Groups in Europe fight over the definitions of "open source" and "open standards"; meanwhile, "Free/libre software" is being left out of this conversation

The European Interoperability Framework (EIF) is an important document for the European public sector. Version 1 had strong support for open standards and royalty-free licences to patents. A leaked version 2 shows that open standards and open source are out, and "openness" of the vaguest kind is in, as are software patents.

"There is an important issue facing the European Commission now with regard to standards, and they need to hear from you. Please support this campaign in favor of open standards by adding your signature on their web page (by 2007 September 15), answering the European Commission's request for comments, and asking your friends and colleagues to do the same..."

There are many “open standards” definitions, and this great amount of interpretations or views about the subject, allowed distortions to make possible that almost anything on IT market could be classified as an “Open Standard” by marketing departments.

The campaign herein asks you to do 3 (three) actions :

1. sign the campaign herebelow for open standards by answering the IDABC request for comment before September 15, 2007
2. answer the request for comment of the European Commission request for comments on its websites, on CampaignECwebsites
3. ask your friends to do the same.

Things have been going pretty well for open source and open standards recently... But elsewhere, other open movements are still in the early stages of the struggle against forces pushing closed, proprietary standards.

First some definitions. In this post let’s define an “open standard” as one that is: 1) freely available, 2) developed in an open process and 3) freely implementable, e.g., is royalty free. I freely acknowledge that there are interests out there that attempt to soften these criteria, but that only demonstrates the competitive power presented by truly open standards.

The European Commission will take a more pro-active approach to its own use of Open Source and Open Standards. Xavier Heymans highlights the importance of a real and mature collaboration with communities where IT providers share their developments and adopt an "open source" philosophy.

The final version of the important Digital Agenda for Europe has been leaked – and shows that the European Commission has betrayed open standards. Where an earlier draft had an entire section headed “Open Standards and Interoperability”, the latest version only uses the word “open” once in the corresponding section “Interoperability and standards.”