After a colossal amount of debate and discussion over the last one year, India has finally voted NO for OOXML. Today the committee was asked "Should India change its September 2007 No vote into Yes?"
13 members voted No
5 members (including Microsoft, of course) voted Yes.
1 member abstained
3 did not attend
The government bodies, academic institutions and industry voted against OOXML. The only people who voted for OOXML were the software exporters--TCS, Infosys, Wipro and NASSCOM (National Association of Software Services Companies).
posted by rakeshkumar
www.close2job.com
ref: osindiablogspot.com
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Impossible thing #2: Comprehensive free knowledge repositories like Wikipedia and Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg, started in 1971, is the oldest part of the modern free culture movement. Wikipedia is a relative upstart, riding on the wave of success of free software, extending the idea to other kinds of information content. Today, Project Gutenberg, with over 24,000 e-texts, is probably larger than the legendary Library of Alexandria. Wikipedia is the largest and most comprehensive encyclopedic work ever created in the history of mankind. It’s common to draw comparisons to Encyclopedia Britannica, but they are hardly comparable works—Wikipedia is dozens of times larger and covers many more subjects. Accuracy is a more debatable topic, but studies have suggested that Wikipedia is not as much less accurate than Britannica as one might naively suppose.
posted by rakesh
www.close2job.com
ref: freesoftwaremagazine.com
posted by rakesh
www.close2job.com
ref: freesoftwaremagazine.com
Making the impossible happen: the rules of free culture
In the mainstream, free culture is regarded with varying degrees of skepticism, disdain, and dewy-eyed optimism. It violates the “rules” by which we imagine our world works, and many people react badly to that which they don’t understand.
If the system of rules that we have based our entire industrial civilization on are wrong, will we have to face the prospect of re-ordering that society from the ground up? Will that civilization now collapse (like Wile E. Coyote falling once he notices there’s no ground underneath him)?
On the opposite extreme, for those who’ve given up on the rationalizations, preferring a “faith-based” approach, there is a great tendency to leap to magical thinking. Perhaps there are gods of freedom reordering the world to make it a happier place? If we shake our rattles hard enough, will all our dreams come true?
But where is genuine reason in all this? Here, I’ll present six “impossible” acheivements of free culture, each representing a particular challenge to the old paradigm. Then I’ll present a set of rules to help understand “how the magic works”, and give a more realistic framework for what can and can’t be expected from the commons-based methods on which free culture operates.
more>>
posted by rakeshkumar
www.close2job.com
ref:freesoftwaremagazine.com
If the system of rules that we have based our entire industrial civilization on are wrong, will we have to face the prospect of re-ordering that society from the ground up? Will that civilization now collapse (like Wile E. Coyote falling once he notices there’s no ground underneath him)?
On the opposite extreme, for those who’ve given up on the rationalizations, preferring a “faith-based” approach, there is a great tendency to leap to magical thinking. Perhaps there are gods of freedom reordering the world to make it a happier place? If we shake our rattles hard enough, will all our dreams come true?
But where is genuine reason in all this? Here, I’ll present six “impossible” acheivements of free culture, each representing a particular challenge to the old paradigm. Then I’ll present a set of rules to help understand “how the magic works”, and give a more realistic framework for what can and can’t be expected from the commons-based methods on which free culture operates.
more>>
posted by rakeshkumar
www.close2job.com
ref:freesoftwaremagazine.com
Friday, March 14, 2008
Free-software lawyers: Don't trust Microsoft's Open XML patent pledge
Prominent legal counsel the Software Freedom Law Center said that the legal terms covering Microsoft's Open XML document formats pose a patent risk to free and open-source software developers.
The SFLC on Wednesday published a legal analysis of Microsoft's Open Specification Promise (OSP), a document written to give developers the green light to make open-source products based on specifications written by Microsoft.
The OSP is meant to allay concerns over violating Microsoft patents that relate to Open XML, Microsoft's document specifications that the company is trying to have certified as a standard at the ISO (International Organization for Standardization). For example, a company could create an open-source spreadsheet or server software that can handle Open XML documents.
Microsoft is awaiting the results of a crucial vote, expected by March 29, from representatives of national standards bodies.
But the SFLC said that the OSP is not to be trusted. It said that it did the legal analysis following the close of a recent Ballot Resolution Meeting held to resolve problems with the Open XML specification.
Specifically, the SFLC concluded that the patent protections only apply to current versions of the specifications; future versions could not be covered, it noted.
Also, software developers who write code based on a Microsoft-derived specification, such as Open XML, could be limited in how that code is used. "Any code that implements the specification may also do other things in other contexts, so in effect the OSP does not cover any actual code, only some uses of code," according to the analysis.
Finally, the SFLC said that OSP-covered specifications are not compatible with the General Public License (GPL), which covers thousands of free and open-source products.
Most open-source software advocates have opposed Microsoft's effort to standardize Open XML and the SFLC is no exception.
While not attempting to clarify the text of the OSP to indicate compatibility with the GPL or provide a safe harbor through its guidance materials, Microsoft wrongly blames the free software legal community for Microsoft's failure to present a promise that satisfies the requirements of the GPL. It is true that a broad audience of developers could implement the specifications, but they would be unable to be certain that implementations based on the latest versions of the specifications would be safe from attack. They would also be unable to distribute their code for any type of use, as is integral to the GPL and to all free software.
As the final period for consideration of OOXML by ISO elapses, SFLC recommends against the establishment of OOXML as an international standard and cautions GPL implementers not to rely on the OSP.
ref: fsdaily
rakeshkumar
close2job.com
The SFLC on Wednesday published a legal analysis of Microsoft's Open Specification Promise (OSP), a document written to give developers the green light to make open-source products based on specifications written by Microsoft.
The OSP is meant to allay concerns over violating Microsoft patents that relate to Open XML, Microsoft's document specifications that the company is trying to have certified as a standard at the ISO (International Organization for Standardization). For example, a company could create an open-source spreadsheet or server software that can handle Open XML documents.
Microsoft is awaiting the results of a crucial vote, expected by March 29, from representatives of national standards bodies.
But the SFLC said that the OSP is not to be trusted. It said that it did the legal analysis following the close of a recent Ballot Resolution Meeting held to resolve problems with the Open XML specification.
Specifically, the SFLC concluded that the patent protections only apply to current versions of the specifications; future versions could not be covered, it noted.
Also, software developers who write code based on a Microsoft-derived specification, such as Open XML, could be limited in how that code is used. "Any code that implements the specification may also do other things in other contexts, so in effect the OSP does not cover any actual code, only some uses of code," according to the analysis.
Finally, the SFLC said that OSP-covered specifications are not compatible with the General Public License (GPL), which covers thousands of free and open-source products.
Most open-source software advocates have opposed Microsoft's effort to standardize Open XML and the SFLC is no exception.
While not attempting to clarify the text of the OSP to indicate compatibility with the GPL or provide a safe harbor through its guidance materials, Microsoft wrongly blames the free software legal community for Microsoft's failure to present a promise that satisfies the requirements of the GPL. It is true that a broad audience of developers could implement the specifications, but they would be unable to be certain that implementations based on the latest versions of the specifications would be safe from attack. They would also be unable to distribute their code for any type of use, as is integral to the GPL and to all free software.
As the final period for consideration of OOXML by ISO elapses, SFLC recommends against the establishment of OOXML as an international standard and cautions GPL implementers not to rely on the OSP.
ref: fsdaily
rakeshkumar
close2job.com
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