Slashdot is powered by your submissions, so send in your scoop

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
United States Your Rights Online

Help Write An Open Data Format Bill 208

Posted by timothy from the avoiding-chainware dept.
AdamBa writes "There has been a lot of discussion of open source bills, but I think open data format bills have a much greater chance of actually becoming law. Over at the Open Data Format Initiative site, I have written an article explaining "Why Open Data Format Laws Are Better Than Open Source Laws". I also have a sample Open Data Format bill; I invite comments from slashdot readers, in particular on how the sample bill could be improved."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Help Write An Open Data Format Bill More

Help Write An Open Data Format Bill

Comments Filter:

  • But who? (Score:2, Funny)

    by CptChipJew ( 301983 ) *
    Now, you could argue that even the study that Microsoft is pushing...

    Although proponents of these laws may dream that Microsoft is going to open up their source...

    If the government uses Office and the Office data format is made public...

    Either Microsoft and other vendors are going to have to completely change their business model...

    Microsoft will undoubtedly still lobby against open data format laws, but its arguments will be weakened significantly...

    It doesn't have to get into reasons why op

    • Re:But who? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by AdamBa ( 64128 )
      Microsoft is certainly a company that stores a lot of user data in proprietary formats, given the widespread use of Office and Windows. But I don't think this proposal is "anti-Microsoft" the way some of the open source bills were anti-Microsoft.

      Microsoft was also one of the main companies lobbying against open source bills, thus it will presumably be one of the main companies lobbying against open data format bills...so it makes sense to think "how can this be written to deflect arguments Microsoft will

  • The color scheme made my eyes hurt (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Karl Cocknozzle ( 514413 ) <kcocknozzle.hotmail@com> on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @09:24PM (#6120324) Homepage
    Text of article, complete.

    ---BEGIN---
    Why Open Data Format Laws Are Better Than Open Source Laws
    With a variety of open source bills introduced, both in the United States and elsewhere, there has been a lot of discussion about open source laws. However open source laws have problems, both structurally and politically, and I think open data format laws would work much better.

    (NOTE: I use the term "open source laws," although in fact some of the laws refer to "free software" instead.)

    The reasons are as follows:

    Open source laws are too easy to argue against

    The three points mentioned most often in favor of open source laws are cost, security, and open data formats. In the lobbying against open source laws, I have never seen any negative comments about open data formats; the focus is on the cost and security arguments.

    When discussing cost, opponents of open source laws can point out (correctly) that the actual cost of the product is only one part of the total cost; Microsoft quotes a Gartner Group survey putting the number at 8%. Presumably they found the study with the lowest number, but the general fact is correct. Plus, the cost issue likely favors open source more on the server, where administration costs may be lower with open source software; on the client, where Windows is bundled with almost any computer anyway and support involves helping end users with unfamiliar software, open source won't come out looking as good.

    Now, you could argue that even the study that Microsoft is pushing shows that the total TCO of open source is only 92% of what it is for proprietary software. The problem is that this then leads to a long debate about how open source affects the other costs of software (installation, support, administration, etc) and no clear winner will emerge.

    Meanwhile, the security issue can easily get embroiled in a FUD battle between the two sides, each claiming that the other has more crashes and remote exploits, each waving studies that support their claims. If you want to convince a legislature to pass a law causing significant, possibly risky changes in government procurement, you can't get stuck in a battle like that. Keep in mind that properly designed secure file formats are not dependent on keeping the file format itself secret, so nobody should be able to argue that open data formats compromise security.

    When the debate can be framed in terms of cost and security, the issue of open data formats can be conveniently ignored by opponents. Requring only open data formats would remove the abililty of opponents to attack the cost and security arguments, leaving them to come up with arguments explaining why open data formats are bad, whch I have not seen so far. Finally, governments have presumably always considered cost as a factor when evaluating software purchases, and these days they no doubt consider security too; having a law that focussed only on open data formats would open their eyes to something new, that they have probably missed in the discussion of open source laws.

    Open source laws are either too inflexible, or require too much work

    Many open source laws seem designed to force a government to replace Windows/IIS/Office with Linux/Apache/*Office, but of course they aren't written that way; they discuss open source and proprietary software in general. This can take one of two tacks; either requiring open source or free software with no alternative, or making it difficult to buy proprietary software (for example requiring each purchase be accompanied by written justification).

    The first approach takes too simplistic a view of the type of software that governments use. Much of the it is customized for specific tasks such as processing drivers' licenses, and the market for providers of such software is presumably small. If software vendors release their software as open source, they may find that cash-strapped governments in other states gladly help themselves to it for free, so the vendor may g

    • Re:The color scheme made my eyes hurt (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dnoyeb ( 547705 ) on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @09:45PM (#6120404) Homepage Journal
      I don't think people want open source "laws." We want freedom of choice.

      We do not want to be locked into a particular software package so they can exthort money out of us. Charging for what amounts to an upgrade is just wrong. Charging for and upgrade that makes the software do what you said it would do in the first place is wronger. Charging for security fixes is wrong. I don't like to see my tax dollars wasted. If you are a private company, that I have no stock in, do what ever you want...

      I have never seen Ford charge their customer for a recall...Only in software.
      • If you have a law forcing data to be in properly-documented formats, proprietary software companies are free to implement apps that work with that format, without open-sourcing anything.

        They'll just have to compete (with open-source apps, and with other proprietary apps) on features, ease of use, reliability and things like that, that actually help the user, as opposed to competing on "but we're the only people who *really* know how .doc format works".

        (IMO governments should use open formats; private comp
    • It might hurt your eyes but it is well designed

      in opera, try: view -> style -> usermode

      I presume most browsers have similar features...

    • Re:The color scheme made my eyes hurt (Score:5, Informative)

      by Col. Klink (retired) ( 11632 ) on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @10:14PM (#6120526)
      Which color scheme? Slashdot or the linked site?

      Anyways, you can always use Zapping Bookmarklets [squarefree.com] to fix ugly sites.

  • Damned by genuine praise (Score:5, Funny)

    by rot26 ( 240034 ) * on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @09:26PM (#6120329) Homepage Journal
    This idea seems too obvious, too clear, too intuitive, and far too easy to implement for any respectable lawmaker to consider it for even a single nanosecond.

    • Re:Damned by genuine praise (Score:5, Funny)

      by EverDense ( 575518 ) on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @10:01PM (#6120476) Homepage
      This idea seems too obvious, too clear, too intuitive, and far too easy to implement for
      any respectable lawmaker to consider it for even a single nanosecond.

      Colour me cynical; it also lacks the necessary monetary backing for a politician to back it.
    • 1 - say a wordprocessor developer decides to get rid of the concept entirely of files - does that mean they have to disclose how they store the information? ie: perhaps using their own disc format and writing sectors/tracks directly?

      2 - where does the difference in data and program exist? ok, most of the time it is plain and clear, but what if the text of a wordprocessor wasn't stored as text, but rather a program that was interpretted to give the text layout? Also, is a BASIC program tokenised not data

      • Re:Damned by genuine praise (Score:5, Insightful)

        by MrLint ( 519792 ) on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @11:01PM (#6120738) Journal
        1) well then said app wont be running on any current OS I can think of. Reimplementing low level data storage routines is plain stupid, especially for a high level app like a word processor. (i can hear the grumbling 'but that was just an example you are too literal.. etc)

        2) This argument is older than dirt and way too contrived. If a user is inputting records into a database its not code. Besides interpreted basic (as its a structured high level programming language the 'data' is already defined. Besides if the govt. is writing apps in interpreted basic you better ph33r f0r y0ur l1f3!

        3) This is the whole point of the exercise, to write your data on purpose such that you document its output. In addition indexes to a database *could* be made user friendly, but since they are ephemeral anyway and are rebuilt and updated as needed and not generally data that is input by a user for long term data storage its kidna falls outside of the bounds here.

        4) Well this is forcing the govt. to document their data structures that contain data that is not internal to the govt. And since ostensibly we all own the dat that the govt. has we can tell them (ideally) to do whatever we want.

      • Re:Damned by genuine praise (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Moses Lawn ( 201138 ) on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @11:30PM (#6120867)
        All these problems could be solved by simply having an "Export" feature, that spits out all the relevant data, relevant being defined as whatever the user has typed or otherwise entered. The major examples are going to be text documents, databases, and spreadsheets. This would also work for all the one-off homegrown apps that store whatever in some binary format.

        Following this idea, the proposed bill could just list the benefits of open formats and mandate the ability to export to something like ASCII, RTF, CSV or XML.

  • Opening up office formats... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by gnuadam ( 612852 ) * on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @09:27PM (#6120334) Journal

    ...might or might not now help linux ... a lot of people I've talked to just don't like openoffice (and I've noticed that big spreadsheets are intolerably slow). There's a bit more work to be done there, besides the standard ms office problems. (That said, it wouldn't hurt a bit). But it would definately help a company like apple.

    Imagine flawless powerpoint support in keynote.

    • Re:Opening up office formats... (Score:5, Funny)

      by clonebarkins ( 470547 ) on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @09:35PM (#6120366)
      Imagine flawless powerpoint support in keynote.

      Even better: Imagine flawless powerpoint support in PowerPoint!

    • I don't like MS Office either, and I resent having to pay for it to access information (often public information), when, in my view, it has no other merit and I don't use it for anything else.

      So, we may each like or not like MS Office or OpenOffice, but the principle is that simple, textual public information should not require the purchase of a package that costs several hundred dollars in licensing fees.

      And if the formats are forced to be open, maybe we will get a lot more applications that can read and
      • I don't like MS Office either, and I resent having to pay for it to access information (often public information), when, in my view, it has no other merit and I don't use it for anything else.

        I find it interesting that you blame Microsoft for creating a product which they sell to whoever wants it, and not the people who chose to use the product inappropriately. There are plenty of ways to save a complex document in a portable format (RTF, PDF and HTML are a few examples). MS Word supports all of those (I
        • I find it interesting that anybody would suggest that spending taxpayer money to subsidize a welfare program for a company that has been convicted of violations of the Sherman Act [harvard.edu] is somehow appropriate.

          This open formats idea is naive. You don't cut deals with monopolies, you cut their goddam welfare. Do you realize how much every single elementary school in your state if forking over to these whores? The DMV is a lame example. The schools are where they're juicing the taxpayer like crazy. If your

        • This leads me to suspect that you simply want to bash Microsoft, and don't really care about or understand the underlying issue at all.

          Microsoft creates barriers for users, such as proprietary default file formats, because it is in their interest to do so.

          OpenOffice.org uses open file formats by default, because it is in their interest to do so.

          It is appropriate to blame Microsoft, because their position of conflict of interest cannot be ignored.
        • Although you *can* save data in other formats from Word, it's not as rich or clean as the native format (have you ever looked at HTML produced by Word?), PLUS most people don't do it--so in twenty years when someone is trying to retrieve a Word .DOC file long after Word is gone (hypothetically) it won't do much good to say, "you know, the user *could* have saved this in a better format".

          - adam

    • a lot of people I've talked to just don't like openoffice

      The only people that I have talked to that don't like OpenOffice.org, don't like becuase it is not exactly like MS Office. But this is unrealistic. They are functional equivalents (to a degree). I.e., OpenOffice.org and MS Office are both office productivity suites that provide word processing, spread sheet, and presentation functions. Similarly, GNU/Linux and Windows are operating systems that allow your computer hardware to execute applicatio

  • Was I the only one...? (Score:5, Funny)

    by The_Pey ( 532136 ) on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @09:29PM (#6120343)
    Was I the only one who saw the title Help Write An Open Data Format Bill and thought "Yeah right, like Bill's ever gonna do that."

    Rock on M$

    Yes, I know they are embracing XML now...

    • Re:Was I the only one...? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by metacosm ( 45796 ) on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @10:13PM (#6120522)
      yes -- you were the only one.

      And no, they are not really embracing XML -- read a little more about it. "Consumer Grade" (read: non-corp) will still use propriety format. The XML will only be on the high end, which should keep them nice and securely embedded in the consumer market.

  • He's right (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Otterley ( 29945 ) on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @09:29PM (#6120347)
    The author has the right idea; it would certainly make building compatible third-party implementations of data-processing software (by that I mean nearly all software) much easier than if the file formats were closed, as they are now.

    The trouble is that the distinction between code and data isn't as bright a line as you might think. I don't mean code/data segmenting; if you think about what evals and ELF are, you know what I mean.

    Algorithms (not to mention software in the US) are certainly patentable -- and efficient data storage mechanisms are too. Think about what a gold mine in terms of IP value a hash table would have been if it invented at a commercial organization instead of in academia.

    So, the conundrum we still face is that there are still valid IP claims WRT data structures, because oftentimes, as much thought is put into them as into the processing software that reads and writes them.

    • Re:He's right (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gnuadam ( 612852 ) * on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @09:44PM (#6120401) Journal

      Is it really good public policy to permanently store records that are meant to be for the public's benefit in a data format that cannot be guaranteed to be readable in the future?

      This is the argument.

      Closed standards are of course allowed by law. Companies and individuals should be allowed to use them. I argue that it is not good public policy, and governments should demand that their software vendors provide them with software that stores its data in a publicly reproducible way.

      • Re:He's right (Score:4, Insightful)

        by stubear ( 130454 ) on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @10:28PM (#6120585)
        "I argue that it is not good public policy, and governments should demand that their software vendors provide them with software that stores its data in a publicly reproducible way."

        They do. It's called text, RTF and HTML. MS Office saves out to all these formats. You can even install Acrobat and save Office documents as PDFs.

        • Re:He's right (Score:5, Interesting)

          by gnuadam ( 612852 ) * on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @10:39PM (#6120635) Journal

          ...right but you lose information if you save an office document that way.

          And even assuming that, as often as not the US government uses a proprietary data format exclusively. NSF now only accepts grant applications electronically. The forms are now an MS Office macro or an Adobe PDF form (which requires that you use the Adobe writer).

          Why should I have to pay a third party to do business with the government? Especially when alternatives exist (or could if the government took interest in this issue) ...

          • "...right but you lose information if you save an office document that way."

            You lose formatting, not data.

            "Why should I have to pay a third party to do business with the government? Especially when alternatives exist (or could if the government took interest in this issue) ..."

            You only asked for an open format. PDF fills this need. Now you're asking for a cost free format as well? The US government is not in, nor should it be in, the business of software development or steering the direction of sof
            • The US government is not in, nor should it be in, the business of software development or steering the direction of software development.

              This is wrong in a couple of different ways. The government has specific requirements for its software ALL THE TIME. It requires that some software interact with certain other software, that there are certain security considerations, that there are certain mechanisms for backup, that there are certain effeciency requirements. They also sometimes require that software

          • Just thought you should be informed, PDF is an open format and does not require using Adobe writer. While the windows options may be limited, that is primarily because few windows programs have been written to create PDF output. In unix, it is fairly simple to write to PDF format and doesn't involve using any Adobe tools.
      • At Breakout Session 8 of the Spring 2003 Digital Library Federation Forum [diglib.org] I learned that a "committee of government, industry, and academic representatives has started work on an International Standards Organization (ISO) specification for a basic subset of the Adobe Portable Document Format. Known as PDF/A, this specification will govern creation of documents that are self-contained, technologically stable, and have the basic properties that users need."

        At the session, I got the impression that most gover

    • no facts back him up (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SuperBanana ( 662181 ) on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @10:16PM (#6120535)
      The author has the right idea; it would certainly make building compatible third-party implementations of data-processing software (by that I mean nearly all software) much easier than if the file formats were closed, as they are now.

      Except the author thinks that software companies are just going to lovingly hand over specifications on their file formats. Throughout computing history, software companies have used file formats to lock people into their product, force them to buy upgrades, and use them as leverage for strategic partnerships. Ie- it's a huge cash cow to have proprietary formats.

      The author, in the very first paragraph, dismisses "open source laws", saying they "won't work". Huh? Says who? Then he says his WILL work. You can't just make enormous blanket statements like that without backing them up!

      In his second point, he says "Many open source laws seem designed to force a government to replace Windows/IIS/Office with Linux/Apache/*Office". Where is he getting this crap from? He goes on to dismiss the security benefits of open-source software, the cost savings...he pretty much dismisses every single argument for considering open-source software, with nothing to back up his reasoning. He 'thinks', therefore it is.

      My impression of "open source laws" was that they instruct government agencies to -CONSIDER- open source solutions- it does not FORCE them to use them- yet he makes it out like there's a cop sitting there with a gun to a government IT manager's head, saying "Go ahead punk. Make my day. Install Office. Are you feelin' lucky, punk?" Maybe I misread it, but his idea seems to be to -FORCE- companies to release file formats if their software is used by the government.

      One requires you consider open-source software, leaving commercial software companies plenty of oppertunity to compete if they've got a better solution(remember, open-source is not $0, you still have labor involved, possibly a migration, maybe staff training and hiring, maybe different equipment.) Open source doesn't automatically, if ever, "win" outright simply because it's open-source, yet the author seems to think open-source always will, and hence open-source laws will be bad because there will be a huge inconvenience to the government or the software companies. Again, consider- not force! If the manager thinks commercial software will overall be better, he/she will make that call.

      The other forces software companies to do something that threatens, in a BIG way, how they compete against other companies.

      Now, which has more of a chance of failing?

      • Re:no facts back him up (Score:5, Insightful)

        by rjch ( 544288 ) on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @10:34PM (#6120614) Homepage
        Except the author thinks that software companies are just going to lovingly hand over specifications on their file formats.
        No, that's not what he said. What he said is that if open data laws were passed, companies would be more likely to open up their data formats in order to retain lucrative government contracts.
        The author, in the very first paragraph, dismisses "open source laws", saying they "won't work". Huh? Says who? Then he says his WILL work. You can't just make enormous blanket statements like that without backing them up!
        Gee... maybe we weren't reading the same article. The great bulk of the article was discussing why software companies would be more likely to open their data formats than their source code.
        Likewise, he is not talking about forcing companies to open their data formats, he's talking about making it more commercially viable. You seem to be picking quotes out from their context and twisting them to your preferred view.
    • It would be possible as a second-best option to at least require open but patent-encumbered standards, along the lines of the MPEG consortium's work (MP3 and AAC are both patent-encumbered, for example, but also open and documented standards). This way you don't have the problem of one day not being able to read valuable data -- once the patent expires, anyone can reimplement the open and documented format.

      You could even take this another step in the direction of MPEG-like policies, and have a common non-
    • Think about what a gold mine in terms of IP value a hash table would have been if it invented at a commercial organization instead of in academia.

      No, it wouldn't have been, because it was invented so long ago that the market was tiny at the time. That's, in fact, true for most computer-related inventions.

      Algorithms (not to mention software in the US) are certainly patentable -- and efficient data storage mechanisms are too.

      There is no contradiction between a requirement for open data formats and pate

  • Hmmm (Score:5, Insightful)

    by alptraum ( 239135 ) on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @09:35PM (#6120367)
    On the second bullet you say "computer data owned by the [government] be permanently available to the [government] throughout its useful life."

    Somewhere you may want to define "useful life", I could see this as a possible loophole, this term could mean different time lengths to different people.

  • Patent It (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Stuff this open data format crap.
    I think data formats are patentable... because some of them are inventive and require real ingenuity. eg: video streaming, etc.

    If you don't award patents, you don't get the great inventions. (cf: Edison)

    from,

    your friendly patent attorney

    • you could at least require an open standard (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Trepidity ( 597 ) <delirium-slashdot@@@hackish...org> on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @09:56PM (#6120452)
      I would prefer a complete free and open standard with no patent encumberment, but a second-best option would be to have an open and fully documented standard that may or may not be subject to patents, along the lines of the stuff put out by the MPEG consortium (MP3, AAC, etc. are all patented, but are also completely open formats). This way at the very least you have an guarantee that your data won't be permanently inaccessible, because when the patent expires you can reimplement the open specification.
    • If you don't award patents, you don't get the great inventions. (cf: Edison)

      A completely disinterested opinion, no doubt.

  • What goverment? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by axxackall ( 579006 ) on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @09:43PM (#6120399) Homepage Journal
    Goverment? What goverment? We are talking about open data formats for Internet, not for national network of one country, right? If so then the law should be international. Otherwise - it's wasting of time and efforts.

    • Re:What goverment? (Score:3, Informative)

      by jericho4.0 ( 565125 )
      We're not talking about open data formats for internet use. The idea behind this bill is to make 'goverment' store all data in open standards so they don't become dependent on corporations.

    • Re:What goverment? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by FCKGW ( 664530 )

      If one government does this, then another, then another, eventually all governments would be forced to use open formats. Not to mention that governments can tell people to give them documents in open formats or else. It could spread similarly to how MS .doc format became the de-facto standard. Of course, MSFT and possibly other closed-source vendors would lobby against this and pay off representatives to keep this from happening, so who knows if any of this will work.

      I don't care nearly as much abou

      • Being involved in a number of projects to integrate various systems in the largest unitary governmental authority in Europe, I think that this bill is a darned good idea. Having an entirely open way to move data from one system to another would make things a lot simpler.

        On thing that I would like to see added, although at the moment I'm not sure on how to word it, would be to require open publishing of APIs and interfaces to allow other systems to access in real time the information held in a system utili

    • It might help reading the article before posting, but the concept it is too old-fashioned, I suppose.

  • Exclusions (Score:4, Interesting)

    by HybridTheory ( 551364 ) on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @09:46PM (#6120410)
    There are, I believe, certain classes of software where this may not be viable - where the format of a data file is a part of the competitive advantage of that product.

    I guess the best example would be Oracle and their proprietary database files.

    To handle a case like this, the company would need to apply for an exception, which could be granted under the following conditions

    a) an independant technical review confirms protecting the file format is significant to the business

    b) the company provides free utilities to extarct all data into an open format from the proprietary format

    c) The source code for the utility is escrowed, and publically released in the event of the company going under, discontinuing support of the product, etc

    This would allow Oracle to protect it's way of storing a database, but doesn't prevent anyone from moving to a different database

  • An Open Source Model For Law? LOVE IT!!! (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Levendis47 ( 90899 ) on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @09:47PM (#6120419) Homepage
    I won't brattle on, but how about using a Wiki to fascilitate the creation of various public participation law draftings?

    This would be an excellent application of the wiki technology and mantra of all-and-any user participation.

    Just an idea...

    cheers,
    Levendis47

  • It absolutely will NOT pass (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    a) Lobbyists from companies that currently have govt. contracts will be pissed

    b) cost to convert and/or interoperate with legacy systems will be IMMENSE, may run into the many billions (consider all the govt. agencies ..NASA, FDA etc.)

    c) Did I mention the costs involved (perceived costs, not necessarily real costs)

    Nice dream though, but I rather dream of sleeping.
    • There won't be any pressure to convert from the use of one file format to another. If you have a file format that is secret, then all you have to do is make the formatting algorithm freely available.

      But then again, I'm just an unfrozen caveman.* [mathforge.net]

  • Oregon's bill has both (Score:5, Informative)

    by po8 ( 187055 ) on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @10:03PM (#6120486)

    Oregon's HB 2892 has sections covering both open source and open formats. It has recently been revived, and there's still a chance of passage.

    • Yes, in fact while Oregon's bill only requires "consideration" of open source, it *requires* open data formats. I discuss it on the ODFI site [odfi.org].

      Has it been revived? I thought it was dead for this year. If you have a link to current status, please post it. Thanks.

      - adam

      • Word on the street is that HB 2892 may be revived via a rarely-used legislative maneuver. An existing unrelated bill, SB 589, scheduled for a floor vote, may be amended by removing the text of the existing SB 589 and replacing it with the text of HB 2892. I don't know any official cite for this information yet, but I have heard it from "reliable sources". It's not a sure thing, but there's still a slight hope...

  • Sounds familiar (Score:5, Interesting)

    by DreadSpoon ( 653424 ) on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @10:15PM (#6120530) Journal
    I pushed for a similar "rule" at the local government offices I work at. All documents available to the public, and all documents used for communications with contractors/agencies/whatever, must be in an open format, unless no open format exists for the given data that conveys all needed information. (Which is pretty damn rare to not have.)

    It's working fairly well. Enough of the employees are still just using the default MS formats in MS Office (I still receive enough .DOC files from coworkers) but a good deal of external communication is on open formats. Our e-mail gateway blocks most non-open formats, which helps a good deal as well. ;-)

    On a sadder note, tho, the residents have never requested this. Likely, they do not care; the majority of them, anyways. Increasing demand from residents would help push more gov't agencies to use rules similar to ours. How many of you Free Software and Open Communications geeks have even sent an e-mail to your local township/city/county/etc. requesting open formats? Truly, even a small handful of voices are listened to, from my own experience in the field.

    Be heard!
  • Even if everyone on /. pooled their money, I don't think we could afford to pass a bill like this.

  • Word processor format (Score:2, Flamebait)

    by hey ( 83763 )
    Since word processing is so common I think there should be a line in the bill that says what word processor format should be used. Open Office is the best one I know about (xml subfiles in a zip).
    • Forcing one particular format is a recipe for disaster - as soon as a feature it doesn't support comes along, you need a new law.

      What is worth forcing is that the format is documented sufficiently well that it can be reimplemented.

      In this particular case, the format is easy to document, because you can just say "It's XML, it conforms to specifications A, B and C, and the whole thing is in a zip file as described by RFC 1234" - so all you actually need to document is the particular "application" (sub-langu

  • right tools for the right job (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MrLint ( 519792 ) on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @10:29PM (#6120589) Journal
    Admittedly i read the 'bill' a bit quickly, but there is one problem (which seems to be partially addressed later on) is that all data be in human readable format. Well this is good for string data. However I very much suspect there are going to be number formats that are much better stored in their binary format. Now as I recall from college COBOL's strategy as to have everything stored as string data with (interesting) defining headers. As I also recall this was to help portable between COBOL and other foreign (computer wise) data retrieval systems, like when data was passed around on tapes.

    This is all well and good, but you trade off portability for parsing overhead. Of course CPU time is way cheap as to compared to yesteryear. However you will end up with people's nutjob parsing routines, I mean hell CPUs and calculator software still get shipped making math mistakes. Reading in data in any of the standard int and float storage formats is cheaper and you don't have to worry about joe-bob desk jockey hosing up an import routing and your tax bill being 100x too large.

    Now as most of us who have been thru a proper programming class know there are routines for these kinda things.. but again beware of joe-bob who wants to do it 'better' or whatever. Perhaps along with open data one needs to define a data import stadard?

  • Open data formats are good, but not sufficient (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @10:34PM (#6120609)
    Open data formats are a good start, but don't fool yourself into believing they are sufficient. HTML is perfectly open, but how many web sites are there that test against anything but IE? How many rely on the behavior (even the bugs) of IE?

    The non-openness of Microsoft Word's document formats is not the biggest obstacle. There are plenty of office suites now that can read them. The biggest obstacle is that people write their documents expecting them to look exactly as they do in Word. That's not something that open data formats by themselves will solve. Microsoft could move entirely to XML, and that problem would still remain.
  • Instead of making major corporations, such as Microsoft, open their formats, perhaps Word and similar programs should be required to have the ability to read and/or write major open formats, such as StarOffice/OpenOffice formats.

    Yes, I could see arguments along the lines of "but we can't possibly support every format," but in the case of behemoth corporations, it should be doable for at least the major formats. This could also be said to stifle competition, but in Microsoft's case, it has already done e

  • Open data format considered harmful (Score:3, Interesting)

    by PizzaFace ( 593587 ) on Wednesday June 04, 2003 @11:35PM (#6120890)
    This "open data format" proposal is impractical and counter-productive.

    Impractical

    Most computer programs are useful because they produce human-readable output, usually by arranging pixels on a screen or on a sheet of paper in ways that correspond with natural-language representations (words and numbers). Every purchaser of software is free to decide before purchase whether a program's output is sufficient for his needs, including any potential need for data archiving or transfer.

    But until the data is output, it is encoded for the convenience of the program, not for the user. Even an ASCII file is not really "text," but numeric bytes whose values correspond to alphanumeric characters only through an artificial, though widely adopted, convention.

    A data file is just a data structure stored in a persistent medium. As a developer, I shudder to imagine the burden of documenting every bit of data my programs store. I'd need to convert them from binary format to human readable. Not only that, but binary formats are necessary for some functionality. Have you ever benchmarked the performance of a large conventional database against a stored-as-XML database?

    I guess I couldn't compress data, or maybe I could only compress it in a "standard" format - but which one, and who decides which one? Graphics and sound? I suppose I couldn't use a proprietary format for those either. And I guess I couldn't encrypt any data, at least not in any way a competing program couldn't decrypt. Well, if my competion can decrypt the data, so can anyone else. Sorry, but this is a non-starter for many business applications.

    Counter-productive

    Currently, a user has his software, he has his data (stored in whatever format the software's author found efficient and secure enough for the application), and he has a legal right to make copies of them so he won't lose any data he has bargained for. So this law doesn't really gain him data security; it gains interoperability, the possibility that competing software vendors will be able to serve his needs. There's an implicit hope that small software vendors could use open data formats to compete more equally against large vendors.

    Alas, that hope is a pipe dream. Because any software vendor would be able to extend a published data format, the publisher who could extend it most and fastest would always lead the market. That means the biggest company would lead the market.

    It's happened before. Microsoft's president is on record, telling his developers to "embrace and extend" industry standards. That's how Microsoft maintains de facto leadership of many standards. They can embrace whatever is open to be embraced, and extend it so it becomes Microsoft's. Examples include HTML (Microsoft's progress slowed by developer inertia), web services (Microsoft looking strong), Java (thwarted, so far, by Sun's license), and even ".doc" files (we old-timers remember when they were plain ASCII).

    An open source author has the protections of copyright and licensing terms against Microsoft stealing his code. But the author of a program that keeps its data open has no such protection. The data belongs to the program's user, not the program's author. Open data is ripe for the picking by a bigger company, and a small-scale author of successful open-data software will soon be following instead of leading in his market.

    Let's leave software authors and users free to decide whether human-readable output is enough for them, or if they want data structures stored persistently in human-readable form. The perversion of the patent system should teach us this much: laws that are meant to help the little guy, may help the big guy even more.
    • An open data format doesn't preclude the possibility that the data files couldn't be password protected and encrypted...as long as it is done in an openly defined way.

      Anyway, my understanding of the proposal is that it would apply to files that are public in nature anyway. (I.e., work product of govenrnment employees, legislators, etc.) Nobody's trying to say that Joe Schmoe, private citizen, shouldn't be able to use whatever file formats he wishes.

  • The purpose of government (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Trailer Trash ( 60756 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @12:06AM (#6121023) Homepage

    The first approach takes too simplistic a view of the type of software that governments use. Much of the it is customized for specific tasks such as processing drivers' licenses, and the market for providers of such software is presumably small. If software vendors release their software as open source, they may find that cash-strapped governments in other states gladly help themselves to it for free, so the vendor may get only one paying contract instead of fifty. Therefore, it's quite possible that governments won't be able to find companies willing to provide them with open source software, and then what alternative do they have?

    I just covered this recently in an op-ed piece in the business journal. Let me make this simple: governments do not exist to provide business opportunities to software developers. Reread that until it makes sense.

    We (collectively "the people") shouldn't have to pay twice for a piece of software. The open source world needs to come up with solutions to boring problems, like drivers' license registration. If a particular company doesn't want to be a part of that, then so be it.

    Michael

  • Where the GPL really shines... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by El Cubano ( 631386 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @01:26AM (#6121339)

    If software vendors release their software as open source, they may find that cash-strapped governments in other states gladly help themselves to it for free, so the vendor may get only one paying contract instead of fifty.

    IIRC, the GPL specifies that you only need to make the source available to the entities to which you distribute binaries. I.e., if Michigan gets a contract with some company for some software, the company can release the software as GPL and only provide the source to the Michigan state government. It is then in the best interests of the state government to NOT redistribute the software. That way another state, say New York, also buys the software to make sure that the company is still there next year. The best thing is that if company X pisses off the state, they can take the source and hire company Y to maintain it. If I understand the intent of the GPL, this is the kind of choice that is available with free software.

    Compare that to a previous post (I don't recall the exact thread) where the poster pointed out that his organization used a particalur personnel management product. PeopleSoft bought the competitor and disconitnued the product. Security flaws were found, his company had to spend $2M to switch to PeopleSoft. Had that software been GPL, they could have just hired another company to fix/maintain it. Again, in that situation it is in the company's best interest to NOT freely (as in beer) redistribute the program.

    I think the same can be said for many non-commodity software products. I mean, how many people actually need or want (or have the hardware) to run a PeopleSoft level program at home? Better yet, if a company pays, say $250000, for a program and accompanying support, what incentive do they have to turn around and give it away? It seems to me that the GPL is really perfect for situations like this.

  • A word from Ken Barber.... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Mr. Firewall ( 578517 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @01:36AM (#6121380) Homepage

    I am the author of the Oregon Open Source bill.

    You are seeing things exactly as I saw them when I wrote the original bill: I felt that its real power was not in the open source provisions -- those were there to get media attention -- but in the requirements for open standards.

    I was unable to contact the one person I needed help from when writing the bill -- Larry Rosen of the Open Source Initiative -- until after the bill had been introduced with all of the flaws and mistakes I made.

    Please, get advice from Larry Rosen in writing your sample bill. I won't post his contact info here, but I'm sure you can find him if you look.

    Ken Barber
  • Open data format is an interesting concept, but unfortunately doesn't not address another critical aspect of government data and freedom of information at the state and local levels.

    Oregon has been cited for introducing open source legislation: but unfortunately is also one of the few states that have allowed state and local government entitites to charge development fees and a marginal copying fees for certain types of information (Oregon Revised Statues, section 190).

    The federal government passed th

  • Why they write the laws, not us (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Quila ( 201335 ) on Thursday June 05, 2003 @07:28AM (#6122291)
    I've seen all the comments on loopholes and inconsistencies in this proposed law. This is why the politicians and corporations normally write the laws.

    Unlike us, they know how to eliminate loopholes and gross internal inconsistencies. Take, respectively, the tax laws and the DMCA for example.
  • ...though it should also extend to network protocols. We could call it the Interoperable Technologies Act or something like that. Or perhaps we could even usurp the name PATRIOT (Progressing Always Towards Real Interoperability in Our Technology) or something similarly stupid but catchy and spinny.

    My basic idea would be this: data storage formats and transmission protocols are mandated to be publicly documented, available to anyone at no charge (or at cost). One might also require that a public-domain refe

Slashdot Top Deals

One man's constant is another man's variable. -- A.J. Perlis

Close