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Our Work

Open Standards

Open Standards allow people to share all kinds of data freely and with perfect fidelity. They prevent lock-in and other artificial barriers to interoperability, and promote choice between vendors and technology solutions. FSFE's work on Open Standards has the goal of making sure that people find it easy to migrate to Free Software or between Free Software solutions.

Introduction

The relevance of Open Standards is closely linked to networking effects, and has consequently been rising dramatically. The reward for gaming the system for proprietary vendors is increasing, so is the cost for users of software.

Governments, public interest NGOs, including groups that are concerned about freedom of competition or consumer rights are generally strong proponents of Open Standards. Typical critics are the proprietary software vendors and those that represent their interests. One of the items that critics seek to highlight is the inherent conflict between innovation and standardisation.

Standardisation deliberately limits changes to a technological basis, including innovation. These limits are introduced in order to allow subsequent innovation by everyone that has access to the standard and not just the party that controls the technological basis. So standards limit the ability to innovate by a single party in order to allow innovation on the basis of that standard by multiple parties.

Open Standards allow such innovation by all parties with no leverage for the initial developer of the platform to limit such innovation or the competition it represents.

FSFE's goals include freedoms from lock-in, of innovation and competition for everyone. That is why FSFE is a strong supporter of Open Standards.

Publications

  • "Analysis on balance: Standardisation and Patents"
    by Georg Greve
  • Why FRAND is bad for Free Software
  • "EIFv2: Tracking the loss of interoperability"
    by Karsten Gerloff and Hugo Roy
  • "Defending Open Standards: FSFE refutes BSA's false claims to European Commission"
    by Karsten Gerloff, Carlo Piana and Sam Tuke
  • FSFE's submission to the UK Open Standards Consultation 2012, held by the Cabinet Office.

Publications at the IGF

  • "Sovereign Software: Open Standards, Free Software, and the Internet"
    FSFE contribution to the first IGF, by Georg Greve

Publications on MS-OOXML

  • Six questions to national standardisation bodies
  • FSFE Context Briefing: "Interoperability woes with MS-OOXML"
  • FSFE Context Briefing: "DIS-29500: Deprecated before use?"
  • Article on BBC: "Questions for Microsoft on open formats"
  • Article on Heise.de: "The converter hoax"

FSFE responds to UK Open Standards Consultation

01 June 2012:

FSFE has submitted its response [Update: see as PDF version or HTML version] to a public consultation by the UK Government, concerning a definition of Open Standards and a policy for increasing their use in the UK's public sector. If the policy is applied boldly and proactively, the UK stands to greatly gain from increased competition in the software market, with much greater opportunities for small companies. On the other hand, even minor lapses in implementation could derail the policy entirely.

FSFE responds to UK Open Standards Consultation

01 June 2012:

FSFE has submitted its response [pdf] to a public consultation by the UK Government, concerning a definition of Open Standards and a policy for increasing their use in the UK's public sector. If the policy is applied boldly and proactively, the UK stands to greatly gain from increased competition in the software market, with much greater opportunities for small companies. On the other hand, even minor lapses in implementation could derail the policy entirely.

FSFE: NW UK businesses please tell Government that Open Standards matter

28 May 2012:

Is the Government one of your potential customers? Free Software may shortly be locked out of opportunities in the public sector if proposed Open Standards policy is adopted.

Executive summary of the EURA case

09 May 2012:

Slovak textile importer EURA Slovakia, s.r.o. is facing EUR 5600 in fines because it did not buy and use the Microsoft Windows operating system for submitting electronic tax reports. Slovak tax administration gave EURA only two options: either to buy and use Microsoft Windows or face the fines. This is also how we could briefly summarize the decision of Slovak tax administration from a few weeks ago. The administration imposed several fines on a company, EURA Slovakia, which submitted its tax reports on paper, because the use of electronic form was impossible as the state's web application worked only on the Microsoft Windows operating system. The company now plans to appeal to the court and to demand that the state stops forcing businesses to use a certain product, instead of requiring that the public administration uses a multi-platform technical solution based on Open Standards that is available for everybody.

State neglected web standards, company now faces EUR 5600 in fines

09 May 2012:

In Slovakia, a law introduced to reduce red tape has led to injustice. The state has mandated electronic means as a only way of fulfilling certain statutory obligations. However the dedicated web solution excludes some citizens from use as it is not interoperable and runs only on the software from one vendor. In absence of any non-electronic option, this means that state, in fact, prescribed the use of a certain product from a certain vendor. Who did not own the copy, had to buy one. Slovak textile importer deemed that state should not force him to use a certain software for his business and fulfilled its legal obligation by paper. Now the company faces EUR 5600 in fines.
  • Document Freedom Day
  • ODF Alliance
  • PDFreaders.org
  • Play Ogg!
  • "Open Documents and Democracy" by Laura de Nardis and Eric Tam, Yale Information Society Project
  • "An Economic Basis for Open Standards" by Rishab A. Ghosh
  • "An emerging understanding of Open Standards" by Georg Greve

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