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The National Public Meeting on Software Patents
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/the-national-public-meeting-on-software-patents
<b>On Saturday, October 4, 2008, the Centre for Internet and Society, with the support of eighteen other organization, held a meeting on the National Public Meeting on Software Patents in the United Theological College campus. The aim of the event was to explore various issues surrounding software patents, especially from the perspective of the draft Patent Manual.</b>
<p>After introductions by <a href="https://cis-india.org/../../about-us/people/staff/staff#sunil-abraham" class="external-link">Sunil Abraham</a> of CIS, the discussions were kicked off by <a class="external-link" href="http://www.nls.ac.in/faculty_sudhir.html">Sudhir Krishnaswamy</a> (an Assistant Professor at National Law School), who spoke about typology of laws; principle-based arguments for excluding software from patenting; policy-based arguments for the same; and lastly, strategies for combating the patent manual. About the rationale behind excepting software ("computer programmes <em>per se</em>") from patentability, he theorised that given the location of "computer programmes <em>per se</em>" in section 3(k) of the Act, surrounded as it is by "mathematical or business method" and "algorithms", the exception seems to be a principle-based one and not a policy-based one. He also talked about what he saw as the practical realities of the Patent Office, and questioned the role the Draft Manual would actually play in the decisions of Patent Examiners.<br /><br />He listed out economic arguments as:</p>
<ol><li>Inapplicability of the incentive arguments. The software industry does not need patents since copyright covers software, and even if incentives are required, that is incentive enough;</li><li>Return on investment. Short shelf-life, and hence 17-year patent terms are irrelevant when the shelf-life is so small;</li><li>New intermediaries are created, who are neither producers nor consumers of software. These intermediaries who help in price-discovery. They discover value in patents which were previously thought neglected by the process known as patent trolling. </li></ol>
<p><br />Apart from these, he also briefly talked of the legal arguments around software patents, and argued that the question is not only about copyright vs. patent, but also about property vs. contract. He asked questions such as: "What role does copyright play in the software industry, or is contract more important?", and pointed out that while this might have been addressed around a decade ago, those questions need to be revisited given the current scenario. Further, he proposed that the strategies should not revolve solely around the Patent Act and Draft Manual, but around pre- and post-grant oppositions as well.<br /><br /><img class="image-right" src="../NMoSP%20005.jpg/image_mini" alt="Prabir Purkayastha" />Prabir Purkayastha of the Delhi Science Forum and Knowledge Commons spoke next, giving a quick run-through of the history, both legal and philosophical, surrounding software patents in India and in the U.S. and Europe (pointing out that most of the wordings of Draft Manual on this point are borrowed from a similar document in the U.K.). He asked the question of why people are opposing software patents. Is it because it is damaging to 'public interest', because it bad for Indian domestic software industry, or because it is an abstract idea which is sought to be patented in the guise of something else? He concluded that ultimately it is not the manual that groups are opposing, but the notion of software patents themselves. Thus, he focussed on how the phrase <em>"per se</em>" used in the Act ought to be interpreted by the Patent Office so as to give credence to the Indian Parliament's rejection (in 2005) of the 2004 patent ordinance (in which section 3(k) read: "a computer programme <em>per se</em> other than its technical application to industry or a combination with hardware"). Lastly, he talked about the various strategies to be employed in the fight against software patents, including pre- and post-grant oppositions.<br /><br /><a class="external-link" href="http://www.gnu.org.in/about-fsf-india/whos-who">Dr. Nagarjuna G.</a> of the Free Software Foundation of India focussed on what he termed "the absurdity of software patents". He emphasised how software requires an interpreter or hardware, and hence talk of "software <em>per se</em>" often becomes meaningless. Further, he underlined how embedding software in hardware was not innovation in itself, and stressed ont he changing notions of software and hardware as we evolve technologically. His equation of software with abstract ideas gives us a glimpse into the foundation of his objection to software patents.<br /><br /><img class="image-left" src="../PrashantIyengar.jpg/image_mini" alt="Prashant Iyengar" />First up in the second session (which was more focussed on the manual, and the law in India) was <a class="external-link" href="http://www.altlawforum.org/OUR_TEAM/profile">Prashant Iyengar</a> of the Bangalore-based Alternative Law Forum. He first listed out the different kinds of objections to software patents, including the point that there are only limited ways of thinking about programming, as Donald Knuth's <em><a class="external-link" href="http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/taocp.html">The Art of Computer Programming</a> </em>shows. Then he went on to go through the history of software patents in India, from the first software patent, granted in 1996, through the 2002 Amendment, the 2004 Ordinance, the 2005 Amendment, and the 2005 and 2008 Draft Manuals. He looked at the vocabulary surrounding software patents, including the words "<em>per se</em>" and "as such", and the cases and legislations from which the language used in the Draft Manual might have been borrowed. He also started a fruitful debate on the different ways to attack the implicit inclusion of that which is not "computer programmes <em>per se</em>" within the scope of patentable subject matter.<br /><br />After Prashant was Venkatesh Hariharan of Red Hat. He spoke on the practical benefits and harms of software patents, and spoke at length about the difference between legal protection of software in the form of patents and via copyright. He pointed to data showing that lawyers are the ones who benefit most from software patents, and that software developers were the ones who suffered most. Pointing to such practical issues such as how does one go about coding a simple e-commerce transaction when more than 4000 patents have already been granted in that area, he brought down the level of discussion from abstract notions of laws and legalities to practical experiences of software programmers.<br /><br />Next, Pranesh Prakash of the Centre for Internet and Society made a presentation on a small sample of software patents that have been applied for in India, and pointed out the infirmities in both the patents that have been applied for, as well as the problems in uncovering these patents because of various errors on the Indian Patent Office website. Going through a few of the patent applications, he showed how a great number applications have very badly worded abstracts, filled with weasel words, whose sole purpose is obfuscating the fact that what is being applied for is a software patent. This, he pointed out, made it difficult to both determine the scope of the applications (subject matter) as well as the innovations contained in the invention (novelty and non-obviousness), and thus difficult to examine from the perspective of pre-grant oppositions.<br /><br />After these presentations, the meeting continued with the Open House session which had many people making presentations, including Abhas Abhinav of <a class="external-link" href="http://www.deeproot.co.in/">DeepRoot Linux</a>, Arun M. of <a class="external-link" href="http://www.gnu.org.in">FSF India</a>, and Joseph C. Matthew, who is the IT Adviser to the Chief Minister, Kerala. With the wrapping up of this session, the proceedings for the day came to a close.</p>
<p> </p>
<h3>Coverage in the press<br /></h3>
<ul><li><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/world-day-against-software-patents" class="internal-link" title="World Day Against Software Patents">The Hindu (September 25, 2008) - World Day Against Software Patents</a></li><li><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/time-out-bengaluru-software-patenting" class="internal-link" title="Time Out Bengaluru - Software Patenting">Time Out Bengaluru (October 3, 2008) - Software Patenting</a></li><li><a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/software-patenting-will-harm-industry-consumer" class="internal-link" title="Software patenting will harm industry, consumer">The Hindu (October 5, 2008) - Software patenting will harm industry, consumer</a><br /></li></ul>
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<h3>Audio Recordings and Slides<br /></h3>
<div>
<ul>
<li>The Principles of Patent Law and Introduction to Software Patents</li>
<ul><li>Sudhir Krishnaswamy (National Law School) | <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/uploads/02.%20Sudhir%20Krishnaswamy.mp3" class="internal-link" title="The Principles of Patent Law and Introduction to Software Patents">mp3</a> | <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/uploads/02.%20Sudhir%20Krishnaswamy.ogg" class="internal-link" title="The Principles of Patent Law and Introduction to Software Patents">ogg</a></li><li>Prabir Purkayastha(Delhi Sience Forum) (Knowledge Commons) |<a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/uploads/03.%20Prabir%20Purkayastha.mp3" class="internal-link" title="The Principles of Patent Law and Introduction to Software Patents">mp3</a> | <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/uploads/03.%20Prabir%20Purkayastha.ogg" class="internal-link" title="The Principles of Patent Law and Introduction to Software Patents">ogg</a></li><li>Nagarjuna G.(Free Software Foundation of India) | <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/uploads/04.%20Nagarjuna%20G..mp3" class="internal-link" title="The Principles of Patent Law and Introduction to Software Patents">mp3</a> | <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/uploads/04.%20Nagarjuna%20G..ogg" class="internal-link" title="The Principles of Patent Law and Introduction to Software Patents">ogg</a></li></ul>
<li>Software Patents in India: The Indian Patent Act and the Draft Patent Manual</li>
<ul><li>Prashant Iyengar(Alternative Law Forum) | <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/uploads/05.%20Prashant%20Iyengar.mp3" class="internal-link" title="Software Patents in India - The Indian Patent Act and the Draft Patent Manual">mp3</a> | <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/uploads/05.%20Prashant%20Iyengar.ogg" class="internal-link" title="Software Patents in India - The Indian Patent Act and the Draft Patent Manual">ogg</a></li><li style="text-align: left;">Venkatesh Hariharan(Red Hat) | <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/uploads/06.%20Venkatesh%20Hariharan.mp3" class="internal-link" title="Software Patents in India - The Indian Patent Act and the Draft Patent Manual">mp3</a> | <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/uploads/06.%20Venkatesh%20Hariharan.ogg" class="internal-link" title="Software Patents in India - The Indian Patent Act and the Draft Patent Manual">ogg</a></li></ul>
<li>Software Patent Applications in India</li>
<ul><li>Pranesh Prakash (Centre for Internet and Society) | <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/uploads/07.%20Pranesh%20Prakash.mp3" class="internal-link" title="Presentation on Software Patents Applied for in India">mp3</a> | <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/uploads/07.%20Pranesh%20Prakash.ogg" class="internal-link" title="Presentation on Software Patents Applied for in India">ogg</a> | <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/pranesh-software-patents-draft.ppt" class="internal-link" title="software patent draft pranesh">ppt</a><br /></li></ul>
<li>Open House <br /></li>
<ul><li>Abhas Abhinav (DeepRoot Linux) | <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/uploads/08.%20Abhas%20Abhinav.mp3" class="internal-link" title="Open House">mp3</a> | <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/uploads/09.%20Arun%20M..mp3" class="internal-link" title="Open House">ogg</a></li></ul>
<ul><li>Arun M.(Free Software Foundation of India)| <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/uploads/09.%20Arun%20M..mp3" class="internal-link" title="Open House">mp3</a> | <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/uploads/09.%20Arun%20M..ogg" class="internal-link" title="Open House">ogg</a></li><li>Joseph Mathew (IT Adviser to the Chief Minister, Kerala)| <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/uploads/10.%20Joseph%20Mathew.mp3" class="internal-link" title="Open House">mp3</a> | <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/uploads/10.%20Joseph%20Mathew.ogg" class="internal-link" title="Open House">ogg</a></li></ul>
</ul>
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<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/the-national-public-meeting-on-software-patents'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/the-national-public-meeting-on-software-patents</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshConferenceCampaignSoftware PatentsFLOSSOpennessMeeting2011-08-23T03:02:56ZBlog EntryThe 2010 Special 301 Report Is More of the Same, Slightly Less Shrill
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/2010-special-301
<b>Pranesh Prakash examines the numerous flaws in the Special 301 from the Indian perspective, to come to the conclusion that the Indian government should openly refuse to acknowledge such a flawed report. He notes that the Consumers International survey, to which CIS contributed the India report, serves as an effective counter to the Special 301 report.</b>
<h1>Special 301 Report: Unbalanced Hypocrisy</h1>
<p>The United States Trade Representative has put yet another edition of the Special 301 report which details the copyright law and policy wrongdoings of the US's trading partners. Jeremy Malcolm of Consumers International notes that the report this year claims to be "well-balanced assessment of intellectual property protection and enforcement ... taking into account diverse factors", but:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>[I]n fact, the report largely continues to be very one-sided. As in previous editions, it lambasts developing countries for failing to meet unrealistically stringent standards of IP protection that exceed their obligations under international law.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>More the report changes, <a href="http://cis-india.org/advocacy/ipr/blog/consumers-international-ip-watch-list-2009">the more it stays the same</a>. <a href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4684/195/">Despite having wider consultations</a> than just the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA, consisting of US-based IP-maximalist lobbyists like the Motion Picture Association of America, Recording Industry Association of America, National Music Publishers Association, Association of American Publishers, and Business Software Alliance) and the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA, consisting of US-based pharma multinationals), things haven't really changed much in terms of the shoddiness of the Special 301 report.</p>
<h1>India and the 2010 Special 301 Report</h1>
<p>The Special 301 report for 2010 contains the following assessment of India:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>India will remain on the Priority Watch List in 2010. India continues to make gradual progress on efforts to improve its legislative, administrative, and enforcement infrastructure for IPR. India has made incremental improvements on enforcement, and its IP offices continued to pursue promising modernization efforts. Among other steps, the United States is encouraged by the Indian government’s consideration of possible trademark law amendments that would facilitate India’s accession to the Madrid Protocol. The United States encourages the continuation of efforts to reduce patent application backlogs and streamline patent opposition proceedings. Some industries report improved engagement and commitment from enforcement officials on key enforcement challenges such as optical disc and book piracy. However, concerns remain over India’s inadequate legal framework and ineffective enforcement. Piracy and counterfeiting, including the counterfeiting of medicines, remains widespread and India’s enforcement regime remains ineffective at addressing this problem. Amendments are needed to bring India’s copyright law in line with international standards, including by implementing the provisions of the WIPO Internet Treaties. Additionally, a law designed to address the unauthorized manufacture and distribution of optical discs remains in draft form and should be enacted in the near term. The United States continues to urge India to improve its IPR regime by providing stronger protection for patents. One concern in this regard is a provision in India’s Patent Law that prohibits patents on certain chemical forms absent a showing of increased efficacy. While the full import of this provision remains unclear, it appears to limit the patentability of potentially beneficial innovations, such as temperature-stable forms of a drug or new means of drug delivery. The United States also encourages India to provide protection against unfair commercial use, as well as unauthorized disclosure, of undisclosed test or other data generated to obtain marketing approval for pharmaceutical and agricultural chemical products. The United States encourages India to improve its criminal enforcement regime by providing for expeditious judicial disposition of IPR infringement cases as well as deterrent sentences, and to change the perception that IPR offenses are low priority crimes. The United States urges India to strengthen its IPR regime and will continue to work with India on these issues in the coming year. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This short dismissal of the Indian IPR regime, and subsequent classification of India as a "Priority Watch List" country reveals the great many problems with the Special 301.</p>
<h2>On Copyrights</h2>
<ol>
<li>
<p>The report notes that there are "concerns over India's inadequate legal framework and ineffective enforcement". However, nowhere does it bother to point out precisely <em>how</em> India's legal framework is inadequate, and how this is negatively affecting authors and creators, consumers, or even the industry groups (MPAA, RIAA, BSA, etc.) that give input to the USTR via the IPAA. Nor does it acknowledge the well-publicised fact that the statistics put out by these bodies have time and again <a href="http://www.cis-india.org/a2k/blog/fallacies-lies-and-video-pirates">proven to be wrong</a>:</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>Apart from this bald allegation which has not backing, there is a bald statement about India needing to bring its copyright law "in line with international standards" including "the WIPO Internet Treaties". The WIPO Internet Treaties given that more than half the countries of the world are not signatories to either of the WIPO Internet Treaties (namely the WIPO Copyright Treaty and the WIPO Performance and Phonograms Treaty), calling them 'international standards' is suspect. That apart, both those treaties are TRIPS-plus treaties (requiring protections greater than the already-high standards of the TRIPS Agreement). India has not signed either of them. It should not be obligated to do so. Indeed, Ruth Okediji, a noted copyright scholar, <a href="http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1433848">states</a>:</p>
</li>
</ol>
<blockquote>
<p>Consistent with their predecessors, the WIPO Internet Treaties marginalize collaborative forms of creative engagement with which citizens in the global South have long identified and continue in the tradition of assuming that copyright’s most enduring cannons are culturally neutral. [...] The Treaties do not provide a meaningful basis for a harmonized approach to encourage new creative forms in much the same way the Berne Convention fell short of embracing diversity in patterns and modes of authorial expression.</p>
</blockquote>
<ol>
<li>
<p>Some of the of the 'problems' noted in the report are actually seen as being beneficial by many researchers and scholars such as Lawrence Liang, Achal Prabhala, Perihan Abou Zeid <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/iipenforcement/bibliography">and others</a>, who argue that <a href="http://www.altlawforum.org/intellectual-property/publications/articles-on-the-social-life-of-media-piracy/reconsidering-the-pirate-nation">lax enforcement has enabled access to knowledge and promotion of innovation</a>. In a panel on 'Access to Knowledge' at the Internet Governance Forum, <a href="http://a2knetwork.org/access-knowledge-internet-governance-forum">Lea Shaver, Jeremy Malcolm and others</a> who have been involved in that Access to Knowledge movement noted that lack of strict enforcement played a positive role in many developing countries. However, they also noted, with a fair bit of trepidation, that this was sought to be changed at the international level through treaties such as the Anti-Counterfeiting Treaty Agreement (ACTA).</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The scope of an optical disc law are quite different from copyright law. The report condemns "unauthorized manufacture and distribution of optical discs", however it does not make it clear that what it is talking about is not just unlicensed copying of films (which is already prohibited under the Copyright Act) but the manufacture and distribution of blank CDs and DVDs as well. The need for such a law is assumed, but never demonstrated. It is onerous for CD and DVD manufacturers (such as the Indian company Moserbaer), and is an overbearing means of attacking piracy.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The report calls for "improve[ment] [of India's] criminal enforcement regime" and for "deterrent" sentences and expeditious judicial disposition of IPR infringement cases. While we agree with the last suggestion, the first two are most unacceptable. Increased criminal enforcement of a what is essentially a private monopoly right is undesirable. Copyright infringment on non-commercial scales should not be criminal offences at all. What would deter people from infringing copyright laws are not "deterrent sentences" but more convenient and affordable access to the copyright work being infringed.</p>
</li>
</ol>
<h2>On Patents</h2>
<p>Thankfully, this year the Special 301 report does not criticise the Indian Patent Act for providing for post-grant opposition to patent filings, as it has in previous years. However, it still criticises section 3(d) of the Patent Act which ensures that 'evergreening' of drug patents is not allowed by requiring for new forms of known substances to be patented only if "the enhancement of the known efficacy of [the known] substance" is shown. Thus, the US wishes India to change its domestic law to enable large pharma companies to patent new forms of known substances that aren't even better ("enhancement of the known efficacy"). For instance, "new means of drug delivery" will not, contrary to the assertions of the Special 301 report and the worries of PhRMA, be deemed unpatentable.</p>
<p>The United States has been going through much turmoil over its patent system. Reform of the patent system is currently underway in the US through administrative means, judicial means, as well as legislative means. One of the main reasons for this crumbling of the patent system has been the low bar for patentability (most notably the 'obviousness' test) in the United States and the subsequent over-patenting. An <a href="http://supreme.justia.com/us/447/303/case.html">American judgment</a> even noted that "anything under the sun that is made by man" is patentable subject matter. It is well-nigh impossible to take American concerns regarding our high patent standards seriously, given this context.</p>
<h2>Miscellanea</h2>
<p>The harms of counterfeit medicine, as <a href="http://www.cis-india.org/a2k/blog/fallacies-lies-and-video-pirates">we have noted earlier</a>, are separate issues that are best dealt under health safety regulations and consumer laws, rather than trademark law.</p>
<p>Data exclusivity has been noted to be harmful to the progress of generics, and seeks to extend proprietary rights over government-mandated test data. It is [clear from the TRIPS Agreement][de-trips] that data exclusivity is not mandatory. There are clear rationale against it, and the Indian pharmaceutical industry [is dead-set against it][de-india]. Still, the United States Trade Representative persists in acting as a corporate shill, calling on countries such as India to implement such detrimental laws.</p>
<h2>Conclusion</h2>
<p>Michael Geist, professor at University of Ottowa <a href="http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4997/125">astutely notes</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Looking beyond just Canada, the list [of countries condemned by the Special 301 report] is so large, that it is rendered meaningless. According to the report, approximately 4.3 billion people live in countries without effective intellectual property protection. Since the report does not include any African countries outside of North Africa, the U.S. is effectively saying that only a small percentage of the world meet its standard for IP protection. Canada is not outlier, it's in good company with the fastest growing economies in the world (the BRIC countries are there) and European countries like Norway, Italy, and Spain.
In other words, the embarrassment is not Canadian law. Rather, the embarrassment falls on the U.S. for promoting this bullying exercise and on the Canadian copyright lobby groups who seemingly welcome the chance to criticize their own country. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>His comments apply equally well for India as well.</p>
<h1>IIPA's Recommendation for the Special 301 Report</h1>
<p>Thankfully, this year <a href="http://www.iipa.com/rbc/2010/2010SPEC301INDIA.pdf">IIPA's recommendations</a> have not been directly copied into the Special 301 report. (They couldn't be incorporated, as seen below.) For instance, the IIPA report notes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>The industry is also concerned about moves by the government to consider mandating the use of open source software and software of only domestic origin. Though such policies have not yet been implemented, IIPA and BSA urge that this area be carefully monitored.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Breaking that into two bit:</p>
<h2>Open Source</h2>
<p>Firstly, it is curious to see industry object to legal non-pirated software. Secondly, many of BSA's members (if not most) use open source software, and a great many of them also produce open source software. <a href="http://hp.sourceforge.net/">HP</a> and <a href="http://www-03.ibm.com/linux/ossstds/">IBM</a> have been huge supporters of open source software. Even <a href="http://www.microsoft.com/opensource/">Microsoft has an open source software division</a>. [Intel][intel], <a href="http://www.sap.com/usa/about/newsroom/press.epx?pressid=11410">SAP</a>, <a href="http://www.cisco.com/web/about/doing_business/open_source/index.html">Cisco</a>, <a href="http://linux.dell.com/projects.shtml">Dell</a>, <a href="http://www.sybase.com/developer/opensource">Sybase</a>, <a href="http://www.entrust.com/news/index.php?s=43&item=702">Entrust</a>, <a href="http://about.intuit.com/about_intuit/press_room/press_release/articles/2009/IntuitPartnerPlatformAddsOpenSourceCommunity.html">Intuit</a>, <a href="http://www.synopsys.com/community/interoperability/pages/libertylibmodel.aspx">Synopsys</a>, <a href="http://www.apple.com/opensource/">Apple</a>, <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/04/22/jbuilder_eclipse/">Borland</a>, <a href="http://w2.cadence.com/webforms/squeak/">Cadence</a>, <a href="http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&id=6153839">Autodesk</a>, and <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-9967593-16.html">Siemens</a> are all members of BSA which support open source software / produce at least some open source software. And <em>all</em> BSA members rely on open source software (as part of their core products, their web-server, their content management system, etc.) to a lesser or greater extent. BSA's left hand doesn't seem to know what its right hand -- its members -- are doing. Indeed, the IIPA does not seem to realise that the United States' government itself uses [open source software], and has been urged to <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7841486.stm">look at FOSS very seriously</a> and is doing so, especially under CIO Vivek Kundra. And that may well be the reason why the USTR could not include this cautionary message in the Special 301 report.</p>
<h2>Domestic Software</h2>
<p>As <a href="http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/04/indias-copyright-proposals-are-un-american-and-thats-bad.ars">this insightful article by Nate Anderson in Ars Technica</a> notes:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Open source is bad enough, but a "buy Indian" law? That would be <a href="http://www.canadainternational.gc.ca/sell2usgov-vendreaugouvusa/procurement-marches/buyamerica.aspx?lang=eng">an outrage</a> and surely something the US government would not itself engage in <a href="http://www.canadainternational.gc.ca/sell2usgov-vendreaugouvusa/procurement-marches/ARRA.aspx?lang=eng">as recently as last year</a>. Err, right?</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Furthermore, the IIPA submission do not provide any reference for their claim that "domestic origin" software is being thought of being made a mandatory requirement in governmental software procurement.<br />
</p>
<h2>WCT, WPPT, Camcording, and Statutory Damages</h2>
<p>The IIPA submission also wish that India would:</p>
<ol>
<li>Adopt a system of statutory damages in civil cases; allow compensation to be awarded in criminal cases;</li>
<li>Adopt an optical disc law;</li>
<li>Enact Copyright Law amendments consistent with the WCT and WPPT;</li>
<li>Adopt an anti-camcording criminal provision.</li>
</ol>
<p>Quick counters:</p>
<ol>
<li>Statutory damages (that is, an amount based on statute rather than actual loss) would result in ridiculousness such as the $1.92 million damages that the jury (based on the statutory damages) slapped on Jammie Thomas. The judge in that case <a href="http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/01/judge-slashes-monstrous-jammie-thomas-p2p-award-by-35x.ars">called the damage award</a> "monstrous and shocking" and said that veered into "the realm of gross injustice."</li>
<li>The reasons against an optical disc law are given above. Quick recap: it is a) unnecessary and b) harmful.</li>
<li>India has not signed the WCT and the WPPT. Indian law satisfies all our international obligations. Thus enacting amendments consistent with the WCT and the WPPT is not required.</li>
<li>Camcording of a film is in any case a violation of the Copyright Act, 1957, and one would be hard-pressed to find a single theatre that allows for / does not prohibit camcorders. Given this, the reason for an additional law is, quite frankly, puzzling. At any rate, IIPA in its submission does not go into such nuances.</li>
</ol>
<h2>Further conclusions</h2>
<p><a href="http://spicyipindia.blogspot.com/2010/05/us-special-301-report-and-not-so.html">Shamnad Basheer</a>, an IP professor at NUJS, offer the following as a response:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>"Dear USA,</p>
<p>India encourages you to mind your own business. We respect your sovereignty to frame IP laws according to your national priorities and suggest that you show us the same courtesy. If your grouse is that we haven't complied with TRIPS, please feel free to take us to the WTO dispute panel. Our guess is that panel members familiar with the English language will ultimately inform you that section 3(d) is perfectly compatible with TRIPS. And that Article 39.3 does not mandate pharmaceutical data exclusivity, as you suggest!
More importantly, at that point, we might even think of hauling you up before the very same body for rampant violations, including your refusal to grant TRIPS mandated copyright protection to our record companies, despite a WTO ruling (Irish music case) against you.</p>
<p>Yours sincerely,</p>
<p>India."</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Basheer's suggestion seems to be in line with that Michael Geist who believes that other countries should join Canada and Israel in openly refusing to acknowledge the validity of the Special 301 Reports because they lack ['reliable and objective analysis'][geist-reliable]. And that thought serves as a good coda.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/2010-special-301'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/2010-special-301</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshDevelopmentConsumer RightsAccess to KnowledgeCopyrightPiracyAccess to MedicineIntellectual Property RightsData ProtectionFLOSSTechnological Protection MeasuresPublications2011-10-03T05:37:27ZBlog EntryTechnological Protection Measures in the Copyright (Amendment) Bill, 2010
https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/tpm-copyright-amendment
<b>In this post Pranesh Prakash conducts a legal exegesis of section 65A of the Copyright (Amendment) Bill, 2010, which deals with the stuff that enables 'Digital Rights/Restrictions Management', i.e., Technological Protection Measures. He notes that while the provision avoids some mistakes of the American law, it still poses grave problems to consumers, and that there are many uncertainties in it still.</b>
<p><a href="http://www.wipo.int/enforcement/en/faq/technological/faq03.html">Technological Protection Measures</a> are sought to be introduced in India via the Copyright (Amendment) Bill, 2010. This should be quite alarming for consumers for reasons that will be explained in a separate blog post on TPMs that will follow shortly.</p>
<p>In this post, I will restrict myself to a legal exegesis of section 65A of the Bill, which talks of "protection of technological measures". (Section 65B, which talks of Right Management Information will, similarly, be tackled in a later blog post.)</p>
<p>First off, this provision is quite unnecessary. There has been no public demand in India for TPMs to be introduced, and the pressure has come mostly from the United States in the form of the annual "Special 301" report prepared by the United States Trade Representative with input coming (often copied verbatim) from the International Intellectual Property Alliance. India is not a signatory to the WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT) which requires technological protection measures be safeguarded by law. That provision, interestingly, was pushed for by the United States in 1996 when even it did not give legal sanctity to TPMs via its copyright law (which was amended in 2000 by citing the need to comply with the WCT).</p>
<p>TPMs have been roundly criticised, have been shown to be harmful for consumers, creators, and publishers, and there is also evidence that TPMs do not really decrease copyright infringement (but instead, quite perversely through unintended consequences, end up increasing it). Why then would India wish to introduce it?</p>
<p>Leaving that question aside for now, what does the proposed law itself say?</p>
<blockquote>
<p>65A. Protection of Technological Measures </p>
<p> (1) Any person who circumvents an effective technological measure applied for the purpose of protecting any of the rights conferred by this Act, with the intention of infringing such rights, shall be punishable with imprisonment which may extend to two years and shall also be liable to fine.</p>
<p> (2) Nothing in sub-section (1) shall prevent any person from:</p>
<p> (a) doing anything referred to therein for a purpose not expressly prohibited by this Act:</p>
<p> Provided that any person facilitating circumvention by another person of a technological measure for such a purpose shall maintain a complete record of such other person including his name, address and all relevant particulars necessary to identify him and the purpose for which he has been facilitated; or</p>
<p> (b) doing anything necessary to conduct encryption research using a lawfully obtained encrypted copy; or</p>
<p> (c) conducting any lawful investigation; or</p>
<p> (d) doing anything necessary for the purpose of testing the security of a computer system or a computer network with the authorisation of its owner; or</p>
<p> (e) operator; or [<em>sic</em>]</p>
<p> (f) doing anything necessary to circumvent technological measures intended for identification or surveillance of a user; or</p>
<p> (g) taking measures necessary in the interest of national security.</p>
</blockquote>
<h1>Implications: The Good Part</h1>
<p>This provision clearly takes care of two of the major problems with the way TPMs have been implemented by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) in the United States:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>In s.65A(1) it aligns the protection offered by TPMs to that offered by copyright law itself (since it has to be "applied for the purpose of protecting any of the rights conferred by this Act"). Thus, presumably, TPMs could not be used to restrict <em>access</em>, only to restrict copying, communication to the public, and that gamut of rights.</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>In s.65A(1) and 65A(2) it aligns the exceptions granted by copyright law with the exceptions to the TPM provision. Section 65A(1) states that the act of circumvention has to be done "with the intention of infringing ... rights", and s.52(1) clearly states that those exceptions cannot be regarded as infringement of copyright. And s.65A(2)(a) states that circumventing for "a purpose not expressly prohibited by this Act" will be allowed.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>A third important difference from the DMCA is that</p>
<ul>
<li>It does not criminalise the manufacture and distribution of circumvention tools (including code, devices, etc.). (More on this below.)</li>
</ul>
<h1>Implications: The Bad Part</h1>
<p>This provision, despite the seeming fair-handed manner in which it has been drafted, still fails to maintain the balance that copyright seeks to promote:</p>
<ul>
<li>
<p>TPM-placers (presumably, just copyright holders, because of point 1. above) have been given the ability to restrict the activities of consumers, but they have not been given any corresponding duties. Thus, copyright holders do not have to do anything to ensure that the Film & Telivision Institute of India professor who wishes to use a video clip from a Blu-Ray disc can actually do so. Or that the blind student who wishes to circumvent TPMs because she has no other way of making it work with her screen reader is actually enabled to take advantage of the leeway the law seeks to provide her through s.52(1)(a) (s.52(1)(zb) is another matter!). Thus, while there are many such exceptions that the law allows for, the technological locks themselves prevent the use of those exceptions. Another way of putting that would be to say:</p>
</li>
<li>
<p>The Bill presumes that every one has access to all circumvention technology. This is simply not true. In fact, Spanish law (in <a href="http://noticias.juridicas.com/base_datos/Admin/rdleg1-1996.l3t5.html">Article 161 of their law</a>) expressly requires that copyright holders facilitate access to works protected by TPM to beneficiaries of limitations of copyright. Thus, copyright holders who employ TPMs should be required to:</p>
<ul>
<li>tell their customers how they can be contacted if the customer wishes to circumvent the TPM for a legitimate purpose</li>
<li>upon being contacted, aid their customer in making use of their rights / the exceptions and limitations in copyright law</li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>
<p>How seriously can you take a Bill that has been introduced in Parliament that includes a provision that states: "Nothing in sub-section (1) shall prevent any person from operator; or" (as s.65A(2)(e), read in its entirety, does)?</p>
</li>
</ul>
<h1>Uncertainties</h1>
<p>As mentioned above, the provisions are not all that clear regarding manufacture and distribution of circumvention tools. Thus, the proviso to s.65A(2)(a) deserves a closer reading. What is clear is that there are no penalties mentioned for manufacture or dissemination of TPMs, and that only those who <em>circumvent</em> are penalised in 65A(1), and not those who produce the circumvention devices. However:</p>
<h2>On "shall maintain" and penalties</h2>
<p>In the proviso to s.65B(2)(a), there is an imperative ("shall maintain") requiring "any person facilitating circumvention" to keep records. It
is unclear what the implications of not maintaining such records are.</p>
<p>The obvious one is that the exemption contained in s.65(1)(a) will not apply if one were facilitated without the facilitator keeping records. Thus, under this interpretation, there is no independent legal (albeit penalty-less) obligation on facilitators. This interpretation runs into
the problem that if this was the intention, then the drafters would have written "Provided that any person facilitating circumvention ... for
such a purpose <em>maintain</em>/<em>maintained</em> a complete record ...". Instead, <em>shall maintain</em> is used, and an independent legal obligation seems,
thus, to be implied. But can a proviso create an independent legal obligation? And is there any way a penalty could <em>possibly</em> be attached
to violation of this proviso despite it not coming within 65A(1)?</p>
<h2>On "facilitating" and remoteness</h2>
<p>The next question is who all can be said to "facilitate", and how remote can the connection be? Is the coder who broke the circumvention a
facilitator? The distributor/trafficker? The website which provided you the software? Or is it (as is more likely) a more direct "the friend who sat at your computer and installed the circumvention software" / "the technician who unlocked your DVD player for you while installing it in your house"?</p>
<p>While such a record-keeping requirement is observable by people those who very directly help you (the last two examples above), it would be more difficult to do so the further up you get on the chain of remoteness. Importantly, such record-keeping is absolutely not possible in decentralized distribution models (such as those employed by most free/open source software), and could seriously harm fair and legitimate circumvention.</p>
<h1>More uncertainties</h1>
<p>It is slightly unclear which exception the bypassing of Sony's dangerous "Rootkit" copy protection technology would fall under if I wish to get rid of it simply because it makes my computer vulnerable to malicious attacks (and not to exercise one of the exceptions under s.52(1)). Will such circumvention come under s.65A(2)(a)? Because it does not quite fall under any of the others, including s.65(2)(b) or (f).</p>
<h2>On "purpose" as a criterion in 65A(2)(a)</h2>
<p>A last point, which is somewhat of an aside is that 65A(2)(a) states:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Nothing in sub-section (1) shall prevent any person from doing anything referred to therein for a purpose not expressly prohibited by this Act.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There's something curious about the wording, since the Copyright Act generally does not prohibit any acts based on purposes (i.e., the prohibitions by ss.14 r/w s.51 are not based on <em>why</em> someone reproduces, etc., but on the act of reproduction). In fact, it <em>allows</em> acts based on purposes
(via s.52(1)). The correct way of reading 65A(2)(a) might then be:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Nothing in sub-section (1) shall prevent any person from doing anything referred to therein for a purpose expressly allowed by this Act.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But that might make it slightly redundant as s.65A(1) covers that by having the requirement of the circumvention being done "with the intention of infringing such right" (since the s.52(1) exceptions are clearly stated as not being infringements of the rights granted under the Act).</p>
<h1>Conclusion</h1>
<p>It would be interesting to note how leading copyright lawyers understand this provision, and we will be tracking such opinions. But it is clear that TPMs, as a private, non-human enforcement of copyright law, are harmful and that we should not introduce them in India. And we should be especially wary of doing so without introducing additional safeguards, such as duties on copyright holder to aid access to TPM'ed works for legitimate purposes, and remove burdensome record-keeping provisions.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/tpm-copyright-amendment'>https://cis-india.org/a2k/blogs/tpm-copyright-amendment</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshAccess to KnowledgeCopyrightIntellectual Property RightsFLOSSTechnological Protection MeasuresPublications2012-05-17T16:51:38ZBlog EntrySoftware Freedom Pledge
https://cis-india.org/openness/software-freedom-pledge-2015
<b>On September 19, 2015, celebrated globally as Software Freedom Day, a number of enthusiasts got together and collectively took a pledge.</b>
<br />
<p>We, who have gathered together for <a href="http://softwarefreedomday.org/">Software Freedom Day 2015</a>, believe that software freedom is both a matter of ethical principle as well as a matter of pragmatism, and is necessary for a democratic, open society.</p>
<p>We believe that it is desirable that all people, but especially governments, use, contribute to, and spread open standards, free/libre/open source software, open APIs, openly-licensed content (including open data, open access, and open education resources), leading to a vibrant public domain, and ensure that all of the above are accessible for all, including persons with disabilities and other marginalised sections of society.</p>
<p>Given that, we pledge to:</p>
<ul>
<li>use and spread free software amongst our family, friends, and neighbours, both in person and virtually.</li>
<li>demand that services we use in turn use open standards and open APIs, and thus be available for all using free/libre/open source software, without the payment of any royalties.</li>
<li>raise the issue of software freedom with our democratic representatives, to seek that they in turn respect and promote these principles.</li>
<li>as far as possible, making our own work openly available, and seek to convince our employers, publishers, producers, and other persons who might be in a position to restrict </li>
<li>work against any laws, policies — corporate or governmental — or technical restrictions that seek to prevent people from full exercise of their rights, and which are contrary to the above principles.</li>
</ul>
<br />
<br />
<p>Signed by:</p>
<p>Abhaya Agarwal <br />
Ananth Subray <br />
Asutosha Sarangi <br />
Chirag Sarthi J <br />
Prakash Hebballi <br />
Pranesh Prakash <br />
Ralph Andrade <br />
Subhashish Panigrahi <br />
Tito Dutta <br />
Veethika Mishra</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/software-freedom-pledge-2015'>https://cis-india.org/openness/software-freedom-pledge-2015</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshOpen StandardsOpen SourceAccess to KnowledgeFLOSSOpen ContentFOSSEventTechnological Protection Measures2015-09-25T12:26:09ZBlog EntryRTI Application to Visvesvaraya Technological University
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/rti-application-on-microsoft-vtu-deal
<b>The Centre for Internet and Society filed an RTI application to Visvesvaraya Technological University asking it to provide details about its curriculum design, and its tie-ups with various software vendors. </b>
<p>The grip software vendors have over courses in technology (at both the school and the university levels) is a matter for concern. Due to what can be termed institutional inertia, educational institutions often don't realise that alternatives exist in the form of FLOSS (Free/Libre/Open Source software), as proprietary software is entrenched in the system (and is sometimes the market leader in that tech sector). To further tighten their grip, software vendors enter into commercial deals with governments and universities in attempts to penetrate the crucial education sector. This often results in students being taught courses on how to use particular (usually proprietary) software instead of being taught standard technologies. In turn, this denies them the opportunity to learn the concepts behind the software effectively, and ties them to the particular software that they were taught. For software vendors, getting their products into the curricula is very important because the supply of students trained in particular software also affects the demand for that software.</p>
<p>Students should be taught technologies first and foremost, and these technologies should be taught via the vehicle of both free and proprietary software (this is much easier if the technology itself is an open technology). That would allow students the opportunity to understand different implementations of the same technology and make an informed decision as to what they wish to use. It would also offer them more opportunities and choices in their future careers. The importance of FLOSS in the education sector is highlighted in <a class="external-link" href="http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/FOSS_Education">a guide</a> brought out by the United Nations Development Programme's International Open Source Network.</p>
<p>Against this backdrop, when news reports appeared in the Hindu (<a class="external-link" href="http://www.hindu.com/2008/11/19/stories/2008111956231000.htm">19 November 2008</a>) and the Deccan Herald (<a class="external-link" href="http://www.deccanherald.com/Content/Nov202008/state20081119101706.asp">20 November 2008</a>) about a curriculum tie-up between Microsoft and Visvesvaraya Technological University, we filed a Right to Information application to get more details about it. The response stated that this matter was still under discussion and no agreement had been signed.</p>
<p>To read the application, click <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/uploads/rti-application-to-vtu" class="external-link">here</a>; to read the response, click <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/uploads/rti-response-from-vtu" class="external-link">here</a>. You can download a scanned copy of the response <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/uploads/RTIresponse-VTU/image_view_fullscreen" class="external-link">here</a>.</p>
<p>-----</p>
<p>This entry was originally posted on 30 March 2009 and was updated on 3 April 2009.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/rti-application-on-microsoft-vtu-deal'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/rti-application-on-microsoft-vtu-deal</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshFLOSSRTI2011-08-18T05:01:46ZBlog EntryReport on Open Standards for GISW2008
https://cis-india.org/openness/publications/standards/report-on-open-standards-for-gisw2008
<b>In this report, Sunil Abraham lays out the importance and the policy implications of Open Standards.</b>
<div id="introduction">
<p>[<a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/sunil-abrahams-publications/Open-Standards-GISW-2008.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Report on Open Standards for GISW 2008">PDF copy</a>]</p>
<p>Most computer users today remain
“digitally colonised” (Bhattacharya, 2008) due to our unquestioning use
of proprietary standards. As users of proprietary standards we usually
forget that we lose the right to access our own files the moment the
licence for the associated software expires. For example, if I were to
store data, information or knowledge in .doc, .xls or .ppt format, my
ability to read my own files expires the moment the licence for my copy
of Microsoft Office expires.</p>
<h3>Definition</h3>
<p>Unlike
the terms “free software” or “open source software”, the term “open
standard” does not have a universally accepted definition. The free and
open source software (FOSS) community largely believes that an open
standard is:</p>
</div>
<p>[S]ubject to full public assessment and use
without constraints [royalty-free] in a manner equally available to all
parties; without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an open
standard themselves; free from legal or technical clauses that limit
its utilisation by any party or in any business model; managed and
further developed independently of any single vendor in a process open
to the equal participation of competitors and third parties; available
in multiple complete implementations by competing vendors, or as a
complete implementation equally available to all parties (Greve, 2007).</p>
<div id="introduction">
<h3>The controversy</h3>
<p>Proprietary
software manufacturers, vendors and their lobbyists often provide a
definition of open standards that is not in line with the above
definition on two counts (Nah, 2006).</p>
<p>One, they do not
think it is necessary for an open standard to be available on a
royalty-free basis as long as it is available under a “reasonable and
non-discriminatory” (RAND) licence. This means that there are some
patents associated with the standard and the owners of the patents have
agreed 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/International
Electrotechnical Commission] standard where the associated patents are
owned by Thomson Consumer Electronics and the Fraunhofer Society of
Germany. A developer of a game with MP3 support would have to pay
USD 2,500 as royalty for using the standard. While this may be
reasonable in the United States (US), it is unthinkable for an
entrepreneur from Bangladesh. Additionally, RAND licences are
incompatible with most FOSS licensing requirements. Simon Phipps of Sun
Microsystems says that FOSS “serves as the canary in the coalmine for
the word ‘open’. Standards are truly open when they can be implemented
without fear as free software in an open source community” (Phipps,
2007). RAND licences also retard the growth of FOSS, since they are
patented in a few countries. Despite the fact that software is not
patentable in most parts of the world, the makers of various
distributions of GNU/Linux do not include reverse-engineered drivers,
codecs, etc., in the official builds for fear of being sued. Only the
large corporation-backed distributions of GNU/Linux can afford to pay
the royalties needed to include patented software in the official
builds (in this way enabling an enhanced out-of-the-box experience).
This has the effect of slowing the adoption of GNU/Linux, as less
experienced users using community-backed distributions do not have
access to the wide variety of drivers and codecs that users of other
operating systems do (Disposable, 2004). This vicious circle
effectively ensures negligible market presence of smaller
community-driven projects by artificial reduction of competition.</p>
<p>Two,
proprietary software promoters do not believe that open standards
should be “managed and further developed independently of any single
vendor,” as the following examples will demonstrate. This is equally
applicable to both new and existing standards.</p>
<p>Microsoft’s
Office Open XML (OOXML) is a relatively new standard which the FOSS
community sees as a redundant alternative to the existing Open Document
Format (ODF). During the OOXML process, delegates were unhappy with the
fact 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 its
corporate social responsibility wing to coax non-governmental
organisations to send form letters to national standards committees,
and haranguing those who opposed OOXML. Of the twelve new national
board members that joined ISO after the OOXML process started, ten
voted “yes” in the first ballot (Weir, 2007). The European Commission,
which has already fined Microsoft USD 2.57 billion for anti-competitive
behaviour, is currently investigating the allegations of committee
stuffing (Calore, 2007). Microsoft was able to use its financial muscle
and monopoly to fast-track the standard and get it approved. In this
way it has managed to subvert the participatory nature of a
standards-setting organisation. So even though Microsoft is ostensibly
giving up control of its primary file format to the ISO, it still
exerts enormous influence over the future of the standard.</p>
<p>HTML,
on the other hand, is a relatively old standard which was initially
promoted by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), an
international community of techies. However, in 2002, seven years after
the birth of HTML 2.0, the US Department of Justice alleged that
Microsoft used the strategy of “embrace, extend, and extinguish” (US
DoJ, 1999) in an attempt to create a monopoly among web browsers. It
said that Microsoft used its dominance in the desktop operating system
market to achieve dominance in the web-authoring tool and browser
market by introducing proprietary extensions to the HTML standard
(Festa, 2002). In other words, financial and market muscle have been
employed by proprietary software companies – in these instances,
Microsoft – to hijack open standards.</p>
<h3>The importance</h3>
<p>There
are many technical, social and ethical reasons for the adoption and use
of open standards. Some of the reasons that should concern governments
and other organisations utilising public money – such as multilaterals,
bilaterals, civil society organisations, research organisations and
educational institutions – are listed below.</p>
<ul><li><strong>Innovation/competitiveness:</strong>
Open standards are the bases of most technological innovations, the
best example of which would be the internet itself (Raymond, 2000). The
building blocks of the internet and associated services like the world
wide web are based on open standards such as TCP/IP, HTTP, HTML, CSS,
XML, POP3 and SMTP. Open standards create a level playing field that
ensures greater competition between large and small, local and foreign,
and new and old companies, resulting in innovative products and
services. Instant messaging, voice over internet protocol (VoIP),
wikis, blogging, file-sharing and many other applications with
large-scale global adoption were invented by individuals and small and
medium enterprises, and not by multinational corporations. </li><li><strong>Greater interoperability:</strong>
Open standards ensure the ubiquity of the internet experience by
allowing different devices to interoperate seamlessly. It is only due
to open standards that consumers are able to use products and services
from competing vendors interchangeably and simultaneously in a seamless
fashion, without having to learn additional skills or acquire
converters. For instance, the mail standard IMAP can be used from a
variety 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 to
use our friends’ computers, our mobile phones, or a cybercafé to check
our mail. </li><li><strong>Customer autonomy: </strong>Open
standards also empower consumers and transform them into co-creators or
“prosumers” (Toffler, 1980). Open standards prevent vendor lock-in by
ensuring that the customer is able to shift easily from one product or
service provider to another without significant efforts or costs
resulting from migration. </li><li><strong>Reduced cost: </strong>Open
standards eliminate patent rents, resulting in a reduction of total
cost of ownership. This helps civil society develop products and
services for the poor. </li><li><strong>Reduced obsolescence: </strong>Software
companies can leverage their clients’ dependence on proprietary
standards to engineer obsolescence into their products and force their
clients to keep upgrading to newer versions of software. Open standards
ensure that civil society, governments and others can continue to use
old hardware and software, which can be quite handy for sectors that
are strapped for financial resources. </li><li><strong>Accessibility: </strong>Operating
system-level accessibility infrastructure such as magnifiers, screen
readers and text-to-voice engines require compliance to open standards.
Open standards therefore ensure greater access by people with
disabilities, the elderly, and neo-literate and illiterate users.
Examples include the US government’s Section 508 standards, and the
World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) WAI-AA standards.</li><li><strong>Free access to the state:</strong>
Open standards enable access without forcing citizens to purchase or
pirate software in order to interact with the state. This is critical
given the right to information and the freedom of information
legislations being enacted and implemented in many countries these
days. </li><li><strong>Privacy/security:</strong> Open
standards enable the citizen to examine communications between personal
and state-controlled devices and networks. For example, open standards
allow users to see whether data from their media player and browser
history are being transmitted along to government servers when they
file their tax returns. Open standards also help prevent corporate
surveillance. </li><li><strong>Data longevity and archiving: </strong>Open
standards ensure that the expiry of software licences does not prevent
the state from accessing its own information and data. They also ensure
that knowledge that has been passed on to our generation, and the
knowledge generated by our generation, is safely transmitted to all
generations to come. </li><li><strong>Media monitoring:</strong>
Open standards ensure that the voluntary sector, media monitoring
services and public archives can keep track of the ever-increasing
supply of text, audio, video and multimedia generated by the global
news, entertainment and gaming industries. In democracies, watchdogs
should be permitted to reverse-engineer proprietary standards and
archive critical ephemeral media in open standards.</li></ul>
<h3>Policy implications</h3>
<p>Corporations
have a right to sell products based on proprietary standards just as
consumers have a right to choose between products that use open
standards, proprietary standards, or even a combination of such
standards. Governments, however, have a responsibility to use open
standards, especially for interactions with the public and where the
data handled has a direct impact on democratic values and quality of
citizenship. In developing countries, governments have greater
responsibility because most often they account for over 50% of the
revenues of proprietary software vendors. Therefore, by opting for open
standards, governments can correct an imbalanced market situation
without needing any additional resources. Unfortunately, many
governments lack the expertise to counter the campaigns of fear,
uncertainty and doubt unleashed by proprietary standards lobbyists with
unlimited expense accounts.</p>
<p>Most governments from the
developing world do not participate in international standard-setting
bodies. On the other hand, proprietary software lobbyists like the
Business Software Alliance (BSA) and Comptia attend all national
meetings on standards. This has forced many governments to shun these
forums and exacerbate the situation by creating more (totally new)
standards. Therefore, governments need the support of academic and
civil society organisations in order to protect the interests of the
citizen. For example, the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur
(IIT-K) helped the government of India develop the open standard Smart
Card Operating System for Transport Applications (SCOSTA) for smart
card-based driving licences and vehicle registration documents.
Proprietary vendors tried to jettison the move by saying that the
standard was technically not feasible. IIT-K developed a reference
implementation on FOSS to belie the vendor's claims. As a consequence,
the government of India was able to increase the number of empanelled
smart-card vendors from four to fifteen and reduce the price of a smart
card by around USD 7 each (UNDP, 2007a). This will hopefully result in
enormous savings during the implementation of a national multi-purpose
identification card in India.</p>
<p>In some instances,
proprietary standards are technically superior or more universally
supported in comparison to open standards. In such cases the government
may be forced to adopt proprietary and de facto standards in the short
and medium term. But for long-term technical, financial and societal
benefits, many governments across the world today are moving towards
open standards. The most common policy instruments for implementation
of open standards policy are government interoperability frameworks
(GIFs). Governments that have published GIFs include the United
Kingdom, Denmark, Brazil, Canada, the European Union, Malaysia, Hong
Kong, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Australia (UNDP, 2007b).</p>
<p>While
challenges to the complete adoption of open standards in the public
sector and civil society remain, one thing is certain: the global march
towards openness, though slow, is irreversible and inevitable.</p>
<h3>References</h3>
<p align="left">Bhattacharya, J. (2008) <em>Technology Standards: A Route to Digital Colonization. Open Source, Open Standards and Technological Sovereignty</em>.
. <br />
Available at:<br />
<a href="http://knowledge.oscc.org.my/practice-areas/%E2%80%8Cgovernment%E2%80%8C/oss-seminar-putrajaya-2008/technology-standards-a-route-to-digital/at_download/file">knowledge.oscc.org.my/practice-areas/government/oss-seminar-putrajaya-2008/technology-standards-a-route-to-digital/at_download/file</a></p>
<p align="left">Calore, M. (2007) Microsoft Allegedly Bullies and Bribes to Make Office an International Standard. <em>Wired</em>, 31 August. <br />
Available at: <a href="http://www.wired.com/software/coolapps/news/2007/08/ooxml_vote">www.wired.com/software/coolapps/news/2007/08/ooxml_vote</a></p>
<p align="left">Disposable (2004) <em>Ubuntu multimedia HOWTO</em>. <br />
Available at: <a href="http://www.oldskoolphreak.com/tfiles/%E2%80%8Chack/%E2%80%8Cubuntu.txt">www.oldskoolphreak.com/tfiles/hack/ubuntu.txt</a></p>
<p align="left">Festa, P. (2002) W3C members: Do as we say, not as we do. <em>CNET News</em>, 5 September. <br />
Available at: <a href="http://news.cnet.com/2100-1023-956778.html">news.cnet.com/2100-1023-956778.html</a></p>
<p>Greve, G. (2007) <em>An emerging understanding of open standards</em>.<br />
. <br />
Available at: <a href="http://www.fsfe.org/%E2%80%8Cfellows%E2%80%8C/greve/freedom_bits/an_emerging_understanding_of_open_standards">www.fsfe.org/fellows/greve/freedom_bits/an_emerging_understanding_of_open_standards</a></p>
<p align="left">Nah, S.H. (2006) <em>FOSS Open Standards</em> <em>Primer</em>. New Delhi: UNDP-APDIP. <br />
Available at: <a href="http://www.iosn.net/open-standards/foss-open-standards-primer/foss-openstds-withnocover.pdf">www.iosn.net/open-standards/foss-open-standards-primer/foss-openstds-withnocover.pdf</a></p>
<p align="left">Phipps, S. (2007) <em>Roman Canaries</em>.. <br />
Available at: <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/webmink/entry/%E2%80%8Croman_canaries">blogs.sun.com/webmink/entry/roman_canaries</a></p>
<p align="left">Raymond, E.S. (2000) <em>The Magic Cauldron</em>. <br />
Available at: <a href="http://www.catb.org/%7Eesr/writings/%E2%80%8Ccathedral-%E2%80%8Cbazaar/%E2%80%8Cmagic-%E2%80%8Ccauldron/%E2%80%8Cindex.html">www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/magic-cauldron/index.html</a></p>
<p align="left">Toffler, A. (1980) <em>The Third Wave</em>. New York: Bantam.</p>
<p align="left">UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) (2007a) <em>e-Government Interoperability: A Review of Government Interoperability Frameworks in Selected Countries</em>. <br />
Available at: <a href="http://www.apdip.net/projects/gif/gifeprimer">www.apdip.net/projects/gif/gifeprimer</a></p>
<p align="left">UNDP (2007b) <em>e-Government Interoperability: Guide</em>. <br />
Available at: <a href="http://www.apdip.net/projects/gif/GIF-Guide.pdf">www.apdip.net/projects/gif/GIF-Guide.pdf</a></p>
<p align="left">US DoJ (Department of Justice) (1999) <em>Proposed Findings of Fact – Revised</em>. <br />
Available at: <a href="http://www.usdoj.gov/%E2%80%8Catr/%E2%80%8Ccases/%E2%80%8Cf2600/v-a.pdf">www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f2600/v-a.pdf</a></p>
<p align="left">W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) (2002) <em>Current patent practice</em>. <br />
Available at: <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/patent-practice#def-RAND">www.w3.org/TR/patent-practice#def-RAND</a></p>
<p align="left">Weir, R. (2007) <em>How to hack ISO</em>. <br />
Available at: <a href="http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/09/how-to-hack-iso.html">www.robweir.com/blog/2007/09/how-to-hack-iso.html</a></p>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/publications/standards/report-on-open-standards-for-gisw2008'>https://cis-india.org/openness/publications/standards/report-on-open-standards-for-gisw2008</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshOpen StandardsFLOSS2009-01-05T06:52:54ZBlog EntryOpenness, Videos, Impressions
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/OVSreport
<b>The one day Open Video Summit organised by the Centre for Internet & Society, iCommons, Open Video Alliance, and Magic Lantern, to bring together a range of stakeholders to discuss the possibilities, potentials, mechanics and politics of Open Video. Nishant Shah, who participated in the conversations, was invited to summarise the impressions and ideas that ensued in the day.</b>
<p></p>
<p>The notion of free and open is under great debate even under
that, and I think even when you side with a camp, there are going to be further
splinters. There are many ways of defining the free and open, and I think that the
tension, rather than being resolved, needs to be sustained and creatively
perpetrated to keep an internal checks and balances on not getting carried away
with it. All the groups did indeed circle around this in different,
often tangential ways – that there is need to define, variously and almost
endlessly, in defining the context of the free that we are dealing with.</p>
<p>Open video, in that matter, has gone through different
iterations, and I think it is nice that different stakeholders have defined it
variously, and also looked at the problems that it might lead to. However, for
the sake of synthesis, I am going to let you have your own idea of free and
open but instead look at five key words which have emerged, in my selective
hearing, through the day: <strong>Access, Archive,
Share, Remix, Repurpose</strong>. And it is these five that we need to now
imbricate these concepts across different thematic that emerged in the groups
today.</p>
<p><strong>Access</strong> has been one primary question that almost everybody
dealt with; Access has its legacies in the Open and Free culture movements,
where technological access, dealing with questions of open standards and
content, of bandwidth and infrastructure. More interestingly, in an emerging
information society like India, there are other concerns of language, access,
privilege, bandwidth, education etc. To
contextualise access and to put it into different perspectives is something
that different participants have voiced the need for.</p>
<p><strong>Archive</strong> is a preoccupation with most people because
archiving has close relationships with knowledge and subsequently retrieval and
usage. If knowledge is being digitised so that it is made accessible to
different people, there are older questions of representation, voice,
empowerment, participation, ethics, privacy, ownership etc. Crop up. In
education archiving has to do with the curricula building and knowledge
production. In networking, collaboration and film making, it is the kind of
issues that pad.ma is trying to tackle with. It also leads to notions of
access, distribution etc.</p>
<p><strong>Sharing </strong>is what is almost defining the spirit of the Open
and Free culture movements. There is a need to understand and explore what
sharing means. When does it infringe laws and what kind of regulation needs to
be advocated so that sharing becomes possible. How does one overcome questions
of piracy, stealing, IPR etc? More interestingly, what do we share and who do
we share it with? Tools by which sharing
leads to innovation? How does it lead to new participation and learning
practices and pedagogies? What kind of open distribution models and networks
can be built up?</p>
<p><strong>Remix</strong> has been of great value because it means that you are
being converted into some sort of a stakeholder or a contributor to the
process. Networking and nodes, network-actor, collaborator , peer 2 peer – the
possibility of looking at questions of internet and digital traces is
interesting. Or imagine that the act of sharing is also a remix. Sometimes just
putting it into new contexts, making it available to newer constituencies, etc.
can also be looked upon as remixing. Remix as a knowledge production aesthetic
and mechanics seems to have emerged.</p>
<p><strong>Repurpose </strong>is my additional reading of something that perhaps
needs no mention to this group, but nonetheless needs flagging. The fact
remains, that the technology is not a solution in itself. It is a tool that
enables the solutions which one is seeking for. The processes, paradigms,
protocols and practices are indeed shaped and mediated by technologies and
there are new solution possibilities which are produced. However, there still
seem to be anxieties, concerns, questions and problems which are cropping up
and need to be addressed outside of technology but within technology ecologies.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/OVSreport'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/OVSreport</a>
</p>
No publishernishantConferenceOpen StandardsArtWorkshopDigital AccessFLOSSOpen ContentArchivesOpennessOpen InnovationMeetingOpen Access2011-09-22T12:23:13ZBlog EntryOpen Standards Workshop at IGF '09
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/dcos-workshop-09
<b>The Centre for Internet and Society co-organized a workshop on 'Open Standards: A Rights-Based Framework' at the fourth Internet Governance Forum, at Sharm el-Sheikh. The panel was chaired by Aslam Raffee of Sun Microsystems and the panellists were Sir Tim Berners-Lee of W3C, Renu Budhiraja of India's DIT, Sunil Abraham of CIS, Steve Mutkoski of Microsoft, and Rishab Ghosh of UNU-MERIT.</b>
<p>Sir Tim Berners-Lee started the session with an address on various rights. Rights, he noted can range from being things like the rights to air and water to the right not to have the data carrier you use determine which movie you watch. Then, there are tensions between rights: the right to anonymity can clash with the right to know who posted information on making a bomb. Berners-Lee stated that for 2009, he has chosen to pursue one particular right: the right to government-held data. This data can include everything from where schools are to emergency services such as locations of hospitals. Today, we are talking about standards. </p>
<p>The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is a fifteen-year old body in which all kinds of people come together for purposes of setting standards around the World Wide Web. Thus, everything from HTML, which is used to write Web pages to WCAG, which are guidelines to enable people with disabilities access websites through assistive technologies. W3C conducts its discussions openly: anybody who has a good idea has a right to participate in its discussions -- it does not matter who one works for, who one represents -- what does matter are the ideas one brings to the table. The kinds of standards that W3C deals with are of interest to an immensely wide-ranging group of people. Even ten-year olds have actually expressed their opinions about standards like HTML. All this openness of participation must be guaranteed while ensuring that the processes move forward.</p>
<p>Next spoke Renu Budhiraja of the Department of Information and Technology, which is a part of the Indian government. She started off by hoping that this workshop would be not only a platform to share knowledge, but also to reach consensus on a few matters. Next, she laid out why open standards are extremely important for the Indian government. What citizens want in their interactions with the government are ease of interaction and efficiency. For them it is immaterial whether a certain service is provided by Department A or Department B. Thus we need to move towards a single-window government service for citizens, enabling them to interact easily with the government's various departments. While such an initiative must be centralized for it to be effective, it is crucial that its implementation be decentralized and suited to each district or localities' needs.</p>
<p>There is, understandably, a huge institutional mechanism behind ensuring that these systems are based on open standards. We have expert committees, consisting of academics and knowledgeable bureaucrats, and working groups, which include industry groups. Through these, we have evolved a National Policy on Open Standards, which is currently in a draft stage, but shall be notified soon. This policy outlines the principles based on which particular standards required for governmental functioning are to be chosen or evolved. This document will ensure long-term accessibility to public documents and information, and seamless interoperability of various governmental services and departments. It will also reduce the risk of vendor lock-in and reduce costs, and thus ensure long-term, sustainable, scalable and cost-effective solutions.</p>
<p>Ms. Budhiraja noted that there are a few aspects of the policy that bear discussion in a forum such as the IGF. First is the issue of whether royalty-free is the only choice for innovation. All other things equal, between royalty-free and reasonable and non-discriminatory (RAND) standards, of course royalty-free is to be preferred. But what if a superior technology (JPEG200 vs. JPEG) is RAND? What should the government's position be in such a case? Further, what should the government's position be when in a particular domain a RAND standard is the only option? </p>
<p>Next is the issue of single vs. multiple open standards. When interoperability is what we are aiming at, can multiple standards be recommended as some in the industry are asking us to do? And then is the issue of market maturity. The government sometimes finds itself in a situation where a standard is available, but well-developed products around that standard aren't and there aren't sufficient vendors using that standard. All these issues are of great practical importance when a government works on a policy document on standards.</p>
<p>Next up was Sunil Abraham, Executive Director of the Centre for Internet and Society. His presentation was on open standards as citizens' and consumers' rights. He started off by citing the example of the Smart Card Operating System for Transport Application (SCOSTA) standard, and the implications that the SCOSTA story has on large-scale projects such as the National Unique ID project currently under way in India. SCOSTA, an open standard, was being written off as unimplementable by all the MNC smart card vendors who wished to push RAND standards. IIT Kanpur helped the government develop a working implementation. Within twenty days, the card manufacturers submitted modified cards for compliance testing by NIC. Because of SCOSTA being an open standard, local companies also joined the tender. The cost went down from Rs. 600 per card to Rs. 30 per card. This shows the benefits of open standards as a means of curbing oligopolistic pricing, and working for the benefit of consumers.</p>
<p>From a rights-based perspective, access to the state machinery is a primary right. Citizens should not be required to pirate or purchase software to interact with the state. If e-governance solutions are based on proprietary standards, not all citizens would be equal. The South African example or requiring a particular browser to access the election commission's website shows that in a rather drastic fashion. When intellectual property interferes with governmental needs, governments have not been shy of issuing compulsory licences. This was seen when during the Great War the United States government pooled various flight-related patents and compulsorily licensed them, as well as what we are currently seeing with many Aids-related drugs being compulsorily licensed in developing countries. Thus, there are precedents for such licensing, and governments should explore them in the realm of e-governance. Many countries now have statutes that guarantee the right to government-held information. Government Interoperability Frameworks should take these into account, and mandate all government-to-citizen (G2C) information be transacted via open standards. This must be backed up by a strong accessibility policy to ensure that the governments don't discriminate between their citizens.</p>
<p>Proprietary standards act like pseudo-intellectual property rights, just as DRMs do. They add a layer on top of rights such as copyright, and can prevent the exercise of fair use and fair dealing rights because of an inability to legally negotiate the standards in which the content is encoded in a cost-free manner. In guaranteeing this balance between copyrights and fair dealing rights, free software and alternative IP models play a crucial role. Because of software patents being recognized in a few countries, development of free software which allows citizens to exercise their fair use rights is harmed in all countries.</p>
<p>Steve Mutkoski of Microsoft spoke next and placed the standards debate in a large context. He noted that standards are a technicality that are only a small part of the large issue which is interoperability in e-governance and delivery to citizens. The real challenges are organizational and semantic interoperability. Frequently interoperability is not harmed by technical issues, but by legal and organizational issues. Governments used to work on paper; during the shift to electronic data, they didn't engage in any organizational changes. Thus they continue to function with electronic data the same way that they did with paper-based data. Governments often lack strong privacy policies regarding the data that each of their departments holds. This harms governmental functioning. Additionally, legacy hardware and software have to be catered to by the standards we are talking about: sometimes an open standard just will not work. </p>
<p>Standards don't guarantee interoperability, and there is significant work done on this by noted academics ("Why Standards Are Not Enough To Guarantee End-to-End Interoperability" Lewis et al.; "Difficulties Implementing Standards" Egyedi & Dahanayake; "Standards Compliant, But Incompatible?" Egyedi et al.). Mandated standards lists will not help address interoperability issues between different implementations of the same standard. What would help? Transparency of implementations; collaboration with community; active participation in maintenance of standards, etc., would help. There is a need for continued public sector reform, with a focus on citizen-centric e-governance, and a need to engage with the question of whether government-mandated standards lists lead the market or follow the market.</p>
<p>Rishab Aiyer Ghosh, a senior researcher at UN University, Maastricht, spoke next. He started by noting that technical standards are left to technical experts. That needs to change, which is why discussing open standards at the IGF is important. He next set off a hypothetical: imagine you go to the city council office in Sharm el Sheik, and at the parking lot there it says that your car has to be a Ford if you are to park there; or if the Dutch government insists that you have a Philips TV if you are to receive the national broadcaster's signal. While these might seem absurd, situations like this arise all the time when it comes to the realm of software. Thus, the social effects of open standards are of utmost importance, and not just their technical qualities. Analysing the social effects of open standards takes us back to the economics of technology and technological standards. Technological standards exhibit network externalities: their inherent value is less than the value of others using them. Being the only person in the world with a telephone won't be very useful. Technological standards also exhibit path dependence: once you go with one technological format, it is difficult to change over to another even if that other format is superior to the first. Thus, clearly, standards benefit when there is a 'natural monopoly'. The challenge really arises when faced with the question of how to ensure a monopoly in a technology without the supplier of that technology exhibiting monopolistic tendencies. This can only be done when the technology is open and developed openly, of which the web standards and the W3C are excellent examples. If the technology or the process are semi-open, then because of the few intellectual property rights attached to the technology, some would be better off than others. Just as governments cannot insist on driving a particular make of cars as a prerequisite for access to them, they cannot insist on using a particular proprietary standard as a means of accessing them.</p>
<p>Many interesting questions arose when the floor was thrown open to the audience. "Should governments only mandate a particular standard when it is certain that market maturity exists?" Not really, since governmental decisions also give signals to the market and help direct attention to those standards. It would be best if roadmaps were provided, with particular under-mature standards being designated as "preferred standards", thus helping push industry in a particular direction. Examples where this strategy has borne fruit abound. This is also the strategy found in the Australian GIF. On the issue of multiplicity of standards, Sir Tim was very clear that they have to be avoided at all costs. He gave the example of XSLT and CSS, which are both stylesheet formats. He noted that their domain of operation was very different (with one being for servers and the other for clients), so having two standards with similar functions but different domains of operation does not make them multiple standards. Multiple standards defeat the purpose of the standardization process.</p>
<p>It was noted that governmental choices are of practical importance to citizens. During the Hurricane Katrina emergency, the federal emergency website only worked properly if Internet Explorer was used. How do we move forward? We must move forward by having policies that strike a balance between allowing for the natural evolution of standards and stability. The Government Interoperability Frameworks must be dynamic documents, allowing for categorization between standards and having clear roadmaps to enable industry to provide solutions to the government in a timely fashion. Governments must be strong in order to push industry towards openness, for the sake of its citizens, and not let industry dictate proprietary standards as the solution. Some opined that since there are dozens of domains that governments function in, maintaining lists of standards is a time-consuming process that is not justified, but others rebutted that by noting that for enterprise architectures to work, governments have to maintain such lists internally. Opening up that list to citizens and service providers would not entail greater overheads.</p>
<p><strong>Sunil Abraham talking Open Standards at IGF09</strong></p>
<p>(Video added on December 30, 2009)<br /><br /><br /><a title="<OBJECT>, shockwave-flash@http://www.youtube.com/v/woC_6GddD6A&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1" class="__noscriptPlaceholder__" href="http://www.youtube.com/v/woC_6GddD6A&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1">
</a></p>
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<div class="__noscriptPlaceholder__2"> </div>
</a></div>
<a title="<OBJECT>, shockwave-flash@http://www.youtube.com/v/woC_6GddD6A&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1" class="__noscriptPlaceholder__" href="http://www.youtube.com/v/woC_6GddD6A&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en_US&feature=player_embedded&fs=1">
</a>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/dcos-workshop-09'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/dcos-workshop-09</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshOpen StandardsConsumer RightsDigital GovernanceFair DealingsFLOSSWorkshopOpenness2011-08-23T02:54:03ZBlog EntryLetter to Education Secretary, Government of Karnataka, Advocating Adoption of FOSS in State IT Academies
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/letter-to-education-secretary-may-2009
<b>The Centre for Internet and Society is a signatory to a letter being sent to the Education Secretary, Government of Karnataka, advocating the adoption of FOSS at state IT academies. </b>
<p>
The state of Karnataka has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with
Microsoft under which three IT academies have been established in
the state, in Bangalore, Dharwad and Gulbarga, in 2004-05. Government school teachers are being trained at these academies. As
per the MOU, only Microsoft decides the curriculum at these
academies, and only Microsoft software applications are being taught
to the teachers. This MOU will expire in the coming academic year. Therefore, Gurumurthy Kasinathan and members of the FOSS community in India are sending a letter to the Education Secretary for the state of Karnataka, advocating the adoption of a FOSS-based curriculum in these IT academies, and explaining why this would be a useful move.</p>
<p>The Centre for Internet and Society is one of the signatories to this letter, which is reproduced below.</p>
<p>-----</p>
<p>To</p>
<p>The
Education Secretary</p>
<p>Government
of Karnataka</p>
<p>MS
Building</p>
<p>Bangalore,
Karnataka.</p>
<p><u><strong>Sub
– Microsoft IT Academies in Karnataka</strong></u></p>
<p>
Dear Sri Nadadur,</p>
<p>
Karnataka has a MOU with
Microsoft under which three 'IT Academies' have been established in
the State, in Bangalore, Dharwad and Gulbarga during 2004-05.
Government school teachers are being trained in these academies. As
per the MOU, only Microsoft decides the curriculum in these
academies, and only Microsoft software applications are being taught
to the teachers.</p>
<p>
There are a couple of issues
with this program.</p>
<p>
Firstly Microsoft does not allow
the teaching of software other than their own proprietary products.
This deprives the teachers from learning alternative Free and Open
Source Software (FOSS) platforms. There are compelling pedagogical,
economic, social and political reasons why the education system
needs to adopt and promote FOSS. Free software is software which
gives the users the <strong>freedom </strong>to <strong>use, study, modify and
share, </strong>while in the case of proprietary software, the vendor
prevents the study, modification and distribution of the software.
The freedoms of FOSS provide users and the rest of society with
several important advantages, which are briefly listed below:</p>
<p>
a. With proprietary software,
the teachers only learn be superficial 'users'. This is because,
proprietary software companies prevent access to the “source
code” that goes into the creation of software. With FOSS, students
can learn not only how to use software, but also how create and
modify the software applications. Hence with FOSS, students will not
just be passive users but will actually construct knowledge. As we
know, 'Constructivism' is a key feature of the National Curriculum
Framework 2005.</p>
<p>
b. FOSS supports the creation of
local language versions of the software. For example, Kerala has
locally created software in Malayalam for its IT@School program.
Similarly the Kannada community <em>Sampada
</em>has created a
complete Kannada distribution by customising existing FOSS software.</p>
<p>
Though Microsoft has provided
Windows and Microsoft Office gratis at these academies, it does not
provide the same software to the teachers who are trained at the
centre. Hence the teachers who intend to purchase computers would
need to shell out considerable amounts for the software which they
have become used to in the schools. However, if the teachers are
trained on FOSS alternatives to Windows and Office, at at negligible
price (the cost of a CD which is around Rupees ten), each teacher can
be a given a copy of the software. The training can also cover the
installation of the software, if required. In this way, the teacher
training can lead to the actual use of computers in the schools and
teachers homes and make the training meaningful and lead to the
greater dispersion of ICTs. Currently, most teachers learn to use
these products but have no continuity of learning which makes the
training futile.</p>
<p>Of course, the issue of FOSS is
not only one of cost. Even if proprietary software were offered free
of cost, our nation will eventually have economic losses, due to
permanent dependency on software monopoly.</p>
<p>
These are some of the reasons
why <strong>Karnataka has chosen FOSS in its own ICT@Schools program. The
computers in Karnataka schools run on GNU/Linux platform under this
program. We would like to submit that the teacher training in the IT
Academies at Bangalore, Dharwad and Gulbarga also need to be aligned
to the IT@School program, and hence teachers should be taught on the
same FOSS software platforms as well.</strong></p>
<p>
We had a meeting with Ms Vandita
Sharma last November, along with Dr Richard Stallman, the founder of
the global Free Software movement, and explained these issues. She
was sympathetic to these arguments on the public benefits from FOSS
and mentioned that the department would take appropriate action in
this regard as is consistent with the public interest and those of
the teachers and children in our government schools. She mentioned
that the MOU with Microsoft is expiring in the coming academic year
and and requested us to formally write to her in this regard, hence
this letter.</p>
<p>
We request that the Government
take a firm stance in favor of adopting and promoting FOSS and chose
FOSS in its software procurement to align the department to the
government schools.</p>
<p>A few months back, organisations that
are working to promote FOSS came together to establish a <strong>'Coalition
of the FOSS Community in India</strong>' whose goal is to collaborate with
governments and other organisations to promote the adoption of FOSS,
specially in the public sector. Several of the member of this
coalition are based in Bangalore, including the Centre for Internet
and Society, Sampada, Swatantra Malayalam Computing, Deeproot Linux,
IT for Change etc. Faculty from IIM-B, Bangalore University as well
as other academic institutions are also members of this coalition.
<strong>Members of this coalition are willing to provide any technical
support or guidance that the government may require in this regard</strong>.
For eg, FOSS curriculum for both schools and for teacher training is
available in Kerala and can be adapted to Karnataka schools. It
should be noted that FOSS is already being used in many institutions
in Karnataka, including IISC, IIIT-B, IIIT-H, IITK and many
engineering colleges.</p>
<p>We hope our submission will be
considered by the education department as well as by the government
and we look forward to working with you to help bring these ideals
into reality. If you think it would be useful, we could plan a small
workshop / interaction, or even a series of workshops for different
stakeholders, to discuss the issue in more detail and look at the
implications of the choice of the software platforms for the ICT
programs in the department.</p>
<p>We look forward to your response.</p>
<p>
Yours truly</p>
<p>
Gurumurthy Kasinathan and
members of the FOSS community in India (list of signatories is
provided overleaf)</p>
<p>
May 9<sup>th</sup> 2009.</p>
<p>
Copy - Commissioner for Public
Instruction, Sri Kumar Naik</p>
<p>Copy - State
Project Director, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan, Sri Selva Kumar</p>
<p>
Copy - Principal Secretary,
DPAR (Dept of Personnel and Administrative Reforms) e-Governance</p>
<p>
Copy - Principal Secretary,
Department of IT</p>
<p>
enclosed:</p>
<p>
Why Government of Karnataka
should adopt and promote FOSS</p>
<p>
Kerala IT@Schools project</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/letter-to-education-secretary-may-2009'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/letter-to-education-secretary-may-2009</a>
</p>
No publishersachiaOpennessFLOSS2011-08-23T02:55:16ZBlog EntryIt's September, and That Means It's Time for Software Freedom Day
https://cis-india.org/openness/global-voices-september-17-2016-subhashish-panigrahi-it-is-september-and-that-means-it-is-time-for-software-freedom-day
<b>Software Freedom Day (SFD), which celebrates the use of free and open software, is just around the corner on September 17. When the day first started in 2004, only 12 teams from different places joined, but it has since grown to include hundreds registered events around the world, depending on the year.</b>
<p>The article was <a class="external-link" href="https://globalvoices.org/2016/09/17/its-september-and-that-means-its-time-for-software-freedom-day/">published by Global Voices</a> on September 17, 2016.</p>
<hr />
<table class="listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td style="text-align: justify; ">
<p><a href="http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/index.php/about/sponsors">Supported</a> by several global organizations like Google, Canonical, Free Software Foundation, Joomla, Creative Commons and Linux Journal, Software Freedom Day draws its inspiration from the philosophy promoted by people like Richard Stallman who <a href="http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/index.php/about/sponsors">argue</a> that free software is all about the freedom and not necessarily free of cost but provides the liberty to users from proprietary software developers’ power and influence.</p>
<p>SFD <a href="https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/its-software-freedom-day">encourages</a> everyone to gather in their own cities (here's a <a href="http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/map/index.php?year=2015">map</a> of places where SFD is organized this year), educate people around them about free software, and promote the cause on social media (with the hashtag <a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23SFD2016">#SFD2016</a> this year). There's also hackathons (hacking free software to modify the code and create what one wants to have in it), running free software installation camps, and even going creative with <a href="http://www.htxt.co.za/2015/09/03/flying-freedom-day-gloriously-combines-drones-and-craft-beer/">flying a drone running free software</a>.</p>
</td>
<td>
<p><b>What are FOSS, free software, open source, and FLOSS?</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Free and open source software (FOSS or F/OSS), and free/libre and open-source software (FLOSS) are umbrella terms that are used to include both free software and open source software. Adopted by noted software freedom advocate Richard Stallman in 1983, free software has many names — libre software, freedom-respecting software and software libre are some of them. As defined by the <a href="https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-intro.html">Free Software Foundation</a>, one of the early advocates of software freedom, free software allows users not just to use the software with complete freedom, but to study, modify, and distribute the software and any adapted versions, in both commercial and noncommercial form.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The distribution of the software for commercial and noncommercial form, however, depends on the particular license the software is released under. “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Open_Source_Definition">Open source</a>” was coined as an alternative to free software in 1998 by educational-advocacy organization <a href="https://opensource.org/history">Open Source Initiative.</a> Open source software is generally created collaboratively, made available with its source code, and it provides the user rights to study, change, and distribute the software to anyone and for any purpose.</p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p>From South Asia, there are <a href="http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/2016/India">13 celebratory events in India</a>, <a href="http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/2016/Nepal?highlight=%28%5CbCategoryCountry2016%5Cb%29">eight in Nepal</a>, <a href="http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/2016/Bangladesh?highlight=%28%5CbCategoryCountry2016%5Cb%29">one in Bangladesh</a> and <a href="http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/2016/Sri%20Lanka?highlight=%28%5CbCategoryCountry2016%5Cb%29">four in Sri Lanka</a>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">South Asian countries have seen adoption of both free software and open source software by individuals, organizations and the government. The <a href="http://www.fsmi.in/about">Free Software Movement of India</a> was founded in Bengaluru, India, in 2010 to act as a national coalition of several regional chapters working to promote and grow the free software movement in India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The Indian government has <a href="https://data.gov.in/about-us">launched</a> an open data portal at <a href="http://data.gov.in">data.gov.in</a> portal for sharing large datasets like the census data under free licenses. The government's <a href="http://meity.gov.in/sites/upload_files/dit/files/policy_on_adoption_of_oss.pdf">new policy</a> emphasizes on adopting open source software. Moreover government's Ministry of Communication and Information Technology <a href="https://opensource.com/government/15/6/indian-government-includes-open-source-rfps">asked</a> vendors to include open source software applications while making requests for proposals.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Similarly, there are several free and open source communities and organizations operating from the subcontinent, like <a href="http://mozillaindia.org/">Mozilla India</a>, <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_India">Wikimedia India</a>, the <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CISA2K">Centre for Internet and Society, </a><a href="http://in.okfn.org/about/">Open Knowledge India</a>, <a href="http://mozillabd.org/">Mozilla Bangladesh</a>, <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Bangladesh">Wikimedia Bangladesh,</a> <a href="http://www.bdosn.org/about-bdosn">Bangladesh Open Source Network</a>, <a href="https://okfn.org/network/bangladesh/">Open Knowledge Bangladesh</a>, <a href="https://wiki.mozilla.org/Nepal">Mozilla Nepal</a>, <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Nepal">Wikimedians of Nepal,</a> <a href="http://np.okfn.org/about/">Open Knowledge Nepal</a>, <a href="https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Community_User_Group_Pakistan">Wikimedia Community User Group Pakistan</a>, and the <a href="http://www.opensource.lk/">Lanka Software Foundation</a> in Sri Lanka.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Mohammad Jahangir Alam, a lecturer from Southern University Bangladesh, argues in a <a href="http://research.ijcaonline.org/volume42/number18/pxc3878099.pdf">research paper</a> that the use of open source software can help the government save a enormous amount of money that are spent in purchasing proprietary software:</p>
<blockquote class="quoted" style="text-align: justify; ">A Large amount of money of government can be saved if the government uses open source software in different IT sectors of government offices and others sectors, Because government is providing computer to all educational institute from school to university level and they are using proprietary software. For this reason government is to expend a large amount of many for buying proprietary software to run the computers. Another one is government paying significant amount of money to the different vendors for buying different types of software to implement e-Governance project. So, the Government can use open source software for implanting projects to minimize cost of the projects.</blockquote>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/global-voices-september-17-2016-subhashish-panigrahi-it-is-september-and-that-means-it-is-time-for-software-freedom-day'>https://cis-india.org/openness/global-voices-september-17-2016-subhashish-panigrahi-it-is-september-and-that-means-it-is-time-for-software-freedom-day</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaOpen StandardsAccess to KnowledgeFLOSSOpennessFOSS2016-09-17T15:42:46ZBlog EntryEssay Competition for Software Freedom Day
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/essay-competition-for-software-freedom-day
<b>The Free Software Users Group of Bangalore and the Centre for Internet and Society in collaboration organise an essay competition for schools and colleges in Bangalore on the topic of "Software Freedom"</b>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/essay-competition-for-software-freedom-day'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/essay-competition-for-software-freedom-day</a>
</p>
No publishersunilFLOSS2011-08-18T05:02:02ZBlog EntryEssay Competition
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/uploads/essay-competition
<b>In partnership with Free Software User Group - Bangalore, the Centre for Internet and Society is organising a essay competition for school and college students from Bangalore. The last date for submitting entries is 8th November 2008. Three prizes of Rs. 3,000/- each are available for college students, and three 3 prizes of Rs. 1,000/- each are available for school students. </b>
<h3>Poster and Cover Letter<br /></h3>
<p>Download an electronic copy of the <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/uploads/hiran.jpg" class="internal-link" title="Competition Poster">poster</a> and <a href="https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/uploads/covering-letter.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Covering Letter">covering letter</a> that has been sent to around 350 school and colleges in Bangalore city. </p>
<h3>Process of Judging<br /></h3>
<p>Volunteers from the Free Software User Group will together constitute a committee that will anonymously and individual score all entries. The score will be consolidated across judges to determine the final winners. </p>
<h3>Terms and Conditions</h3>
<ol><li>Copyright: The copyright of the essay will remain with the participant. <br /></li><li>License: All submissions will automatically be considered licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 India License. <br /></li><li>The collective decision of the judges will be considered final. <br /></li></ol>
<h3>Rules</h3>
<ol><li>Participants must be bona fide students of a school or college in Bangalore. <br /></li><li>The word limit for essays is 1200 words. </li><li>Essays can be submitted either in English or in Kannada.</li><li>Electronic submission should be in an Open Format [Text - .txt, Rich Text Format - .rtf, Open Document Format - .odt, Portable Document Format - .pdf]<br /></li></ol>
<h3> Thanks</h3>
<ol><li><a class="external-link" href="http://mm.gnu.org.in/pipermail/fsug-bangalore/">Free Software Users Group</a>, Bangalore, for acting as co-organiser for the competition. <br /></li><li>Renuka Prasad, Professor, R.V.College of Engineering for the concept, providing leadership and organising the databases of schools and colleges.</li><li>Anivar Aravind for providing advice and support.<br /></li><li><a class="external-link" href="http://hiraneffects.blogspot.com/">Hiran Venugopalan</a>, Engineering Student, for designing the poster. <br /></li></ol>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/uploads/essay-competition'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/uploads/essay-competition</a>
</p>
No publishersunilFLOSS2009-09-23T10:02:28ZPageAn Interview With Arjen Kamphuis
https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/an-interview-with-arjen-kamphuis
<b>In an email interview with the Centre for Internet and Society, Dutch open source activist Arjen Kamphuis discussed his experience of successfully working with the government for a policy mandating open standards for all government IT in the Netherlands. </b>
<p><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a>In<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a> 2002 Arjen Kamphuis co-authored a <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>parliament motion to mandate open standards for all gov<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a>e<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a>rnment IT in the Netherlands. The motion was unanimously accepted and, in <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>2007, became policy. The Netherland<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a>s thus became the first <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>western country to make the use of open standards in public sector IT <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>mandatory. Arjen is now workin<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a>g t<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a>o e<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a>xport this set of policies to <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>other European countries with the help of local political parties and <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>business partners.</p>
<p>Arjen discussed his experience of lobbying for this policy change and some other questions related to<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a> his<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a> work as a consultant on IT strategy and the implications of nanotechnology and biotechnology in an email interview with the Centre for Internet and Society.<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a><br /><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags">
</span><strong>The Centre for Internet and Society: What is the Dutch government's policy on FOSS and Open <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>Standards specifically and intellectual property rights in general? Provide some history, name <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>the main lobbying factions in the Netherlands and their policy <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>positions. What was your role in the formulation of these policies?</strong></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span><strong>Arjen Kamphuis:</strong> The national action plan 'The Netherlands in Open Connection' is the <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>government's answer to a unanimous vote in parliament in November <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>2002. The parliament stated that the market for desktop software was <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>not functioning as it should and that significant vendor lock-in <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>effects were harming both individual citizens and society as a whole. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>It requested maximum efforts from the government to change this <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>situation. The suggested method for changing was mandating open <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>standards in all public sector IT and actively supporting the adoption <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>of open source software wherever functionally and <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>technically feasible. <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>I was one of the people who got this process started by contacting a <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>member of parliament from the Green Party. This was triggered by <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>my inability to access the website of the national railway on 1 January <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>2002. The website had been redesigned and only allowed access to <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>visiters with Internet Explorer. As a Linux user, I had previously had comparable <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>problems with local government websites and electronic tax forms <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>(usage of which was mandatory for small businesses like my consulting<span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span>start-up).</p>
<p>After the unanimous vote in parliament, several people in the <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>Dutch open source community, including me, kept the pressure on the government by <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>monitoring major procurements and writing questions for the Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) to ask <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>the government. In 2004 this led to a breakthrough when the <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>Justice Ministry ra<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a>n a project to procure 147 million euros' worth of <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>desktop software without going through a proper multi-vendor selection <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>process. They only talked to one vendor, and that is against European Union<span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span>regulations. Since some of the civil servants working on this project <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>were gagged, we can conclude that some people were aware they were <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>breaking the law, yet went ahead anyway. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>When the news broke we made sure the MEPs were armed with the proper <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>questions the next day, and the contract was dropped. In reply to <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>questions asked to the government by the MEPs, the responsible <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>ministers admitted that the government was very dependent on <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>Microsoft for basic functioning of its office environments; that <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>this was a problem; and that the government would take active <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>steps to remedy this situation by moving forward with <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>the requests <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a>made in 2002 by parliament.</p>
<p>Two-and-a-half years and an election later, a new under-Minister for <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>Economic Affairs, Frank Heemskerk, took up the challenge <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>and promised a comprehensive policy. I gave input for this plan in <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>mid-2007 and it was formally published and adopted later that year as <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>a national policy for all government and public-sector (i.e. tax <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>funded) organisations. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>The policy has three objectives:</p>
<ul><li>improving interoperability between <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>public sector organisations;</li><li>lowering the vendor-dependence of the <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>public sector;</li><li> improving the functioning of the software market <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>and supporting the Dutch knowledge economy <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a></li></ul>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>Some of the practical measures are the mandating of the use of open <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>standards in all public sector organisations. Whenever software is <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>procured, open source should be considered <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>and preferred whenever functionally adequate. These two very basic <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>rules change the entire market for IT in the Dutch public sector (40% <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>of the entire market) and is having a profound effect on the way <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>software vendors offer their products as well as the negotiating power <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>of the client organisations. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"><br /></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span>I continue to advise both the decision makers and the civil servants <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>overseeing the implementation of the policy. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"><br /></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span><strong>CIS: What is the current status on the implementation of these<span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span>policies?</strong></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span><strong>AK: </strong>After a slow start the government organisation that is responsable for <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>overseeing the implementation is now up and running. The basic problem <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>is lack of awareness about both the practical value that open <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>standards and open source software can contribute and the underlying <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>political reasons for making it the preferred option for government <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>information processing. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"><br /></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span>Thus a lot of the work for the next few years will <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>be communicating these ideas to civil servants (be the<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a>y IT <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>professionals or managers who have other jobs). The policy helps a lot <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>because it puts some serious weight behind the whole process. The fact <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>that government organisations have to support Open Document Format for <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>instance significantly heightens their interest in the technical <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>subject matter!<span class="moz-txt-citetags"><br /></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>So the policy gives the drive needed to get things moving and now it <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>is up to us to communicate the how and the why in a way that is <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>understandable for people who are new to these concepts. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>I have no doubt it will be a long process, we have over 20 years of <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>proprietary legacy built up in our public institutions. Replacing <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>those systems with open alternatives will take many years. All the <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>greater a reason to proceed with some urgency. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"><br /></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span>The complete policy document has been translated into English and <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>released under Creative Commons Licence:<br /><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://appz.ez.nl/publicaties/pdfs/07ET15.pdf">http://appz.ez.nl/publicaties/pdfs/07ET15.pdf</a> <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><br /><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>In December 2007 I gave a talk in Berlin. Here a summary, slides and <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>video are available:<br /><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2387.en.html">http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2387.en.html</a> <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></p>
<p> <strong>CIS: What can a country like India learn from the Dutch <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>government's e<span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>xperience in eGovernance and ICT in Education?</strong></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span><strong>AK:</strong> I am not familiar with the Indian political process but these are some <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>of my lessons learned: </p>
<p>- The government will not do anything unless constant <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>and significant pressure is applied by citizens. Politicians and civil <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>servants only act if the pain of acting is less than the pain of not <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>acting. Change is achieved by citizens standing up and working on <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>these problems without guarantee of any reward or even achieving any <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>results (it took us five years to get from a unanimous vote <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>in parliament to an actual policy). <span class="moz-txt-citetags"><br /></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>- Big IT companies may be your friend or your enemy. But even if they <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>are your friends they generally will not be at the forefront of <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>political action that could be seen as controversial. Once policies <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>are pushed beyond the co<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a>ntroversial stage and have been adopted as <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>official policy some of them will support it. Others, with much to <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>lose, will fight you and the policy every step of the way. The more <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>money or loss of market share is involved the more radical the methods <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>that are employed. Massive lobbying, applying political pressure <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>through foreign governments, bribery and all kinds of other activities <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>are well-funded, well organised and very common. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>- In moving forward with these policies it's the lack of knowledge and <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>vision with the the management of institutions that is by far the <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>biggest bottleneck. Without a clear policy from the top it is <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>impossible to get things moving in most organisations.<span class="moz-txt-citetags"><br /></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span>- Another big problem in switching over local governments and other <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>smaller organisations is the fact that many of the advantages of such <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>a switch is national and/or macro-economic in nature while the initial <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>cost and risk is micro-economic in nature. Hence again the need for a <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>national policy. </p>
<p>- The funding required to make significant improvements is often not <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>that large compared to the existing operational budgets. Investing in <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>the smart use of IT in education for instance is something that can <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>pay for itself very quickly. This is generally also true for adoption <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>of open source and open standards in general. By just reducing the <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>yearly spend on software licences by 1% the entire government program <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>can be funded. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>- Simply stopping the procurement of new licences (while continuing <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>the use of those already paid for) can often free up enough money to <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>finance a migration process. This has been the case in the city of <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>Amsterdam and the French Gendarmes. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>- The actual value of better government services or education is hard <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>to quantify in monetary terms. H<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a>ow do we value improved <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>responsiveness, transparency, national sovereignty in information <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>processing and supporting local service companies instead of foreign <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>software companies? <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>- IT education should focus on understanding methods and principles, <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>not products. The product life-cycle is 18-36 months, the educational <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>process takes many years and the length of a career is decades. Any <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>education with a focus on products leads to knowledge that is <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>irrelevant by the time the degree is finished. Teach people to drive a <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>car, not just a Volkswagen or Tata. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"><br /></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span>- The cost of physical books per student per year in the Netherlands <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>is now greater that the cost of a laptop. This is insane since the <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>content of those books is generally written by teachers who get paid <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>very little for it. Using the funds to pay those teachers instad of <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>the publishers and releasing the content under a free licence will <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>free up resources to develop better educational programs and provide <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>all students with computational tools to use them. All without <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>increasing the total cost compared to our current situation. The <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>financial numbers will be different for India but the <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>basic principle is the same and works even better given the larger <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>scale of India. The cost of producing and distributing electronic <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>educational content will drop practically to zero when compared to <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>physical on a per-student basis. Using funds to support teachers in <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>the use of e-learning with open content is the way forward. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span> <strong>CIS: How can a local support environment for open technologies be <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>created? Can local SMEs ever substitute for the transnational <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>proprietary giants?</strong><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><strong>AK: </strong>Whether SMEs can supplant multinationals depends on the product being <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>replaced. CPU manufacturing requires a very high upfront investment in <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>R&D and manufacturing capability. This is usually far beyond any but a <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>handful of companies. With software development and services things <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>are very different. Software development only requires a human with <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>programming skills, a good idea and a computer. The Free Software <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>Movement has shown clearly that distributed methods of software <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>development can lead to high quality products with excellent local <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>support systems. Local organisations (or communities that are not even <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>organisations) can often understand local needs and respond to local <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>changes much better, faster and cheaper than large, lumbering <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>corporations. If local organisations work together globally to share <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>knowledge (and code) for those parts they all need they can beat any <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>centralised system. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>What many senior business and government leaders are struggling with <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>is the realisation that many of the 'truths' they have learned while <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>studying economics or business management or some such subject turn out to be <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>empirically incorrect. For example: it has become clear there is no <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>causal relationship between the cost of software and its quality or <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>utility. This must be a fact that is difficult to truly understand and <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>accept if you have been brought up believing the gospel of the <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>Anglo-Saxon economic worldview. The current economic crisis is a great <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>help in questioning some of those beliefs and opens up room for new <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>ideas about economic vs. societal value of technology and its <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>relationship to<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a> businesses trying to earn a living. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"><br /></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span> <strong>CIS: Could you tell us about the Dutch government's rollback on <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>electronic voting machines? What is your opinion on the use<span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span>of <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>electronic voting machines in the upcoming elections in <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>India?<span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></strong></p>
<p><strong>AK: </strong>From the mid '80s onward, voting computers were introduced in the <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>Netherlands. By 2006, the vast majority of all elections were being <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>performed by proprietary computer systems. Citizens would press a <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>button and then go home to watch TV. Some software that no-one could <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>control, monitor or properly audit would spit out a result and that <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>would be it -- new government. Only a handful of engineers (all working <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>for the companies that made the voting computers) actually knew what <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>the software did and could make the computer system say anything they <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>wanted. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"><br /></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span>When the city of Amsterdam (the last holdout using paper ballots) <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>announced in 2006 that it was moving to voting computers, a group of <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>activists organised a campaign to ban voting computers. We felt that <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>the very nature of democracy was under attack by running the election <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>process in a way that makes it impossible for ordinary citizens to <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>check the validity of the election. It also makes fraud a lot harder <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>to detect. Detectability of fraud is the one of the primary properties <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>any election process should have. We all know election fraud is also <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>possible with non-electronic means but keeping it a secret is much <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>harder in such cases (as we saw in the US and Zimbabwean election over <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>the last years). There was a actual case of suspected voter fraud in a <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>Dutch municipal election and the judge concluded that while the fraud <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>seemed likely it could not be proven. Regrettably for the suspected <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>council member the fraud could also not be disproven. This <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html"><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></a>shows very <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>clearly that such a method is wholly unsuitable for application in <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>real democratic processes. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"><br /></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>Through lots of media attention, a few spectacular hacks showing the <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>technical insecurity of the systems, and legal pressure, we forced the <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>government in 2007 to reverse the approval of the voting computers and <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>go back to an all-paper balloting system. This reversal is part of a <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>global backlash against electronic voting systems. Comparable changes <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>have been going on in many US states and all over Europe. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"><br /></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span>I think India should have voting process that can be understood and <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>monitored by its citizens. This understanding and monitoring should be <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>possible without requiring advanced degrees in computer science, <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>software engineering and electronics. The only way to have such a <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>process is when there is a paper ballot involved. Such a ballot could <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>be printed by a computer to increase the ease of use but <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>all-electronic solutions are ruled out by the basic demands of what a <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>democracy is. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"><br /></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span>India should move to either all paper systems or voting computer <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>backed-up by a voter-verified paper trail. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"><br /></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span>Are more extensive telling of the tale can be found here:<span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl/English">http://wijvertrouwenstemcomputersniet.nl/English</a> <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>This is a link to the Berlin CCC conference of Rop Gongrijp's 2007 <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>presentation (with video): <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://events.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html">http://event<span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>s.ccc.de/congress/2007/Fahrplan/events/2342.en.html</a> <span class="moz-txt-citetags"><br /></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.blackboxvoting.org/">http://www.blackboxvoting.org</a> has a wealth of information on this subject. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><strong>CIS: What are the services provided by Gendo? Could you describe <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>some <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>of the projects that you have undertaken?</strong><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><strong>AK:</strong> My company (gendo.nl) also provides consulting services in the area of <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>IT strategy, development of open IT architectures and implementing <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>those in mixed open source/proprietary environments. We are currently <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>advising both national and local government organisations in the <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>implementation of policies and plans to move to open standards and <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>open source software. We are also involved in projects where we do the <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>actual development and implementation of new systems to enable <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>innovation and lessen the dependance of our client on proprietary <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>systems. Currently we are involved with a healthcare organisation <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>where we are assisting in re-architecting their entire IT environment <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>to allow service innovation, lower cost and increase information <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>security. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"><br /></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span>We have also been involved in information security work and other <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>auditing in the financial services and government sector. Here our <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>activities focus on the grey area between technology and process. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>Outside the field of IT we also do other consulting work such as <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>scenario planning and strategic future studies, mostly for large <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>corporate clients. Most of the big Anglo-Dutch multinationals such as <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>Shell or Unilever are on our client list. We also have a large number <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>of clients in the financial services and insurance sector. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span>For all of these clients we organise presentations and brainstorming <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>sessions, often preceded by research. This helps the leaders in those <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>organisations think about the nature of rapid, technology-driven <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>changes in their markets and the world in general. These insights are <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>then translated into new products, services and ways of delivering <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>them. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"><br /></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span>Forgive me if this all sounds a bit vague but with many of these <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>clients there is some confidentiality agreement involved. <br /><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><strong>CIS: Could you tell us more about yourself? Maybe you would like <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>to <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>share some formative experiences.</strong><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><strong>AK:</strong> Writing my first paper on black holes at age 11 showed me that <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>grown-ups usually also don't know what is going on in the universe <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>either. Despite rumours to the contrary parents, teachers, senior <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>managers and politicians are not all-knowing and are stumbling about <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>just like most two-year-olds where complex issues are concerned. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"><br /></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"> </span>Over the last quarter century I've had this intuition reconfirmed <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>again and again. In a world that is changing faster and faster <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>experience becomes obsolete rather quickly and wisdom is no longer the <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>sole purview of older, m<span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>ore senior, people. We need young smart-asses <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>who have not yet learned what is impossible, so they go out there and <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>do it. <span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span><span class="moz-txt-citetags"><br /></span></p>
<p><span class="moz-txt-citetags"></span>-----</p>
<span class="visualHighlight">Arjen Kamphuis (born 1972) studied Science & Policy at Utrecht University and worked for IBM as Unix specialist, Tivoli consultant and software instructor. As IT-strategy consultant at Twynstra Gudde he was involved in starting up Kennisnet, the Dutch educational network. Since 2001 he is operating as an independent adviser of companies and governments. He co-authored, in 2002, a motion in parliament that ultimately turned, in 2007, into a full-fledged policy of the Dutch government mandating the use of open source software in all government and public sector IT operations. <br /><br />Arjen at present divides his attention between IT-policy and the convergence of IT, biotechnology and nanotechnology and its social and economic implications. His customers include: Shell, Unilever, Pfizer, Stork, and various hospitals, governmental institutions and insurance companies. Arjen guest lectures on technology policy at various universities and colleges. <br /><br />When not consulting Arjen is actively involved in (digital) civil liberties, the open source movement and criticizing the war on terror.</span>
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For more details visit <a href='https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/an-interview-with-arjen-kamphuis'>https://cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/an-interview-with-arjen-kamphuis</a>
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No publishersachiaInterviewOpen StandardsFLOSSIntellectual Property Rights2011-08-18T05:01:53ZBlog Entry