[ILUG] Mary Hanafins progress report, New connections

[Justin Mason]

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James McCarthy writes:
> Ask the minister to define exactly what are the open standards & what
> the governemt considers open standards?
> 
> Ask if the future software updates will be support these open
> standard?(such as MS Longhorn)
> 
> The government is entitled to use what
> software it likes.  However, it must not make decisions which mandate
> that citizens use the same in order to interoperate. 
> This absolutely excludes use of closed standard, vendor specific, file
> formats such as .doc, .xls, .mdb, .pps
> 
> and closed extensions to open standards such as Office 2003's extension
> of XML.

Worth noting here that the use of XML with an XSD schema isn't really
"extension".  It's just one of the standard uses of XML. XSD, as is XML
itself, is a W3C standard:

  http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/REC-xmlschema-0-20010502/
  http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/REC-xmlschema-1-20010502/
  http://www.w3.org/TR/2001/REC-xmlschema-2-20010502/

This is by no means "extension" of XML in a new and innovative way.
It's not even proprietary, as far as I can see!  The patent just covers
the use of two open standards together, in a word processor.

So I'd say it's important that the term "open standard" be replaced with
something like: "open standards without known patent licensing concerns".
or something like that.

(Note the "known": there's nothing to stop a company establishing a
product that uses an open standard, convincing customers it's fully
open, then devising a submarine patent to "lock them in" later on
through some means like the above.  It's a quagmire.)

Given that MS are reportedly applying for 10 patents a *day* now,
this situation is set to get much worse. :(

- --j.

> If they did insist on this policy MS Office would be a seriously useless
> solution.
> 
> Ask the Minster has she considerd mixing the use of Open Source software
> & proprietry software if an Open Source only solution is too exspensive?
> 
> Ask the minister are these open standards the same as that of the rest
> of the EU, are they compatible?
> 
> Ask the Minister provide the report/documentation as to where the
> government 'looked' into the total cost of ownership of Open Source
> solutions.
> 
> Ask the minister if she would consider the setting up of a permament
> commision consisting of individuals skilled in the sector of I.T. to
> decide the purchase of all I.T. provisions for the government based on
> technical & economic details. 
> 
> Thanks for the input, anything else to pollish it up?
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