The Centre for Internet and Society
http://editors.cis-india.org
These are the search results for the query, showing results 31 to 35.
Workshop on Reforming the International ICT Standardization System
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/workshop-on-reforming-the-international-ict-standardization-system
<b>On Day 4, the last day, of the Internet Governance Forum, a workshop was conducted by the Dynamic Coalition on Open Standards on the reforming the international ICT standardisation system. The panellists were Bob Jolliffe of Freedom to Innovate South Africa, Sunil Abraham of the Centre for Internet and Society, Ashish Gautam of IBM India, and Aslam Raffee, Chairperson of the Government IT Officers' Council, OSS Working Group, Republic of South Africa, who moderated the session.</b>
<p>Mr. Rafee, after introducing the panellists, laid out the parameters of the discussion. He noted that the discussion was not about "open standards" per se, but about the standardisation process.</p>
<p>Mr. Jolliffe noted that the main problems revolved around the question of legitimacy of the Standard Setting Organizations, which often arises from "standardisation by corporations" (a phrase coined by Martin Bryan), as shown by the representatives of the individual countries to the international bodies. For the international standardization process to acquire legitimacy, the national bodies need to do so first. A start can be made, Mr. Jolliffe noted, through simple steps like increase in stakeholder participation beyond vendors, full disclosure of institutional affiliations at the standardisation bodies, better streamlining of processes such as the fast-track system, and full and clear disclosures with regard to IP licensing terms would help in increasing accountability and legitimacy of standard setting organizations.</p>
<p>He also indicated that financial transparency, modernisation of processes (including remote participation), regulation of proportional influence of private interests, a code of best practices and innovation in patent searches, full interest disclosures, and clear display of IPR policies of committees would help in increasing the openness of standards.</p>
<p>Mr. Abraham chose to focus on the national standardization processes, and the lessons that can be learnt from those. He highlighted that the discussions around open standards were really discussions about standards followed by public institutions. He analogized the situation to private houses vs. the public road infrastructure, noting how the road infrastructure cannot be private. Ensuring that the public infrastructure was open to all, he said, was the important role played by the standardisation process. He went on to highlight the importance of open standards as a lever in the hands of governments which can be used to fix monopoly situations, as it was in the case of SCOSTA smart card standard, where the use of an open standard led to a drop in price from Rs.600 to Rs.30 and increased the number of vendors from 3 to 12. He then narrated a number of "stories" from India, Pakistan and Malaysia to show the various forms of weaknesses within the national standard setting processes. He further concluded that countries with weak institutions are the ones less likely to support open standards.</p>
<p>Mr. Abraham added the need to adopt common definitions of "open standards" and transparency of processes and encouragement of remote participation as suggestions for the standardization system.</p>
<p>Mr. Gautam from IBM India chose to talk about the standards principles that the company follows, and the need for reform of the standardization processes.<br /><br /></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/workshop-on-reforming-the-international-ict-standardization-system'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/workshop-on-reforming-the-international-ict-standardization-system</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshOpen StandardsWorkshop2011-08-23T02:56:30ZBlog EntryReport on Open Standards for GISW2008
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/publications/standards/report-on-open-standards-for-gisw2008
<b>In this report, Sunil Abraham lays out the importance and the policy implications of Open Standards.</b>
<div id="introduction">
<p>[<a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/sunil-abrahams-publications/Open-Standards-GISW-2008.pdf" class="internal-link" title="Report on Open Standards for GISW 2008">PDF copy</a>]</p>
<p>Most computer users today remain
“digitally colonised” (Bhattacharya, 2008) due to our unquestioning use
of proprietary standards. As users of proprietary standards we usually
forget that we lose the right to access our own files the moment the
licence for the associated software expires. For example, if I were to
store data, information or knowledge in .doc, .xls or .ppt format, my
ability to read my own files expires the moment the licence for my copy
of Microsoft Office expires.</p>
<h3>Definition</h3>
<p>Unlike
the terms “free software” or “open source software”, the term “open
standard” does not have a universally accepted definition. The free and
open source software (FOSS) community largely believes that an open
standard is:</p>
</div>
<p>[S]ubject to full public assessment and use
without constraints [royalty-free] in a manner equally available to all
parties; without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an open
standard themselves; free from legal or technical clauses that limit
its utilisation by any party or in any business model; managed and
further developed independently of any single vendor in a process open
to the equal participation of competitors and third parties; available
in multiple complete implementations by competing vendors, or as a
complete implementation equally available to all parties (Greve, 2007).</p>
<div id="introduction">
<h3>The controversy</h3>
<p>Proprietary
software manufacturers, vendors and their lobbyists often provide a
definition of open standards that is not in line with the above
definition on two counts (Nah, 2006).</p>
<p>One, they do not
think it is necessary for an open standard to be available on a
royalty-free basis as long as it is available under a “reasonable and
non-discriminatory” (RAND) licence. This means that there are some
patents associated with the standard and the owners of the patents have
agreed to license them under reasonable and non-discriminatory terms
(W3C, 2002). One example is the audio format MP3, an ISO/IEC
[International Organisation for Standardisation/International
Electrotechnical Commission] standard where the associated patents are
owned by Thomson Consumer Electronics and the Fraunhofer Society of
Germany. A developer of a game with MP3 support would have to pay
USD 2,500 as royalty for using the standard. While this may be
reasonable in the United States (US), it is unthinkable for an
entrepreneur from Bangladesh. Additionally, RAND licences are
incompatible with most FOSS licensing requirements. Simon Phipps of Sun
Microsystems says that FOSS “serves as the canary in the coalmine for
the word ‘open’. Standards are truly open when they can be implemented
without fear as free software in an open source community” (Phipps,
2007). RAND licences also retard the growth of FOSS, since they are
patented in a few countries. Despite the fact that software is not
patentable in most parts of the world, the makers of various
distributions of GNU/Linux do not include reverse-engineered drivers,
codecs, etc., in the official builds for fear of being sued. Only the
large corporation-backed distributions of GNU/Linux can afford to pay
the royalties needed to include patented software in the official
builds (in this way enabling an enhanced out-of-the-box experience).
This has the effect of slowing the adoption of GNU/Linux, as less
experienced users using community-backed distributions do not have
access to the wide variety of drivers and codecs that users of other
operating systems do (Disposable, 2004). This vicious circle
effectively ensures negligible market presence of smaller
community-driven projects by artificial reduction of competition.</p>
<p>Two,
proprietary software promoters do not believe that open standards
should be “managed and further developed independently of any single
vendor,” as the following examples will demonstrate. This is equally
applicable to both new and existing standards.</p>
<p>Microsoft’s
Office Open XML (OOXML) is a relatively new standard which the FOSS
community sees as a redundant alternative to the existing Open Document
Format (ODF). During the OOXML process, delegates were unhappy with the
fact that many components were specific to Microsoft technology,
amongst other issues. By the end of a fast-track process at the ISO,
Microsoft stands accused of committee stuffing: that is, using its
corporate social responsibility wing to coax non-governmental
organisations to send form letters to national standards committees,
and haranguing those who opposed OOXML. Of the twelve new national
board members that joined ISO after the OOXML process started, ten
voted “yes” in the first ballot (Weir, 2007). The European Commission,
which has already fined Microsoft USD 2.57 billion for anti-competitive
behaviour, is currently investigating the allegations of committee
stuffing (Calore, 2007). Microsoft was able to use its financial muscle
and monopoly to fast-track the standard and get it approved. In this
way it has managed to subvert the participatory nature of a
standards-setting organisation. So even though Microsoft is ostensibly
giving up control of its primary file format to the ISO, it still
exerts enormous influence over the future of the standard.</p>
<p>HTML,
on the other hand, is a relatively old standard which was initially
promoted by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), an
international community of techies. However, in 2002, seven years after
the birth of HTML 2.0, the US Department of Justice alleged that
Microsoft used the strategy of “embrace, extend, and extinguish” (US
DoJ, 1999) in an attempt to create a monopoly among web browsers. It
said that Microsoft used its dominance in the desktop operating system
market to achieve dominance in the web-authoring tool and browser
market by introducing proprietary extensions to the HTML standard
(Festa, 2002). In other words, financial and market muscle have been
employed by proprietary software companies – in these instances,
Microsoft – to hijack open standards.</p>
<h3>The importance</h3>
<p>There
are many technical, social and ethical reasons for the adoption and use
of open standards. Some of the reasons that should concern governments
and other organisations utilising public money – such as multilaterals,
bilaterals, civil society organisations, research organisations and
educational institutions – are listed below.</p>
<ul><li><strong>Innovation/competitiveness:</strong>
Open standards are the bases of most technological innovations, the
best example of which would be the internet itself (Raymond, 2000). The
building blocks of the internet and associated services like the world
wide web are based on open standards such as TCP/IP, HTTP, HTML, CSS,
XML, POP3 and SMTP. Open standards create a level playing field that
ensures greater competition between large and small, local and foreign,
and new and old companies, resulting in innovative products and
services. Instant messaging, voice over internet protocol (VoIP),
wikis, blogging, file-sharing and many other applications with
large-scale global adoption were invented by individuals and small and
medium enterprises, and not by multinational corporations. </li><li><strong>Greater interoperability:</strong>
Open standards ensure the ubiquity of the internet experience by
allowing different devices to interoperate seamlessly. It is only due
to open standards that consumers are able to use products and services
from competing vendors interchangeably and simultaneously in a seamless
fashion, without having to learn additional skills or acquire
converters. For instance, the mail standard IMAP can be used from a
variety of operating systems (Mac, Linux and Windows), mail clients
(Evolution, Thunderbird, Outlook Express) and web-based mail clients.
Email would be a completely different experience if we were not able to
use our friends’ computers, our mobile phones, or a cybercafé to check
our mail. </li><li><strong>Customer autonomy: </strong>Open
standards also empower consumers and transform them into co-creators or
“prosumers” (Toffler, 1980). Open standards prevent vendor lock-in by
ensuring that the customer is able to shift easily from one product or
service provider to another without significant efforts or costs
resulting from migration. </li><li><strong>Reduced cost: </strong>Open
standards eliminate patent rents, resulting in a reduction of total
cost of ownership. This helps civil society develop products and
services for the poor. </li><li><strong>Reduced obsolescence: </strong>Software
companies can leverage their clients’ dependence on proprietary
standards to engineer obsolescence into their products and force their
clients to keep upgrading to newer versions of software. Open standards
ensure that civil society, governments and others can continue to use
old hardware and software, which can be quite handy for sectors that
are strapped for financial resources. </li><li><strong>Accessibility: </strong>Operating
system-level accessibility infrastructure such as magnifiers, screen
readers and text-to-voice engines require compliance to open standards.
Open standards therefore ensure greater access by people with
disabilities, the elderly, and neo-literate and illiterate users.
Examples include the US government’s Section 508 standards, and the
World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) WAI-AA standards.</li><li><strong>Free access to the state:</strong>
Open standards enable access without forcing citizens to purchase or
pirate software in order to interact with the state. This is critical
given the right to information and the freedom of information
legislations being enacted and implemented in many countries these
days. </li><li><strong>Privacy/security:</strong> Open
standards enable the citizen to examine communications between personal
and state-controlled devices and networks. For example, open standards
allow users to see whether data from their media player and browser
history are being transmitted along to government servers when they
file their tax returns. Open standards also help prevent corporate
surveillance. </li><li><strong>Data longevity and archiving: </strong>Open
standards ensure that the expiry of software licences does not prevent
the state from accessing its own information and data. They also ensure
that knowledge that has been passed on to our generation, and the
knowledge generated by our generation, is safely transmitted to all
generations to come. </li><li><strong>Media monitoring:</strong>
Open standards ensure that the voluntary sector, media monitoring
services and public archives can keep track of the ever-increasing
supply of text, audio, video and multimedia generated by the global
news, entertainment and gaming industries. In democracies, watchdogs
should be permitted to reverse-engineer proprietary standards and
archive critical ephemeral media in open standards.</li></ul>
<h3>Policy implications</h3>
<p>Corporations
have a right to sell products based on proprietary standards just as
consumers have a right to choose between products that use open
standards, proprietary standards, or even a combination of such
standards. Governments, however, have a responsibility to use open
standards, especially for interactions with the public and where the
data handled has a direct impact on democratic values and quality of
citizenship. In developing countries, governments have greater
responsibility because most often they account for over 50% of the
revenues of proprietary software vendors. Therefore, by opting for open
standards, governments can correct an imbalanced market situation
without needing any additional resources. Unfortunately, many
governments lack the expertise to counter the campaigns of fear,
uncertainty and doubt unleashed by proprietary standards lobbyists with
unlimited expense accounts.</p>
<p>Most governments from the
developing world do not participate in international standard-setting
bodies. On the other hand, proprietary software lobbyists like the
Business Software Alliance (BSA) and Comptia attend all national
meetings on standards. This has forced many governments to shun these
forums and exacerbate the situation by creating more (totally new)
standards. Therefore, governments need the support of academic and
civil society organisations in order to protect the interests of the
citizen. For example, the Indian Institute of Technology in Kanpur
(IIT-K) helped the government of India develop the open standard Smart
Card Operating System for Transport Applications (SCOSTA) for smart
card-based driving licences and vehicle registration documents.
Proprietary vendors tried to jettison the move by saying that the
standard was technically not feasible. IIT-K developed a reference
implementation on FOSS to belie the vendor's claims. As a consequence,
the government of India was able to increase the number of empanelled
smart-card vendors from four to fifteen and reduce the price of a smart
card by around USD 7 each (UNDP, 2007a). This will hopefully result in
enormous savings during the implementation of a national multi-purpose
identification card in India.</p>
<p>In some instances,
proprietary standards are technically superior or more universally
supported in comparison to open standards. In such cases the government
may be forced to adopt proprietary and de facto standards in the short
and medium term. But for long-term technical, financial and societal
benefits, many governments across the world today are moving towards
open standards. The most common policy instruments for implementation
of open standards policy are government interoperability frameworks
(GIFs). Governments that have published GIFs include the United
Kingdom, Denmark, Brazil, Canada, the European Union, Malaysia, Hong
Kong, Malaysia, New Zealand, and Australia (UNDP, 2007b).</p>
<p>While
challenges to the complete adoption of open standards in the public
sector and civil society remain, one thing is certain: the global march
towards openness, though slow, is irreversible and inevitable.</p>
<h3>References</h3>
<p align="left">Bhattacharya, J. (2008) <em>Technology Standards: A Route to Digital Colonization. Open Source, Open Standards and Technological Sovereignty</em>.
. <br />
Available at:<br />
<a href="http://knowledge.oscc.org.my/practice-areas/%E2%80%8Cgovernment%E2%80%8C/oss-seminar-putrajaya-2008/technology-standards-a-route-to-digital/at_download/file">knowledge.oscc.org.my/practice-areas/government/oss-seminar-putrajaya-2008/technology-standards-a-route-to-digital/at_download/file</a></p>
<p align="left">Calore, M. (2007) Microsoft Allegedly Bullies and Bribes to Make Office an International Standard. <em>Wired</em>, 31 August. <br />
Available at: <a href="http://www.wired.com/software/coolapps/news/2007/08/ooxml_vote">www.wired.com/software/coolapps/news/2007/08/ooxml_vote</a></p>
<p align="left">Disposable (2004) <em>Ubuntu multimedia HOWTO</em>. <br />
Available at: <a href="http://www.oldskoolphreak.com/tfiles/%E2%80%8Chack/%E2%80%8Cubuntu.txt">www.oldskoolphreak.com/tfiles/hack/ubuntu.txt</a></p>
<p align="left">Festa, P. (2002) W3C members: Do as we say, not as we do. <em>CNET News</em>, 5 September. <br />
Available at: <a href="http://news.cnet.com/2100-1023-956778.html">news.cnet.com/2100-1023-956778.html</a></p>
<p>Greve, G. (2007) <em>An emerging understanding of open standards</em>.<br />
. <br />
Available at: <a href="http://www.fsfe.org/%E2%80%8Cfellows%E2%80%8C/greve/freedom_bits/an_emerging_understanding_of_open_standards">www.fsfe.org/fellows/greve/freedom_bits/an_emerging_understanding_of_open_standards</a></p>
<p align="left">Nah, S.H. (2006) <em>FOSS Open Standards</em> <em>Primer</em>. New Delhi: UNDP-APDIP. <br />
Available at: <a href="http://www.iosn.net/open-standards/foss-open-standards-primer/foss-openstds-withnocover.pdf">www.iosn.net/open-standards/foss-open-standards-primer/foss-openstds-withnocover.pdf</a></p>
<p align="left">Phipps, S. (2007) <em>Roman Canaries</em>.. <br />
Available at: <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/webmink/entry/%E2%80%8Croman_canaries">blogs.sun.com/webmink/entry/roman_canaries</a></p>
<p align="left">Raymond, E.S. (2000) <em>The Magic Cauldron</em>. <br />
Available at: <a href="http://www.catb.org/%7Eesr/writings/%E2%80%8Ccathedral-%E2%80%8Cbazaar/%E2%80%8Cmagic-%E2%80%8Ccauldron/%E2%80%8Cindex.html">www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/magic-cauldron/index.html</a></p>
<p align="left">Toffler, A. (1980) <em>The Third Wave</em>. New York: Bantam.</p>
<p align="left">UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) (2007a) <em>e-Government Interoperability: A Review of Government Interoperability Frameworks in Selected Countries</em>. <br />
Available at: <a href="http://www.apdip.net/projects/gif/gifeprimer">www.apdip.net/projects/gif/gifeprimer</a></p>
<p align="left">UNDP (2007b) <em>e-Government Interoperability: Guide</em>. <br />
Available at: <a href="http://www.apdip.net/projects/gif/GIF-Guide.pdf">www.apdip.net/projects/gif/GIF-Guide.pdf</a></p>
<p align="left">US DoJ (Department of Justice) (1999) <em>Proposed Findings of Fact – Revised</em>. <br />
Available at: <a href="http://www.usdoj.gov/%E2%80%8Catr/%E2%80%8Ccases/%E2%80%8Cf2600/v-a.pdf">www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f2600/v-a.pdf</a></p>
<p align="left">W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) (2002) <em>Current patent practice</em>. <br />
Available at: <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/patent-practice#def-RAND">www.w3.org/TR/patent-practice#def-RAND</a></p>
<p align="left">Weir, R. (2007) <em>How to hack ISO</em>. <br />
Available at: <a href="http://www.robweir.com/blog/2007/09/how-to-hack-iso.html">www.robweir.com/blog/2007/09/how-to-hack-iso.html</a></p>
</div>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/publications/standards/report-on-open-standards-for-gisw2008'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/publications/standards/report-on-open-standards-for-gisw2008</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshOpen StandardsFLOSS2009-01-05T06:52:54ZBlog EntryReport on Open Standards for GISW 2008
http://editors.cis-india.org/publications-automated/cis/sunil/Open-Standards-GISW-2008.pdf
<b>A report on Open Standards prepared by Sunil Abraham, for the Global Information Society Watch 2008. As on their site, GISWatch focuses on monitoring progress made towards implementing the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) action agenda and other international and national commitments related to information and communications. It also provides analytical overviews of institutions involved in implementation. </b>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/publications-automated/cis/sunil/Open-Standards-GISW-2008.pdf'>http://editors.cis-india.org/publications-automated/cis/sunil/Open-Standards-GISW-2008.pdf</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshOpen StandardsPublications2011-08-23T02:57:53ZFileDCOS Agreement on Procurement
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/dcos-agreement-on-procurement
<b>On December 6, 2008, at the closing of the third Internet Governance Forum in Hyderabad, India, the Dynamic Coalition on Open Standards (DCOS), of which the Centre for Internet and Society is a member, released an agreement entitled the "Dynamic Coalition on Open Standards (DCOS) Agreement on Procurement in Support of Interoperability and Open Standards".</b>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/dcos-agreement-on-procurement'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/blog-old/dcos-agreement-on-procurement</a>
</p>
No publisherpraneshOpen StandardsInternet Governance ForumWorkshop2011-08-23T02:58:35ZBlog EntryResponse to the Draft National Policy on Open Standards for e-Governance
http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/publications/standards/the-response
<b>Pranesh Prakash, Programme Manager at the Centre for Internet and Society, authored a response to the draft Open Standards Policy document published by the National Informatics Centre,
Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology.</b>
<p><span id="parent-fieldname-description" class="kssattr-atfieldname-description kssattr-templateId-widgets/textarea kssattr-macro-textarea-field-view inlineEditable">The National Informatics Centre (NIC),
Department of Information Technology (DIT), Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) has recently published a <a class="external-link" href="http://egovstandards.gov.in/Policy_Open_Std_review">Draft Policy on Open Standards for eGovernance</a>. Members of the public have been invited to provide feedback to the document. The last date for feedback is 21st November 2008.</span></p>
<p>The Centre for Internet and Society has prepared a draft response to the draft policy. This response letter only deals
with the policy document from the perspective of the global FLOSS
movement. This is not meant to be comprehensive feedback to the
document itself.</p>
<h3><br /></h3>
<h3>Institutional Co-signatories</h3>
<ol><li>Richard Stallman, Founder, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.fsf.org">Free Software Foundation</a>, USA</li><li>Mishi Choudhary, Partner, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.sflc.org">Software Freedom Law Centre</a>, USA <br /></li><li>Dr. Alvin Marcelo, Director for Southeast Asia, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.iosn.net">International Open Source Network</a>, the Philippines <br /></li><li>Lawrence Liang, Founder, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.altlawforum.org">Alternative Law Forum</a>, Bangalore, India<br /></li><li>Dr. G. Nagarjuna, Chaiman, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.gnu.org.in">Free Software Foundation of India</a>, Mumbai, India<br /></li><li>Vinay Sreenivasa, Member, <a class="external-link" href="http://itforchange.net">IT for Change</a>, Bangalore, India <br /></li></ol>
<h3><br /></h3>
<h3>Individual Co-signatories<strong> </strong></h3>
<ol><li>Shahid Akhtar, Founder, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.iosn.net">International Open Source Network</a>, Canada</li><li>Denis Jaromil Rojo, Developer, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.dyne.org">Dyne</a>, Netherlands<br /></li><li>Raj Mathur, Consultant, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.kandalaya.org">Kandalaya</a>, New Delhi, India<br /></li><li>Marek Tuszynski, Founder, <a class="external-link" href="http://www.tacticaltech.org">Tactical Technology Collective</a>, United Kingdom</li></ol>
<h3><br /></h3>
<h3>Text <br /></h3>
<p>Dear Sir or Madam,</p>
<p>The government had done a commendable job of releasing a progressive and forward-looking policy on the usage of open standards in e-governance. Globally the European Union's Electronic Interoperability Framework (EIF) guidelines (version 2 of which is currently in the draft stage) is considered to be the gold standard as far as open standard policy is concerned. The draft National Policy on Open Standards meets all of the EIF's four open standard requirements. However, there is still some room for improvement as discussed below.</p>
<p>While the document talks of the standard being royalty free (4.1 and 5.1.1) and without any patent-related encumbrance (4.1), it limits those requirements "for the life time of the standard" (5.1.1), which seems a bit ambiguous and is not defined in the appendix either. It would be preferable to make it royalty-free for the lifetime of the patents (if any) as open archival material shouldn't one day (after the end of "life time of the standard", and before the expiry of the patents) suddenly be forced to become paid archives. It would be desirable to make declarations of patent non-enforcement irrevocable (as the EU EIF does), by incorporating a wording such as: "irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis, without any patent-related encumbrance". </p>
<p>There should also be a separate provision in the "policy statement on open standards adoption in e-governance" section of the document making explicit that there can be no restraint on use or implementation of the standard (as has been stated in the "guiding principles" section). </p>
<p>Perhaps when talking of specification documents (5.1.5) the words "any restrictions" could be amended to include a few examples of what the term "any restrictions" would include. The document could make explicit that it must be permissible for all to copy, distribute and use the specifications freely, without any cost or legal barriers. </p>
<p>Sometimes private companies can interfere with the standardisation process, the document could perhaps be more explicit regarding remedial measures that could be undertaken in the event – for example use of competition law, as in the case of the EU EIF which states: "Practices distorting the definition and evolution of open standards must be addressed immediately to protect the integrity of the standardisation process." </p>
<p>As it stands, the draft document addresses many notions of openness (freely accessible, at zero cost, non-discriminatory, extensible, and without any legal hindrances, thus preventing vendor lock-in), and there is much to applaud in it. It has a clear implementation mechanism, with a laudable aim of establishing a monitoring agency and an Open Source Solutions Laboratory. It is applicable not only to future e-governance initiatives, but to existing ones as well. Furthermore, it also has an in-built review mechanism, which is crucial given the rate of change of technologies and consequently of the requirements of the government. Thus, the draft policy document very clearly encourages competition and innovation in the software industry and promotes the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) movement and industry. As researchers from UNU MERIT have pointed out, even a nominal fee for usage of a standard can lead to exclusion of open source software implementations, leading to less competition in the software industry. Thus, all in all this draft document represents a commendable effort by the Indian government towards a sustainable and robust e-governance structure based on open standards. However, a few small amendments as suggested in this letter would make it an even greater guarantor of openness.</p>
<p><br />Yours sincerely,<br />Sunil Abraham<br />Director (Policy)<br />Centre for Internet and Society<br /><br /></p>
<p>Please download the draft response in the format you prefer.</p>
<ol><li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/publications/standards/response-to-indian-open-standards-policy-10-sept-2008.odt" class="internal-link" title="Oo.org Format">Open Office </a><br /></li><li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/publications/standards/response-to-indian-open-standards-policy-10-sept-2008.doc" class="internal-link" title="MS Format">MS Office</a></li><li><a href="http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/publications/standards/response-to-indian-open-standards-policy-09-sept-2008.pdf" class="internal-link" title="PDF Format">PDF</a><br /></li></ol>
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For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/publications/standards/the-response'>http://editors.cis-india.org/openness/publications/standards/the-response</a>
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