|
The Jan. 14th Eric Kriss Speech on Open Formats -- Transcript and Audio |
|
Tuesday, January 18 2005 @ 03:27 PM EST
|
Eric Kriss, Secretary for the Executive Office of the Administration of Finance for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, has kindly given us permission to share with you audio of his recent speech on Open Formats, which we earlier reported. It was Dan Bricklin who made the mp3 and was nice enough to let us have it, and I've also morphed it into Ogg format. And that brings me to my reason for sharing this transcript and audio. It turns out that the current list of formats that qualify for Massachusetts government public documents use is just the beginning. Next month, they will be releasing an amplified list.
If I were going to add to the list, I think I'd point out two things: one, that when there are video and audio files, it's important that GNU/Linux users not be excluded and that for many, that means they'd like to be able to use the natural and free applications that come with and/or match best that operating system, such as Ogg Vorbis for audio. And second, I would hope that the handicapped would be considered. For the blind, as I've learned from doing Groklaw, that means that PDF files also be made available in plain text, so speech applications can read documents to them. And for the deaf, it means that audio and video files have transcripts in plain text made available. Personally, if I were doing it, I'd use plain text for everything, no matter what other formats I also made a document available in, for the same reasons Project Gutenberg does: File Formats. Whenever possible, Project Gutenberg distributes a plain text version of an eBook. Other formats, such as HTML, XML, RTF, and others are also welcome, but plain text is the "lowest common denominator." We stress the inclusion of plain text because of its longevity: Project Gutenberg includes numerous text files that are 20-30 years old. In that time, dozens of widely used file formats have come and gone. Text is accessible on all computers, and is also insurance against future obsolescence.
My other concern is that when a definition of Open Formats says it must be nondiscriminatory, it means specifically that no license include requirements that conflict with the General Public License. The SenderID flap comes to mind, and this is a good time to let you know that there are now transcripts of the FTC's Email Authentication Summit of last November 9 and 10 available in PDF format. I would hope if Microsoft does follow up on changing their license for XML, as they have told Massachusetts they will, that they rewrite it to make sure that it does not conflict with the GPL. If they do that, I'll surely write poetry in praise of Microsoft. A haiku, at a minimum.
Here is a transcript of the speech. It wasn't until I did the transcript that I fully understood that Microsoft has been exiled from public documents by the state of Massachusetts unless they change their exclusionary license. Thank you, Massachusetts.
I'd also recommend the following references:
-
Lawrence Rosen's Letter to the FTC on Open Standards and precisely how Microsoft's Sender ID patent license terms conflict with the GPL, text and PDF
-
David Wheeler's Why Open Source Software/Free Software? Look at the Numbers!", which has recently been updated, here
-
Bruce Perens'
The Problem of Sofware Patents and Standards
So, speak now, Groklaw, if you have suggestions, or forever hold your peace. If you have already commented on the earlier article, feel free to reference your earlier comments or to repeat your suggestions. I'll be making a collection of the most thoughtful comments to forward to Mr. Kriss. Here is the transcript to get you thinking.
************************
DAN BRICKLIN: We're running a little behind, so if you would all open up and take out your, the thing that tells you what Eric's background is [laughter], you'll see that it's also on the website and you also know, if you go to the website, that he's only one click away from the Governor, which is pretty heavy-duty. He also used to be a Software Council member. We're really happy that he chose the Software Council as the place to go to discuss stuff. Last time, he spoke to some of us, he talked about the Open Source and Open Standards initiatives, which shook up the industry a lot. It shows how they're trying to move along in ways that John [Landrey - previous speaker] talked about and others, and take advantage of it to the benefit of us in the Commonwealth
So it's my pleasure to welcome Eric Kriss, former Council member and the Secretary for the Executive Office of the Administration of Finance for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, here to speak to us this morning. Eric.
ERIS KRISS: Thank you, Dan. And I want to thank Joyce for allowing me to spend a couple of minutes with you in the middle of what I know is a very busy program, and I will make my comments brief. And hopefully they will be of interest to you.
It was exactly a year ago that we first launched the Open Standards policy. It was actually January the 13th, 2004, which set out for state government in Massachusetts the way we anticipated planning, developing, and using systems in the future. And those open standards began what is going to be a continual evolutionary process to better define, better understand, and go forward, with not only those of us in state government but obviously with the vendor community and all of you as well.
In light of that, we're ready to extend the concept of Open Standards to the next step or stage. And I'm making an informal announcement today to you. We're looking forward as always to comments -- feedback -- because it's been terrific. One of the best assets that we have is all of you and the tremendous amount of brainpower that resides in this room and in the greater community in the software industry in Massachusetts.
But we are planning to extend the definition of Open Standards to what we are now going to be calling "Open Formats". Open Standards, as you know, are specifications for systems developed by an open community and affirmed by a standards body, and an example for that would be, for example, XML, a method of exchanging data.
Open Formats, as we're thinking about them, and we're trying to be precise with the language, because people use different English words for different technical terms, in our definition, "Open Formats" are specifications for data file formats that are based on an underlying open standard, developed by an open community and affirmed by a standards body; or, de facto format standards controlled by other entities that are fully documented and available for public use under perpetual, royalty-free, and nondiscriminatory terms.
And I will illuminate that a little bit more in a second. An example of an Open Format that we have already characterized is .TXT text files and PDF document formats. And we're going to be promulgating some time next month an additional list.
Let me make a comment as to why we care about this, and I should also say as I launch into this that this effort on the importance for open formats really concerns public records and public documents, and we've done this with full cooperation and collaboration of the Secretary of State of the Commonwealth.
The Secretary of State and I jointly have responsibility for the stuff of government, and he has his own responsibilities and I have mine, but they really overlap quite a bit. And the two of us, in terms of our Constitutional and formal offices, really are responsible for overseeing what there is going to be of state government when we look back a hundred years, whether there's going to be anything or not, with respect to the public records aspect of what we do.
It should be reasonably obvious for a lay person who looks at the concept of Public Documents that we've got to keep them independent and free forever, because it is an overriding imperative of the American democratic system that we cannot have our public documents locked up in some kind of proprietary format or locked up in a format that you need to get a proprietary system to use some time in the future.
So, one of the things that we're incredibly focused on is insuring that independent, that public records remain independent of underlying systems and applications, insuring their accessibility over very long periods of time. In the IT business a long period of time is about 18 months. In government it's about 300 years, so we have a slightly different perspective.
Open Formats insure also that there are minimal restrictions imposed on the use of applications needed to access those records and files. And finally, Open Formats support the integrity of public records when we're going to need to do a file conversion as required probably in the course of normal technological evolution. So if we have something in a format of 2005, and it's going to need to be converted in 2038 into something that we've never thought of yet, we need to be able to do that without losing the integrity in the underlying information.
Given the fragmented legal status now of proprietary formats, the Commonwealth will only certify an Open Format designation when minimal legal restrictions exist on the reading and dissemination of government records.
We will increasingly rely on the promulgation of Open Standards for file formats by national and international standards bodies. The Oasis OpenOffice XML format technical community would be one example of that. And our future systems, as we look to the long run future, will require full support of open formats, as well as open standards.
Now, we've published our initial open standards policy as I indicated a year ago. And the latest version, although we're going to be changing the language of the way we describe it, has already indicated that TXT, RTF, HTM, PDF AND XML, to the extent it is used to specify a format, are all open formats.
But what I want to discuss informally today is we have been in a conversation with Microsoft for several months with regard to the patent that they have and the license surrounding their use of XML to specify specifically .DOC files in Microsoft Office 2003.
They have made representations to us recently they are planning to modify that license, and we believe, if they do so in the way that we understand that they have spoken about -- we will leave it obviously to them to describe exactly what they are going to do -- that it is our expectation that when we do issue the next iteration of the standard that, in fact, the Microsoft, what are proprietary formats, will be deemed to be Open Formats because they will no longer have the restrictions on their use they currently have.
That would include potentially, and, again, we need to wait for the final designation of this by Microsoft, it would include Word Processing ML, which is the wrapper around .DOC files, Spreadsheet ML, which is the wrapper around .XLS files and the form template schemas.
Obviously, we are going to be talking to other companies and other entities that may have restrictions around the use of those formats, and we hope to either get them removed or have further conversations so that as we all move forward together in this wonderful evolution of technology, we are going to insure that at least to the government, we will be able to reference something a hundred years from now, and it won't get lost forever.
Thank you very, very much.
[applause]
|
|
Authored by: overshoot on Tuesday, January 18 2005 @ 03:38 PM EST |
Link 'em, click 'em -- think of the mice! [ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
Authored by: nickieh on Tuesday, January 18 2005 @ 03:42 PM EST |
The adoption of open-spec document standards by governments is very bad news for
MS. The trickle-down of govt -> businesses supplying govt -> schools
training for business -> home users adopting "what the kids use at
school" could break the format stranglehold MS-Office holds at present.
The Kriss comments about needing a view past the next upgrade is dead-on. Now
if they could only get it propagated across to the other states and up to the
Feds.[ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 18 2005 @ 03:43 PM EST |
Now, we've published our initial open standards policy as I
indicated a year ago. And the latest version, although we're going to be
changing the language of the way we describe it, has already indicated that TXT,
RFT, HTM, PDF AND XML, to the extent it is used to specify a format, are
all open formats.
s/RFT/RTF/
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
- Corrections - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 18 2005 @ 10:51 PM EST
- Corrections - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 19 2005 @ 01:02 AM EST
- Corrections - Authored by: moonbroth on Wednesday, January 19 2005 @ 02:33 AM EST
- Corrections - Authored by: Steve Allen on Wednesday, January 19 2005 @ 10:35 AM EST
- insure? - Authored by: TerryC on Wednesday, January 19 2005 @ 01:41 PM EST
- Corrections - Authored by: brentdax on Sunday, January 23 2005 @ 06:12 AM EST
|
Authored by: ak on Tuesday, January 18 2005 @ 03:45 PM EST |
For the blind, as I've learned from doing Groklaw, that means that
PDF files also be made available in plain text, so speech applications can read
documents to them.
The German government guidelines require PDF
files published by governmental institutions to be "tagged" so that they
can be used by handicapped people. The soon-to-be-released OpenOffice.org
2.0 supports exporting such tagged PDF files. But I do not know which
speech applications can be used with those files.
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 18 2005 @ 03:58 PM EST |
Thank you very, very much.
No, Eric, thank you very, very
much.
-Anonomous.
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
Authored by: overshoot on Tuesday, January 18 2005 @ 04:00 PM EST |
All well and good to have a formal public specification for a file format. I
applaud the effort of Mr. Kriss and his colleagues in that regard.
If,
however, I may offer a caution from someone who's been in the public-standards
business for some while:
A public standard without a conformance test isn't
much good. Regardless of what the published specification for (to pick an
example) Word-ML may say, the only spec that actually matters is, "Does it work
with Microsoft Word?" In other words, the conformance test is the ultimate
specification.
If Massachusetts accepts a document format based on published
specs and then makes heavy use of a tool that does things its own way, all the
"open formats" in the world won't make those documents available to our
great-grandchildren. [ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
Authored by: Yobgod on Tuesday, January 18 2005 @ 04:29 PM EST |
Just in case we need it, here's a start on that promise. :)
Chrysalis of laws --
Ideas from a green prison
Fly with open wings[ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
Authored by: Nick_UK on Tuesday, January 18 2005 @ 05:01 PM EST |
I cannot see MS doing anything of the sort - this is their
bread and butter, and the operate my like the drug dealer
on the streets... give a little away until the people are
dependant on it, then start charging (or changing, in MS's
case, so it breaks inter-operability with other formats
and they 'gotcha').
MS cannot operate, nor do I think they can conceive an
'open' standard of any sort, because it goes against the
grain of what they do to monopolise.
As I read somewhere else earlier this month, if it wasn't
for the Apache project, I expect 90% of web servers would
be IIS and then everybody would have to use IE to view
content of the web as the standards would have been
changed bastardised to tie everyone in and lock others
out.
Nick [ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 18 2005 @ 05:49 PM EST |
The Massachusetts realization that closed-source data formats have no place in
government documents is wonderful. It is to be applauded by every citizen in
every jurisdiction, not just in Massachusetts, but world wide.
I don't have access to the actual specifications, so I would like to point out a
few potential loopholes and/or problems, hoping that they have already been
addressed.
1. Another comment brings up the need for independent comformance testing, so I
won't intrude, except to point out that non-profit and low-profit software
implementors would be kept out of the market if conformance testing were too
costly. Some conformance test suites are available without cost or unnecessary
restrictions (copyright and widespread availability suffice to assure integrity
of the tests). Other conformance testing is proprietary, and is too costly for
use for any implementation that's not highly profitable.
2. The data format of a public-record document must, of course, be freely
available and freely implementable. There must be no licensing, relicensing, or
sublicensing restrictions imposed by the format standard, directly or
indirectly, on any implementation using the format.
3. The data format of a public-record document can become irrelevent in any
case where the document is stored in a filing system that is not at least as
open as the format standard. Even if the format of the content is open, the
document as a whole can become inaccessible by some act of or against the
'proprietor' of filing system.
[All rights in or to this comment are hereby transferred to pj (Pamela Jones),
the mistress of Groklaw.net.]
---
--Bill P, not a lawyer. Question the answers, especially if I give some.[ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 18 2005 @ 06:01 PM EST |
From the earlier post entitled : Eric Kriss, please note: Two points of concern.
The terms and conditions upon which Microsoft is licensing such
intellectual property may be found at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/odcXMLRef/html/odcXMLRefLegalNot
ice.asp
The problem is these terms can be changed at whim by Microsoft.
Please read Ed Foster's Gripeline at Infoworld to understand the implications of
having terms controled by a web page. Strongly recommend that any agreement
between
Microsoft and the State not be depended on terms found on a web page,
but terms on hardcopy and signed in person, then posted to a web page.
End
of previous post
I am including below the Ed Foster articles I was refering
to. It turns out, that the current site for these articles is at
www.grip2ed.com. My apologies to everyone about saying the article could be
found at www.infoworld.com. Infoworld is kind enough to carry Ed Foster's
column, which I appreciate. Ed Foster maintains the web site www.gripe2ed.com
where he kindly maintains an archive of his columns.
What started it was
Ed's column where he related a problem with Hilton's web site.
Ed Foster's
article where Hilton had a very invasive EULA for using their web site to book a
room, even including the right to publish your personal information. Ed updated
the article to indicate Hilton had changed the terms.
http://www.grip
e2ed.com/scoop/story/2004/6/24/84919/0676
The change in terms prompted
another column where Ed Foster discusses the problems with web based legal
documents.
http://www.grip
e2ed.com/scoop/story/2004/10/12/05225/836
Finally I am including a link
to an article discussing Microsoft's pratices about accepting their End User
License Agreement. Microsoft won't let you see EULA until you open package,
then even if you don't agree with the EULA the package can't be returned because
it has been opened.
http://www.grip
e2ed.com/scoop/story/2005/1/11/1939/04481
In Summary, please be very
very careful when allowing a Microsoft document format to become a standard. It
seems obvious to this reader from the last article the company does not care
about the people using their software, and their business practices seem to take
delight in finding loopholes in contracts they can weasle through. There
was a very clear condition on the Java license that incompatible extensions
would not be permitted. Yet Microsoft went ahead and modified the programs the
included with their product, making the Microsoft Java machine incompatible with
the standard version. It was only after Sun went to court and in a case that
took years, got Microsoft to drop the incompatible product. And this was a case
where the terms were not just on the web page but in a legally binding contract
written on paper and agreed to by Microsoft. Please forgive me if I sound
as if I don't trust Microsoft. I can only go on past experiences.[ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, January 18 2005 @ 06:37 PM EST |
Thank you Mr. Kriss,
open formats I believe will bring information together, I mean it has been the
case for me more then once that I can only obtain something in one format, so I
cannot open the file without first having the cost of buying that product to
open the file. Some offer readers for free, but how many readers for how many
formats does one need.
The above reading problem continues for saving files in one format of choice, or
no choice, the problem, at a later date, is try and share them, withouit the
product that created them, I as well as those I wish to share with are limited
and in some cases dead in the water. With open formats, everyone would be able
to save information as well share it without limit.
I talked about reading and saving files in formats, and another problem is being
able to edit as well. Collaboration is a problem with not being able to edit, to
be able to have information shared in a joint work makes for faster results.
Collaboration without format edit restrictions would open the doors for
non-profits, schools and home based business as well as the largest corporations
that need to share information without security restrictions.
Again, Mr. Kriss thank you for all of the hard work you have done, and continue
to do for open formats.
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
Authored by: m_si_M on Tuesday, January 18 2005 @ 08:18 PM EST |
I just checked the announcement of the EU on
open document formats, dated 26 November 2004. Paragraphs with reference to
Microsoft are highlighted in bold letters. Is it just me who sees lots of
loopholes for Redmond? For instance, only Word is mentioned. What about Excel or
Access?
EU's IDA Programme drives progress on open
document formats
eGovernment News – 26 November 2004 – EU
& Europe-wide – Interoperability
Major software vendors have
responded positively to the recommendations on open document formats adopted in
May 2004 by the Telematics between Administrations Committee (TAC), which
oversees the EU’s Interchange of Data between Administrations (IDA)
Programme.
On 25 May 2004, the TAC had endorsed several recommendations
designed to promote the use of open document formats by the public sector. In an
era when communication between public administrations, as well as between them
and citizens and businesses, is increasingly based on electronic documents, the
adoption of non-proprietary document formats is indeed essential to ensure that
everyone has access to public-sector information and services.
The
recommendations suggested that the public sector should review its use of
'revisable documents', and prefer non-revisable formats to ensure better access
to public-sector information when possible. When revisable documents are
required, the public sector should make use of open, XML-based document formats,
such as Microsoft XML reference schemas and OpenOffice.org. The recommendations
further placed particular emphasis on increasing standardisation efforts to
ensure market access to all industry actors. They encouraged the participation
of all industry actors in the Open Office XML Format standardisation process led
by the Organisation for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards
(OASIS), and the submission of the resulting format to an official
standardisation organisation such as the International Organisation for
Standardisation (ISO). They also encouraged Microsoft to consider submitting
its XML formats to an international standards body of its choice, to issue a
public commitment to publish and provide non-discriminatory access to future
versions of its XML specifications, and to assess the possibility of excluding
non-XML formatted components from WordML documents (WordML is a Word 2003 native
XML file format that allows separating the pure XML data from formatting as
required).
A few months later, major software vendors have responded
positively to these recommendations, enabling significant progress to be made
towards widespread adoption of standard open document formats:
Sun
Microsystems, the provider of Open Office who has been instrumental in the
process of standardising the Open Office XML document format in OASIS, welcomed
the recommendations and said it would encourage the adoption of the OASIS format
as an ISO standard. It also announced that it would shortly release filters
providing import and export capabilities to other formats, making them also
available for other software vendors.
IBM responded to the
recommendations stating that it had had informed OASIS of its intention to join
the relevant technical committee and that it already had products complying with
the existing OASIS draft specification on Open Office XML format.
Microsoft also agreed to issue a public commitment to publish and provide
non-discriminatory access to future versions of its WordML Document
specifications. In addition, Microsoft highlighted its commitment to support the
availability of meaningful documentation, tools and services, and stated that it
would pursue actions to document the existing non-XML formatted elements of the
WordML Document format in XML format.
These positive responses
represent a significant step on the way to establishing fully interoperable and
seamlessly connected public administrations throughout Europe and to enabling
seamless and transparent communications between EU public administrations,
citizens and businesses.
© European Communities
2004
Reproduction is authorised provided the source is
acknowledged.
The views expressed are not an official position of the European
Commission.
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
Authored by: jbn on Tuesday, January 18 2005 @ 08:47 PM EST |
The blog entry is quite
interesting and well worth a read. [ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
Authored by: micheal on Tuesday, January 18 2005 @ 09:10 PM EST |
IIRC (it has been almost a year since I used M$ Word) Excel objects can be
embedded in a M$ Word document. So, the only way a M$ Word file can be truly
open is if the format of any object that can be embedded is also open. Has
Masachusets addressed this issue?
---
LeRoy -
What a wonderful day.[ Reply to This | # ]
|
- Embedded Objects - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 19 2005 @ 05:48 AM EST
|
Authored by: Latesigner on Tuesday, January 18 2005 @ 09:36 PM EST |
Get the point about getting along.
It's true M$ could weasel out of the agreement with Mass. as well as the one
with the EC.
It's also true that doing so isn't going to do them any good where as abiding by
the agreements might.
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
Authored by: Brian S. on Tuesday, January 18 2005 @ 10:48 PM EST |
There are so many obvious reasons why the world will switch to "open". They
are the same reasons IBM re-assessed its position on F/OSS and Linux in
2000.
There are quality, security and well understood technical reasons the
world should adopt open standards. It's almost a prerequisit for a successfull
world wide web. There are national interests at stake and governments should be
open and who wants their computer controlled by "big brother". In poorer
countries they have a chance to "connect" in a way they can both understand in
their own culture and afford to have this developed. The list is
endless.
WHY doesn't M$ understand this???? Brian S. [ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
Authored by: wtansill on Tuesday, January 18 2005 @ 11:46 PM EST |
Actually, something like the Massachutses effort, had it been done earlier,
would have saved the US and various state governments tons of money, and years
of litigation.
Think about this -- rather than having Justice, Boise, et. al. sue Microsoft for
Anti-trust violations (and, effectively losing the battle even if they won
legally), all the government had to do was specify open standards. The
government puts out thousands upon thousands of solicitations, legal
communications, press releases, regulatory documents, etc. every single day. In
most cases, the tools used are Word and Excel. Every other entity dealing with
the government is informally mandated to use Word and Excel so that they can
communicate with the government at all levels. All that needs to be done is to
specify that only open file formats will be usd at all levels of government, and
Microsoft's monopoly is forever broken. End of story, and no more litigation...[ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
Authored by: davamundo on Tuesday, January 18 2005 @ 11:51 PM EST |
At the moment, although Ogg Vorbis
stands out as the obvious candidate for todays open format, for audio, there is no such codec for video..
but there will be !
It's called Dirac, and it's
an important open source project from
the BBC. Yup ! The British Broadcasting
Company is busy coding tomorrows video format !
As a broadcast
profesional I'm exited, and as an open
source enthisiast I'm thrilled, to see an alternative on the horizon for the
worlds video content.
--
clicky enough
for ya :-) ?
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
Authored by: jbn on Wednesday, January 19 2005 @ 12:35 AM EST |
The story says that "Eric Kriss, Secretary for the Executive Office of the
Administration of Finance for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, has kindly
given us permission to share with you audio of his recent speech on Open Formats
[...]". I'm glad to see a warm reception for OpenOffice.org's work on OASIS and
their software. I appreciate how hard it is to speak extemporaneously and be as
precise as Kriss said he wanted to be. I host a radio show on my local
community radio station, WEFT 90.1 FM, called
Digital Citizen where I talk about these issues live on the air, taking phone
calls live as well, every other Wednesday night from 8-10p. I've developed a
sincere appreciation for people who can speak clearly, precisely, and do so in
real time.
What Kriss wants to accomplish is difficult. I think the
lack of conditions on the aforementioned audio file distribution permission (the
file was originally distributed as an MP3) show just how tricky it is to
accomplish what he and his team set out to do.
Consider Kriss'
definition of an "open format": (emphasis mine)
"Open
Formats, as we're thinking about them, and we're trying to be precise with the
language, because people use different English words for different technical
terms, in our definition, "Open Formats" are specifications for data file
formats that are based on an underlying open standard, developed by an open
community and affirmed by a standards body; or, de facto format standards
controlled by other entities that are fully documented and available for public
use under perpetual, royalty-free, and nondiscriminatory
terms."
The free software community can see the irony
of distributing an MP3 copy of the recording ostensibly meant to be attractive
to the free software community, but I was curious if MP3 qualifies as an "open
format" according to this definition?
MP3 is covered by patents.
Fraunhofer Gesellschaft, through Thomson, distributes licenses under uniform
per-unit terms. Per-unit terms make their licensing structure incompatible with
free software because it is impossible to know exactly how many copies of the
ostensibly free software MP3 program are distributed (free software allows you
to share and modify the software, hence the use of the word "free" not as a
reference to price but to freedom). To my knowledge, nobody has paid the
alternative $50,000 one-time license fee because nobody developing what
would be a free software MP3 program can afford it. Therefore, in countries
that have software patents (such as the US), there is no free software MP3
encoder or decoder. The MP3 patent
situation drove the creation of Ogg Vorbis which, functionally, is a
complete replacement for MP3, albeit an incompatible replacement—Ogg
Vorbis files and MP3 files are not the same format and the methods to make the
files are different. Vorbis is also considered a superior codec for its
intended use. As far as I know, neither the Ogg encapsulation format nor the
Vorbis lossy audio compression codec are covered by patents. The specification
for Ogg Vorbis is in the public domain and free software reference encoders and
decoders are available. These are other reasons why Ogg Vorbis is a superior
choice to MP3.
Reasonable and non-discriminatory licensing (also known
as "RAND" licensing) can discriminate against free software implementations of
the patented idea. The FSF reminds
us, "that makes [RAND] unreasonable". MP3 licenses are available on
so-called RAND terms, terms which are probably better described by the
replacement term the FSF suggests: UFO for "uniform fee only" because the
uniform fee is what these licensing schemes share. MP3 licensing is uniform for
a particular use according to the terms described on their licensing
page.
So, has anyone asked Kriss or his organization if they
considered the problem of RAND licensing? [ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
Authored by: chris_bloke on Wednesday, January 19 2005 @ 03:38 AM EST |
Eric Kriss said:
Now, we've published our
initial open
standards policy as I indicated a year
ago.
This list is (I believe)
at http://www.mass.gov/itd/techre
fmodelv2.htm
and dated May 2004.
It
lists:
- Rich Text Format v. 1.7 (.rtf)
- Plain Text Format (.txt)
- Hypertext Document Format
(.htm)
- Portable Document Format (.pdf) - Reference
version 1.5
- Extensible Markup Language (XML) v. 1.0 (Third
Edition) or v 1.1 when necessary
Looking forward to
seeing the updated version, thanks so
much Eric and everyone else involved!
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
Authored by: sveinrn on Wednesday, January 19 2005 @ 05:50 AM EST |
The biggest problem with "plain text" is that one is loosing
information. The original document may contain sections with cursive or bold or
sections that has to be rendered with monospace fonts to be readable.
The next problem is non-english letters. I am from Norway, and have had lots of
strange problems caused by "plain text"-files beeing in a different
codepage og character set than the printer expected. So as soon as one leaves
the English language with 26 letters, there is really no such thing as
"plain text".
Among others, my document can be CP850, CP437, ISO-8859-1, ISO-8859-10 (if I
need support for saami), UTF8 etc. So the first thing in the document has to be
a header telling what character set the file is, and then it stops being a plain
text file. Also, there is no guarantee that anyone is able to read even 7-bit
ASCII 100 years from now.
So I think the correct way of doing it is using good, open standards like xml
and utf and try to make the documents easy to upgrade to new standards that are
not yet created. One should, for example, try to limit the use of specific font
names, because there is no guarantee that it is in use 50 years from now, and
instead try to tell what kind of font (monospace, script etc.) [ Reply to This | # ]
|
- Plain Text - Authored by: macrorodent on Wednesday, January 19 2005 @ 07:13 AM EST
- Plain Text - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 19 2005 @ 11:05 AM EST
- Plain Text - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 19 2005 @ 11:09 AM EST
- XML open? (was Plain Text - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 19 2005 @ 12:17 PM EST
|
Authored by: stevec on Wednesday, January 19 2005 @ 07:03 AM EST |
Is the wonderful revision control - a great way for the government's 'secrets'
to leak out.
bbc report
--- Registered Linux user #375134
http://counter.li.org [ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
Authored by: rsteinmetz70112 on Wednesday, January 19 2005 @ 11:12 AM EST |
Microsoft is unlikely to agree to what is truly necessary for their files to be
a useful for archiving public documents in digital form. In addition to being
open the formats must be stable. By stable I mean that the format must be fairly
fixed and unchanging. Microsoft has shown no ability to maintain backward
compatibility with their own proprietary applications.
If someone has Word 2 documents I'm not sure how you could find software to read
them on today. What do you think will be the case when Microsoft is up to Word
43 in about 100 years?
TXT and to a lesser extent HTML and PDF don't have this problem.
---
Rsteinmetz
"I could be wrong now, but I don't think so."
Randy Newman - The Title Theme from Monk[ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
Authored by: Nick Bridge on Wednesday, January 19 2005 @ 05:14 PM EST |
The following clauses:
Emphasis added
If you
distribute,
license or sell a Licensed Implementation, this license is
conditioned upon you
requiring that the following notice be prominently
displayed in all
copies and derivative works of your source code and in
copies of the
documentation and licenses associated with your
Licensed
Implementation:
"This product may incorporate intellectual property
owned by
Microsoft Corporation. The terms and conditions upon which Microsoft
is
licensing such intellectual property may be found
at
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/odcXMLRef/html/odcXMLRefLegalNotice.a
sp.
"
And:
By including the above notice
in a Licensed
Implementation, you will be deemed to have accepted the terms and
conditions of
this license. You are not licensed to distribute a Licensed
Implementation under
license terms and conditions that prohibit the terms and
conditions of this
license.
You are not licensed to sublicense or
transfer your
rights.
These clauses prohibit (or near
enough to be
impractical) implementations in Open Source software.
Since
OSS appears to be
Microsoft's biggest current threat, I would consider these two
clauses to be
very "descriminatory"
Is there any intention or
consideration of removing
them?
The following is from a reply to
comments questioning the original post
Open Source just cannot work if
everyone who wants to distribute (etc) the software they just downloaded and
modified has to go to everyone who has patents in the software to ask for
permission. Which is EXACTLY what that license requires.
What if Microsoft
suddenly said "No"? Although they may not be able to retract their license from
existing license-holders, they can most certainly refuse to license
others.
The whole point of the GPL clause 4 is to ensure that everyone
always has permission to the 4 freedoms.
The GPL also requires that no
further restrictions are placed on distributions. Both the clauses I mentioned
do this.
Requiring additional noticed be placed in the software is not
allowed by the GPL. And neither is adding the restriction of requiring
licensees to obtain additional licenses directly from Microsoft.
It does not
float.
[ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, January 19 2005 @ 10:44 PM EST |
As my $2 (yup inflation) here is my thoughts on defining a
open document format suitable for storage of public
information. And for Software Vendor requirements
1) The data format should be available as the default format
for saving in the documents or data. This may be a
configurable default format.
( because people are lazy and just hit save)
2) The data format must be publicly documented and free
from any restrictions on re-implimentation. The documentation
must be complete and consistant with the produced file. This
shuold include the underlying file system structure.
The test for compliance is to hand the provided
documentation, along with a file stored on a disk to a
programmer with suitable skill with instructions to recreate and
print (if appropiate) the file onto paper.
By then comparing the recreated data with the origional
there should be no difference.
Any suggestions? improvements?
I'm certain some one is able to define this far better than I
can. Also I don't know if I've left any holes that unscruplius
types can sneek through. [ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
Authored by: Anonymous on Friday, January 21 2005 @ 05:07 PM EST |
Official version of Eric Kriss informal comments on OPEN FORMATS now
available at http://www.mass.gov/eoaf/open_formats_comments.html [ Reply to This | # ]
|
|
|
|
|