develop products andservices for the poor.
• Reduced obsolescence: Softwarecompanies can leverage their clients’ dependence on proprietarystandards to engineer obsolescence into their products and force theirclients to keep upgrading to newer versions of software. Open standardsensure that civil society, governments and others can continue to useold hardware and software, which can be quite handy for sectors thatare strapped for financial resources.
• Accessibility: Operatingsystem-level accessibility infrastructure such as magnifiers, screenreaders and text-to-voice engines require compliance to open standards.Open standards therefore ensure greater access by people withdisabilities, the elderly, and neo-literate and illiterate users.Examples include the US government’s Section 508 standards, and theWorld Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) WAI-AA standards.
• Free access to the state:Open standards enable access without forcing citizens to purchase orpirate software in order to interact with the state. This is criticalgiven the right to information and the freedom of informationlegislations being enacted and implemented in many countries thesedays.
• Privacy/security: Openstandards enable the citizen to examine communications between personaland state-controlled devices and networks. For example, open standardsallow users to see whether data from their media player and browserhistory are being transmitted along to government servers when theyfile their tax returns. Open standards also help prevent corporatesurveillance.
• Data longevity and archiving: Openstandards ensure that the expiry of software licences does not preventthe state from accessing its own information and data. They also ensurethat knowledge that has been passed on to our generation, and theknowledge generated by our generation, is safely transmitted to allgenerations to come.
• Media monitoring:Open standards ensure that the voluntary sector, media monitoringservices and public archives can keep track of the ever-increasingsupply of text, audio, video and multimedia generated by the globalnews, entertainment and gaming industries. In democracies, watchdogsshould be permitted to reverse-engineer proprietary standards andarchive critical ephemeral media in open standards.

Policy implications

Corporationshave a right to sell products based on proprietary standards just asconsumers have a right to choose between products that use openstandards, proprietary standards, or even a combination of suchstandards. Governments, however, have a responsibility to use openstandards, especially for interactions with the public and where thedata handled has a direct impact on democratic values and quality ofcitizenship. In developing countries, governments have greaterresponsibility because most often they account for over 50% of therevenues of proprietary software vendors. Therefore, by opting for openstandards, governments can correct an imbalanced market situationwithout needing any additional resources. Unfortunately, manygovernments lack the expertise to counter the campaigns of fear,uncertainty and doubt unleashed by proprietary standards lobbyists withunlimited expense accounts.

Most governments from thedeveloping world do not participate in international standard-settingbodies. On the other hand, proprietary software lobbyists like theBusiness Software Alliance (BSA) and Comptia attend all nationalmeetings on standards. This has forced many governments to shun theseforums and exacerbate the situation by creating more (totally new)standards. Therefore, governments need the support of academic andcivil society organisations in order to protect the interests of thecitizen. For example, the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur(IIT-K) helped the government of India develop the open standard SmartCard Operating System for Transport Applications (SCOSTA) for smartcard-based driving licences and vehicle registration documents.Proprietary vendors tried to jettison the move by saying that thestandard was technically not feasible. IIT-K developed a referenceimplementation on FOSS to belie the vendor’s claims. As a consequence,the government of India was able to increase the number of empanelledsmart-card vendors from four to fifteen and reduce the price of a smartcard by around USD 7 each (UNDP, 2007a). This will hopefully result inenormous savings during the implementation of a national multi-purposeidentification card in India.

In some instances,proprietary standards are technically superior or more universallysupported in comparison to open standards. In such cases the governmentmay be forced to adopt proprietary and de facto standards in the shortand medium term. But for long-term technical, financial and societalbenefits, many governments across the world today are moving towardsopen standards. The most common policy instruments for implementationof open standards policy are government interoperability frameworks(GIFs). Governments that have published GIFs include the UnitedKingdom, Denmark, Brazil, Canada, the European Union, Malaysia, HongKong, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Australia (UNDP, 2007b).

Whilechallenges to the complete adoption of open standards in the publicsector and civil society remain, one thing is certain: the global marchtowards openness, though slow, is irreversible and inevitable.

References

Bhattacharya, J. (2008) Technology Standards: A Route to Digital Colonization. Open Source, Open Standards and Technological Sovereignty. .
Available at:
knowledge.oscc.org.my/practice-areas/‌government‌/oss-seminar-putrajaya-2008/technology-standards-a-route-to-digital/at_download/file

Calore, M. (2007) Microsoft Allegedly Bullies and Bribes to Make Office an International Standard. Wired, 31 August. Available at: www.wired.com/software/coolapps/news/2007/08/ooxml_vote

Disposable (2004) Ubuntu multimedia HOWTO. Available at: www.oldskoolphreak.com/tfiles/‌hack/‌ubuntu.txt

Festa, P. (2002) W3C members: Do as we say, not as we do. CNET News, 5 September. Available at: news.cnet.com/2100-1023-956778.html

Greve, G. (2007) An emerging understanding of open standards. . Available at: www.fsfe.org/‌fellows‌/greve/freedom_bits/an_emerging_understanding_of_open_standards

Nah, S.H. (2006) FOSS Open Standards Primer. New Delhi: UNDP-APDIP. Available at: www.iosn.net/open-standards/foss-open-standards-primer/foss-openstds-withnocover.pdf

Phipps, S. (2007) Roman Canaries.. Available at: blogs.sun.com/webmink/entry/‌roman_canaries‌

Raymond, E.S. (2000) The Magic Cauldron. Available at: www.catb.org/~esr/writings/‌cathedral-‌bazaar/‌magic-‌cauldron/‌index.html

Toffler, A. (1980) The Third Wave. New York: Bantam.

UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) (2007a) e-Government Interoperability: A Review of Government Interoperability Frameworks in Selected Countries. Available at: www.apdip.net/projects/gif/gifeprimer

UNDP (2007b) e-Government Interoperability: Guide. Available at: www.apdip.net/projects/gif/GIF-Guide.pdf

US DoJ (Department of Justice) (1999) Proposed Findings of Fact – Revised. Available at: www.usdoj.gov/‌atr/‌cases/‌f2600/v-a.pdf

W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) (2002) Current patent practice. Available at: www.w3.org/TR/patent-practice#def-RAND

Weir, R. (2007) How to hack ISO. Available at: www.robweir.com/blog/2007/09/how-to-hack-iso.html