This is a presentation held at eLiberatica 2007. http://www.eliberatica.ro/2007/ One of the biggest events of its kind in Eastern Europe, eLiberatica brings community leaders from around the world to discuss about the hottest topics in FLOSS movement, demonstrating the advantages of adopting, using and developing Open Source and Free Software solutions. The eLiberatica organizational committee together with our speakers and guests, have graciously allowed media representatives and all attendees to photograph, videotape and otherwise record their sessions, on the condition that the photos, videos and recordings are licensed under the Creative Commons Share-Alike 3.0 License.

1. Open Standards
and
Free Competition
Georg Greve
greve@fsfeurope.org
Free Software Foundation Europe
eLiberatica 2007 – 18 May 2007 – Brasov, Romania – p. 1

2. 0. Roadmap
Approaching the issue
1. Background
2. Interoperability
3. History of an Open Standard
4. Effects on national economy
5. e-Government
6. Summary
7. Outlook
eLiberatica 2007 – 18 May 2007 – Brasov, Romania – p. 2

3. 1. Formats and protocols
Are a form of language, spoken by computers
Have very specific properties:
Arbitrarily chosen
(which frequency is used to dial ’0’?)
Require precise implementation
(computers are bad interpretors)
Are written by humans
Interpreted by humans into software, but all
software has unintended behaviour (bugs)
Compatibility is difficult!
eLiberatica 2007 – 18 May 2007 – Brasov, Romania – p. 3

4. 2. Interoperability
Interoperability is essential
"The ability of two or more systems or
components to exchange information and
to use the information that has been
exchanged." – IEEE
Open Standards vs Lock-In
No globally accepted definition
Hard to achieve in reality
Software patents: the "RAND hook"
More standards mean less competition!
eLiberatica 2007 – 18 May 2007 – Brasov, Romania – p. 4

5. 3. History of an Open Standard...
...from the Workgroup Server Market
Novell was the dominant player, so Microsoft
launches Open Standard effort around CIFS
gains foothold in the market
stops participating in standardisation
modifies protocol, claims "IPR"
locks Novell out of the client by cryptography
pushes desktop monopoly to server
Result: EU antitrust case
eLiberatica 2007 – 18 May 2007 – Brasov, Romania – p. 5

6. 4. Effects on national economy
1. communication required
2. five intermediaries
3. proprietary software:
rewards lock-in through "value-adding"
Proprietary model encourages monopolies,
proliferating into the hardware domain
Fraunhofer ISST study:
> 50% of German industry
> 80% of German exports
depend on ICT!
eLiberatica 2007 – 18 May 2007 – Brasov, Romania – p. 6

7. 5. e-Government
Governments must be accessible to all, so
Governments using proprietary technology
lose control over decisions and data
spread monopoly at cost of local economy
force population into similar dependency
transfer economic power out of country
Reminder:
It is the responsibility of governments
to protect freedom of competition!
eLiberatica 2007 – 18 May 2007 – Brasov, Romania – p. 7

8. 7. Summary
Interoperability
is essential to Free Competition
depends on Open Standards
Open Standards
need active work & maintenance
require vigilance against abuse
Free Software != Open Standards
but is solves many of the difficult issues!
Ultimately, you want both.
eLiberatica 2007 – 18 May 2007 – Brasov, Romania – p. 8

9. 8. Outlook
Open Document Format (ODF)
OASIS standard, ISO/IEC 26300:2006
supported by Sun, Google, IBM, ...
implementation(s) in Free Software
"MS Office OpenXML" (MS-OOXML) format
dependency on proprietary components
only ever fully implementable by MS
one proprietary implementation
Romania gets to make a choice here!
eLiberatica 2007 – 18 May 2007 – Brasov, Romania – p. 9

10. 8. Contact
Thank you for your attention!
Questions?
Free Software Foundation Europe:
http://fsfeurope.org
Get involved, defend your freedom:
http://www.fsfe.org
eLiberatica 2007 – 18 May 2007 – Brasov, Romania – p. 10