open standards

  • GNU’s trick-or-treat at Windows 8 launch

    Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Tech

    Last Friday saw the launch of Windows 8, the latest “best Windows ever” release from the Beast of Redmond.

    However, the launch was not without its problems for MS, as reported by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The FSF crashed the Windows 8 launch event in New York City. A cheerful GNU and her team handed out DVDs loaded with Trisquel GNU/Linux (a Linux distribution that meets the FSF’s very strict definition of free. Ed.), FSF stickers and information about the FSF’s new pledge, which asks Windows users to upgrade not to Windows 8, but to GNU/Linux.

    The FSF crew at NYC Windows 8 launch
    The FSF crew at NYC Windows 8 launch
    A friendly gnu handing out FSF stickers
    Have a FSF sticker!

    I must concur with the FSF’s conclusion: Windows 8 is a downgrade, not an upgrade since it compromises users’ freedom, security and privacy. Some of the ‘features’ of Windows 8 identified by the FSF that Microsoft won’t tell potential users about are:

    • Restricts freedom: Windows 8 is proprietary software. At its core, it’s designed to control you as a user. You can’t modify Windows 8 or see how it is built, meaning Microsoft can use its operating system to exploit users and benefit special interests.
    • Invades privacy: Windows 8 includes software that inspects the contents of your hard drive and Microsoft claims the right to do this without warning. These programs have misleading names like “Windows Genuine Advantage.”
    • Exposes personal data: Windows 8 has a contacts cache that experts fear may store sensitive personal data and make users vulnerable to identity theft.

  • Italy’s Umbria region adopts LibreOffice

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Tech

    Location map for Umbria
    Location map for Umbria. Picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
    It’s not just self-employed wordsmiths such as myself that are moving away from overpriced proprietary office suites towards free and open source alternatives: cash-strapped public sector organisations are doing so too.

    EU open source news website Joinup reports that the Administration the Italian region of Umbria has started a project to migrate an initial group of 5,000 users to LibreOffice. Osvaldo Gervasi, president of Umbria’s Open Source Competence Centre – CCOS – states that getting rid of IT vendor lock-in is one of the main motives for the migration.

    As part of the move, the region will also be adopting LibreOffice’s default Open Document Format as an open document standard.

    The legal basis for the migration is a 2006 regional law promoting the use of free and open source software by the public sector in Umbria.

    According to the Libre Umbria blog, the project involves the Provinces of Perugia and Terni, Local Health Unit no. 2 and the Region of Umbria, and is being co-ordinated by the Consortium of Umbrian Authorities (Consorzio SIR Umbria) and CCOS Umbria.

    The story is also covered by La Stampa (in Italian).

  • Companies asked to fight European software patents and unitary patents

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Tech

    Companies within the European Union are being asked publicly to declare their opposition to software patents by signing a resolution (below) asking to the European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs to amend the regulation on the unitary patent.

    This resolution, along with the list of signatories, will be sent to Members of the European Parliament on Tuesday, 13th September – a few days before the meeting of the Committee on Legal Affairs. More than 400 firms have already signed it.

    To sign the resolution, please send an email to: resolution-enterprises (at) unitary-patent.eu

    The text of the resolution is as follows:

    Our company is worried about the current plans to set up a unitary patent with a flanking unified patent court.

    The European Patent Office (EPO)’s practices to grant software patents, under the deceiving term of “computer-implemented inventions”, pose a threat to our professional activities.

    We are concerned that the regulation on the unitary patent, as agreed in December 2011 by the negotiators of the Council, the Commission, and the Committee on Legal Affairs of the European Parliament, leaves any and every issue on the limits of patentability to the EPO’s case law, without any democratic control or review by an independent court.

    The regulation on the unitary patent is an opportunity for the EU legislators to harmonise substantive patent law in the EU institutional and jurisdictional framework, and to put an end to the EPO’s self-motivated practices extending the realm of patentability to software. Failing to do so, this unitary patent will do more harm than good to the EU ICT firms.

    For these reasons, we urge MEPs to adopt amendments which clearly state that the EPO’s decisions are subject to a review from the Court of Justice of the European Union, and which reaffirm the rejection of software patentability, as expressed by the votes of the European Parliament on September 24th, 2003 and July 6th, 2005.

    Signatories are also being encouraged to contact members of the Committee on Legal Affairs by email.

    As company secretary of Bristol Wireless, I’m pleased to say BW’s already signed the resolution.

  • How not to do an ‘online’ consultation

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Tech

    Today I posted the article below on the Bristol Wireless blog. It is reproduced here in its entirety.

    Yesterday, the last day for responses, Bristol Wireless responded to the Department for Education‘s consultation on internet blocking in the cause of keeping children safe online. The consultation arose from a campaign called ‘Safety Net‘, run by Premier Christian Media and SaferMedia, and supported by the Daily Mail. The campaign, and now the consultation is about requiring Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to block adult and other content at network level whilst giving adults a choice to ‘opt-in’ to this content.

    However, taking part in the consultation wasn’t easy. Consultees had to do the following:

    • Download consultation questionnaire;
    • Fill in questionnaire;
    • Upload completed questionnaire to Dept. of Education website.

    Sounds easy, doesn’t it? It wasn’t.

    Here’s why. Ignoring the rhetoric on open standards coming out of their Whitehall neighbours the Cabinet Office, Education Department civil servants only made the consultation questionnaire available as a Microsoft Word file (Wot? No ODF? Ed.). The author of the questionnaire had also stuffed it full of Word macros; this made it very difficult, if not impossible, to open using alternative office suites, such as LibreOffice. Many highly experienced openistas encountered this: Alan Lord (aka the Open Sourcerer) mentioned on Twitter that he couldn’t open it, whilst Glyn Moody could, but found the questionnaire impossible to fill in! On the chief scribe’s, machine attempting to open the file either stalled to a complete halt or crashed the office suite! 🙁 Ultimately, the chief scribe was only able to complete the questionnaire as he had access to a copy of MS Office.

    We cannot understand why the civil servants at the Dept. for Education couldn’t have designed the consultation questionnaire as an online survey. Bristol City Council has years of experience of doing online consultations in this manner – and they work very well indeed. Perhaps Sir Humphrey at the Dept. for Education should have called the Counts Louse for advice. As it is, out of 10 we’re giving this Education Dept. consultation a mark of 2. They’d better pull their socks up or it’ll be detention for them… 🙂

    Update 08/09/12: It seems that the consultation did originally start out as an online consultation, but was rejigged owing to extremely embarrassing security cock-ups, as The Register reports.

    The Register was first to reveal – within hours of the Department for Education publishing its parental internet controls proposal – that the DfE’s website was ironically exposing the email addresses, unencrypted passwords and sensitive answers submitted people who filled in the consultation’s questionnaire.

    As a result of this additional information, we’ve now reduced the DfE’s mark to minus 2 out of 10. 🙂

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