[DMCA-Activists] Bangkok Post on Open Standards for Government, SW Patents

[Seth Johnson]

> http://www.bangkokpost.com/Database/07Dec2005_data01.php


OPEN DOCUMENT FORMAT: A MATTER OF SOVEREIGNTY

Govt adoption of open standards would improve efficiency,
continuity and transparency

Don Sambandaraksa


"December 26, 2004 . . . A thirty-foot-high wall of water -- a
tsunami -- slams into the famed resort islands off Thailand's
southern coast. In one tragic moment, thousands of lives are
lost, and thousands more are missing. In the race to identify
victims and assist survivors, Thailand's government hits its own
wall.

"Responding agencies and non-governmental groups are unable to
share information vital to the rescue effort. Each uses different
data and document formats. Relief is slowed; coordination is
complicated. The need for common, open standards for disaster
management was never more stark or compelling. The Royal Thai
Government responded by creating a common website for registering
missing persons and making open file formats in particular an
immediate national priority."

This quote, taken from the opening of the white paper, "Roadmap
for Open ICT Systems" by the Berkman Center for Internet and
Society, Harvard Law School shows how open systems affect more
than the business world now that we are becoming an information
society. Information is arguably a nation's most precious
resource -- but what is Thailand doing as a country to facilitate
and ensure that the value of information, especially the
information generated by government agencies, is maximised, not
just for its primary users but for each and every citizen?

The tsunami example highlights the damage that proprietary
systems can have in times of emergency. Yet recent developments
in the US state of Massachusetts -- the first regional government
anywhere in the world that will require all public documents to
be stored in open format -- have raised further questions as to
what exactly constitutes the word, "open", and asks our leaders
whether a state can -- or should -- force its citizens to adopt a
proprietary technology, no matter how widespread it is.

It also brings us to consider the definition of "open" in today's
world of software patents and intellectual property rights.

Here, both Nectec, one of the authors of the Open ICT Systems
white paper, and Sipa's Open Source department are trying to
raise awareness of important battle for control of the standards
for government documents. Once created, the documents need to
remain accessible, be it another 10, 20 or 100 years in the
future.

Today 13 countries are reported to be looking at Open Document
Format (ODF) as a format for national documents as part of their
e-Government projects, rather than to base everything on
proprietary Microsoft technology.

IBM's vice-president of standards Bob Sutor, in a tele-conference
interview, explained how the issue of the Open Document Format
had made headlines in Massachusetts when the state government
required the adoption of an open standard within government.

"What happened was that there appeared to be an agreement on the
use of the Microsoft XML format," Sutor said. This basically ran
against the spirit of the decision to use open standards. While
being open and well-documented, the Microsoft XML format had
certain provisions and patents which did not allow for its use
within open source software.

"The state had made a decision about the documents it was
creating. Like many governments, they want to make sure of
several things -- that the documents they create today are still
available 200 years in the future, and that they cannot force
their citizens to purchase software from one particular vendor to
interact with the state," Sutor explained.

Soon, people from all walks of life were asking the question of
how open should state infrastructure, funded by taxpayers' money,
be, and how open is open enough. The Microsoft XML format was
open in that it was documented and not encrypted, but it was
protected through intellectual property rights and this prevented
anyone from writing software which would use those formats.
Today, Sutor says the matter is more political than technical,
with state sovereignty at the very heart of the debate.

Massachusetts held a number of open hearings which were attended
by organisations such as IBM, Sun, Oracle, Novell, Corel, RedHat,
Apple and many more. The question that was asked was whether it
is appropriate for a company to say what tools can and cannot be
used to access a document and just how much control over
information could a government allow a single vendor?

Sutor said that Microsoft had claimed they were "not properly
consulted" over these proceedings. With the new version of
Microsoft Office, they will support Adobe PDF and another similar
standard, but not ODF, even though Microsoft could have easily
implemented it.

"You're seeing the last battle of vendors who are still trying to
maintain some sort of market position by controlling data and
information," Sutor said.

He also cited the response at the Federal level towards Hurricane
Katrina. The FEMA web site would only accept requests for aid
from people using Microsoft Internet Explorer. People using
Linux, Macs or Firefox on Windows were effectively cut off from
state aid, which Sutor said was "just not appropriate."

Sutor thinks that the future IT industry will be one of
proprietary and, where appropriate, patented applications
interacting with each other through open standards.

In other words, the language and connections will be common, but
different vendors can compete in developing better client
software or better "black boxes" which abide by those open
standards. "If you can create a box with patented software which
operates faster and more efficiently than a competitor's box,
then you deserve to win," Sutor explained.

What is at issue is not whether software should be patented or
not but the quality of software patents.

"Patents should be good patents and represent real technological
improvements, not obvious or simply excuses for litigation,"
Sutor said.

Another major push for open standards is in healthcare and
education. Governments around the world can potentially increase
the well-being of their population and productivity by ensuring
that medical records are kept in an open format and can be
quickly shared between different hospital systems and emergency
rescue crews if needed, IBM's vice president of standards
explained.

Microsoft Thailand Marketing Director Derek Brown, when asked to
comment on the issue of ODF, said simply that Microsoft was a
customer-led company and would implement features which the
customer demands. "For the next version of Office 12, everyone is
calling for PDF export and it will have it," he said, adding that
nobody in the real world was calling for ODF support yet.

He also said that Sutor's comments stating that Microsoft had
said that it had not been properly consulted in a year-long open
process had to be taken in context. Brown pointed out that
Microsoft people are on thousands of standards committees at any
one time, suggesting that it was quite possible that the
Microsoft people had been present, but just not aware of the
significance or importance of that particular function back
before it made news headlines.

Brown accepted that in some cases, Microsoft had walked away from
open standards when it is clear that they are not in the best
interests of the Microsoft customer. Nectec Director Dr Thaweesak
Koanantakool has been one of the most vocal proponents here in
Thailand of the ODF and of open standards in general. Nectec is
part of the working group for the Harvard Roadmap to Open ICT
Systems that cited the tsunami example in its white paper. This
document is now increasingly cited as the definitive guide to
governments and industry as to the benefits of open standards.

Thaweesak is a key advocate of this Roadmap and states in the
report that making file formats open is now an immediate national
priority for Thailand. Open standards would improve efficiency,
continuity and transparency, he said.

Of particular concern is their role in ensuring a fair and level
playing field within large-scale IT projects from government and
corporations alike.

Manager of the ICT Ministry's Software Industry Promotion
Agency's Open Source Department James Clark, is also known for
endorsing ODF in a national context and his enthusiasm for Open
Office 2.0 is well known. Open Office supports the ODF format
natively and is being distributed on Sipa's increasingly popular
Chantra CD compilation of open source software for Windows.

However, when asked to comment on what needs to happen to advance
open standards further, Clark simply smiled and said that
unfortunately making noises about ODF was all he could do as the
matter was really one that transcended his department and even
Sipa itself. Clark noted that the real push for open standards
must come from one level up -- that of the ICT Ministry.

However, he did say that there were some significant advancements
in Open Office 2.01 which were initiated by Sipa though he would
prefer to talk about them only after the beta is publicly
available.

So, the final say is with the ICT Ministry and its mandate to set
and enforce e-Government standards. Indeed, the ICT Ministry must
approve every government IT project over 5 million Baht and can
veto any smaller projects which it deems to be out of line with
established guidelines and hence they already have the tools
needed to impose open standards if they so choose to.

However, asked if the ICT Ministry would be pushing for the Open
Document Format, ICT Minister Sora-At Klinpratoom said that no
decision had been made yet. "We have to weigh up the benefits of
Microsoft and open systems and select what is best for the
country," he replied.

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