Commission to exclude free software from public administrations
,----[ Quote ]
| An MEP has written a question on the use of patented standards within public
| administrations. The position of the DG Enterprise is definitely to prefer
| RAND patented standards, and exclude free software from public
| administrations.
`----
http://www.digitalmajority.org/forum/t-45941/commission-to-exclude-free-software-from-public-administrations
New petition calls for open standards in the European Parliament
,----[ Quote ]
| At a time when the EU Commission investigates the anti-competitive behaviour
| of a market-dominant player, the European Parliament (EP) still imposes that
| same specific software choice on both the European Union's citizens and its
| own MEPs. OpenForum Europe, The European Software Market Association, and
| the Free Software Foundation Europe today launched a petition to call on the
| EP to use open standards so that all citizens can participate in the
| democratic process.
`----
http://www.openforumeurope.org/press-room/latest-news/new-petition-calls-for-open-standards-in-the-european-parliament
OOXML and the future of open standards
,----[ Quote ]
| OpenForum's conference featured keynote speeches from Vint Cerf, who is often
| dubbed "the father of the internet" for his role in developing ARPAnet, and
| shared the common concern that...
|
| [...]
|
| Interestingly, many of the delegates of the "other meeting" attended the
| keynotes and some presentations, presumably out of a common interest in the
| meaning and definition of "standards", but were the soul of discretion when
| it came to discussing events in the other place. The structure of the
| conference and the tone of its presentations was discursive, not didactic,
| and there was a genuine interest in finding resolutions to the issues that
| beset standards in the computing industry. Standards affect innovation,
| barriers to entry, interoperability and the neutrality of data, and are
| fundamental to the future of computing. Technology moves at speed and the
| idea that protocols, APIs and data formats are "trade secrets" can be viewed
| as regressive, and an impediment to the transmission of ideas.
`----
http://www.itpro.co.uk/information-management/features/176100/ooxml-and-the-future-of-open-standards.html
Microsoft conned Neelie Kroes, but progress is being made. More people become
aware of the real issues.
Related:
EU tells open source to start paying MS patent tax
,----[ Quote ]
| EU Commissioner Kroes' deal with Microsoft creates real dangers to Europe's
| growing open source economy, warns the FFII. Using patent licenses that
| exclude businesses, the software monopolist has turned the EU competition
| ruling into a victory, and now gets implicit support from the Commission to
| proceed aggressively against its competitors.
`----
http://press.ffii.org/Press_releases/EU_tells_open_source_to_start_paying_MS_patent_tax
Amazon Patents Including a String at End of a URL
,----[ Quote ]
| On Tuesday, Amazon search subsidiary A9.com was awarded U.S. patent no.
| 7,287,042 for 'including a search string at the end of a URL without any
| special formatting.' In the Summary of the Invention, it's explained that 'a
| user wishing to search for 'San Francisco Hotels' may do by simply accessing
| the URL www.domain_name/San Francisco Hotels, where domain_name is a domain
| name associated with the web site system.' Here's the flowchart that helped
| cinch the deal.
`----
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/23/1250255&from=rss
Late night baseball games, Microsoft concessions evoke big yawns at open source
water cooler
,----[ Quote ]
| It will benefit purveyors of proprietary software but not open source
| developers, agreed Michael Goulde, analyst of open source strategy at
| Forrester Research, Cambridge, Mass. “Some open source developers believe
| that Microsoft should make its protocols available for use royalty free. In
| some cases, there are open source license restrictions that make it not
| possible for the software to include Microsoft licensed code – because you
| can’t downstream the license. So, unless Microsoft goes way beyond what it
| has agreed with the EU to do, only a subset of open source developers will
| have much interest. They’ll continue reverse engineering Microsoft protocols
| and doing the best they can."
`----
http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=1582
Let's Make a Deal - The MS-EU Settlement
,----[ Quote ]
| The patent part is terrible. Worse than terrible. They are not blocked from
| offering patent deals, only constrained as to how much to charge for a
| license, which is not and never was the issue. So they'll beef up those
| initiatives, I'm sure. However, the good part is that they were compelled to
| separate the patent license offer out and make it optional. Thanks, but no
| thanks.
|
| [...]
|
| I'm guessing Microsoft lawyers are high fiving each other, having snatched an
| important victory from utter and total defeat. The rest is excellent, of
| course, and in no way do I mean to detract from the hard work and persistence
| that the EU Commission has shown. However, I don't think they understand how
| seriously broken the US patent system is currently, and how easy it is to
| abuse it, or they don't feel it's their job to fix the US problems, or how
| central patents are to Microsoft's current strategy against FOSS.
`----
http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20071022114731199
|
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