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1 <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
2 <rss version='2.0' xmlns:lj='http://www.livejournal.org/rss/lj/1.0/'>
3 <channel>
4 <title>Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries tagged standard</title>
5 <description>Entries tagged standard</description>
6 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
7
8
9 <item>
10 <title>Regjeringen, FAD og DIFI går inn for å fjerne ODF som obligatorisk standard i det offentlige</title>
11 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Regjeringen__FAD_og_DIFI_g_r_inn_for___fjerne_ODF_som_obligatorisk_standard_i_det_offentlige.html</link>
12 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Regjeringen__FAD_og_DIFI_g_r_inn_for___fjerne_ODF_som_obligatorisk_standard_i_det_offentlige.html</guid>
13 <pubDate>Mon, 18 Mar 2013 21:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
14 <description>&lt;p&gt;I
15 &lt;a href=&quot;http://standard.difi.no/hoyring/forslag-om-endring-av-forskrift-om-it-standarder-i-offentlig-forvaltning&quot;&gt;siste
16 høring&lt;/a&gt; om
17 &lt;a href=&quot;http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder&quot;&gt;referansekatalogen
18 for IT-standarder i offentlig sektor&lt;/a&gt;, med høringsfrist 2012-09-30
19 (DIFI-sak 2012/498), ble det foreslått å fjerne ODF som obligatorisk
20 standard når en publiserte dokumenter som skulle kunne redigeres
21 videre av mottaker. NUUG og andre protesterte på forslaget, som er et
22 langt steg tilbake når det gjelder å sikre like rettigheter for alle
23 når en kommuniserer med det offentlige. For noen dager siden ble jeg
24 oppmerksom på at Direktoratet for forvaltning og IKT (DIFI) og
25 Fornyings-,administrasjons- og kirkedepartementet (FAD) har
26 konkludert, og oversendt forslag til regjeringen i saken. FADs
27 dokument
28 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oep.no/search/result.html?period=none&amp;descType=both&amp;caseNumber=2012%2F2168&amp;senderType=both&amp;documentType=all&amp;list2=94&amp;searchType=advanced&amp;Search=S%C3%B8k+i+journaler&quot;&gt;2012/2168&lt;/a&gt;-8,
29 «Utkast til endring av standardiseringsforskriften» datert 2013-02-06
30 har følgende triste oppsummering fra høringen i saken:&lt;/p&gt;
31
32 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
33 Det kom noen innvendinger på forslaget om å fjerne ODF som
34 obligatorisk standard for redigerbare dokumenter. Innvendingene har
35 ikke blitt ilagt avgjørende vekt.
36 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
37
38 &lt;p&gt;Ved å fjerne ODF som obligatorisk format ved publisering av
39 redigerbare dokumenter setter en Norge tiår tilbake. Det som vil skje
40 er at offentlige etater går tilbake til kun å publisere dokumenter på
41 et av de mange formatene til Microsoft Office, og alle som ikke
42 aksepterer bruksvilkårene til Microsoft eller ikke har råd til å bruke
43 penger på å få tilgang til Microsoft Office må igjen basere seg på
44 verktøy fra utviklerne som er avhengig av å reversutvikle disse
45 formatene. I og med at ISO-spesifikasjonen for OOXML ikke komplett og
46 korrekt spesifiserer formatene til MS Office (men er nyttige å titte i
47 når en reversutvikler), er en tilbake til en situasjon der en ikke har
48 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fri_og__pen_standard__slik_Digistan_ser_det.html&quot;&gt;en
49 fri og åpen standard&lt;/a&gt; å forholde seg til, men i stedet må springe
50 etter Microsoft. Alle andre leverandører enn Microsoft vil dermed ha
51 en seriøs ulempe. Det er som å fjerne krav om bruk av meter som
52 måleenhet, og heretter aksepterer alle måleenheter som like gyldige,
53 når en vet at den mest brukte enheten vil være armlengden til Steve
54 Ballmer slik Microsoft måler den.&lt;/p&gt;
55
56 &lt;p&gt;Jeg er ikke sikker på om forslaget er vedtatt av regjeringen ennå.
57 Kristian Bergem hos DIFI nevnte på et møte forrige tirsdag at han
58 trodde det var vedtatt i statsråd 8. mars, men jeg har ikke klart å
59 finne en skriftlig kilde på regjeringen.no som bekrefter dette.
60 Kanskje det ennå ikke er for sent...&lt;/p&gt;
61
62 &lt;p&gt;Jeg ba i forrige uke om innsyn i dokument 6, 7 og 8 i FAD-saken, og
63 har i dag fått innsyn i dokument 7 og 8. Ble nektet innsyn i
64 dokumentet med tittelen «Oppsummering av høring om endringer i
65 forskrift om IT-standarder i offentlig forvaltning» med hjemmel i
66 off. lovens §15.1, så det er vanskelig å vite hvordan argumentene fra
67 høringen ble mottatt og forstått av saksbehandleren hos DIFI. Lurer
68 på hvordan jeg kan klage på at jeg ikke fikk se oppsummeringen. Fikk
69 tre PDFer tilsendt fra FAD,
70 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/pub/offentliginnsyn/from-FAD/20130115%20Notat%20FAD%20-%20EHF.pdf%20(L)(889185).pdf&quot;&gt;Endring av underversjon i EHF&lt;/a&gt;,
71 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/pub/offentliginnsyn/from-FAD/Bakgrunnsnotat%20knyttet%20til%20versjon%20av%20EHF%20standarden%20i%20Forskrift%20om%20IT-standarder%20i%20offentlig%20sektor.pdf&quot;&gt;Bakgrunnsnotat knyttet til versjon av EHF standarden i Forskrift om IT-standarder i offentlig sektor&lt;/a&gt; og
72 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/pub/offentliginnsyn/from-FAD/Utkast%20Kongelig%20resolusjon.docx%20(L)(898064).pdf&quot;&gt;Utkast til endring av standardiseringsforskriften&lt;/a&gt;, hvis du vil ta en titt.&lt;/p&gt;
73 </description>
74 </item>
75
76 <item>
77 <title>&quot;Electronic&quot; paper invoices - using vCard in a QR code</title>
78 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Electronic__paper_invoices___using_vCard_in_a_QR_code.html</link>
79 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Electronic__paper_invoices___using_vCard_in_a_QR_code.html</guid>
80 <pubDate>Tue, 12 Feb 2013 10:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
81 <description>&lt;p&gt;Here in Norway, electronic invoices are spreading, and the
82 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.anskaffelser.no/e-handel/faktura&quot;&gt;solution promoted
83 by the Norwegian government&lt;/a&gt; require that invoices are sent through
84 one of the approved facilitators, and it is not possible to send
85 electronic invoices without an agreement with one of these
86 facilitators. This seem like a needless limitation to be able to
87 transfer invoice information between buyers and sellers. My preferred
88 solution would be to just transfer the invoice information directly
89 between seller and buyer, for example using SMTP, or some HTTP based
90 protocol like REST or SOAP. But this might also be overkill, as the
91 &quot;electronic&quot; information can be transferred using paper invoices too,
92 using a simple bar code. My bar code encoding of choice would be QR
93 codes, as this encoding can be read by any smart phone out there. The
94 content of the code could be anything, but I would go with
95 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VCard&quot;&gt;the vCard format&lt;/a&gt;, as
96 it too is supported by a lot of computer equipment these days.&lt;/p&gt;
97
98 &lt;p&gt;The vCard format support extentions, and the invoice specific
99 information can be included using such extentions. For example an
100 invoice from SLX Debian Labs (picked because we
101 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html&quot;&gt;ask
102 for donations to the Debian Edu project&lt;/a&gt; and thus have bank account
103 information publicly available) for NOK 1000.00 could have these extra
104 fields:&lt;/p&gt;
105
106 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
107 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
108 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
109 X-INVOICE-KID:123412341234
110 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
111 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
112 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
113 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
114 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
115
116 &lt;p&gt;The X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER field was proposed in a stackoverflow
117 answer regarding
118 &lt;a href=&quot;http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10045664/storing-bank-account-in-vcard-file&quot;&gt;how
119 to put bank account information into a vCard&lt;/a&gt;. For payments in
120 Norway, either X-INVOICE-KID (payment ID) or X-INVOICE-MSG could be
121 used to pass on information to the seller when paying the invoice.&lt;/p&gt;
122
123 &lt;p&gt;The complete vCard could look like this:&lt;/p&gt;
124
125 &lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
126 BEGIN:VCARD
127 VERSION:2.1
128 ORG:SLX Debian Labs Foundation
129 ADR;WORK:;;Gunnar Schjelderups vei 29D;OSLO;;0485;Norway
130 URL;WORK:http://www.linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/
131 EMAIL;PREF;INTERNET:sdl-styret@rt.nuug.no
132 REV:20130212T095000Z
133 X-INVOICE-NUMBER:1
134 X-INVOICE-AMOUNT:NOK1000.00
135 X-INVOICE-MSG:Donation to Debian Edu
136 X-BANK-ACCOUNT-NUMBER:16040884339
137 X-BANK-IBAN-NUMBER:NO8516040884339
138 X-BANK-SWIFT-NUMBER:DNBANOKKXXX
139 END:VCARD
140 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
141
142 &lt;p&gt;The resulting QR code created using
143 &lt;a href=&quot;http://fukuchi.org/works/qrencode/&quot;&gt;qrencode&lt;/a&gt; would look
144 like this, and should be readable (and thus checkable) by any smart
145 phone, or for example the &lt;a href=&quot;http://zbar.sourceforge.net/&quot;&gt;zbar
146 bar code reader&lt;/a&gt; and feed right into the approval and accounting
147 system.&lt;/p&gt;
148
149 &lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2013-02-12-qr-invoice.png&quot;&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
150
151 &lt;p&gt;The extension fields will most likely not show up in any normal
152 vCard reader, so those parts would have to go directly into a system
153 handling invoices. I am a bit unsure how vCards without name parts
154 are handled, but a simple test indicate that this work just fine.&lt;/p&gt;
155
156 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Update 2013-02-12 11:30&lt;/strong&gt;: Added KID to the proposal
157 based on feedback from Sturle Sunde.&lt;/p&gt;
158 </description>
159 </item>
160
161 <item>
162 <title>12 years of outages - summarised by Stuart Kendrick</title>
163 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/12_years_of_outages___summarised_by_Stuart_Kendrick.html</link>
164 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/12_years_of_outages___summarised_by_Stuart_Kendrick.html</guid>
165 <pubDate>Fri, 26 Oct 2012 14:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
166 <description>&lt;p&gt;I work at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uio.no/&quot;&gt;University of Oslo&lt;/a&gt;
167 looking after the computers, mostly on the unix side, but in general
168 all over the place. I am also a member (and currently leader) of
169 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;the NUUG association&lt;/a&gt;, which in turn
170 make me a member of &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.usenix.org/&quot;&gt;USENIX&lt;/a&gt;. NUUG
171 is an member organisation for us in Norway interested in free
172 software, open standards and unix like operating systems, and USENIX
173 is a US based member organisation with similar targets. And thanks to
174 these memberships, I get all issues of the great USENIX magazine
175 &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.usenix.org/publications/login&quot;&gt;;login:&lt;/a&gt; in the
176 mail several times a year. The magazine is great, and I read most of
177 it every time.&lt;/p&gt;
178
179 &lt;p&gt;In the last issue of the USENIX magazine ;login:, there is an
180 article by &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skendric.com/&quot;&gt;Stuart Kendrick&lt;/a&gt; from
181 Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center titled
182 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/october-2012-volume-37-number-5/what-takes-us-down&quot;&gt;What
183 Takes Us Down&lt;/a&gt;&quot; (longer version also
184 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skendric.com/problem/incident-analysis/2012-06-30/What-Takes-Us-Down.pdf&quot;&gt;available
185 from his own site&lt;/a&gt;), where he report what he found when he
186 processed the outage reports (both planned and unplanned) from the
187 last twelve years and classified them according to cause, time of day,
188 etc etc. The article is a good read to get some empirical data on
189 what kind of problems affect a data centre, but what really inspired
190 me was the kind of reporting they had put in place since 2000.&lt;p&gt;
191
192 &lt;p&gt;The centre set up a mailing list, and started to send fairly
193 standardised messages to this list when a outage was planned or when
194 it already occurred, to announce the plan and get feedback on the
195 assumtions on scope and user impact. Here is the two example from the
196 article: First the unplanned outage:
197
198 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
199 Subject: Exchange 2003 Cluster Issues
200 Severity: Critical (Unplanned)
201 Start: Monday, May 7, 2012, 11:58
202 End: Monday, May 7, 2012, 12:38
203 Duration: 40 minutes
204 Scope: Exchange 2003
205 Description: The HTTPS service on the Exchange cluster crashed, triggering
206 a cluster failover.
207
208 User Impact: During this period, all Exchange users were unable to
209 access e-mail. Zimbra users were unaffected.
210 Technician: [xxx]
211 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
212
213 Next the planned outage:
214
215 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
216 Subject: H Building Switch Upgrades
217 Severity: Major (Planned)
218 Start: Saturday, June 16, 2012, 06:00
219 End: Saturday, June 16, 2012, 16:00
220 Duration: 10 hours
221 Scope: H2 Transport
222 Description: Currently, Catalyst 4006s provide 10/100 Ethernet to end-
223 stations. We will replace these with newer Catalyst
224 4510s.
225 User Impact: All users on H2 will be isolated from the network during
226 this work. Afterward, they will have gigabit
227 connectivity.
228 Technician: [xxx]
229 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
230
231 &lt;p&gt;He notes in his article that the date formats and other fields have
232 been a bit too free form to make it easy to automatically process them
233 into a database for further analysis, and I would have used ISO 8601
234 dates myself to make it easier to process (in other words I would ask
235 people to write &#39;2012-06-16 06:00 +0000&#39; instead of the start time
236 format listed above). There are also other issues with the format
237 that could be improved, read the article for the details.&lt;/p&gt;
238
239 &lt;p&gt;I find the idea of standardising outage messages seem to be such a
240 good idea that I would like to get it implemented here at the
241 university too. We do register
242 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uio.no/tjenester/it/aktuelt/planlagte-tjenesteavbrudd/&quot;&gt;planned
243 changes and outages in a calendar&lt;/a&gt;, and report the to a mailing
244 list, but we do not do so in a structured format and there is not a
245 report to the same location for unplanned outages. Perhaps something
246 for other sites to consider too?&lt;/p&gt;
247 </description>
248 </item>
249
250 <item>
251 <title>NUUGs høringsuttalelse til DIFIs forslag om å kaste ut ODF fra statens standardkatalog</title>
252 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/NUUGs_h_ringsuttalelse_til_DIFIs_forslag_om___kaste_ut_ODF_fra_statens_standardkatalog.html</link>
253 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/NUUGs_h_ringsuttalelse_til_DIFIs_forslag_om___kaste_ut_ODF_fra_statens_standardkatalog.html</guid>
254 <pubDate>Mon, 1 Oct 2012 08:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
255 <description>&lt;p&gt;Som jeg
256 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/DIFI_foresl_r___kaste_ut_ODF_og_ta_inn_OOXML_fra_statens_standardkatalog.html&quot;&gt;skrev
257 i juni&lt;/a&gt; har DIFI foreslått å fjerne krav om å bruke ODF til
258 utveksling av redigerbare dokumenter med det offentlige, og
259 derigjennom tvinge innbyggerne til å forholde seg til formatene til MS
260 Office når en kommuniserer med det offentlige.&lt;/p&gt;
261
262 &lt;p&gt;I går kveld fikk vi i &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;NUUG&lt;/a&gt;
263 fullført vår høringsuttalelse og sendt den inn til DIFI. Du finner
264 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.nuug.no/uttalelser/201209-forskrift-standardkatalog&quot;&gt;uttalelsen
265 på wikien&lt;/a&gt;. Ta en titt. Fristen for å sende inn uttalelse var i
266 går søndag, men en får kanskje sitt innspill med hvis en sender i
267 dag.&lt;/p&gt;
268 </description>
269 </item>
270
271 <item>
272 <title>Free software forced Microsoft to open Office (and don&#39;t forget Officeshots)</title>
273 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_forced_Microsoft_to_open_Office__and_don_t_forget_Officeshots_.html</link>
274 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_software_forced_Microsoft_to_open_Office__and_don_t_forget_Officeshots_.html</guid>
275 <pubDate>Thu, 23 Aug 2012 14:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
276 <description>&lt;p&gt;I came across a great comment from Simon Phipps today, about how
277 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.infoworld.com/d/open-source-software/how-microsoft-was-forced-open-office-200233&quot;&gt;Microsoft
278 have been forced to open Office&lt;/a&gt;, and it made me remember and
279 revisit the great site
280 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.officeshots.org/&quot;&gt;officeshots&lt;/a&gt; which allow you
281 to check out how different programs present the ODF file format. I
282 recommend both to those of my readers interested in ODF. :)&lt;/p&gt;
283 </description>
284 </item>
285
286 <item>
287 <title>OOXML og standardisering</title>
288 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OOXML_og_standardisering.html</link>
289 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OOXML_og_standardisering.html</guid>
290 <pubDate>Wed, 25 Jul 2012 21:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
291 <description>&lt;p&gt;DIFI har
292 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/DIFI_foresl_r___kaste_ut_ODF_og_ta_inn_OOXML_fra_statens_standardkatalog.html&quot;&gt;en
293 høring gående&lt;/a&gt; om ny versjon av statens standardkatalog, med frist
294 2012-09-30, der det foreslås å fjerne ODF fra katalogen og ta inn ISO
295 OOXML. I den anledning minnes jeg
296 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.regjeringen.no/upload/FAD/Vedlegg/IKT-politikk/Refkat_v2.pdf&quot;&gt;notatet
297 FAD skrev&lt;/a&gt; da versjon 2 av standardkatalogen var under
298 utarbeidelse, da FAD og DIFI fortsatt forsto poenget med og verdien av
299 frie og åpne standarder.&lt;/p&gt;
300
301 &lt;p&gt;Det er mange som tror at OOXML er ett spesifikt format, men det
302 brukes ofte som fellesbetegnelse for både formatet spesifisert av
303 ECMA, ISO, og formatet produsert av Microsoft Office (aka docx), som
304 dessverre ikke er det samme formatet. Fra en av de som implementerte
305 støtte for docx-formatet i KDE fikk jeg høre at ISO-spesifikasjonen
306 var en nyttig referanse, men at det var mange avvik som gjorde at en
307 ikke kunne gå ut ifra at Microsoft Office produserte dokumenter i
308 henhold til ISO-spesifikasjonen.&lt;/p&gt;
309
310 &lt;p&gt;ISOs OOXML-spesifikasjon har (eller hadde, usikker på om
311 kommentaren er oppdatert) i følge
312 &lt;a href=&quot;http://surguy.net/articles/ooxml-validation-and-technical-review.xml&quot;&gt;Inigo
313 Surguy&lt;/a&gt; feil i mer enn 10% av eksemplene, noe som i tillegg gjør
314 det vanskelig å bruke spesifikasjonen til å implementere støtte for
315 ISO OOXML. Jeg har ingen erfaring med å validere OOXML-dokumenter
316 selv, men ser at
317 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=5124&quot;&gt;Microsoft
318 har laget en validator&lt;/a&gt; som jeg ikke kan teste da den kun er
319 tilgjengelig på MS Windows. Finner også en annen kalt
320 &lt;a href=&quot;http://code.google.com/p/officeotron/&quot;&gt;Office-O-Tron&lt;/A&gt; som
321 er oppdatert i fjor. Lurer på om de validerer at dokumenter er i
322 formatet til Microsoft office, eller om de validerer at de er i
323 henhold til formatene spesifisert av ECMA og ISO. Det hadde også vært
324 interessant å se om docx-dokumentene publisert av det offentlige er
325 gyldige ISO OOXML-dokumenter.&lt;/p&gt;
326 </description>
327 </item>
328
329 <item>
330 <title>Mer oppfølging fra MPEG-LA om avtale med dem for å kringkaste og publisere H.264-video</title>
331 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Mer_oppf_lging_fra_MPEG_LA_om_avtale_med_dem_for___kringkaste_og_publisere_H_264_video.html</link>
332 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Mer_oppf_lging_fra_MPEG_LA_om_avtale_med_dem_for___kringkaste_og_publisere_H_264_video.html</guid>
333 <pubDate>Thu, 5 Jul 2012 23:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
334 <description>&lt;p&gt;I føljetongen om H.264
335 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/MPEG_LA_mener_NRK_m__ha_avtale_med_dem_for___kringkaste_og_publisere_H_264_video.html&quot;&gt;forlot
336 jeg leserne i undring&lt;/a&gt; om hvor pakken fra MPEG-LA tok veien, og om
337 hvilke selskaper i Norge som har avtale med MPEG-LA. Da Ryan hos
338 MPEG-LA dro på ferie sendte jeg min melding videre til hans kollega,
339 og dagen etter fikk jeg følgende svar derfra:&lt;/p&gt;
340
341 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
342 &lt;p&gt;Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2012 18:32:34 +0000
343 &lt;br&gt;From: Sidney Wolf &amp;lt;SWolf (at) mpegla.com&amp;gt;
344 &lt;br&gt;To: Petter Reinholdtsen &amp;lt;pere (at) hungry.com&amp;gt;
345 &lt;br&gt;Cc: Ryan Rodriguez &amp;lt;RRodriguez (at) mpegla.com&amp;gt;
346 &lt;br&gt;Subject: RE: Do NRK have a license agreement with MPEG-LA?&lt;/p&gt;
347
348 &lt;p&gt;Dear Mr. Reinholdtsen,&lt;/p&gt;
349
350 &lt;p&gt;Thank you for your message. As you know, Ryan is currently our of the
351 office, so it will be my pleasure to assist you.&lt;/p&gt;
352
353 &lt;p&gt;Per your request, attached please find an electronic copy of the
354 AVC Patent Portfolio License. Please note that the electronic copy of
355 the License is provided as a convenience and for informational
356 purposes only. When concluding the Licenses, only the hard copies
357 provided by MPEG LA may be used.&lt;/p&gt;
358
359 &lt;p&gt;To your question, MPEG LA lists our Licensees on our website
360 according to each program. The lists are in alphabetical order, so it
361 is very easy to search.&lt;/p&gt;
362
363 &lt;p&gt;I hope that this was helpful. If we can be of additional
364 assistance, please let me know.&lt;/p&gt;
365
366 &lt;p&gt;Kind regards,&lt;/p&gt;
367
368 &lt;p&gt;Sidney A. Wolf
369 &lt;br&gt;Manager, Global Licensing
370 &lt;br&gt;MPEG LA&lt;/p&gt;
371 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
372
373 &lt;p&gt;Selv om et epostvedlegg er nyttig for mottakeren, så håpet jeg å få
374 et dokument jeg kunne dele med alle leserne av bloggen min, og ikke et
375 som må deles på individuell basis. Opphavsretten krever godkjenning
376 fra rettighetsinnehaver før en kan gjøre slikt, så dermed fulgte jeg
377 opp med et spørsmål om dette var greit.&lt;/p&gt;
378
379 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
380 &lt;p&gt;Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2012 20:25:06 +0200
381 &lt;br&gt;From: Petter Reinholdtsen &amp;lt;pere (at) hungry.com&amp;gt;
382 &lt;br&gt;To: Sidney Wolf &amp;lt;SWolf (at) mpegla.com&amp;gt;
383 &lt;br&gt;Cc: Ryan Rodriguez &amp;lt;RRodriguez (at) mpegla.com&amp;gt;
384 &lt;br&gt;Subject: Re: Do NRK have a license agreement with MPEG-LA?&lt;/p&gt;
385
386 &lt;p&gt;Thank you for your reply.&lt;/p&gt;
387
388 &lt;p&gt;[Sidney Wolf]
389 &lt;br&gt;&amp;gt; Per your request, attached please find an electronic copy of the AVC
390 &lt;br&gt;&amp;gt; Patent Portfolio License. Please note that the electronic copy of
391 &lt;br&gt;&amp;gt; the License is provided as a convenience and for informational
392 &lt;br&gt;&amp;gt; purposes only. When concluding the Licenses, only the hard copies
393 &lt;br&gt;&amp;gt; provided by MPEG LA may be used.&lt;/p&gt;
394
395 &lt;p&gt;This is useful for me to learn, but the reason I asked for the
396 Internet address of the licensing document was to ensure I could
397 publish a link to it when I discuss the topic of H.264 licensing here
398 in Norway, and allow others to verify my observations. I can not do
399 the same with an email attachment. Thus I would like to ask you if it
400 is OK with MPEG LA that I publish this document on the Internet for
401 others to read?&lt;/p&gt;
402
403 &lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; To your question, MPEG LA lists our Licensees on our website
404 &lt;br&gt;&amp;gt; according to each program. The lists are in alphabetical order, so
405 &lt;br&gt;&amp;gt; it is very easy to search.&lt;/p&gt;
406
407 &lt;p&gt;I am afraid this do not help me locate Norwegian companies in the
408 list of Licensees. I do not know the name of all companies and
409 organisations in Norway, and thus do not know how to locate the
410 Norwegian ones on that list.&lt;/p&gt;
411
412 &lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; I hope that this was helpful. If we can be of additional assistance,
413 &lt;br&gt;&amp;gt; please let me know.&lt;/p&gt;
414
415 &lt;p&gt;Absoutely helpful to learn more about how MPEG LA handle licensing.&lt;/p&gt;
416
417 &lt;p&gt;--
418 &lt;br&gt;Happy hacking
419 &lt;br&gt;Petter Reinholdtsen&lt;/p&gt;
420 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
421
422 &lt;p&gt;Jeg håpet også at det skulle være mulig å få vite hvilke av de
423 mange hundre som har avtale med MPEG-LA om bruk av H.264 som holdt til
424 i Norge. Begge mine håp falt i grus med svaret fra MPEG-LA.
425
426 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
427 &lt;p&gt;Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2012 17:42:39 +0000
428 &lt;br&gt;From: Sidney Wolf &amp;lt;SWolf (at) mpegla.com&amp;gt;
429 &lt;br&gt;To: &#39;Petter Reinholdtsen&#39; &amp;lt;pere (at) hungry.com&amp;gt;
430 &lt;br&gt;Cc: Ryan Rodriguez &amp;lt;RRodriguez (at) mpegla.com&amp;gt;
431 &lt;br&gt;Subject: RE: Do NRK have a license agreement with MPEG-LA?&lt;/p&gt;
432
433 &lt;p&gt;Dear Mr. Reinholdtsen,&lt;/p&gt;
434
435 &lt;p&gt;Thank you for your reply.&lt;/p&gt;
436
437 &lt;p&gt;We appreciate the additional explanation you have provided and for
438 asking our permission to publish the electronic copy of the License in
439 advance of doing so. Typically, MPEG LA prefers to distribute the
440 electronic copies of our Licenses to interested parties. Therefore,
441 please feel free to send interested parties to the AVC portion of our
442 website, http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/Intro.aspx for
443 their further reference.&lt;/p&gt;
444
445 &lt;p&gt;As previously mentioned, MPEG LA maintains a list of Licensees in good
446 standing on our website according to each program. Due to the large
447 volume of Licensees, it would be administratively impractical to
448 provide this level of detail to interested parties. Therefore, I am
449 afraid we are not in a position to assist you with your request.&lt;/p&gt;
450
451 &lt;p&gt;Kind regards,&lt;/p&gt;
452
453 &lt;p&gt;Sidney A. Wolf
454 &lt;br&gt;Manager, Global Licensing
455 &lt;br&gt;MPEG LA&lt;/p&gt;
456 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
457
458 &lt;p&gt;Men takket være epostvedlegget kunne jeg søke på Google etter
459 setningen &quot;WHEREAS, a video standard commonly referred to as AVC has
460 been defined and is referred to in this Agreement as the “AVC
461 Standard” (as more fully defined herein below)&quot; som finnes i avtalen,
462 og lokalisere en kopi fra 2007 av
463 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1342960/000119312509050004/dex1024.htm&quot;&gt;lisensavtalen
464 mellom MPEG-LA og DivX, Inc.&lt;/a&gt;, slik at mine lesere kan se hvordan
465 avtalen så ut da. Jeg har ikke sammenlignet tekstene for å se om noe
466 har endret seg siden den tid, men satser på at teksten er representativ.&lt;/p&gt;
467
468 &lt;p&gt;Jeg aner fortsatt ikke hvor FedEx tok veien med pakken fra
469 MPEG-LA.&lt;/p&gt;
470
471 &lt;p&gt;Update 2012-07-06: Jeg er visst ikke den første som forsøker å få
472 klarhet i problemstillinger rundt H.264, og kom nettopp over en veldig
473 interessant bloggpost fra 2010 hos LibreVideo med tittelen
474 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.librevideo.org/blog/2010/06/14/mpeg-la-answers-some-questions-about-avch-264-licensing/&quot;&gt;MPEG-LA
475 answers some questions about AVC/H.264 licensing&lt;/a&gt;. Anbefales!&lt;/p&gt;
476 </description>
477 </item>
478
479 <item>
480 <title>DIFI foreslår å kaste ut ODF og ta inn OOXML fra statens standardkatalog</title>
481 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/DIFI_foresl_r___kaste_ut_ODF_og_ta_inn_OOXML_fra_statens_standardkatalog.html</link>
482 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/DIFI_foresl_r___kaste_ut_ODF_og_ta_inn_OOXML_fra_statens_standardkatalog.html</guid>
483 <pubDate>Fri, 29 Jun 2012 18:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
484 <description>&lt;p&gt;DIFI har nettopp annonsert høring om revisjon av
485 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder&quot;&gt;standardkatalogen&lt;/a&gt;,
486 og endelig har Microsoft fått viljen sin. Se
487 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/forslag-om-endring-av-forskrift-om-it-standarder-i-offentlig-forvaltning&quot;&gt;høringssiden&lt;/a&gt;
488 for hele teksten.&lt;/p&gt;
489
490 &lt;p&gt;Her er forslaget i sin helhet:&lt;/p&gt;
491
492 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
493 &lt;p&gt;3.2 Revisjon av krav til redigerbare dokumenter&lt;/p&gt;
494
495 &lt;p&gt;I første versjon av referansekatalogen i 2007 ble det satt krav om
496 Open Document Format (ODF), versjon 1.1 (OASIS, 1.2.2007) for
497 redigerbare dokumenter. Kravet var obligatorisk for stat og sterkt
498 anbefalt for kommunal sektor. I 2009 ble kravet gjort obligatorisk for
499 hele offentlig sektor i
500 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lovdata.no/for/sf/fa/xa-20090925-1222.html&quot;&gt;forskrift
501 om IT-standarder i forvaltningen&lt;/a&gt;. Anvendelsesområdet for kravet
502 har vært begrenset til publisering av dokumenter som skal bearbeides
503 videre (§ 4 nr. 1 andre ledd). I 2011 ble anvendelsesområdet utvidet
504 til å omfatte utveksling av dokumenter beregnet for redigering som
505 vedlegg til e-post (§4 nr. 2).&lt;/p&gt;
506
507 &lt;p&gt;Office Open XML ISO/IEC 29500:2011 (OOXML) er et dokumentformat
508 opprinnelig utviklet av Microsoft med tilsvarende anvendelsesområde
509 som ODF. Formatet er blant annet tatt i bruk i nyere versjoner av
510 kontorstøtteprogamvaren MS Office. Difi har foretatt en
511 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.standard.difi.no/filearchive/revisjonsvurdering-standarder-for-redigerbare-dokumenter-v1-0.pdf&quot;&gt;revisjonsvurdering&lt;/a&gt;
512 av krav som stilles til redigerbare dokumenter i Forskrift om
513 IT-standarder i forvaltningen, og anbefaler at kravet til ODF
514 fjernes. Dette innebærer at det ikke stilles krav til dokumentformater
515 for redigerbare dokumenter ved publisering på offentlige virksomheters
516 nettsider og for redigerbare vedlegg til e-post som sendes fra
517 offentlige virksomheter til innbyggere og næringsliv. Offentlige
518 virksomheter vil dermed stå fritt til å publisere eller sende
519 redigerbare dokumenter i det format som ivaretar brukernes behov
520 best.&lt;/p&gt;
521
522 &lt;p&gt;Forslaget innebærer at krav til ODF utgår § 4 nr. 1 tredje ledd og
523 § 4 nr. 2 første ledd&lt;/p&gt;
524
525 &lt;P&gt;Imidlertid bør det stilles strengere krav til hvilke formater
526 offentlige virksomheter plikter å motta redigerbare dokumenter. Vi
527 mener at det ikke bør skilles mellom mottak av redigerbare dokumenter
528 som sendes i ODF eller OOXML3, som begge er åpne standarder. Dette
529 medfører at innbyggere og næringsliv skal kunne basere sitt valg av
530 programvare på egne behov og ikke på de valg offentlige virksomheter
531 tar. Kravet vil omfatte hele offentlig sektor, herunder
532 utdanningssektoren, hvor det kanskje er størst bruk av ODF. Kravet er
533 foreslått som ny § 4 nr.2 andre ledd&lt;/p&gt;
534 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
535
536 &lt;P&gt;De satser vel på at det hele blir glemt over sommeren, og at de
537 fleste har glemt Standard Norge og ISOs fallitt fra da OOXML ble
538 jukset igjennom som ISO-standard. Jeg håper mine lesere sender inn
539 høringsuttalelser til høringen.&lt;/p&gt;
540
541 &lt;p&gt;Anbefaler alle å friske opp sine argumenter ved å lese
542 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_reply_from_Edgar_Villanueva_to_Microsoft_in_Peru.html&quot;&gt;svaret
543 fra senator Edgar Villanueva til Microsoft i Peru&lt;/a&gt;. Det er en
544 klassisk tekst som er like gyldig i dag som da det ble skrevet.&lt;/p&gt;
545
546 </description>
547 </item>
548
549 <item>
550 <title>Departementenes servicesenter har ingen avtale om bruk av H.264 med MPEG-LA</title>
551 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Departementenes_servicesenter_har_ingen_avtale_om_bruk_av_H_264_med_MPEG_LA.html</link>
552 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Departementenes_servicesenter_har_ingen_avtale_om_bruk_av_H_264_med_MPEG_LA.html</guid>
553 <pubDate>Fri, 29 Jun 2012 09:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
554 <description>&lt;p&gt;Da fikk jeg nettopp svar fra
555 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dss.dep.no/&quot;&gt;Departementenes servicesenter&lt;/a&gt;
556 (DSS) på
557 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Trenger_en_avtale_med_MPEG_LA_for___publisere_og_kringkaste_H_264_video_.html&quot;&gt;mitt
558 spørsmål om avtale rundt bruk av H.264&lt;/a&gt;. De har ingen avtale med
559 MPEG LA eller dets representanter. Her er svaret.
560
561 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
562
563 &lt;p&gt;Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2012 07:04:42 +0000
564 &lt;br&gt;From: Nielsen Mette Haga &amp;lt;Mette-Haga.Nielsen (at) dss.dep.no&amp;gt;
565 &lt;br&gt;To: Petter Reinholdtsen &amp;lt;petter.reinholdtsen (at) ...&amp;gt;
566 &lt;br&gt;CC: Postmottak &amp;lt;Postmottak (at) dss.dep.no&amp;gt;
567 &lt;br&gt;Subject: SV: Innsynsbegjæring om MPEG/H.264-relaterte avtaler&lt;/p&gt;
568
569 &lt;p&gt;DSS har ikke inngått noen egen lisensavtale med MPEG-LA eller noen som
570 representerer MPEG-LA i Norge. Videoløsningen på regjeringen.no er
571 levert av Smartcom:tv. Lisensforholdet rundt H.264 er ikke omtalt i
572 vår avtale med Smartcom.&lt;/p&gt;
573
574 &lt;p&gt;Vennlig hilsen&lt;/p&gt;
575
576 &lt;p&gt;Mette Haga Nielsen
577 &lt;br&gt;Fung. seksjonssjef&lt;/p&gt;
578
579 &lt;p&gt;Departementenes servicesenter&lt;/p&gt;
580
581 &lt;p&gt;Informasjonsforvaltning
582
583 &lt;p&gt;Mobil 93 09 83 51
584 &lt;br&gt;E-post mette-haga.nielsen (at) dss.dep.no&lt;/p&gt;
585 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
586
587 &lt;p&gt;Hvis den norske regjeringen representert ved DSS ikke har slik
588 avtale, så kan en kanskje konkludere med at det ikke trengs? Jeg er
589 ikke trygg på at det er god juridisk grunn å stå på, men det er i det
590 minste interessant å vite at hverken NRK eller DSS har funnet det
591 nødvendig å ha avtale om bruk av H.264.&lt;/p&gt;
592
593 &lt;p&gt;Det forklarer ikke hvordan de kan ignorere bruksvilkårene knyttet
594 til bruk av opphavsrettsbeskyttet materiale de bruker til
595 videoproduksjon, med mindre slike vilkår kan ignoreres av selskaper og
596 privatpersoner i Norge. Har de lov til å bryte vilkårene, eller har
597 de brutt dem og så langt sluppet unna med det? Jeg aner ikke.&lt;/p&gt;
598 </description>
599 </item>
600
601 <item>
602 <title>MPEG-LA mener NRK må ha avtale med dem for å kringkaste og publisere H.264-video</title>
603 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/MPEG_LA_mener_NRK_m__ha_avtale_med_dem_for___kringkaste_og_publisere_H_264_video.html</link>
604 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/MPEG_LA_mener_NRK_m__ha_avtale_med_dem_for___kringkaste_og_publisere_H_264_video.html</guid>
605 <pubDate>Thu, 28 Jun 2012 20:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
606 <description>&lt;p&gt;Etter at NRK
607 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/NRK_nekter___finne_og_utlevere_eventuell_avtale_med_MPEG_LA.html&quot;&gt;nektet
608 å spore opp eventuell avtale med MPEG-LA&lt;/a&gt; eller andre om bruk av
609 MPEG/H.264-video etter at jeg &lt;a
610 href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Trenger_en_avtale_med_MPEG_LA_for___publisere_og_kringkaste_H_264_video_.html&quot;&gt;ba
611 om innsyn i slike avtaler&lt;/a&gt;, tenkte jeg at i stedet for å forsøke å
612 få NRK til å finne en slik avtale, så burde det være like enkelt å
613 spørre MPEG-LA om de hadde avtale med NRK. Spørsmålet ble sendt før
614 jeg fikk tips fra Kieran Kunhya om hvor listen over lisensinnehavere
615 &quot;in Good Standing&quot; befant seg. MPEG-LA svarte meg i dag, og kan
616 fortelle at NRK ikke har noen avtale med dem, så da er i det minste det
617 slått fast. Ikke overraskende mener MPEG-LA at det trengs en avtale
618 med MPEG-LA for å streame H.264, men deres rammer er jo
619 rettstilstanden i USA og ikke Norge. Jeg tar dermed den delen av
620 svaret med en klype salt. Jeg er dermed fortsatt ikke klok på om det
621 trengs en avtale, og hvis det trengs en avtale her i Norge, heller
622 ikke sikker på om NRK har en avtale med noen andre enn MPEG-LA som
623 gjør at de ikke trenger avtale direkte med MPEG-LA. Jeg håper NRKs
624 jurister har vurdert dette, og at det er mulig å få tilgang til
625 vurderingen uansett om de trenger en avtale eller ikke.&lt;/p&gt;
626
627 &lt;p&gt;Her er epostutvekslingen med MPEG-LA så langt. Håper ikke
628 utvekslingen fører til NRK plutselig får en litt uventet pakke fra
629 MPEG-LA.&lt;/p&gt;
630
631 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
632 &lt;p&gt;Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2012 15:29:37 +0200
633 &lt;br&gt;From: Petter Reinholdtsen &amp;lt;pere (at) hungry.com&amp;gt;
634 &lt;br&gt;To: licensing-web (at) mpegla.com
635 &lt;br&gt;Subject: Do NRK have a license agreement with MPEG-LA?&lt;/p&gt;
636
637 &lt;p&gt;Hi. I have a small question for you, that I hope it is OK that I
638 ask.&lt;/p&gt;
639
640 &lt;p&gt;Is there any license agreements between MPEG-LA and NRK, &amp;lt;URL:
641 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nrk.no/&quot;&gt;http://www.nrk.no/&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;, the
642 Norwegian national broadcasting cooperation? I am not sure if they
643 need one, and am just curious if such agreeement exist.&lt;/p&gt;
644
645 &lt;p&gt;The postal address is&lt;/p&gt;
646
647 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
648 NRK
649 &lt;br&gt;Postbox 8500, Majorstuen
650 &lt;br&gt;0340 Oslo
651 &lt;br&gt;Norway
652 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
653
654 &lt;p&gt;if it make it easier for you to locate such agreement.&lt;/p&gt;
655
656 &lt;p&gt;Can you tell me how many entities in Norway have an agreement with
657 MPEG-LA, and the name of these entities?&lt;/p&gt;
658
659 &lt;p&gt;--
660 &lt;br&gt;Happy hacking
661 &lt;br&gt;Petter Reinholdtsen
662 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
663
664 &lt;p&gt;I dag, to dager senere, fikk jeg følgende svar:&lt;/p&gt;
665
666 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
667 &lt;p&gt;Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2012 14:11:17 +0000
668 &lt;br&gt;From: Ryan Rodriguez &amp;lt;RRodriguez (at) mpegla.com&gt;
669 &lt;br&gt;To: Petter Reinholdtsen &amp;lt;pere (at) hungry.com&gt;
670 &lt;br&gt;CC: MD Administration &amp;lt;MDAdministration (at) mpegla.com&gt;
671 &lt;br&gt;Subject: RE: Do NRK have a license agreement with MPEG-LA?&lt;/p&gt;
672
673 &lt;p&gt;Dear Mr. Reinholdtsen,&lt;/p&gt;
674
675 &lt;p&gt;Thank you for your message and for your interest in MPEG LA. We
676 appreciate hearing from you and I will be happy to assist you.&lt;/p&gt;
677
678 &lt;p&gt;To begin, I will assume that you are referring to AVC/H.264
679 technology in your message below, as this technology is commonly used
680 in the transmission of video content. In that case, please allow me
681 to briefly summarize the coverage provided by our AVC Patent Portfolio
682 License.&lt;/p&gt;
683
684 &lt;P&gt;Our AVC License provides coverage for end products and video
685 services that make use of AVC/H.264 technology. Accordingly, the
686 party offering such end products and video to End Users concludes the
687 AVC License and is responsible for paying the applicable royalties
688 associated with the end products/video they offer.&lt;/p&gt;
689
690 &lt;p&gt;While the Norwegian Broadcast Corporation (NRK) is not currently a
691 Licensee to MPEG LA&#39;s AVC License (or any other Portfolio License
692 offered by MPEG LA), if NRK offers AVC Video to End Users for
693 remuneration (for example, Title-by-Title, Subscription, Free
694 Television, or Internet Broadcast AVC Video), then NRK will need to
695 conclude the AVC License and may be responsible for paying applicable
696 royalties associated with the AVC Video it distributes.&lt;/p&gt;
697
698 &lt;p&gt;Today I will send you a FedEx package containing a copy of our AVC
699 License for your review. You should receive the License document
700 within the next few days.&lt;/p&gt;
701
702 &lt;p&gt;Meanwhile, MPEG LA currently has several Norwegian Licensees that
703 can be found under the &quot;Licensees&quot; header within the respective
704 portion of our website. For example, you may find our list of
705 Licensees in Good Standing to our AVC License in the AVC portion of
706 our website,
707 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/Licensees.aspx&quot;&gt;http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/Licensees.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
708
709 &lt;p&gt;I hope the above information is helpful. If you have additional
710 questions or need further assistance with the AVC License, please feel
711 free to contact me directly. I look forward to hearing from you again
712 soon.&lt;/p&gt;
713
714 &lt;p&gt;Best regards,&lt;/p&gt;
715
716 &lt;p&gt;Ryan&lt;/p&gt;
717
718 &lt;p&gt;Ryan M. Rodriguez
719 &lt;br&gt;Licensing Associate
720 &lt;br&gt;MPEG LA
721 &lt;br&gt;5425 Wisconsin Avenue
722 &lt;br&gt;Suite 801
723 &lt;br&gt;Chevy Chase, MD 20815
724 &lt;br&gt;U.S.A.
725 &lt;br&gt;Phone: +1 (301) 986-6660 x211
726 &lt;br&gt;Fax: +1 (301) 986-8575
727 &lt;br&gt;Email: rrodriguez (at) mpegla.com&lt;/p&gt;
728
729 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
730
731 &lt;p&gt;Meldingen om utsendt FedEx-pakke var så merkelig at jeg
732 øyeblikkelig sendte svar tilbake og spurte hva i alle dager han mente,
733 da han jo ikke hadde fått noen postadresse som nådde meg.&lt;/p&gt;
734
735 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
736
737 &lt;p&gt;Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2012 16:36:15 +0200
738 &lt;br&gt;From: Petter Reinholdtsen &amp;lt;pere (at) hungry.com&amp;gt;
739 &lt;br&gt;To: Ryan Rodriguez &amp;lt;RRodriguez (at) mpegla.com&amp;gt;
740 &lt;br&gt;Cc: MD Administration &amp;lt;MDAdministration (at) mpegla.com&amp;gt;
741 &lt;br&gt;Subject: Re: Do NRK have a license agreement with MPEG-LA?&lt;/p&gt;
742
743 &lt;p&gt;[Ryan Rodriguez]
744 &lt;br&gt;&amp;gt; Dear Mr. Reinholdtsen,&lt;/p&gt;
745
746 &lt;p&gt;Thank you for your quick reply.&lt;/p&gt;
747
748 &lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Today I will send you a FedEx package containing a copy of our AVC
749 &lt;br&gt;&amp;gt; License for your review. You should receive the License document
750 &lt;br&gt;&amp;gt; within the next few days.&lt;/p&gt;
751
752 &lt;p&gt;The part about sending a FedEx package confused me, though. I did not
753 &lt;br&gt;give you my address, nor am I associated with NRK in any way, so I hope
754 &lt;br&gt;you did not try to send me a package using the address of NRK. If you
755 &lt;br&gt;would send me the Internet address of to the document, it would be more
756 &lt;br&gt;useful to me to be able to download it as an electronic document.&lt;/p&gt;
757
758 &lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Meanwhile, MPEG LA currently has several Norwegian Licensees that can
759 &lt;br&gt;&amp;gt; be found under the &quot;Licensees&quot; header within the respective portion
760 &lt;br&gt;&amp;gt; of our website. For example, you may find our list of Licensees in
761 &lt;br&gt;&amp;gt; Good Standing to our AVC License in the AVC portion of our website,
762 &lt;br&gt;&amp;gt; http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/Licensees.aspx&lt;/p&gt;
763
764 &lt;p&gt;How can I recognize the Norwegian licensees?&lt;/p&gt;
765
766 &lt;p&gt;--
767 &lt;br&gt;Happy hacking
768 &lt;br&gt;Petter Reinholdtsen&lt;/p&gt;
769 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
770
771 &lt;p&gt;Selv om jeg svarte kun noen minutter etter at jeg fikk eposten fra
772 MPEG-LA, fikk jeg eposten under som automatisk var beskjed på min
773 siste epost. Får håpe noen likevel følger opp &quot;FedEx-pakken&quot;. For å
774 øke sjansen for at noen revurderer utsending av pakke uten mottaker,
775 videresendte jeg min epost til swolf (at) mpegla.com, så får vi se.
776 Har ikke hørt noe mer 3 timer senere, så jeg mistenker at ingen leste
777 min epost tidsnok.&lt;/p&gt;
778
779 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
780
781 &lt;p&gt;Date: Thu, 28 Jun 2012 14:36:20 +0000
782 &lt;br&gt;From: Ryan Rodriguez &amp;lt;RRodriguez (at) mpegla.com&amp;gt;
783 &lt;br&gt;To: Petter Reinholdtsen &amp;lt;pere (at) hungry.com&amp;gt;
784 &lt;br&gt;Subject: Automatic reply: Do NRK have a license agreement with MPEG-LA?&lt;/p&gt;
785
786 &lt;p&gt;Thank you for your message.&lt;/p&gt;
787
788 &lt;p&gt;I will be out of the office until Thursday, July 5 and will respond
789 to all messages upon my return. If this is a matter that requires
790 immediate attention, please contact Sidney Wolf (swolf (at)
791 mpegla.com)&lt;/p&gt;
792
793 &lt;p&gt;Best regards,&lt;/p&gt;
794
795 &lt;p&gt;Ryan&lt;/p&gt;
796
797 &lt;p&gt;Ryan M. Rodriguez
798 &lt;br&gt;Licensing Associate
799 &lt;br&gt;MPEG LA&lt;/p&gt;
800
801 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
802
803 &lt;p&gt;Litt klokere, men fortsatt ikke klok på mitt opprinnelige spørsmål,
804 som er om en trenger avtale med MPEG-LA for å publisere eller
805 kringkaste H.264-video i Norge.&lt;/p&gt;
806 </description>
807 </item>
808
809 <item>
810 <title>NRK nekter å finne og utlevere eventuell avtale med MPEG-LA</title>
811 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/NRK_nekter___finne_og_utlevere_eventuell_avtale_med_MPEG_LA.html</link>
812 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/NRK_nekter___finne_og_utlevere_eventuell_avtale_med_MPEG_LA.html</guid>
813 <pubDate>Mon, 25 Jun 2012 15:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
814 <description>&lt;p&gt;Jeg fikk nettopp svar fra NRK på
815 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Trenger_en_avtale_med_MPEG_LA_for___publisere_og_kringkaste_H_264_video_.html&quot;&gt;min
816 forespørsel om kopi av avtale&lt;/a&gt; med MPEG-LA eller andre om bruk av
817 MPEG og/eller H.264. Svaret har fått saksreferanse 2011/371 (mon tro
818 hva slags sak fra 2011 dette er?) hos NRK og lyder som følger:&lt;/p&gt;
819
820 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
821
822 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Svar på innsynsbegjæring i MPEG / H.264-relaterte
823 avtaler&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
824
825 &lt;p&gt;Viser til innsynsbegjæring av 19. juni 2012. Kravet om innsyn
826 gjelder avtale som gjør at NRK «ikke er begrenset av de generelle
827 bruksvilkårene som gjelder for utstyr som bruker MPEG og/eller
828 H.264».&lt;/p&gt;
829
830 &lt;p&gt;I henhold til offentleglova § 28 annet ledd må innsynskravet gjelde
831 en bestemt sak eller i rimelig utstrekning saker av en bestemt
832 sak. Det er på det rene at det aktuelle innsynskravet ikke gjelder en
833 bestemt sak. Spørsmålet som reiser seg er om identifiseringsgraden er
834 tilstrekkelig. I Justisdepartementets «Rettleiar til offentleglova»
835 står følgende:&lt;/p&gt;
836
837 &lt;p&gt;«Kravet om at innsynskravet må gjelde ei bestemt sak er til hinder
838 for at eit innsynskrav kan gjelde alle saker av ein bestemt art, utan
839 at den enkelte saka blir identifisert. Ein kan med andre ord i
840 utgangspunktet ikkje krevje innsyn i til dømes alle saker om
841 utsleppsløyve hos Statens forureiningstilsyn frå dei siste tre åra,
842 med mindre ein identifiserer kvar enkelt sak, til dømes med tilvising
843 til dato, partar eller liknande.»&lt;/p&gt;
844
845 &lt;p&gt;Vedrørende denne begrensningen har Justisdepartementet uttalt
846 følgende (Lovavdelingens uttalelser JDLOV-2010-3295):&lt;/p&gt;
847
848 &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;«Bakgrunnen for avgrensinga av kva innsynskravet kan gjelde,
849 er fyrst og fremst at meir generelle innsynskrav, utan noka form for
850 identifikasjon av kva ein eigentleg ynskjer, ville vere svært
851 vanskelege å handsame for forvaltninga.»&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
852
853 &lt;p&gt;I samme sak uttaler Lovavdelingen følgende:&lt;/p&gt;
854
855 &lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;«Det følgjer vidare av offentleglova § 28 andre ledd at det `i
856 rimeleg utstrekning&#39; kan krevjast innsyn i `saker av ein bestemt
857 art&#39;. Vilkåret om at eit innsynskrav berre `i rimeleg utstrekning&#39; kan
858 gjelde saker av ein bestemt art, er i hovudsak knytt til kor
859 arbeidskrevjande det vil vere å finne fram til dei aktuelle
860 dokumenta. I tillegg reknar vi med at vilkåret kan gje grunnlag for å
861 nekte innsyn i tilfelle der innsynskravet er så omfattande (gjeld så
862 mange dokument) at arbeidsmengda som ville gått med til å handsame
863 det, er større enn det ein `i rimeleg utstrekning&#39; kan krevje (sjølv
864 om det nok skal mykje til).»&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
865
866 &lt;p&gt;NRK har ikke noen egen sammenstilling over avtaler innenfor
867 bestemte områder som omtales i innsynsbegjæringen. De måtte søkes på
868 vanlig måte. I tillegg finnes ikke noen automatisert måte å finne
869 avtaler som «ikke er begrenset av de generelle bruksvilkårene som
870 gjelder for utstyr som bruker MPEG og/eller H.264». En slik
871 gjennomgang av avtaler måtte gjøres manuelt av en person med
872 spesialistkunnskap. Dette vil kreve at NRK avsetter omfattende
873 ressurser for å finne frem relevante avtaler og for deretter å vurdere
874 om de dekkes av det innsynsbegjæringen omfattes.&lt;/p&gt;
875
876 &lt;p&gt;På bakgrunn av dette nekter NRK innsyn, med den begrunnelsen at
877 innsynskravet er så omfattende at arbeidsmengden for å håndtere kravet
878 vil være langt større enn det som i rimelig utstrekning kan kreves i
879 henhold til offentleglova § 28 annet ledd.&lt;/p&gt;
880
881 &lt;p&gt;Avslag på deres innsynsbegjæring kan påklages til Kultur- og
882 kirkedepartementet innen tre uker fra det tidspunkt avslaget kommer
883 frem til mottakeren, i henhold til reglene i offentleglova § 32,
884 jf. forvaltningsloven kapittel VI. Klagen skal stiles til Kultur- og
885 kirkedepartementet, og sendes til NRK.&lt;/p&gt;
886
887 &lt;p&gt;NRK er imidlertid etter Offentleglova forpliktet å gi ut journaler,
888 slik at en eventuell søknad om innsyn kan tydeligere identifisere
889 hvilke dokumenter som det ønskes innsyn i. NRKs offentlige journaler
890 for inneværende og forrige måned ligger ute på
891 NRK.no/innsyn. Journaler som går lengre tilbake i tid, kan sendes ut
892 på forespørsel til innsyn (at) nrk.no.&lt;/p&gt;
893
894 &lt;p&gt;Med hilsen
895 &lt;br&gt;Dokumentarkivet i NRK
896 &lt;br&gt;v/ Elin Brandsrud
897 &lt;br&gt;Tel. direkte: 23 04 29 29
898 &lt;br&gt;Post: RBM3, Postboks 8500 Majorstuen, 0340 Oslo
899 &lt;br&gt;innsyn (at) nrk.no&lt;/p&gt;
900
901 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
902
903 &lt;p&gt;Svaret kom
904 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2012-06-25-video-mpegla-nrk.pdf&quot;&gt;i
905 PDF-form som vedlegg på epost&lt;/a&gt;. Jeg er litt usikker på hvordan jeg
906 best går videre for å bli klok, men jeg har jo i hvert fall tre uker
907 på å vurdere om jeg skal klage. Enten må nok forespørselen
908 reformuleres eller så må jeg vel klage. Synes jo det er merkelig at
909 NRK ikke har bedre kontroll med hvilke avtaler de har inngått. Det
910 burde jo være noen i ledelsen som vet om de har signert en avtale med
911 MPEG-LA eller ikke...&lt;/p&gt;
912
913 &lt;p&gt;Oppdatering 2012-06-25 20:20: Et google-søk på &quot;2011/371 nrk&quot;
914 sendte meg til postjournalen for
915 &lt;a href=&quot;http://nrk.no/contentfile/file/1.8212365!offentligjournal19062012.pdf&quot;&gt;2012-06-19&lt;/a&gt;
916 og
917 &lt;a href=&quot;http://nrk.no/contentfile/file/1.8214156!offentligjournal20062012.pdf&quot;&gt;2012-06-20&lt;/a&gt;
918 hos NRK som viser mine forespørsler og viser at sakens tittel hos NRK
919 er &quot;Graphic Systems Regions MA 2378/10E&quot;. Videre søk etter &quot;Graphic
920 Systems Regions&quot; viser at dette er saken til et anbud om
921 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://no.mercell.com/m/mts/Tender/27179412.aspx&quot;&gt;a graphics
922 system for 12 or 13 sites broadcasting regional news&lt;/a&gt;&quot; hos Mercell
923 Sourcing Service, også omtalt på
924 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.publictenders.net/tender/595705&quot;&gt;Public
925 Tenders&lt;/a&gt; og
926 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.doffin.no/search/show/search_view.aspx?ID=JAN155521&quot;&gt;Doffin&lt;/a&gt;.
927 Jeg er dog usikker på hvordan dette er relatert til min
928 forespørsel.&lt;/p&gt;
929
930 &lt;p&gt;Oppdatering 2012-06-25 22:40: Ble tipset av Kieran Kunhya, fra
931 miljøet rundt
932 &lt;a href=&quot;http://code.google.com/p/open-broadcast-encoder/&quot;&gt;Open
933 Broadcast Encoder&lt;/a&gt;, at listen over de som har lisensavtale med
934 MPEG-LA er
935 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mpeg-la.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/Licensees.aspx&quot;&gt;tilgjengelig
936 på web&lt;/a&gt;. Veldig fint å oppdage hvor den finnes, da jeg må ha lett
937 etter feil ting da jeg forsøke å finne den. Der står ikke NRK, men
938 flere andre &quot;Broadcasting Company&quot;-oppføringer. Lurer på om det betyr
939 at NRK ikke trenger avtale, eller noe helt annet?&lt;/p&gt;
940 </description>
941 </item>
942
943 <item>
944 <title>Trenger en avtale med MPEG-LA for å publisere og kringkaste H.264-video?</title>
945 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Trenger_en_avtale_med_MPEG_LA_for___publisere_og_kringkaste_H_264_video_.html</link>
946 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Trenger_en_avtale_med_MPEG_LA_for___publisere_og_kringkaste_H_264_video_.html</guid>
947 <pubDate>Thu, 21 Jun 2012 13:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
948 <description>&lt;p&gt;Trengs det avtale med MPEG-LA for å ha lovlig rett til å
949 distribuere og kringkaste video i MPEG4 eller med videokodingen H.264?
950 &lt;a href=&quot;http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/&quot;&gt;H.264 og MPEG4 er jo ikke en
951 fri og åpen standard&lt;/a&gt; i henhold til
952 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fri_og__pen_standard__slik_Digistan_ser_det.html&quot;&gt;definisjonen
953 til Digistan&lt;/a&gt;, så i enkelte land er det ingen tvil om at du må ha
954 en slik avtale, men jeg må innrømme at jeg ikke vet om det også
955 gjelder Norge. Det ser uansett ut til å være en juridisk interessant
956 problemstilling. Men jeg tenkte her om dagen som så, at hvis det er
957 nødvendig, så har store aktører som
958 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nrk.no/&quot;&gt;NRK&lt;/a&gt; og
959 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.regjeringen.no/&quot;&gt;regjeringen&lt;/a&gt; skaffet seg en
960 slik avtale. Jeg har derfor sendt forespørsel til begge (for
961 regjeringen sin del er det Departementenes Servicesenter som gjør
962 jobben), og bedt om kopi av eventuelle avtaler de har om bruk av MPEG
963 og/eller H.264 med MPEG-LA eller andre aktører som opererer på vegne
964 av MPEG-LA. Her er kopi av eposten jeg har sendt til
965 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dss.dep.no/&quot;&gt;Departementenes Servicesenter&lt;/a&gt;.
966 Forespørselen til NRK er veldig lik.&lt;/p&gt;
967
968 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
969
970 &lt;p&gt;Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2012 15:18:33 +0200
971 &lt;br&gt;From: Petter Reinholdtsen
972 &lt;br&gt;To: postmottak@dss.dep.no
973 &lt;br&gt;Subject: Innsynsbegjæring om MPEG/H.264-relaterte avtaler
974
975 &lt;p&gt;Hei. Jeg ber herved om innsyn og kopi av dokumenter i DSS relatert
976 til avtaler rundt bruk av videoformatene MPEG og H.264. Jeg er
977 spesielt interessert i å vite om DSS har lisensavtale med MPEG-LA
978 eller noen som representerer MPEG-LA i Norge.&lt;/p&gt;
979
980 &lt;p&gt;MPEG og H.264 er videoformater som brukes både til kringkasting
981 (f.eks. i bakkenett og kabel-TV) og videopublisering på web, deriblant
982 via Adobe Flash. MPEG-LA, &amp;lt;URL:
983 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mpeg-la.com/&quot;&gt;http://www.mpeg-la.com/&lt;/a&gt; &amp;gt;, er
984 en organisasjon som har fått oppgaven, av de kjente rettighetshavere
985 av immaterielle rettigheter knyttet til MPEG og H.264, å selge
986 bruksrett for MPEG og H.264.&lt;/p&gt;
987
988 &lt;p&gt;Via regjeringen.no kringkastes med MPEG og H.264-baserte
989 videoformater, og dette ser ut til å være organisert av DSS. Jeg
990 antar dermed at DSS har avtale med en eller annen aktør om dette.&lt;/p&gt;
991
992 &lt;p&gt;F.eks. har Adobe Premiere Pro har følgende klausul i følge &amp;lt;URL:
993 &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20000101-264.html&quot;&gt;http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20000101-264.html&lt;/a&gt;
994 &amp;gt;:&lt;/p&gt;
995
996 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
997
998 &lt;p&gt;6.17. AVC DISTRIBUTION. The following notice applies to software
999 containing AVC import and export functionality: THIS PRODUCT IS
1000 LICENSED UNDER THE AVC PATENT PORTFOLIO LICENSE FOR THE PERSONAL AND
1001 NON-COMMERCIAL USE OF A CONSUMER TO (a) ENCODE VIDEO IN COMPLIANCE
1002 WITH THE AVC STANDARD (&quot;AVC VIDEO&quot;) AND/OR (b) DECODE AVC VIDEO THAT
1003 WAS ENCODED BY A CONSUMER ENGAGED IN A PERSONAL AND NON-COMMERCIAL
1004 ACTIVITY AND/OR AVC VIDEO THAT WAS OBTAINED FROM A VIDEO PROVIDER
1005 LICENSED TO PROVIDE AVC VIDEO. NO LICENSE IS GRANTED OR SHALL BE
1006 IMPLIED FOR ANY OTHER USE. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION MAY BE OBTAINED
1007 FROM MPEG LA L.L.C. SEE
1008 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mpegla.com&quot;&gt;http://www.mpegla.com&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
1009
1010 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1011
1012 &lt;p&gt;Her er det kun &quot;non-commercial&quot; og &quot;personal and non-commercial&quot;
1013 aktivitet som er tillatt uten ekstra avtale med MPEG-LA.&lt;/p&gt;
1014
1015 &lt;p&gt;Et annet tilsvarende eksempel er Apple Final Cut Pro, som har
1016 følgende klausul i følge &amp;lt;URL:
1017 &lt;a href=&quot;http://images.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/finalcutstudio2.pdf&quot;&gt;http://images.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/finalcutstudio2.pdf&lt;/a&gt;
1018 &amp;gt;:&lt;/p&gt;
1019
1020 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
1021
1022 &lt;p&gt;15. Merknad om H.264/AVC. Hvis Apple-programvaren inneholder
1023 funksjonalitet for AVC-koding og/eller AVC-dekoding, krever
1024 kommersiell bruk ekstra lisensiering og følgende gjelder:
1025 AVC-FUNKSJONALITETEN I DETTE PRODUKTET KAN KUN ANVENDES AV
1026 FORBRUKERE OG KUN FOR PERSONLIG OG IKKE- KOMMERSIELL BRUK TIL (i)
1027 KODING AV VIDEO I OVERENSSTEMMELSE MED AVC-STANDARDEN (&quot;AVC-VIDEO&quot;)
1028 OG/ELLER (ii) DEKODING AV AVC-VIDEO SOM ER KODET AV EN FORBRUKER TIL
1029 PERSONLIG OG IKKE-KOMMERSIELL BRUK OG/ELLER DEKODING AV AVC-VIDEO
1030 FRA EN VIDEOLEVERANDØR SOM HAR LISENS TIL Å TILBY
1031 AVC-VIDEO. INFORMASJON OM ANNEN BRUK OG LISENSIERING KAN INNHENTES
1032 FRA MPEG LA L.L.C. SE HTTP://WWW.MPEGLA.COM.&lt;/p&gt;
1033 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1034
1035 &lt;p&gt;Tilsvarende gjelder for andre programvarepakker, kamera, etc som
1036 bruker MPEG og H.264, at en må ha en avtale med MPEG-LA for å ha lov
1037 til å bruke programmet/utstyret hvis en skal lage noe annet enn
1038 private filmer og i ikke-kommersiell virksomhet.&lt;/p&gt;
1039
1040 &lt;p&gt;Jeg er altså interessert i kopi av avtaler DSS har som gjør at en
1041 ikke er begrenset av de generelle bruksvilkårene som gjelder for
1042 utstyr som bruker MPEG og/eller H.264.&lt;/p&gt;
1043 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1044
1045 &lt;p&gt;Nå venter jeg spent på svaret. Jeg planlegger å blogge om svaret
1046 her.&lt;/p&gt;
1047 </description>
1048 </item>
1049
1050 <item>
1051 <title>The cost of ODF and OOXML</title>
1052 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html</link>
1053 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_cost_of_ODF_and_OOXML.html</guid>
1054 <pubDate>Sat, 26 May 2012 18:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
1055 <description>&lt;p&gt;I just come across a blog post from Glyn Moody reporting the
1056 claimed cost from Microsoft on requiring ODF to be used by the UK
1057 government. I just sent him an email to let him know that his
1058 assumption are most likely wrong. Sharing it here in case some of my
1059 blog readers have seem the same numbers float around in the UK.&lt;/p&gt;
1060
1061 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt; &lt;p&gt;Hi. I just noted your
1062 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm&quot;&gt;http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/does-microsoft-office-lock-in-cost-the-uk-government-500-million/index.htm&lt;/a&gt;
1063 comment:&lt;/p&gt;
1064
1065 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;They&#39;re all in Danish, not unreasonably, but even
1066 with the help of Google Translate I can&#39;t find any figures about the
1067 savings of &quot;moving to a flexible two standard&quot; as claimed by the
1068 Microsoft email. But I assume it is backed up somewhere, so let&#39;s take
1069 it, and the £500 million figure for the UK, on trust.&quot;
1070 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1071
1072 &lt;p&gt;I can tell you that the Danish reports are inflated. I believe it is
1073 the same reports that were used in the Norwegian debate around 2007,
1074 and Gisle Hannemyr (a well known IT commentator in Norway) had a look
1075 at the content. In short, the reason it is claimed that using ODF
1076 will be so costly, is based on the assumption that this mean every
1077 existing document need to be converted from one of the MS Office
1078 formats to ODF, transferred to the receiver, and converted back from
1079 ODF to one of the MS Office formats, and that the conversion will cost
1080 10 minutes of work time for both the sender and the receiver. In
1081 reality the sender would have a tool capable of saving to ODF, and the
1082 receiver would have a tool capable of reading it, and the time spent
1083 would at most be a few seconds for saving and loading, not 20 minutes
1084 of wasted effort.&lt;/p&gt;
1085
1086 &lt;p&gt;Microsoft claimed all these costs were saved by allowing people to
1087 transfer the original files from MS Office instead of spending 10
1088 minutes converting to ODF. :)&lt;/p&gt;
1089
1090 &lt;p&gt;See
1091 &lt;a href=&quot;http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php&quot;&gt;http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12_vl02.php&lt;/a&gt;
1092 and
1093 &lt;a href=&quot;http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php&quot;&gt;http://hannemyr.com/no/ms12.php&lt;/a&gt;
1094 for background information. Norwegian only, sorry. :)&lt;/p&gt;
1095 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1096 </description>
1097 </item>
1098
1099 <item>
1100 <title>OpenOffice.org fungerer da fint for blinde?</title>
1101 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenOffice_org_fungerer_da_fint_for_blinde_.html</link>
1102 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenOffice_org_fungerer_da_fint_for_blinde_.html</guid>
1103 <pubDate>Mon, 21 May 2012 23:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
1104 <description>&lt;p&gt;De siste dagene har høringsuttalelsene om DIFIs forslag til
1105 standardkatalog v3.1 blitt
1106 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder?tab=comments&quot;&gt;publisert
1107 på DIFIs nettside&lt;/a&gt;, og jeg kunne der glede meg over at
1108 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.nuug.no/uttalelser/201204-standardkatalog-v3.1&quot;&gt;NUUGs&lt;/a&gt;
1109 uttalelse er kommet med. En uttalelse som overrasker og forvirrer meg
1110 er
1111 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.standard.difi.no/filearchive/norges-blindeforbund.pdf&quot;&gt;den
1112 fra Norges Blindeforbund&lt;/a&gt;, som 5 år etter at Klaus Knopper sammen
1113 med sin blinde kone blant annet
1114 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20071211-accessibility/&quot;&gt;demonstrerte
1115 høyttalende OpenOffice.org på nynorsk for blinde&lt;/a&gt; på et NUUG-møte.&lt;/p&gt;
1116
1117 &lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.blindeforbundet.no/&quot;&gt;Norges Blindeforbund&lt;/a&gt;
1118 skriver følgende, som for meg virker å være formulert på sviktende
1119 grunnlag:&lt;/p&gt;
1120
1121 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
1122 &lt;p&gt;Bruk av fri programvare
1123
1124 &lt;p&gt;I FRIPROGSENTERET, RAPPORT 2009-02: Universell utforming
1125 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.kunnskapsbazaren.no/filer/Friprogsenteret-Rapport-Universell_utforming.pdf&quot;&gt;http://www.kunnskapsbazaren.no/filer/Friprogsenteret-Rapport-Universell_utforming.pdf&lt;/a&gt;
1126 sies det &quot;Det finnes i dag ikke mange fri programvare-rammeverk eller
1127 generelle løsninger som støtter tilgjengelighet eller som er
1128 universelt utformet.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
1129
1130 &lt;p&gt;Til tross for at det gjennom prinsippene i fri programvare åpnes
1131 for større frihet til selv å påvirke programvareløsninger i retning av
1132 universell utforming viser praksis at virkeligheten er en annen.
1133 Mange av de mest alminnelige frie programvarepakkene mangler delvis
1134 eller fullstendig tilgjengelighet for mennesker med nedsatt
1135 syn. Eksempler på dette er OpenOffice og LibreOffice m.fl.&lt;/p&gt;
1136
1137 &lt;p&gt;En annen utfordring ved bruk av fri programvare kan være manglende
1138 kundestøtte og muligheter til opplæring i bruk av løsningen. Svaksynte
1139 og blinde har et høyere behov for denne typen støtte enn andre brukere
1140 ettersom mange av dem har behov for tilleggsprogramvare som skal
1141 fungere sammen med den opprinnelige programvaren, og ettersom man ikke
1142 har de samme muligheter for overblikk over grensesnittet som en seende
1143 bruker. I tillegg til dette kommer de mer tilgjengelighetstekniske
1144 utfordringene som ofte må løses i samarbeid med
1145 programvareleverandør/produsent.&lt;/p&gt;
1146
1147 &lt;p&gt;Fri programvare er ikke på samme måte underlagt lovgivning gjennom
1148 for eksempel diskriminerings og tilgjengelighetsloven ettersom det
1149 ikke alltid finnes en produsent/tilbyder av tjenesten eller produktet.&lt;/p&gt;
1150
1151 &lt;p&gt;Norges Blindeforbund krever at universell utforming og
1152 brukskvalitet tas med som viktige hensyn i utredninger som ligger til
1153 grunn for valg av standarder som primært leder brukeren mot fri
1154 programvare. Et eksempel på dette er bruk av dokumentformatet ODF som
1155 leder brukeren i retning av OpenOffice, som er helt eller delvis
1156 utilgjengelig for svaksynte og blinde – noe avhengig av plattform og
1157 hjelpemiddelprogramvare.&lt;/p&gt;
1158
1159 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1160
1161 &lt;p&gt;Jeg håper noen involvert i OpenOffice.org og/eller LibreOffice tar
1162 kontakt med Norges Blindeforbund og oppklarer det som for meg virker å
1163 være en misforståelse, i og med at OpenOffice.org så vidt jeg vet
1164 fungerer fint også for blinde.&lt;/p&gt;
1165
1166 &lt;p&gt;Jeg ble minnet på problemstillingen da jeg leste Slashdot-saken om
1167 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://linux.slashdot.org/story/12/05/21/1417221/the-state-of-linux-accessibility&quot;&gt;The
1168 State of Linux Accessibility&lt;/a&gt;&quot;, som også hevder at Linux fungerer
1169 utmerket for blinde.&lt;/p&gt;
1170 </description>
1171 </item>
1172
1173 <item>
1174 <title>NUUGs leverer høringsuttalelse om v3.1 av statens referansekatalog</title>
1175 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/NUUGs_leverer_h_ringsuttalelse_om_v3_1_av_statens_referansekatalog.html</link>
1176 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/NUUGs_leverer_h_ringsuttalelse_om_v3_1_av_statens_referansekatalog.html</guid>
1177 <pubDate>Fri, 27 Apr 2012 15:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
1178 <description>&lt;p&gt;NUUG-styremedlem Hans-Petter Fjeld
1179 &lt;a href=&quot;https://plus.google.com/u/0/110394259537201279374/posts/AGzRmAuFdW1&quot;&gt;meldte
1180 nettopp&lt;/a&gt; at han har sendt inn &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;NUUG&lt;/a&gt;s
1181 høringsuttalelse angående Difi sin standardkatalog v3.1. Jeg er veldig
1182 glad for at så mange bidro og sikret at vår stemme blir hørt i denne
1183 høringen. Anbefaler alle å lese våre
1184 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.nuug.no/uttalelser/201204-standardkatalog-v3.1&quot;&gt;to
1185 sider med innspill&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
1186 </description>
1187 </item>
1188
1189 <item>
1190 <title>HTC One X - Your video? What do you mean?</title>
1191 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/HTC_One_X___Your_video___What_do_you_mean_.html</link>
1192 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/HTC_One_X___Your_video___What_do_you_mean_.html</guid>
1193 <pubDate>Thu, 26 Apr 2012 13:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
1194 <description>&lt;p&gt;In &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece&quot;&gt;an
1195 article today&lt;/a&gt; published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
1196 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.urke.com/eirik/&quot;&gt;Eirik Helland Urke&lt;/a&gt; reports
1197 that the video editor application included with
1198 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs&quot;&gt;HTC One
1199 X&lt;/a&gt; have some quite surprising terms of use. The article is mostly
1200 based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
1201
1202 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
1203 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280&quot;&gt;Drøy
1204 brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
1205 kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat.&lt;/a&gt;&quot;
1206 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1207
1208 &lt;p&gt;I quickly translated it to this English message:&lt;/p&gt;
1209
1210 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
1211 &quot;Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
1212 commercially. Although I can ONLY use them privately.&quot;
1213 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1214
1215 &lt;p&gt;I&#39;ve been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
1216 suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
1217 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html&quot;&gt;discovered
1218 with my Canon IXUS 130&lt;/a&gt;. The HTC One X specification specifies that
1219 the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
1220 video. AMR is
1221 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues&quot;&gt;Adaptive
1222 Multi-Rate audio codec&lt;/a&gt; with patents which according to the
1223 Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
1224 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.voiceage.com/&quot;&gt;VoiceAge&lt;/a&gt;. MP4 is
1225 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing&quot;&gt;MPEG4 with
1226 H.264&lt;/a&gt;, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
1227 with &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.mpegla.com/&quot;&gt;MPEG-LA&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
1228
1229 &lt;p&gt;I know why I prefer
1230 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition&quot;&gt;free and open
1231 standards&lt;/a&gt; also for video.&lt;/p&gt;
1232 </description>
1233 </item>
1234
1235 <item>
1236 <title>RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</title>
1237 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html</link>
1238 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html</guid>
1239 <pubDate>Thu, 19 Apr 2012 22:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
1240 <description>&lt;p&gt;Here in Norway, the
1241 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339&quot;&gt; Ministry of
1242 Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs&lt;/a&gt; is behind
1243 a &lt;a href=&quot;http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder&quot;&gt;directory of
1244 standards&lt;/a&gt; that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
1245 government. When the directory was created, the people behind it made
1246 an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
1247 standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
1248 to the government. Free software and non-free software could compete
1249 on the same level.&lt;/p&gt;
1250
1251 &lt;p&gt;But recently, some standards with RAND
1252 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing&quot;&gt;Reasonable
1253 And Non-Discriminatory&lt;/a&gt;) terms have made their way into the
1254 directory. And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
1255 standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
1256 implementing them. The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
1257 user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
1258 willing to pay will get a license. Both sound great in theory. In
1259 practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
1260 be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user. By
1261 definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
1262 So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
1263 And given that people will use the software without handing any money
1264 to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
1265 software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
1266 to implement a standard when the income available is zero. The result
1267 in these situations is that free software are locked out from
1268 implementing standards with RAND terms.&lt;/p&gt;
1269
1270 &lt;p&gt;Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
1271 standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
1272 how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory. Because free
1273 software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
1274 help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
1275 in Norway. The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
1276 I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
1277 attention to these issues in the future.&lt;/p&gt;
1278
1279 &lt;p&gt;You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
1280 from Simon Phipps
1281 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/&quot;&gt;RAND:
1282 Not So Reasonable?&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;
1283
1284 &lt;p&gt;Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
1285 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm&quot;&gt;blog
1286 post from Glyn Moody&lt;/a&gt; over at Computer World UK warning about the
1287 same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government. I
1288 can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
1289 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder&quot;&gt;the
1290 hearing taking place at the moment&lt;/a&gt; (respond before 2012-04-27).
1291 It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
1292 specifications with RAND terms.&lt;/p&gt;
1293 </description>
1294 </item>
1295
1296 <item>
1297 <title>The video format most supported in web browsers?</title>
1298 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_video_format_most_supported_in_web_browsers_.html</link>
1299 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_video_format_most_supported_in_web_browsers_.html</guid>
1300 <pubDate>Sun, 16 Jan 2011 00:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
1301 <description>&lt;p&gt;The video format struggle on the web continues, and the three
1302 contenders seem to be Ogg Theora, H.264 and WebM. Most video sites
1303 seem to use H.264, while others use Ogg Theora. Interestingly enough,
1304 the comments I see give me the feeling that a lot of people believe
1305 H.264 is the most supported video format in browsers, but according to
1306 the Wikipedia article on
1307 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video&quot;&gt;HTML5 video&lt;/a&gt;,
1308 this is not true. Check out the nice table of supprted formats in
1309 different browsers there. The format supported by most browsers is
1310 Ogg Theora, supported by released versions of Mozilla Firefox, Google
1311 Chrome, Chromium, Opera, Konqueror, Epiphany, Origyn Web Browser and
1312 BOLT browser, while not supported by Internet Explorer nor Safari.
1313 The runner up is WebM supported by released versions of Google Chrome
1314 Chromium Opera and Origyn Web Browser, and test versions of Mozilla
1315 Firefox. H.264 is supported by released versions of Safari, Origyn
1316 Web Browser and BOLT browser, and the test version of Internet
1317 Explorer. Those wanting Ogg Theora support in Internet Explorer and
1318 Safari can install plugins to get it.&lt;/p&gt;
1319
1320 &lt;p&gt;To me, the simple conclusion from this is that to reach most users
1321 without any extra software installed, one uses Ogg Theora with the
1322 HTML5 video tag. Of course to reach all those without a browser
1323 handling HTML5, one need fallback mechanisms. In
1324 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;NUUG&lt;/a&gt;, we provide first fallback to a
1325 plugin capable of playing MPEG1 video, and those without such support
1326 we have a second fallback to the Cortado java applet playing Ogg
1327 Theora. This seem to work quite well, as can be seen in an &lt;a
1328 href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20110111-semantic-web/&quot;&gt;example
1329 from last week&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
1330
1331 &lt;p&gt;The reason Ogg Theora is the most supported format, and H.264 is
1332 the least supported is simple. Implementing and using H.264
1333 require royalty payment to MPEG-LA, and the terms of use from MPEG-LA
1334 are incompatible with free software licensing. If you believed H.264
1335 was without royalties and license terms, check out
1336 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/&quot;&gt;H.264 – Not The Kind Of
1337 Free That Matters&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Simon Phipps.&lt;/p&gt;
1338
1339 &lt;p&gt;A incomplete list of sites providing video in Ogg Theora is
1340 available from
1341 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/List_of_Theora_videos&quot;&gt;the
1342 Xiph.org wiki&lt;/a&gt;, if you want to have a look. I&#39;m not aware of a
1343 similar list for WebM nor H.264.&lt;/p&gt;
1344
1345 &lt;p&gt;Update 2011-01-16 09:40: A question from Tollef on IRC made me
1346 realise that I failed to make it clear enough this text is about the
1347 &amp;lt;video&amp;gt; tag support in browsers and not the video support
1348 provided by external plugins like the Flash plugins.&lt;/p&gt;
1349 </description>
1350 </item>
1351
1352 <item>
1353 <title>Chrome plan to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &amp;lt;video&amp;gt;</title>
1354 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Chrome_plan_to_drop_H_264_support_for_HTML5__lt_video_gt_.html</link>
1355 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Chrome_plan_to_drop_H_264_support_for_HTML5__lt_video_gt_.html</guid>
1356 <pubDate>Wed, 12 Jan 2011 22:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
1357 <description>&lt;p&gt;Today I discovered
1358 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digi.no/860070/google-dropper-h264-stotten-i-chrome&quot;&gt;via
1359 digi.no&lt;/a&gt; that the Chrome developers, in a surprising announcement,
1360 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/html-video-codec-support-in-chrome.html&quot;&gt;yesterday
1361 announced&lt;/a&gt; plans to drop H.264 support for HTML5 &amp;lt;video&amp;gt; in
1362 the browser. The argument used is that H.264 is not a &quot;completely
1363 open&quot; codec technology. If you believe H.264 was free for everyone
1364 to use, I recommend having a look at the essay
1365 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/&quot;&gt;H.264 – Not The Kind Of
1366 Free That Matters&lt;/a&gt;&quot;. It is not free of cost for creators of video
1367 tools, nor those of us that want to publish on the Internet, and the
1368 terms provided by MPEG-LA excludes free software projects from
1369 licensing the patents needed for H.264. Some background information
1370 on the Google announcement is available from
1371 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.osnews.com/story/24243/Google_To_Drop_H264_Support_from_Chrome&quot;&gt;OSnews&lt;/a&gt;.
1372 A good read. :)&lt;/p&gt;
1373
1374 &lt;p&gt;Personally, I believe it is great that Google is taking a stand to
1375 promote equal terms for everyone when it comes to video publishing on
1376 the Internet. This can only be done by publishing using free and open
1377 standards, which is only possible if the web browsers provide support
1378 for these free and open standards. At the moment there seem to be two
1379 camps in the web browser world when it come to video support. Some
1380 browsers support H.264, and others support
1381 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theora.org/&quot;&gt;Ogg Theora&lt;/a&gt; and
1382 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.webmproject.org/&quot;&gt;WebM&lt;/a&gt;
1383 (&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.diracvideo.org/&quot;&gt;Dirac&lt;/a&gt; is not really an option
1384 yet), forcing those of us that want to publish video on the Internet
1385 and which can not accept the terms of use presented by MPEG-LA for
1386 H.264 to not reach all potential viewers.
1387 Wikipedia keep &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTML5_video&quot;&gt;an
1388 updated summary&lt;/a&gt; of the current browser support.&lt;/p&gt;
1389
1390 &lt;p&gt;Not surprising, several people would prefer Google to keep
1391 promoting H.264, and John Gruber
1392 &lt;a href=&quot;http://daringfireball.net/2011/01/simple_questions&quot;&gt;presents
1393 the mind set&lt;/a&gt; of these people quite well. His rhetorical questions
1394 provoked a reply from Thom Holwerda with another set of questions
1395 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.osnews.com/story/24245/10_Questions_for_John_Gruber_Regarding_H_264_WebM&quot;&gt;presenting
1396 the issues with H.264&lt;/a&gt;. Both are worth a read.&lt;/p&gt;
1397
1398 &lt;p&gt;Some argue that if Google is dropping H.264 because it isn&#39;t free,
1399 they should also drop support for the Adobe Flash plugin. This
1400 argument was covered by Simon Phipps in
1401 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2011/01/google-and-h264---far-from-hypocritical/index.htm&quot;&gt;todays
1402 blog post&lt;/a&gt;, which I find to put the issue in context. To me it
1403 make perfect sense to drop native H.264 support for HTML5 in the
1404 browser while still allowing plugins.&lt;/p&gt;
1405
1406 &lt;p&gt;I suspect the reason this announcement make so many people protest,
1407 is that all the users and promoters of H.264 suddenly get an uneasy
1408 feeling that they might be backing the wrong horse. A lot of TV
1409 broadcasters have been moving to H.264 the last few years, and a lot
1410 of money has been invested in hardware based on the belief that they
1411 could use the same video format for both broadcasting and web
1412 publishing. Suddenly this belief is shaken.&lt;/p&gt;
1413
1414 &lt;p&gt;An interesting question is why Google is doing this. While the
1415 presented argument might be true enough, I believe Google would only
1416 present the argument if the change make sense from a business
1417 perspective. One reason might be that they are currently negotiating
1418 with MPEG-LA over royalties or usage terms, and giving MPEG-LA the
1419 feeling that dropping H.264 completely from Chroome, Youtube and
1420 Google Video would improve the negotiation position of Google.
1421 Another reason might be that Google want to save money by not having
1422 to pay the video tax to MPEG-LA at all, and thus want to move to a
1423 video format not requiring royalties at all. A third reason might be
1424 that the Chrome development team simply want to avoid the
1425 Chrome/Chromium split to get more help with the development of Chrome.
1426 I guess time will tell.&lt;/p&gt;
1427
1428 &lt;p&gt;Update 2011-01-15: The Google Chrome team provided
1429 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.chromium.org/2011/01/more-about-chrome-html-video-codec.html&quot;&gt;more
1430 background and information on the move&lt;/a&gt; it a blog post yesterday.&lt;/p&gt;
1431 </description>
1432 </item>
1433
1434 <item>
1435 <title>What standards are Free and Open as defined by Digistan?</title>
1436 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_standards_are_Free_and_Open_as_defined_by_Digistan_.html</link>
1437 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_standards_are_Free_and_Open_as_defined_by_Digistan_.html</guid>
1438 <pubDate>Thu, 30 Dec 2010 23:15:00 +0100</pubDate>
1439 <description>&lt;p&gt;After trying to
1440 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html&quot;&gt;compare
1441 Ogg Theora&lt;/a&gt; to
1442 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition&quot;&gt;the Digistan
1443 definition&lt;/a&gt; of a free and open standard, I concluded that this need
1444 to be done for more standards and started on a framework for doing
1445 this. As a start, I want to get the status for all the standards in
1446 the Norwegian reference directory, which include UTF-8, HTML, PDF, ODF,
1447 JPEG, PNG, SVG and others. But to be able to complete this in a
1448 reasonable time frame, I will need help.&lt;/p&gt;
1449
1450 &lt;p&gt;If you want to help out with this work, please visit
1451 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/standard/digistan-analyse&quot;&gt;the
1452 wiki pages I have set up for this&lt;/a&gt;, and let me know that you want
1453 to help out. The IRC channel #nuug on irc.freenode.net is a good
1454 place to coordinate this for now, as it is the IRC channel for the
1455 NUUG association where I have created the framework (I am the leader
1456 of the Norwegian Unix User Group).&lt;/p&gt;
1457
1458 &lt;p&gt;The framework is still forming, and a lot is left to do. Do not be
1459 scared by the sketchy form of the current pages. :)&lt;/p&gt;
1460 </description>
1461 </item>
1462
1463 <item>
1464 <title>The many definitions of a open standard</title>
1465 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html</link>
1466 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_many_definitions_of_a_open_standard.html</guid>
1467 <pubDate>Mon, 27 Dec 2010 14:45:00 +0100</pubDate>
1468 <description>&lt;p&gt;One of the reasons I like the Digistan definition of
1469 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition&quot;&gt;Free and
1470 Open Standard&lt;/a&gt;&quot; is that this is a new term, and thus the meaning of
1471 the term has been decided by Digistan. The term &quot;Open Standard&quot; has
1472 become so misunderstood that it is no longer very useful when talking
1473 about standards. One end up discussing which definition is the best
1474 one and with such frame the only one gaining are the proponents of
1475 de-facto standards and proprietary solutions.&lt;/p&gt;
1476
1477 &lt;p&gt;But to give us an idea about the diversity of definitions of open
1478 standards, here are a few that I know about. This list is not
1479 complete, but can be a starting point for those that want to do a
1480 complete survey. More definitions are available on the
1481 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_standard&quot;&gt;wikipedia
1482 page&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
1483
1484 &lt;p&gt;First off is my favourite, the definition from the European
1485 Interoperability Framework version 1.0. Really sad to notice that BSA
1486 and others has succeeded in getting it removed from version 2.0 of the
1487 framework by stacking the committee drafting the new version with
1488 their own people. Anyway, the definition is still available and it
1489 include the key properties needed to make sure everyone can use a
1490 specification on equal terms.&lt;/p&gt;
1491
1492 &lt;blockquote&gt;
1493
1494 &lt;p&gt;The following are the minimal characteristics that a specification
1495 and its attendant documents must have in order to be considered an
1496 open standard:&lt;/p&gt;
1497
1498 &lt;ul&gt;
1499
1500 &lt;li&gt;The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
1501 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
1502 open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties
1503 (consensus or majority decision etc.).&lt;/li&gt;
1504
1505 &lt;li&gt;The standard has been published and the standard specification
1506 document is available either freely or at a nominal charge. It must be
1507 permissible to all to copy, distribute and use it for no fee or at a
1508 nominal fee.&lt;/li&gt;
1509
1510 &lt;li&gt;The intellectual property - i.e. patents possibly present - of
1511 (parts of) the standard is made irrevocably available on a royalty-
1512 free basis.&lt;/li&gt;
1513
1514 &lt;li&gt;There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.&lt;/li&gt;
1515
1516 &lt;/ul&gt;
1517 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
1518
1519 &lt;p&gt;Another one originates from my friends over at
1520 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dkuug.dk/&quot;&gt;DKUUG&lt;/a&gt;, who coined and gathered
1521 support for &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aaben-standard.dk/&quot;&gt;this
1522 definition&lt;/a&gt; in 2004. It even made it into the Danish parlament as
1523 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.ft.dk/dokumenter/tingdok.aspx?/samling/20051/beslutningsforslag/B103/som_fremsat.htm&quot;&gt;their
1524 definition of a open standard&lt;/a&gt;. Another from a different part of
1525 the Danish government is available from the wikipedia page.&lt;/p&gt;
1526
1527 &lt;blockquote&gt;
1528
1529 &lt;p&gt;En åben standard opfylder følgende krav:&lt;/p&gt;
1530
1531 &lt;ol&gt;
1532
1533 &lt;li&gt;Veldokumenteret med den fuldstændige specifikation offentligt
1534 tilgængelig.&lt;/li&gt;
1535
1536 &lt;li&gt;Frit implementerbar uden økonomiske, politiske eller juridiske
1537 begrænsninger på implementation og anvendelse.&lt;/li&gt;
1538
1539 &lt;li&gt;Standardiseret og vedligeholdt i et åbent forum (en såkaldt
1540 &quot;standardiseringsorganisation&quot;) via en åben proces.&lt;/li&gt;
1541
1542 &lt;/ol&gt;
1543
1544 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
1545
1546 &lt;p&gt;Then there is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fsfe.org/projects/os/def.html&quot;&gt;the
1547 definition&lt;/a&gt; from Free Software Foundation Europe.&lt;/p&gt;
1548
1549 &lt;blockquote&gt;
1550
1551 &lt;p&gt;An Open Standard refers to a format or protocol that is&lt;/p&gt;
1552
1553 &lt;ol&gt;
1554
1555 &lt;li&gt;subject to full public assessment and use without constraints in a
1556 manner equally available to all parties;&lt;/li&gt;
1557
1558 &lt;li&gt;without any components or extensions that have dependencies on
1559 formats or protocols that do not meet the definition of an Open
1560 Standard themselves;&lt;/li&gt;
1561
1562 &lt;li&gt;free from legal or technical clauses that limit its utilisation by
1563 any party or in any business model;&lt;/li&gt;
1564
1565 &lt;li&gt;managed and further developed independently of any single vendor
1566 in a process open to the equal participation of competitors and third
1567 parties;&lt;/li&gt;
1568
1569 &lt;li&gt;available in multiple complete implementations by competing
1570 vendors, or as a complete implementation equally available to all
1571 parties.&lt;/li&gt;
1572
1573 &lt;/ol&gt;
1574
1575 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
1576
1577 &lt;p&gt;A long time ago, SUN Microsystems, now bought by Oracle, created
1578 its
1579 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.sun.com/dennisding/resource/Open%20Standard%20Definition.pdf&quot;&gt;Open
1580 Standards Checklist&lt;/a&gt; with a fairly detailed description.&lt;/p&gt;
1581
1582 &lt;blockquote&gt;
1583 &lt;p&gt;Creation and Management of an Open Standard
1584
1585 &lt;ul&gt;
1586
1587 &lt;li&gt;Its development and management process must be collaborative and
1588 democratic:
1589
1590 &lt;ul&gt;
1591
1592 &lt;li&gt;Participation must be accessible to all those who wish to
1593 participate and can meet fair and reasonable criteria
1594 imposed by the organization under which it is developed
1595 and managed.&lt;/li&gt;
1596
1597 &lt;li&gt;The processes must be documented and, through a known
1598 method, can be changed through input from all
1599 participants.&lt;/li&gt;
1600
1601 &lt;li&gt;The process must be based on formal and binding commitments for
1602 the disclosure and licensing of intellectual property rights.&lt;/li&gt;
1603
1604 &lt;li&gt;Development and management should strive for consensus,
1605 and an appeals process must be clearly outlined.&lt;/li&gt;
1606
1607 &lt;li&gt;The standard specification must be open to extensive
1608 public review at least once in its life-cycle, with
1609 comments duly discussed and acted upon, if required.&lt;/li&gt;
1610
1611 &lt;/ul&gt;
1612
1613 &lt;/li&gt;
1614
1615 &lt;/ul&gt;
1616
1617 &lt;p&gt;Use and Licensing of an Open Standard&lt;/p&gt;
1618 &lt;ul&gt;
1619
1620 &lt;li&gt;The standard must describe an interface, not an implementation,
1621 and the industry must be capable of creating multiple, competing
1622 implementations to the interface described in the standard without
1623 undue or restrictive constraints. Interfaces include APIs,
1624 protocols, schemas, data formats and their encoding.&lt;/li&gt;
1625
1626 &lt;li&gt; The standard must not contain any proprietary &quot;hooks&quot; that create
1627 a technical or economic barriers&lt;/li&gt;
1628
1629 &lt;li&gt;Faithful implementations of the standard must
1630 interoperate. Interoperability means the ability of a computer
1631 program to communicate and exchange information with other computer
1632 programs and mutually to use the information which has been
1633 exchanged. This includes the ability to use, convert, or exchange
1634 file formats, protocols, schemas, interface information or
1635 conventions, so as to permit the computer program to work with other
1636 computer programs and users in all the ways in which they are
1637 intended to function.&lt;/li&gt;
1638
1639 &lt;li&gt;It must be permissible for anyone to copy, distribute and read the
1640 standard for a nominal fee, or even no fee. If there is a fee, it
1641 must be low enough to not preclude widespread use.&lt;/li&gt;
1642
1643 &lt;li&gt;It must be possible for anyone to obtain free (no royalties or
1644 fees; also known as &quot;royalty free&quot;), worldwide, non-exclusive and
1645 perpetual licenses to all essential patent claims to make, use and
1646 sell products based on the standard. The only exceptions are
1647 terminations per the reciprocity and defensive suspension terms
1648 outlined below. Essential patent claims include pending, unpublished
1649 patents, published patents, and patent applications. The license is
1650 only for the exact scope of the standard in question.
1651
1652 &lt;ul&gt;
1653
1654 &lt;li&gt; May be conditioned only on reciprocal licenses to any of
1655 licensees&#39; patent claims essential to practice that standard
1656 (also known as a reciprocity clause)&lt;/li&gt;
1657
1658 &lt;li&gt; May be terminated as to any licensee who sues the licensor
1659 or any other licensee for infringement of patent claims
1660 essential to practice that standard (also known as a
1661 &quot;defensive suspension&quot; clause)&lt;/li&gt;
1662
1663 &lt;li&gt; The same licensing terms are available to every potential
1664 licensor&lt;/li&gt;
1665
1666 &lt;/ul&gt;
1667 &lt;/li&gt;
1668
1669 &lt;li&gt;The licensing terms of an open standards must not preclude
1670 implementations of that standard under open source licensing terms
1671 or restricted licensing terms&lt;/li&gt;
1672
1673 &lt;/ul&gt;
1674
1675 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
1676
1677 &lt;p&gt;It is said that one of the nice things about standards is that
1678 there are so many of them. As you can see, the same holds true for
1679 open standard definitions. Most of the definitions have a lot in
1680 common, and it is not really controversial what properties a open
1681 standard should have, but the diversity of definitions have made it
1682 possible for those that want to avoid a level marked field and real
1683 competition to downplay the significance of open standards. I hope we
1684 can turn this tide by focusing on the advantages of Free and Open
1685 Standards.&lt;/p&gt;
1686 </description>
1687 </item>
1688
1689 <item>
1690 <title>Is Ogg Theora a free and open standard?</title>
1691 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html</link>
1692 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Ogg_Theora_a_free_and_open_standard_.html</guid>
1693 <pubDate>Sat, 25 Dec 2010 20:25:00 +0100</pubDate>
1694 <description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition&quot;&gt;The
1695 Digistan definition&lt;/a&gt; of a free and open standard reads like this:&lt;/p&gt;
1696
1697 &lt;blockquote&gt;
1698
1699 &lt;p&gt;The Digital Standards Organization defines free and open standard
1700 as follows:&lt;/p&gt;
1701
1702 &lt;ol&gt;
1703
1704 &lt;li&gt;A free and open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages
1705 in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to
1706 freely use, improve upon, trust, and extend a standard over time.&lt;/li&gt;
1707
1708 &lt;li&gt;The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit
1709 organisation, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an
1710 open decision-making procedure available to all interested
1711 parties.&lt;/li&gt;
1712
1713 &lt;li&gt;The standard has been published and the standard specification
1714 document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy,
1715 distribute, and use it freely.&lt;/li&gt;
1716
1717 &lt;li&gt;The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made
1718 irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.&lt;/li&gt;
1719
1720 &lt;li&gt;There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.&lt;/li&gt;
1721
1722 &lt;/ol&gt;
1723
1724 &lt;p&gt;The economic outcome of a free and open standard, which can be
1725 measured, is that it enables perfect competition between suppliers of
1726 products based on the standard.&lt;/p&gt;
1727 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
1728
1729 &lt;p&gt;For a while now I have tried to figure out of Ogg Theora is a free
1730 and open standard according to this definition. Here is a short
1731 writeup of what I have been able to gather so far. I brought up the
1732 topic on the Xiph advocacy mailing list
1733 &lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.xiph.org/pipermail/advocacy/2009-July/001632.html&quot;&gt;in
1734 July 2009&lt;/a&gt;, for those that want to see some background information.
1735 According to Ivo Emanuel Gonçalves and Monty Montgomery on that list
1736 the Ogg Theora specification fulfils the Digistan definition.&lt;/p&gt;
1737
1738 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Free from vendor capture?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1739
1740 &lt;p&gt;As far as I can see, there is no single vendor that can control the
1741 Ogg Theora specification. It can be argued that the
1742 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xiph.org/&quot;&gt;Xiph foundation&lt;/A&gt; is such vendor, but
1743 given that it is a non-profit foundation with the expressed goal
1744 making free and open protocols and standards available, it is not
1745 obvious that this is a real risk. One issue with the Xiph
1746 foundation is that its inner working (as in board member list, or who
1747 control the foundation) are not easily available on the web. I&#39;ve
1748 been unable to find out who is in the foundation board, and have not
1749 seen any accounting information documenting how money is handled nor
1750 where is is spent in the foundation. It is thus not obvious for an
1751 external observer who control The Xiph foundation, and for all I know
1752 it is possible for a single vendor to take control over the
1753 specification. But it seem unlikely.&lt;/p&gt;
1754
1755 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Maintained by open not-for-profit organisation?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1756
1757 &lt;p&gt;Assuming that the Xiph foundation is the organisation its web pages
1758 claim it to be, this point is fulfilled. If Xiph foundation is
1759 controlled by a single vendor, it isn&#39;t, but I have not found any
1760 documentation indicating this.&lt;/p&gt;
1761
1762 &lt;p&gt;According to
1763 &lt;a href=&quot;http://media.hiof.no/diverse/fad/rapport_4.pdf&quot;&gt;a report&lt;/a&gt;
1764 prepared by Audun Vaaler og Børre Ludvigsen for the Norwegian
1765 government, the Xiph foundation is a non-commercial organisation and
1766 the development process is open, transparent and non-Discrimatory.
1767 Until proven otherwise, I believe it make most sense to believe the
1768 report is correct.&lt;/p&gt;
1769
1770 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Specification freely available?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1771
1772 &lt;p&gt;The specification for the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/&quot;&gt;Ogg
1773 container format&lt;/a&gt; and both the
1774 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xiph.org/vorbis/doc/&quot;&gt;Vorbis&lt;/a&gt; and
1775 &lt;a href=&quot;http://theora.org/doc/&quot;&gt;Theora&lt;/a&gt; codeces are available on
1776 the web. This are the terms in the Vorbis and Theora specification:
1777
1778 &lt;blockquote&gt;
1779
1780 Anyone may freely use and distribute the Ogg and [Vorbis/Theora]
1781 specifications, whether in private, public, or corporate
1782 capacity. However, the Xiph.Org Foundation and the Ogg project reserve
1783 the right to set the Ogg [Vorbis/Theora] specification and certify
1784 specification compliance.
1785
1786 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
1787
1788 &lt;p&gt;The Ogg container format is specified in IETF
1789 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.xiph.org/ogg/doc/rfc3533.txt&quot;&gt;RFC 3533&lt;/a&gt;, and
1790 this is the term:&lt;p&gt;
1791
1792 &lt;blockquote&gt;
1793
1794 &lt;p&gt;This document and translations of it may be copied and furnished to
1795 others, and derivative works that comment on or otherwise explain it
1796 or assist in its implementation may be prepared, copied, published and
1797 distributed, in whole or in part, without restriction of any kind,
1798 provided that the above copyright notice and this paragraph are
1799 included on all such copies and derivative works. However, this
1800 document itself may not be modified in any way, such as by removing
1801 the copyright notice or references to the Internet Society or other
1802 Internet organizations, except as needed for the purpose of developing
1803 Internet standards in which case the procedures for copyrights defined
1804 in the Internet Standards process must be followed, or as required to
1805 translate it into languages other than English.&lt;/p&gt;
1806
1807 &lt;p&gt;The limited permissions granted above are perpetual and will not be
1808 revoked by the Internet Society or its successors or assigns.&lt;/p&gt;
1809 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
1810
1811 &lt;p&gt;All these terms seem to allow unlimited distribution and use, an
1812 this term seem to be fulfilled. There might be a problem with the
1813 missing permission to distribute modified versions of the text, and
1814 thus reuse it in other specifications. Not quite sure if that is a
1815 requirement for the Digistan definition.&lt;/p&gt;
1816
1817 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Royalty-free?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1818
1819 &lt;p&gt;There are no known patent claims requiring royalties for the Ogg
1820 Theora format.
1821 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=65782&quot;&gt;MPEG-LA&lt;/a&gt;
1822 and
1823 &lt;a href=&quot;http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/04/30/237238/Steve-Jobs-Hints-At-Theora-Lawsuit&quot;&gt;Steve
1824 Jobs&lt;/a&gt; in Apple claim to know about some patent claims (submarine
1825 patents) against the Theora format, but no-one else seem to believe
1826 them. Both Opera Software and the Mozilla Foundation have looked into
1827 this and decided to implement Ogg Theora support in their browsers
1828 without paying any royalties. For now the claims from MPEG-LA and
1829 Steve Jobs seem more like FUD to scare people to use the H.264 codec
1830 than any real problem with Ogg Theora.&lt;/p&gt;
1831
1832 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;No constraints on re-use?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1833
1834 &lt;p&gt;I am not aware of any constraints on re-use.&lt;/p&gt;
1835
1836 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Conclusion&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
1837
1838 &lt;p&gt;3 of 5 requirements seem obviously fulfilled, and the remaining 2
1839 depend on the governing structure of the Xiph foundation. Given the
1840 background report used by the Norwegian government, I believe it is
1841 safe to assume the last two requirements are fulfilled too, but it
1842 would be nice if the Xiph foundation web site made it easier to verify
1843 this.&lt;/p&gt;
1844
1845 &lt;p&gt;It would be nice to see other analysis of other specifications to
1846 see if they are free and open standards.&lt;/p&gt;
1847 </description>
1848 </item>
1849
1850 <item>
1851 <title>The reply from Edgar Villanueva to Microsoft in Peru</title>
1852 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_reply_from_Edgar_Villanueva_to_Microsoft_in_Peru.html</link>
1853 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_reply_from_Edgar_Villanueva_to_Microsoft_in_Peru.html</guid>
1854 <pubDate>Sat, 25 Dec 2010 10:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
1855 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago
1856 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article189879.ece&quot;&gt;an
1857 article&lt;/a&gt; in the Norwegian Computerworld magazine about how version
1858 2.0 of
1859 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Interoperability_Framework&quot;&gt;European
1860 Interoperability Framework&lt;/a&gt; has been successfully lobbied by the
1861 proprietary software industry to remove the focus on free software.
1862 Nothing very surprising there, given
1863 &lt;a href=&quot;http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/03/29/2115235/Open-Source-Open-Standards-Under-Attack-In-Europe&quot;&gt;earlier
1864 reports&lt;/a&gt; on how Microsoft and others have stacked the committees in
1865 this work. But I find this very sad. The definition of
1866 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt&quot;&gt;an
1867 open standard from version 1&lt;/a&gt; was very good, and something I
1868 believe should be used also in the future, alongside
1869 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition&quot;&gt;the
1870 definition from Digistan&lt;/A&gt;. Version 2 have removed the open
1871 standard definition from its content.&lt;/p&gt;
1872
1873 &lt;p&gt;Anyway, the news reminded me of the great reply sent by Dr. Edgar
1874 Villanueva, congressman in Peru at the time, to Microsoft as a reply
1875 to Microsofts attack on his proposal regarding the use of free software
1876 in the public sector in Peru. As the text was not available from a
1877 few of the URLs where it used to be available, I copy it here from
1878 &lt;a href=&quot;http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/articles/en/reponseperou/villanueva_to_ms.html&quot;&gt;my
1879 source&lt;/a&gt; to ensure it is available also in the future. Some
1880 background information about that story is available in
1881 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/6099&quot;&gt;an article&lt;/a&gt; from
1882 Linux Journal in 2002.&lt;/p&gt;
1883
1884 &lt;blockquote&gt;
1885 &lt;p&gt;Lima, 8th of April, 2002&lt;br&gt;
1886 To: Señor JUAN ALBERTO GONZÁLEZ&lt;br&gt;
1887 General Manager of Microsoft Perú&lt;/p&gt;
1888
1889 &lt;p&gt;Dear Sir:&lt;/p&gt;
1890
1891 &lt;p&gt;First of all, I thank you for your letter of March 25, 2002 in which you state the official position of Microsoft relative to Bill Number 1609, Free Software in Public Administration, which is indubitably inspired by the desire for Peru to find a suitable place in the global technological context. In the same spirit, and convinced that we will find the best solutions through an exchange of clear and open ideas, I will take this opportunity to reply to the commentaries included in your letter.&lt;/p&gt;
1892
1893 &lt;p&gt;While acknowledging that opinions such as yours constitute a significant contribution, it would have been even more worthwhile for me if, rather than formulating objections of a general nature (which we will analyze in detail later) you had gathered solid arguments for the advantages that proprietary software could bring to the Peruvian State, and to its citizens in general, since this would have allowed a more enlightening exchange in respect of each of our positions.&lt;/p&gt;
1894
1895 &lt;p&gt;With the aim of creating an orderly debate, we will assume that what you call &quot;open source software&quot; is what the Bill defines as &quot;free software&quot;, since there exists software for which the source code is distributed together with the program, but which does not fall within the definition established by the Bill; and that what you call &quot;commercial software&quot; is what the Bill defines as &quot;proprietary&quot; or &quot;unfree&quot;, given that there exists free software which is sold in the market for a price like any other good or service.&lt;/p&gt;
1896
1897 &lt;p&gt;It is also necessary to make it clear that the aim of the Bill we are discussing is not directly related to the amount of direct savings that can by made by using free software in state institutions. That is in any case a marginal aggregate value, but in no way is it the chief focus of the Bill. The basic principles which inspire the Bill are linked to the basic guarantees of a state of law, such as:&lt;/p&gt;
1898
1899 &lt;p&gt;
1900 &lt;ul&gt;
1901 &lt;li&gt;Free access to public information by the citizen. &lt;/li&gt;
1902 &lt;li&gt;Permanence of public data. &lt;/li&gt;
1903 &lt;li&gt;Security of the State and citizens.&lt;/li&gt;
1904 &lt;/ul&gt;
1905 &lt;/p&gt;
1906
1907 &lt;p&gt;To guarantee the free access of citizens to public information, it is indispensable that the encoding of data is not tied to a single provider. The use of standard and open formats gives a guarantee of this free access, if necessary through the creation of compatible free software.&lt;/p&gt;
1908
1909 &lt;p&gt;To guarantee the permanence of public data, it is necessary that the usability and maintenance of the software does not depend on the goodwill of the suppliers, or on the monopoly conditions imposed by them. For this reason the State needs systems the development of which can be guaranteed due to the availability of the source code.&lt;/p&gt;
1910
1911 &lt;p&gt;To guarantee national security or the security of the State, it is indispensable to be able to rely on systems without elements which allow control from a distance or the undesired transmission of information to third parties. Systems with source code freely accessible to the public are required to allow their inspection by the State itself, by the citizens, and by a large number of independent experts throughout the world. Our proposal brings further security, since the knowledge of the source code will eliminate the growing number of programs with *spy code*. &lt;/p&gt;
1912
1913 &lt;p&gt;In the same way, our proposal strengthens the security of the citizens, both in their role as legitimate owners of information managed by the state, and in their role as consumers. In this second case, by allowing the growth of a widespread availability of free software not containing *spy code* able to put at risk privacy and individual freedoms.&lt;/p&gt;
1914
1915 &lt;p&gt;In this sense, the Bill is limited to establishing the conditions under which the state bodies will obtain software in the future, that is, in a way compatible with these basic principles.&lt;/p&gt;
1916
1917
1918 &lt;p&gt;From reading the Bill it will be clear that once passed:&lt;br&gt;
1919 &lt;li&gt;the law does not forbid the production of proprietary software&lt;/li&gt;
1920 &lt;li&gt;the law does not forbid the sale of proprietary software&lt;/li&gt;
1921 &lt;li&gt;the law does not specify which concrete software to use&lt;/li&gt;
1922 &lt;li&gt;the law does not dictate the supplier from whom software will be bought&lt;/li&gt;
1923 &lt;li&gt;the law does not limit the terms under which a software product can be licensed.&lt;/li&gt;
1924
1925 &lt;/p&gt;
1926
1927 &lt;p&gt;What the Bill does express clearly, is that, for software to be acceptable for the state it is not enough that it is technically capable of fulfilling a task, but that further the contractual conditions must satisfy a series of requirements regarding the license, without which the State cannot guarantee the citizen adequate processing of his data, watching over its integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility throughout time, as these are very critical aspects for its normal functioning.&lt;/p&gt;
1928
1929 &lt;p&gt;We agree, Mr. Gonzalez, that information and communication technology have a significant impact on the quality of life of the citizens (whether it be positive or negative). We surely also agree that the basic values I have pointed out above are fundamental in a democratic state like Peru. So we are very interested to know of any other way of guaranteeing these principles, other than through the use of free software in the terms defined by the Bill.&lt;/p&gt;
1930
1931 &lt;p&gt;As for the observations you have made, we will now go on to analyze them in detail:&lt;/p&gt;
1932
1933 &lt;p&gt;Firstly, you point out that: &quot;1. The bill makes it compulsory for all public bodies to use only free software, that is to say open source software, which breaches the principles of equality before the law, that of non-discrimination and the right of free private enterprise, freedom of industry and of contract, protected by the constitution.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
1934
1935 &lt;p&gt;This understanding is in error. The Bill in no way affects the rights you list; it limits itself entirely to establishing conditions for the use of software on the part of state institutions, without in any way meddling in private sector transactions. It is a well established principle that the State does not enjoy the wide spectrum of contractual freedom of the private sector, as it is limited in its actions precisely by the requirement for transparency of public acts; and in this sense, the preservation of the greater common interest must prevail when legislating on the matter.&lt;/p&gt;
1936
1937 &lt;p&gt;The Bill protects equality under the law, since no natural or legal person is excluded from the right of offering these goods to the State under the conditions defined in the Bill and without more limitations than those established by the Law of State Contracts and Purchasing (T.U.O. by Supreme Decree No. 012-2001-PCM).&lt;/p&gt;
1938
1939 &lt;p&gt;The Bill does not introduce any discrimination whatever, since it only establishes *how* the goods have to be provided (which is a state power) and not *who* has to provide them (which would effectively be discriminatory, if restrictions based on national origin, race religion, ideology, sexual preference etc. were imposed). On the contrary, the Bill is decidedly antidiscriminatory. This is so because by defining with no room for doubt the conditions for the provision of software, it prevents state bodies from using software which has a license including discriminatory conditions.&lt;/p&gt;
1940
1941 &lt;p&gt;It should be obvious from the preceding two paragraphs that the Bill does not harm free private enterprise, since the latter can always choose under what conditions it will produce software; some of these will be acceptable to the State, and others will not be since they contradict the guarantee of the basic principles listed above. This free initiative is of course compatible with the freedom of industry and freedom of contract (in the limited form in which the State can exercise the latter). Any private subject can produce software under the conditions which the State requires, or can refrain from doing so. Nobody is forced to adopt a model of production, but if they wish to provide software to the State, they must provide the mechanisms which guarantee the basic principles, and which are those described in the Bill.&lt;/p&gt;
1942
1943 &lt;p&gt;By way of an example: nothing in the text of the Bill would prevent your company offering the State bodies an office &quot;suite&quot;, under the conditions defined in the Bill and setting the price that you consider satisfactory. If you did not, it would not be due to restrictions imposed by the law, but to business decisions relative to the method of commercializing your products, decisions with which the State is not involved.&lt;/p&gt;
1944
1945 &lt;p&gt;To continue; you note that:&quot; 2. The bill, by making the use of open source software compulsory, would establish discriminatory and non competitive practices in the contracting and purchasing by public bodies...&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
1946
1947 &lt;p&gt;This statement is just a reiteration of the previous one, and so the response can be found above. However, let us concern ourselves for a moment with your comment regarding &quot;non-competitive ... practices.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
1948
1949 &lt;p&gt;Of course, in defining any kind of purchase, the buyer sets conditions which relate to the proposed use of the good or service. From the start, this excludes certain manufacturers from the possibility of competing, but does not exclude them &quot;a priori&quot;, but rather based on a series of principles determined by the autonomous will of the purchaser, and so the process takes place in conformance with the law. And in the Bill it is established that *no one* is excluded from competing as far as he guarantees the fulfillment of the basic principles.&lt;/p&gt;
1950
1951 &lt;p&gt;Furthermore, the Bill *stimulates* competition, since it tends to generate a supply of software with better conditions of usability, and to better existing work, in a model of continuous improvement.&lt;/p&gt;
1952
1953 &lt;p&gt;On the other hand, the central aspect of competivity is the chance to provide better choices to the consumer. Now, it is impossible to ignore the fact that marketing does not play a neutral role when the product is offered on the market (since accepting the opposite would lead one to suppose that firms&#39; expenses in marketing lack any sense), and that therefore a significant expense under this heading can influence the decisions of the purchaser. This influence of marketing is in large measure reduced by the bill that we are backing, since the choice within the framework proposed is based on the *technical merits* of the product and not on the effort put into commercialization by the producer; in this sense, competitiveness is increased, since the smallest software producer can compete on equal terms with the most powerful corporations.&lt;/p&gt;
1954
1955 &lt;p&gt;It is necessary to stress that there is no position more anti-competitive than that of the big software producers, which frequently abuse their dominant position, since in innumerable cases they propose as a solution to problems raised by users: &quot;update your software to the new version&quot; (at the user&#39;s expense, naturally); furthermore, it is common to find arbitrary cessation of technical help for products, which, in the provider&#39;s judgment alone, are &quot;old&quot;; and so, to receive any kind of technical assistance, the user finds himself forced to migrate to new versions (with non-trivial costs, especially as changes in hardware platform are often involved). And as the whole infrastructure is based on proprietary data formats, the user stays &quot;trapped&quot; in the need to continue using products from the same supplier, or to make the huge effort to change to another environment (probably also proprietary).&lt;/p&gt;
1956
1957 &lt;p&gt;You add: &quot;3. So, by compelling the State to favor a business model based entirely on open source, the bill would only discourage the local and international manufacturing companies, which are the ones which really undertake important expenditures, create a significant number of direct and indirect jobs, as well as contributing to the GNP, as opposed to a model of open source software which tends to have an ever weaker economic impact, since it mainly creates jobs in the service sector.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
1958
1959 &lt;p&gt;I do not agree with your statement. Partly because of what you yourself point out in paragraph 6 of your letter, regarding the relative weight of services in the context of software use. This contradiction alone would invalidate your position. The service model, adopted by a large number of companies in the software industry, is much larger in economic terms, and with a tendency to increase, than the licensing of programs.&lt;/p&gt;
1960
1961 &lt;p&gt;On the other hand, the private sector of the economy has the widest possible freedom to choose the economic model which best suits its interests, even if this freedom of choice is often obscured subliminally by the disproportionate expenditure on marketing by the producers of proprietary software.&lt;/p&gt;
1962
1963 &lt;p&gt;In addition, a reading of your opinion would lead to the conclusion that the State market is crucial and essential for the proprietary software industry, to such a point that the choice made by the State in this bill would completely eliminate the market for these firms. If that is true, we can deduce that the State must be subsidizing the proprietary software industry. In the unlikely event that this were true, the State would have the right to apply the subsidies in the area it considered of greatest social value; it is undeniable, in this improbable hypothesis, that if the State decided to subsidize software, it would have to do so choosing the free over the proprietary, considering its social effect and the rational use of taxpayers money.&lt;/p&gt;
1964
1965 &lt;p&gt;In respect of the jobs generated by proprietary software in countries like ours, these mainly concern technical tasks of little aggregate value; at the local level, the technicians who provide support for proprietary software produced by transnational companies do not have the possibility of fixing bugs, not necessarily for lack of technical capability or of talent, but because they do not have access to the source code to fix it. With free software one creates more technically qualified employment and a framework of free competence where success is only tied to the ability to offer good technical support and quality of service, one stimulates the market, and one increases the shared fund of knowledge, opening up alternatives to generate services of greater total value and a higher quality level, to the benefit of all involved: producers, service organizations, and consumers.&lt;/p&gt;
1966
1967 &lt;p&gt;It is a common phenomenon in developing countries that local software industries obtain the majority of their takings in the service sector, or in the creation of &quot;ad hoc&quot; software. Therefore, any negative impact that the application of the Bill might have in this sector will be more than compensated by a growth in demand for services (as long as these are carried out to high quality standards). If the transnational software companies decide not to compete under these new rules of the game, it is likely that they will undergo some decrease in takings in terms of payment for licenses; however, considering that these firms continue to allege that much of the software used by the State has been illegally copied, one can see that the impact will not be very serious. Certainly, in any case their fortune will be determined by market laws, changes in which cannot be avoided; many firms traditionally associated with proprietary software have already set out on the road (supported by copious expense) of providing services associated with free software, which shows that the models are not mutually exclusive.&lt;/p&gt;
1968
1969 &lt;p&gt;With this bill the State is deciding that it needs to preserve certain fundamental values. And it is deciding this based on its sovereign power, without affecting any of the constitutional guarantees. If these values could be guaranteed without having to choose a particular economic model, the effects of the law would be even more beneficial. In any case, it should be clear that the State does not choose an economic model; if it happens that there only exists one economic model capable of providing software which provides the basic guarantee of these principles, this is because of historical circumstances, not because of an arbitrary choice of a given model.&lt;/p&gt;
1970
1971 &lt;p&gt;Your letter continues: &quot;4. The bill imposes the use of open source software without considering the dangers that this can bring from the point of view of security, guarantee, and possible violation of the intellectual property rights of third parties.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
1972
1973 &lt;p&gt;Alluding in an abstract way to &quot;the dangers this can bring&quot;, without specifically mentioning a single one of these supposed dangers, shows at the least some lack of knowledge of the topic. So, allow me to enlighten you on these points.&lt;/p&gt;
1974
1975 &lt;p&gt;On security:&lt;/p&gt;
1976
1977 &lt;p&gt;National security has already been mentioned in general terms in the initial discussion of the basic principles of the bill. In more specific terms, relative to the security of the software itself, it is well known that all software (whether proprietary or free) contains errors or &quot;bugs&quot; (in programmers&#39; slang). But it is also well known that the bugs in free software are fewer, and are fixed much more quickly, than in proprietary software. It is not in vain that numerous public bodies responsible for the IT security of state systems in developed countries require the use of free software for the same conditions of security and efficiency.&lt;/p&gt;
1978
1979 &lt;p&gt;What is impossible to prove is that proprietary software is more secure than free, without the public and open inspection of the scientific community and users in general. This demonstration is impossible because the model of proprietary software itself prevents this analysis, so that any guarantee of security is based only on promises of good intentions (biased, by any reckoning) made by the producer itself, or its contractors.&lt;/p&gt;
1980
1981 &lt;p&gt;It should be remembered that in many cases, the licensing conditions include Non-Disclosure clauses which prevent the user from publicly revealing security flaws found in the licensed proprietary product.&lt;/p&gt;
1982
1983 &lt;p&gt;In respect of the guarantee:&lt;/p&gt;
1984
1985 &lt;p&gt;As you know perfectly well, or could find out by reading the &quot;End User License Agreement&quot; of the products you license, in the great majority of cases the guarantees are limited to replacement of the storage medium in case of defects, but in no case is compensation given for direct or indirect damages, loss of profits, etc... If as a result of a security bug in one of your products, not fixed in time by yourselves, an attacker managed to compromise crucial State systems, what guarantees, reparations and compensation would your company make in accordance with your licensing conditions? The guarantees of proprietary software, inasmuch as programs are delivered ``AS IS&#39;&#39;, that is, in the state in which they are, with no additional responsibility of the provider in respect of function, in no way differ from those normal with free software.&lt;/p&gt;
1986
1987 &lt;p&gt;On Intellectual Property:&lt;/p&gt;
1988
1989 &lt;p&gt;Questions of intellectual property fall outside the scope of this bill, since they are covered by specific other laws. The model of free software in no way implies ignorance of these laws, and in fact the great majority of free software is covered by copyright. In reality, the inclusion of this question in your observations shows your confusion in respect of the legal framework in which free software is developed. The inclusion of the intellectual property of others in works claimed as one&#39;s own is not a practice that has been noted in the free software community; whereas, unfortunately, it has been in the area of proprietary software. As an example, the condemnation by the Commercial Court of Nanterre, France, on 27th September 2001 of Microsoft Corp. to a penalty of 3 million francs in damages and interest, for violation of intellectual property (piracy, to use the unfortunate term that your firm commonly uses in its publicity).&lt;/p&gt;
1990
1991 &lt;p&gt;You go on to say that: &quot;The bill uses the concept of open source software incorrectly, since it does not necessarily imply that the software is free or of zero cost, and so arrives at mistaken conclusions regarding State savings, with no cost-benefit analysis to validate its position.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
1992
1993 &lt;p&gt;This observation is wrong; in principle, freedom and lack of cost are orthogonal concepts: there is software which is proprietary and charged for (for example, MS Office), software which is proprietary and free of charge (MS Internet Explorer), software which is free and charged for (Red Hat, SuSE etc GNU/Linux distributions), software which is free and not charged for (Apache, Open Office, Mozilla), and even software which can be licensed in a range of combinations (MySQL).&lt;/p&gt;
1994
1995 &lt;p&gt;Certainly free software is not necessarily free of charge. And the text of the bill does not state that it has to be so, as you will have noted after reading it. The definitions included in the Bill state clearly *what* should be considered free software, at no point referring to freedom from charges. Although the possibility of savings in payments for proprietary software licenses are mentioned, the foundations of the bill clearly refer to the fundamental guarantees to be preserved and to the stimulus to local technological development. Given that a democratic State must support these principles, it has no other choice than to use software with publicly available source code, and to exchange information only in standard formats.&lt;/p&gt;
1996
1997 &lt;p&gt;If the State does not use software with these characteristics, it will be weakening basic republican principles. Luckily, free software also implies lower total costs; however, even given the hypothesis (easily disproved) that it was more expensive than proprietary software, the simple existence of an effective free software tool for a particular IT function would oblige the State to use it; not by command of this Bill, but because of the basic principles we enumerated at the start, and which arise from the very essence of the lawful democratic State.&lt;/p&gt;
1998
1999 &lt;p&gt;You continue: &quot;6. It is wrong to think that Open Source Software is free of charge. Research by the Gartner Group (an important investigator of the technological market recognized at world level) has shown that the cost of purchase of software (operating system and applications) is only 8% of the total cost which firms and institutions take on for a rational and truly beneficial use of the technology. The other 92% consists of: installation costs, enabling, support, maintenance, administration, and down-time.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
2000
2001 &lt;p&gt;This argument repeats that already given in paragraph 5 and partly contradicts paragraph 3. For the sake of brevity we refer to the comments on those paragraphs. However, allow me to point out that your conclusion is logically false: even if according to Gartner Group the cost of software is on average only 8% of the total cost of use, this does not in any way deny the existence of software which is free of charge, that is, with a licensing cost of zero.&lt;/p&gt;
2002
2003 &lt;p&gt;In addition, in this paragraph you correctly point out that the service components and losses due to down-time make up the largest part of the total cost of software use, which, as you will note, contradicts your statement regarding the small value of services suggested in paragraph 3. Now the use of free software contributes significantly to reduce the remaining life-cycle costs. This reduction in the costs of installation, support etc. can be noted in several areas: in the first place, the competitive service model of free software, support and maintenance for which can be freely contracted out to a range of suppliers competing on the grounds of quality and low cost. This is true for installation, enabling, and support, and in large part for maintenance. In the second place, due to the reproductive characteristics of the model, maintenance carried out for an application is easily replicable, without incurring large costs (that is, without paying more than once for the same thing) since modifications, if one wishes, can be incorporated in the common fund of knowledge. Thirdly, the huge costs caused by non-functioning software (&quot;blue screens of death&quot;, malicious code such as virus, worms, and trojans, exceptions, general protection faults and other well-known problems) are reduced considerably by using more stable software; and it is well known that one of the most notable virtues of free software is its stability.&lt;/p&gt;
2004
2005 &lt;p&gt;You further state that: &quot;7. One of the arguments behind the bill is the supposed freedom from costs of open-source software, compared with the costs of commercial software, without taking into account the fact that there exist types of volume licensing which can be highly advantageous for the State, as has happened in other countries.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
2006
2007 &lt;p&gt;I have already pointed out that what is in question is not the cost of the software but the principles of freedom of information, accessibility, and security. These arguments have been covered extensively in the preceding paragraphs to which I would refer you.&lt;/p&gt;
2008
2009 &lt;p&gt;On the other hand, there certainly exist types of volume licensing (although unfortunately proprietary software does not satisfy the basic principles). But as you correctly pointed out in the immediately preceding paragraph of your letter, they only manage to reduce the impact of a component which makes up no more than 8% of the total.&lt;/p&gt;
2010
2011 &lt;p&gt;You continue: &quot;8. In addition, the alternative adopted by the bill (I) is clearly more expensive, due to the high costs of software migration, and (II) puts at risk compatibility and interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector, given the hundreds of versions of open source software on the market.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
2012
2013 &lt;p&gt;Let us analyze your statement in two parts. Your first argument, that migration implies high costs, is in reality an argument in favor of the Bill. Because the more time goes by, the more difficult migration to another technology will become; and at the same time, the security risks associated with proprietary software will continue to increase. In this way, the use of proprietary systems and formats will make the State ever more dependent on specific suppliers. Once a policy of using free software has been established (which certainly, does imply some cost) then on the contrary migration from one system to another becomes very simple, since all data is stored in open formats. On the other hand, migration to an open software context implies no more costs than migration between two different proprietary software contexts, which invalidates your argument completely.&lt;/p&gt;
2014
2015 &lt;p&gt;The second argument refers to &quot;problems in interoperability of the IT platforms within the State, and between the State and the private sector&quot; This statement implies a certain lack of knowledge of the way in which free software is built, which does not maximize the dependence of the user on a particular platform, as normally happens in the realm of proprietary software. Even when there are multiple free software distributions, and numerous programs which can be used for the same function, interoperability is guaranteed as much by the use of standard formats, as required by the bill, as by the possibility of creating interoperable software given the availability of the source code.&lt;/p&gt;
2016
2017 &lt;p&gt;You then say that: &quot;9. The majority of open source code does not offer adequate levels of service nor the guarantee from recognized manufacturers of high productivity on the part of the users, which has led various public organizations to retract their decision to go with an open source software solution and to use commercial software in its place.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
2018
2019 &lt;p&gt;This observation is without foundation. In respect of the guarantee, your argument was rebutted in the response to paragraph 4. In respect of support services, it is possible to use free software without them (just as also happens with proprietary software), but anyone who does need them can obtain support separately, whether from local firms or from international corporations, again just as in the case of proprietary software.&lt;/p&gt;
2020
2021 &lt;p&gt;On the other hand, it would contribute greatly to our analysis if you could inform us about free software projects *established* in public bodies which have already been abandoned in favor of proprietary software. We know of a good number of cases where the opposite has taken place, but not know of any where what you describe has taken place.&lt;/p&gt;
2022
2023 &lt;p&gt;You continue by observing that: &quot;10. The bill discourages the creativity of the Peruvian software industry, which invoices 40 million US$/year, exports 4 million US$ (10th in ranking among non-traditional exports, more than handicrafts) and is a source of highly qualified employment. With a law that encourages the use of open source, software programmers lose their intellectual property rights and their main source of payment.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
2024
2025 &lt;p&gt;It is clear enough that nobody is forced to commercialize their code as free software. The only thing to take into account is that if it is not free software, it cannot be sold to the public sector. This is not in any case the main market for the national software industry. We covered some questions referring to the influence of the Bill on the generation of employment which would be both highly technically qualified and in better conditions for competition above, so it seems unnecessary to insist on this point.&lt;/p&gt;
2026
2027 &lt;p&gt;What follows in your statement is incorrect. On the one hand, no author of free software loses his intellectual property rights, unless he expressly wishes to place his work in the public domain. The free software movement has always been very respectful of intellectual property, and has generated widespread public recognition of its authors. Names like those of Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Guido van Rossum, Larry Wall, Miguel de Icaza, Andrew Tridgell, Theo de Raadt, Andrea Arcangeli, Bruce Perens, Darren Reed, Alan Cox, Eric Raymond, and many others, are recognized world-wide for their contributions to the development of software that is used today by millions of people throughout the world. On the other hand, to say that the rewards for authors rights make up the main source of payment of Peruvian programmers is in any case a guess, in particular since there is no proof to this effect, nor a demonstration of how the use of free software by the State would influence these payments.&lt;/p&gt;
2028
2029 &lt;p&gt;You go on to say that: &quot;11. Open source software, since it can be distributed without charge, does not allow the generation of income for its developers through exports. In this way, the multiplier effect of the sale of software to other countries is weakened, and so in turn is the growth of the industry, while Government rules ought on the contrary to stimulate local industry.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
2030
2031 &lt;p&gt;This statement shows once again complete ignorance of the mechanisms of and market for free software. It tries to claim that the market of sale of non- exclusive rights for use (sale of licenses) is the only possible one for the software industry, when you yourself pointed out several paragraphs above that it is not even the most important one. The incentives that the bill offers for the growth of a supply of better qualified professionals, together with the increase in experience that working on a large scale with free software within the State will bring for Peruvian technicians, will place them in a highly competitive position to offer their services abroad.&lt;/p&gt;
2032
2033 &lt;p&gt;You then state that: &quot;12. In the Forum, the use of open source software in education was discussed, without mentioning the complete collapse of this initiative in a country like Mexico, where precisely the State employees who founded the project now state that open source software did not make it possible to offer a learning experience to pupils in the schools, did not take into account the capability at a national level to give adequate support to the platform, and that the software did not and does not allow for the levels of platform integration that now exist in schools.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
2034
2035 &lt;p&gt;In fact Mexico has gone into reverse with the Red Escolar (Schools Network) project. This is due precisely to the fact that the driving forces behind the Mexican project used license costs as their main argument, instead of the other reasons specified in our project, which are far more essential. Because of this conceptual mistake, and as a result of the lack of effective support from the SEP (Secretary of State for Public Education), the assumption was made that to implant free software in schools it would be enough to drop their software budget and send them a CD ROM with Gnu/Linux instead. Of course this failed, and it couldn&#39;t have been otherwise, just as school laboratories fail when they use proprietary software and have no budget for implementation and maintenance. That&#39;s exactly why our bill is not limited to making the use of free software mandatory, but recognizes the need to create a viable migration plan, in which the State undertakes the technical transition in an orderly way in order to then enjoy the advantages of free software.&lt;/p&gt;
2036
2037 &lt;p&gt;You end with a rhetorical question: &quot;13. If open source software satisfies all the requirements of State bodies, why do you need a law to adopt it? Shouldn&#39;t it be the market which decides freely which products give most benefits or value?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
2038
2039 &lt;p&gt;We agree that in the private sector of the economy, it must be the market that decides which products to use, and no state interference is permissible there. However, in the case of the public sector, the reasoning is not the same: as we have already established, the state archives, handles, and transmits information which does not belong to it, but which is entrusted to it by citizens, who have no alternative under the rule of law. As a counterpart to this legal requirement, the State must take extreme measures to safeguard the integrity, confidentiality, and accessibility of this information. The use of proprietary software raises serious doubts as to whether these requirements can be fulfilled, lacks conclusive evidence in this respect, and so is not suitable for use in the public sector.&lt;/p&gt;
2040
2041 &lt;p&gt;The need for a law is based, firstly, on the realization of the fundamental principles listed above in the specific area of software; secondly, on the fact that the State is not an ideal homogeneous entity, but made up of multiple bodies with varying degrees of autonomy in decision making. Given that it is inappropriate to use proprietary software, the fact of establishing these rules in law will prevent the personal discretion of any state employee from putting at risk the information which belongs to citizens. And above all, because it constitutes an up-to-date reaffirmation in relation to the means of management and communication of information used today, it is based on the republican principle of openness to the public.&lt;/p&gt;
2042
2043 &lt;p&gt;In conformance with this universally accepted principle, the citizen has the right to know all information held by the State and not covered by well- founded declarations of secrecy based on law. Now, software deals with information and is itself information. Information in a special form, capable of being interpreted by a machine in order to execute actions, but crucial information all the same because the citizen has a legitimate right to know, for example, how his vote is computed or his taxes calculated. And for that he must have free access to the source code and be able to prove to his satisfaction the programs used for electoral computations or calculation of his taxes.&lt;/p&gt;
2044
2045 &lt;p&gt;I wish you the greatest respect, and would like to repeat that my office will always be open for you to expound your point of view to whatever level of detail you consider suitable.&lt;/p&gt;
2046
2047 &lt;p&gt;Cordially,&lt;br&gt;
2048 DR. EDGAR DAVID VILLANUEVA NUÑEZ&lt;br&gt;
2049 Congressman of the Republic of Perú.&lt;/p&gt;
2050 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
2051 </description>
2052 </item>
2053
2054 <item>
2055 <title>Officeshots still going strong</title>
2056 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html</link>
2057 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_still_going_strong.html</guid>
2058 <pubDate>Sat, 25 Dec 2010 09:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
2059 <description>&lt;p&gt;Half a year ago I
2060 &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html&quot;&gt;wrote
2061 a bit&lt;/a&gt; about &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.officeshots.org/&quot;&gt;OfficeShots&lt;/a&gt;,
2062 a web service to allow anyone to test how ODF documents are handled by
2063 the different programs reading and writing the ODF format.&lt;/p&gt;
2064
2065 &lt;p&gt;I just had a look at the service, and it seem to be going strong.
2066 Very interesting to see the results reported in the gallery, how
2067 different Office implementations handle different ODF features. Sad
2068 to see that KOffice was not doing it very well, and happy to see that
2069 LibreOffice has been tested already (but sadly not listed as a option
2070 for OfficeShots users yet). I am glad to see that the ODF community
2071 got such a great test tool available.&lt;/p&gt;
2072 </description>
2073 </item>
2074
2075 <item>
2076 <title>Best å ikke fortelle noen at streaming er nedlasting...</title>
2077 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best___ikke_fortelle_noen_at_streaming_er_nedlasting___.html</link>
2078 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Best___ikke_fortelle_noen_at_streaming_er_nedlasting___.html</guid>
2079 <pubDate>Sat, 30 Oct 2010 11:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
2080 <description>&lt;p&gt;I dag la jeg inn en kommentar på en sak hos NRKBeta
2081 &lt;a href=&quot;http://nrkbeta.no/2010/10/27/bakom-blindpassasjer-del-1/&quot;&gt;om
2082 hvordan TV-serien Blindpassasjer ble laget&lt;/a&gt; i forbindelse med at
2083 filmene NRK la ut ikke var tilgjengelig i et
2084 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition&quot;&gt;fritt og
2085 åpent format&lt;/a&gt;. Dette var det jeg skrev publiserte der 07:39.&lt;/p&gt;
2086
2087 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
2088 &lt;p&gt;&quot;Vi fikk en kommentar rundt måten streamet innhold er beskyttet fra
2089 nedlasting. Mange av oss som kan mer enn gjennomsnittet om systemer
2090 som dette, vet at det stort sett er mulig å lure ut ting med den
2091 nødvendige forkunnskapen.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;
2092
2093 &lt;p&gt;Haha. Å streame innhold er det samme som å laste ned innhold, så å
2094 beskytte en stream mot nedlasting er ikke mulig. Å skrive noe slikt
2095 er å forlede leseren.&lt;/p&gt;
2096
2097 &lt;p&gt;Med den bakgrunn blir forklaringen om at noen rettighetshavere kun
2098 vil tillate streaming men ikke nedlasting meningsløs.&lt;/p&gt;
2099
2100 &lt;p&gt;Anbefaler forresten å lese
2101 &lt;a href=&quot;http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/10/drm-is-toxic-to-culture/index.htm&quot;&gt;http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/10/drm-is-toxic-to-culture/index.htm&lt;/a&gt;
2102 om hva som ville være konsekvensen hvis digitale avspillingssperrer
2103 (DRM) fungerte. Det gjør de naturligvis ikke teknisk - det er jo
2104 derfor de må ha totalitære juridiske beskyttelsesmekanismer på plass,
2105 men det er skremmende hva samfunnet tillater og NRK er med på å bygge
2106 opp under.&lt;/p&gt;
2107 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2108
2109 &lt;p&gt;Ca. 20 minutter senere får jeg følgende epost fra Anders Hofseth i
2110 NRKBeta:&lt;/p&gt;
2111
2112 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
2113 &lt;p&gt;From: Anders Hofseth &amp;lt;XXX@gmail.com&gt;
2114 &lt;br&gt;To: &quot;pere@hungry.com&quot; &amp;lt;pere@hungry.com&gt;
2115 &lt;br&gt;Cc: Eirik Solheim &amp;lt;XXX@gmail.com&gt;, Jon Ståle Carlsen &amp;lt;XXX@gmail.com&gt;, Henrik Lied &amp;lt;XXX@gmail.com&gt;
2116 &lt;br&gt;Subject: Re: [NRKbeta] Kommentar: &quot;Bakom Blindpassasjer: del 1&quot;
2117 &lt;br&gt;Date: Sat, 30 Oct 2010 07:58:44 +0200&lt;/p&gt;
2118
2119 &lt;p&gt;Hei Petter.
2120 &lt;br&gt;Det du forsøker dra igang er egentlig en interessant diskusjon,
2121 men om vi skal kjøre den i kommentarfeltet her, vil vi kunne bli bedt
2122 om å fjerne blindpassasjer fra nett- tv og det vil heller ikke bli
2123 særlig lett å klarere ut noe annet arkivmateriale på lang tid.&lt;/p&gt;
2124
2125 &lt;p&gt;Dette er en situasjon NRKbeta ikke ønsker, så kommentaren er
2126 fjernet og den delen av diskusjonen er avsluttet på nrkbeta, vi antar
2127 konsekvensene vi beskriver ikke er noe du ønsker heller...&lt;/p&gt;
2128
2129 &lt;p&gt;Med hilsen,
2130 &lt;br&gt;-anders&lt;/p&gt;
2131
2132 &lt;p&gt;Ring meg om noe er uklart: 95XXXXXXX&lt;/p&gt;
2133 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2134
2135 &lt;p&gt;Ble så fascinert over denne holdningen, at jeg forfattet og sendte
2136 over følgende svar. I og med at debatten er fjernet fra NRK Betas
2137 kommentarfelt, så velger jeg å publisere her på bloggen min i stedet.
2138 Har fjernet epostadresser og telefonnummer til de involverte, for å
2139 unngå at de tiltrekker seg uønskede direkte kontaktforsøk.&lt;/p&gt;
2140
2141 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
2142 &lt;p&gt;From: Petter Reinholdtsen &amp;lt;pere@hungry.com&gt;
2143 &lt;br&gt;To: Anders Hofseth &amp;lt;XXX@gmail.com&gt;
2144 &lt;br&gt;Cc: Eirik Solheim &amp;lt;XXX@gmail.com&gt;,
2145 &lt;br&gt; Jon Ståle Carlsen &amp;lt;XXX@gmail.com&gt;,
2146 &lt;br&gt; Henrik Lied &amp;lt;XXX@gmail.com&gt;
2147 &lt;br&gt;Subject: Re: [NRKbeta] Kommentar: &quot;Bakom Blindpassasjer: del 1&quot;
2148 &lt;br&gt;Date: Sat, 30 Oct 2010 08:24:34 +0200&lt;/p&gt;
2149
2150 &lt;p&gt;[Anders Hofseth]
2151 &lt;br&gt;&gt; Hei Petter.&lt;/p&gt;
2152
2153 &lt;p&gt;Hei.&lt;/p&gt;
2154
2155 &lt;p&gt;&gt; Det du forsøker dra igang er egentlig en interessant diskusjon, men
2156 &lt;br&gt;&gt; om vi skal kjøre den i kommentarfeltet her, vil vi kunne bli bedt om
2157 &lt;br&gt;&gt; å fjerne blindpassasjer fra nett- tv og det vil heller ikke bli
2158 &lt;br&gt;&gt; særlig lett å klarere ut noe annet arkivmateriale på lang tid.&lt;/p&gt;
2159
2160 &lt;p&gt;Godt å se at du er enig i at dette er en interessant diskusjon. Den
2161 vil nok fortsette en stund til. :)&lt;/p&gt;
2162
2163 &lt;p&gt;Må innrømme at jeg synes det er merkelig å lese at dere i NRK med
2164 vitende og vilje ønsker å forlede rettighetshaverne for å kunne
2165 fortsette å legge ut arkivmateriale.&lt;/p&gt;
2166
2167 &lt;p&gt;Kommentarer og diskusjoner i bloggene til NRK Beta påvirker jo ikke
2168 faktum, som er at streaming er det samme som nedlasting, og at innhold
2169 som er lagt ut på nett kan lagres lokalt for avspilling når en ønsker
2170 det.&lt;/p&gt;
2171
2172 &lt;p&gt;Det du sier er jo at klarering av arkivmateriale for publisering på
2173 web krever at en holder faktum skjult fra debattfeltet på NRKBeta.
2174 Det er ikke et argument som holder vann. :)&lt;/p&gt;
2175
2176 &lt;p&gt;&gt; Dette er en situasjon NRKbeta ikke ønsker, så kommentaren er fjernet
2177 &lt;br&gt;&gt; og den delen av diskusjonen er avsluttet på nrkbeta, vi antar
2178 &lt;br&gt;&gt; konsekvensene vi beskriver ikke er noe du ønsker heller...&lt;/p&gt;
2179
2180 &lt;p&gt;Personlig ønsker jeg at NRK skal slutte å stikke hodet i sanden og
2181 heller være åpne på hvordan virkeligheten fungerer, samt ta opp kampen
2182 mot de som vil låse kulturen inne. Jeg synes det er en skam at NRK
2183 godtar å forlede publikum. Ville heller at NRK krever at innhold som
2184 skal sendes skal være uten bruksbegresninger og kan publiseres i
2185 formater som heller ikke har bruksbegresninger (bruksbegresningene til
2186 H.264 burde få varselbjellene i NRK til å ringe).&lt;/p&gt;
2187
2188 &lt;p&gt;At NRK er med på DRM-tåkeleggingen og at det kommer feilaktive
2189 påstander om at &quot;streaming beskytter mot nedlasting&quot; som bare er egnet
2190 til å bygge opp om en myte som er skadelig for samfunnet som helhet.&lt;/p&gt;
2191
2192 &lt;p&gt;Anbefaler &amp;lt;URL:&lt;a href=&quot;http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/&quot;&gt;http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/&lt;/a&gt;&gt; og en
2193 titt på
2194 &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html&quot;&gt;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html&lt;/a&gt; &gt;.
2195 for å se hva slags bruksbegresninger H.264 innebærer.&lt;/p&gt;
2196
2197 &lt;p&gt;Hvis dette innebærer at NRK må være åpne med at arkivmaterialet ikke
2198 kan brukes før rettighetshaverene også innser at de er med på å skade
2199 samfunnets kultur og kollektive hukommelse, så får en i hvert fall
2200 synliggjort konsekvensene og antagelig mer flammer på en debatt som er
2201 langt på overtid.&lt;/p&gt;
2202
2203 &lt;p&gt;&gt; Ring meg om noe er uklart: XXX&lt;/p&gt;
2204
2205 &lt;p&gt;Intet uklart, men ikke imponert over måten dere håndterer debatten på.
2206 Hadde du i stedet kommet med et tilsvar i kommentarfeltet der en
2207 gjorde det klart at blindpassasjer-blogpostingen ikke var riktig sted
2208 for videre diskusjon hadde dere i mine øyne kommet fra det med
2209 ryggraden på plass.&lt;/p&gt;
2210
2211 &lt;p&gt;PS: Interessant å se at NRK-ansatte ikke bruker NRK-epostadresser.&lt;/p&gt;
2212
2213 &lt;p&gt;Som en liten avslutning, her er noen litt morsomme innslag om temaet.
2214 &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.archive.org/details/CopyingIsNotTheft&quot;&gt;http://www.archive.org/details/CopyingIsNotTheft&lt;/a&gt; &gt; og
2215 &amp;lt;URL: &lt;a href=&quot;http://patentabsurdity.com/&quot;&gt;http://patentabsurdity.com/&lt;/a&gt; &gt; hadde vært noe å kringkaste på
2216 NRK1. :)&lt;/p&gt;
2217
2218 &lt;p&gt;Vennlig hilsen,
2219 &lt;br&gt;--
2220 &lt;br&gt;Petter Reinholdtsen&lt;/p&gt;
2221 </description>
2222 </item>
2223
2224 <item>
2225 <title>Standardkrav inn i anbudstekster?</title>
2226 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Standardkrav_inn_i_anbudstekster_.html</link>
2227 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Standardkrav_inn_i_anbudstekster_.html</guid>
2228 <pubDate>Sun, 17 Oct 2010 19:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
2229 <description>&lt;p&gt;Hvis det å følge standarder skal ha noen effekt overfor
2230 leverandører, så må slike krav og ønsker komme inn i anbudstekster når
2231 systemer kjøpes inn. Har ikke sett noen slike formuleringer i anbud
2232 så langt, men har tenkt litt på hva som bør inn. Her er noen ideer og
2233 forslag. Min drøm er at en kan sette krav til slik støtte i
2234 anbudstekster, men så langt er det nok mer sannsynlig at en må nøye
2235 seg med å skrive at det er en fordel om slik støtte er tilstede i
2236 leveranser.&lt;/p&gt;
2237
2238 &lt;p&gt;Som systemadministrator på Universitetet er det typisk to områder
2239 som er problematiske for meg. Det ene er admin-grensesnittene på
2240 tjenermaskiner, som vi ønsker å bruke via ssh. Det andre er nettsider
2241 som vi ønsker å bruke via en nettleser. For begge deler er det viktig
2242 at protokollene og formatene som brukes følger standarder våre verktøy
2243 støtter.&lt;/p&gt;
2244
2245 &lt;p&gt;De fleste har nå støtte for SSH som overføringsprotkoll for
2246 admin-grensesnittet, men det er ikke tilstrekkelig for å kunne stille
2247 inn f.eks BIOS og RAID-kontroller via ssh-forbindelsen. Det er flere
2248 aktuelle protokoller for fremvisning av BIOS-oppsett og
2249 oppstartmeldinger, og min anbefaling ville være å kreve
2250 VT100-kompatibel protokoll, for å sikre at flest mulig
2251 terminalemulatorer kan forstå hva som kommer fra admin-grensesnittet
2252 via ssh. Andre aktuelle alternativer er ANSI-terminalemulering og
2253 VT220. Kanskje en formulering ala dette i anbudsutlysninger vil
2254 fungere:&lt;/p&gt;
2255
2256 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
2257 BIOS og oppstartmeldinger i administrasjonsgrensesnittet til maskinen
2258 bør/skal være tilgjengelig via SSH-protokollen som definert av IETF
2259 (RFC 4251 mfl.) og følge terminalfremvisningprotokollen VT100 (ref?)
2260 når en kobler seg til oppstart via ssh.
2261 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2262
2263 &lt;p&gt;Har ikke lykkes med å finne en god referanse for
2264 VT100-spesifikasjonen.&lt;/p&gt;
2265
2266 &lt;p&gt;Når det gjelder nettsider, så er det det HTML, CSS og
2267 JavaScript-spesifikasjonen til W3C som gjelder.&lt;/p&gt;
2268
2269 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
2270 Alle systemets nettsider bør/skal være i henhold til statens
2271 standardkatalogs krav om nettsider og følge HTML-standarden som
2272 definert av W3C, og validere uten feil hos W3Cs HTML-validator
2273 (http://validator.w3.org). Hvis det brukes CSS så bør/skal denne
2274 validere uten feil hos W3Cs CSS-validator
2275 (http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/). Eventuelle JavaScript skal
2276 være i henhold til EcmaScript-standarden. I tillegg til å følge de
2277 overnevnte standardene skal websidene fungere i nettleserne (fyll inn
2278 relevant liste for organisasjonen) Firefox 3.5, Internet Explorer 8,
2279 Opera 9, etc.
2280 &lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2281
2282 &lt;p&gt;Vil et slikt avsnitt være konkret nok til å få leverandørene til å
2283 lage nettsider som følger standardene og fungerer i flere
2284 nettlesere?&lt;/p&gt;
2285
2286 &lt;p&gt;Tar svært gjerne imot innspill på dette temaet til aktive (at)
2287 nuug.no, og er spesielt interessert i hva andre skriver i sine anbud
2288 for å oppmuntre leverandører til å følge standardene. Kanskje NUUG
2289 burde lage et dokument med forslag til standardformuleringer å ta med
2290 i anbudsutlysninger?&lt;/p&gt;
2291
2292 &lt;p&gt;Oppdatering 2010-12-03: I følge Wikipedias oppføring om
2293 &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI_escape_code&quot;&gt;ANSI escape
2294 code&lt;/a&gt;, så bruker VT100-terminaler ECMA-48-spesifikasjonen som
2295 basis for sin oppførsel. Det kan dermed være et alternativ når en
2296 skal spesifisere hvordan seriell-konsoll skal fungere.&lt;/p&gt;
2297 </description>
2298 </item>
2299
2300 <item>
2301 <title>Terms of use for video produced by a Canon IXUS 130 digital camera</title>
2302 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html</link>
2303 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html</guid>
2304 <pubDate>Thu, 9 Sep 2010 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
2305 <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago I had the mixed pleasure of bying a new digital
2306 camera, a Canon IXUS 130. It was instructive and very disturbing to
2307 be able to verify that also this camera producer have the nerve to
2308 specify how I can or can not use the videos produced with the camera.
2309 Even thought I was aware of the issue, the options with new cameras
2310 are limited and I ended up bying the camera anyway. What is the
2311 problem, you might ask? It is software patents, MPEG-4, H.264 and the
2312 MPEG-LA that is the problem, and our right to record our experiences
2313 without asking for permissions that is at risk.
2314
2315 &lt;p&gt;On page 27 of the Danish instruction manual, this section is
2316 written:&lt;/p&gt;
2317
2318 &lt;blockquote&gt;
2319 &lt;p&gt;This product is licensed under AT&amp;T patents for the MPEG-4 standard
2320 and may be used for encoding MPEG-4 compliant video and/or decoding
2321 MPEG-4 compliant video that was encoded only (1) for a personal and
2322 non-commercial purpose or (2) by a video provider licensed under the
2323 AT&amp;T patents to provide MPEG-4 compliant video.&lt;/p&gt;
2324
2325 &lt;p&gt;No license is granted or implied for any other use for MPEG-4
2326 standard.&lt;/p&gt;
2327 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
2328
2329 &lt;p&gt;In short, the camera producer have chosen to use technology
2330 (MPEG-4/H.264) that is only provided if I used it for personal and
2331 non-commercial purposes, or ask for permission from the organisations
2332 holding the knowledge monopoly (patent) for technology used.&lt;/p&gt;
2333
2334 &lt;p&gt;This issue has been brewing for a while, and I recommend you to
2335 read
2336 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.osnews.com/story/23236/Why_Our_Civilization_s_Video_Art_and_Culture_is_Threatened_by_the_MPEG-LA&quot;&gt;Why
2337 Our Civilization&#39;s Video Art and Culture is Threatened by the
2338 MPEG-LA&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Eugenia Loli-Queru and
2339 &quot;&lt;a href=&quot;http://webmink.com/2010/09/03/h-264-and-foss/&quot;&gt;H.264 Is Not
2340 The Sort Of Free That Matters&lt;/a&gt;&quot; by Simon Phipps to learn more about
2341 the issue. The solution is to support the
2342 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition&quot;&gt;free and
2343 open standards&lt;/a&gt; for video, like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.theora.org/&quot;&gt;Ogg
2344 Theora&lt;/a&gt;, and avoid MPEG-4 and H.264 if you can.&lt;/p&gt;
2345 </description>
2346 </item>
2347
2348 <item>
2349 <title>Officeshots taking shape</title>
2350 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html</link>
2351 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Officeshots_taking_shape.html</guid>
2352 <pubDate>Sun, 13 Jun 2010 11:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
2353 <description>&lt;p&gt;For those of us caring about document exchange and
2354 interoperability, &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.officeshots.org/&quot;&gt;OfficeShots&lt;/a&gt;
2355 is a great service. It is to ODF documents what
2356 &lt;a href=&quot;http://browsershots.org/&quot;&gt;BrowserShots&lt;/a&gt; is for web
2357 pages.&lt;/p&gt;
2358
2359 &lt;p&gt;A while back, I was contacted by Knut Yrvin at the part of Nokia
2360 that used to be Trolltech, who wanted to help the OfficeShots project
2361 and wondered if the University of Oslo where I work would be
2362 interested in supporting the project. I helped him to navigate his
2363 request to the right people at work, and his request was answered with
2364 a spot in the machine room with power and network connected, and Knut
2365 arranged funding for a machine to fill the spot. The machine is
2366 administrated by the OfficeShots people, so I do not have daily
2367 contact with its progress, and thus from time to time check back to
2368 see how the project is doing.&lt;/p&gt;
2369
2370 &lt;p&gt;Today I had a look, and was happy to see that the Dell box in our
2371 machine room now is the host for several virtual machines running as
2372 OfficeShots factories, and the project is able to render ODF documents
2373 in 17 different document processing implementation on Linux and
2374 Windows. This is great.&lt;/p&gt;
2375 </description>
2376 </item>
2377
2378 <item>
2379 <title>A manual for standards wars...</title>
2380 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html</link>
2381 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_manual_for_standards_wars___.html</guid>
2382 <pubDate>Sun, 6 Jun 2010 14:15:00 +0200</pubDate>
2383 <description>&lt;p&gt;Via the
2384 &lt;a href=&quot;http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/robweir/antic-atom/~3/QzU4RgoAGMg/weekly-links-10.html&quot;&gt;blog
2385 of Rob Weir&lt;/a&gt; I came across the very interesting essay named
2386 &lt;a href=&quot;http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/shapiro/wars.pdf&quot;&gt;The Art of
2387 Standards Wars&lt;/a&gt; (PDF 25 pages). I recommend it for everyone
2388 following the standards wars of today.&lt;/p&gt;
2389 </description>
2390 </item>
2391
2392 <item>
2393 <title>Danmark går for ODF?</title>
2394 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Danmark_g_r_for_ODF_.html</link>
2395 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Danmark_g_r_for_ODF_.html</guid>
2396 <pubDate>Fri, 29 Jan 2010 12:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
2397 <description>&lt;p&gt;Ble nettopp gjort oppmerksom på en
2398 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.version2.dk/artikel/13690-breaking-odf-vinder-dokumentformat-krigen &quot;&gt;nyhet fra Version2&lt;/a&gt;
2399 fra Danmark, der det hevdes at Folketinget har vedtatt at ODF skal
2400 brukes som dokumentutvekslingsformat i Staten.&lt;/p&gt;
2401
2402 &lt;p&gt;Hyggelig lesning, spesielt hvis det viser seg at de av vedtatt
2403 kravlisten for hva som skal aksepteres som referert i kommentarfeltet
2404 til artikkelen og
2405 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.version2.dk/artikel/13693-er-ooxml-doemt-ude-her-er-kravene-til-en-offentlig-dokumentstandard&quot;&gt;en
2406 annen artikkel&lt;/a&gt; i samme nett-avis. Liker spesielt godt denne:&lt;/p&gt;
2407
2408 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt; Det skal demonstreres, at standarden i sin helhed kan
2409 implementeres af alle direkte i sin helhed på flere
2410 platforme.&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2411
2412 &lt;p&gt;Noe slikt burde være et krav også i Norge.&lt;/p&gt;
2413 </description>
2414 </item>
2415
2416 <item>
2417 <title>Relative popularity of document formats (MS Office vs. ODF)</title>
2418 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Relative_popularity_of_document_formats__MS_Office_vs__ODF_.html</link>
2419 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Relative_popularity_of_document_formats__MS_Office_vs__ODF_.html</guid>
2420 <pubDate>Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
2421 <description>&lt;p&gt;Just for fun, I did a search right now on Google for a few file ODF
2422 and MS Office based formats (not to be mistaken for ISO or ECMA
2423 OOXML), to get an idea of their relative usage. I searched using
2424 &#39;filetype:odt&#39; and equvalent terms, and got these results:&lt;/P&gt;
2425
2426 &lt;table&gt;
2427 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;th&gt;Type&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;ODF&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;MS Office&lt;/th&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
2428 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Tekst&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;odt:282000&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;docx:308000&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
2429 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Presentasjon&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;odp:75600&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;pptx:183000&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
2430 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Regneark&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;ods:26500 &lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;xlsx:145000&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
2431 &lt;/table&gt;
2432
2433 &lt;p&gt;Next, I added a &#39;site:no&#39; limit to get the numbers for Norway, and
2434 got these numbers:&lt;/p&gt;
2435
2436 &lt;table&gt;
2437 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;th&gt;Type&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;ODF&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;MS Office&lt;/th&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
2438 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Tekst&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;odt:2480 &lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;docx:4460&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
2439 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Presentasjon&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;odp:299 &lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;pptx:741&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
2440 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Regneark&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;ods:187 &lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;xlsx:372&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
2441 &lt;/table&gt;
2442
2443 &lt;p&gt;I wonder how these numbers change over time.&lt;/p&gt;
2444
2445 &lt;p&gt;I am aware of Google returning different results and numbers based
2446 on where the search is done, so I guess these numbers will differ if
2447 they are conduced in another country. Because of this, I did the same
2448 search from a machine in California, USA, a few minutes after the
2449 search done from a machine here in Norway.&lt;/p&gt;
2450
2451
2452 &lt;table&gt;
2453 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;th&gt;Type&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;ODF&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;MS Office&lt;/th&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
2454 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Tekst&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;odt:129000&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;docx:308000&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
2455 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Presentasjon&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;odp:44200&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;pptx:93900&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
2456 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Regneark&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;ods:26500 &lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;xlsx:82400&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
2457 &lt;/table&gt;
2458
2459 &lt;p&gt;And with &#39;site:no&#39;:
2460
2461 &lt;table&gt;
2462 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;th&gt;Type&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;ODF&lt;/th&gt;&lt;th&gt;MS Office&lt;/th&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
2463 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Tekst&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;odt:2480&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;docx:3410&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
2464 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Presentasjon&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;odp:175&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;pptx:604&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
2465 &lt;tr&gt;&lt;td&gt;Regneark&lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;ods:186 &lt;/td&gt; &lt;td&gt;xlsx:296&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
2466 &lt;/table&gt;
2467
2468 &lt;p&gt;Interesting difference, not sure what to conclude from these
2469 numbers.&lt;/p&gt;
2470 </description>
2471 </item>
2472
2473 <item>
2474 <title>ISO still hope to fix OOXML</title>
2475 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html</link>
2476 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ISO_still_hope_to_fix_OOXML.html</guid>
2477 <pubDate>Sat, 8 Aug 2009 14:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
2478 <description>&lt;p&gt;According to &lt;a
2479 href=&quot;http://twerner.blogspot.com/2009/08/defects-of-office-open-xml.html&quot;&gt;a
2480 blog post from Torsten Werner&lt;/a&gt;, the current defect report for ISO
2481 29500 (ISO OOXML) is 809 pages. His interesting point is that the
2482 defect report is 71 pages more than the full ODF 1.1 specification.
2483 Personally I find it more interesting that ISO still believe ISO OOXML
2484 can be fixed in ISO. Personally, I believe it is broken beyon repair,
2485 and I completely lack any trust in ISO for being able to get anywhere
2486 close to solving the problems. I was part of the Norwegian committee
2487 involved in the OOXML fast track process, and was not impressed with
2488 Standard Norway and ISO in how they handled it.&lt;/p&gt;
2489
2490 &lt;p&gt;These days I focus on ODF instead, which seem like a specification
2491 with the future ahead of it. We are working in NUUG to organise a ODF
2492 seminar this autumn.&lt;/p&gt;
2493 </description>
2494 </item>
2495
2496 <item>
2497 <title>Regjerningens oppsummering av høringen om standardkatalogen versjon 2</title>
2498 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Regjerningens_oppsummering_av_h_ringen_om_standardkatalogen_versjon_2.html</link>
2499 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Regjerningens_oppsummering_av_h_ringen_om_standardkatalogen_versjon_2.html</guid>
2500 <pubDate>Thu, 9 Jul 2009 14:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
2501 <description>&lt;p&gt;For å forstå mer om hvorfor standardkatalogens versjon 2 ble som
2502 den ble, har jeg bedt om kopi fra FAD av dokumentene som ble lagt frem
2503 for regjeringen da de tok sin avgjørelse. De er nå lagt ut på NUUGs
2504 wiki, direkte tilgjengelig via &quot;&lt;a
2505 href=&quot;http://wiki.nuug.no/uttalelser/200901-standardkatalog-v2?action=AttachFile&amp;do=get&amp;target=kongelig-resolusjon.pdf&quot;&gt;Referansekatalogen
2506 v2.0 - Oppsummering av høring&lt;/a&gt;&quot; og &quot;&lt;a
2507 href=&quot;http://wiki.nuug.no/uttalelser/200901-standardkatalog-v2?action=AttachFile&amp;do=get&amp;target=kongelig-resolusjon-katalogutkast.pdf&quot;&gt;Referansekatalog
2508 for IT-standarder i offentlig sektor Versjon 2.0, dd.mm.åååå -
2509 UTKAST&lt;/a&gt;&quot;.&lt;/p&gt;
2510
2511 &lt;p&gt;Det er tre ting jeg merker meg i oppsummeringen fra
2512 høringsuttalelsen da jeg skummet igjennom den. Det første er at
2513 forståelsen av hvordan programvarepatenter påvirker fri
2514 programvareutvikling også i Norge når en argumenterer med at
2515 royalty-betaling ikke er et relevant problem i Norge. Det andre er at
2516 FAD ikke har en prinsipiell forståelse av verdien av en enkelt
2517 standard innenfor hvert område. Det siste er at påstander i
2518 høringsuttalelsene ikke blir etterprøvd (f.eks. påstanden fra
2519 Microsoft om hvordan Ogg blir standardisert og påstanden fra
2520 politidirektoratet om patentproblemer i Theora).&lt;/p&gt;
2521 </description>
2522 </item>
2523
2524 <item>
2525 <title>Regjerningen forlater prinsippet om ingen royalty-betaling i standardkatalogen versjon 2</title>
2526 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Regjerningen_forlater_prinsippet_om_ingen_royalty_betaling_i_standardkatalogen_versjon_2.html</link>
2527 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Regjerningen_forlater_prinsippet_om_ingen_royalty_betaling_i_standardkatalogen_versjon_2.html</guid>
2528 <pubDate>Mon, 6 Jul 2009 21:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
2529 <description>&lt;p&gt;Jeg ble glad da regjeringen
2530 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digi.no/817635/her-er-statens-nye-it-standarder&quot;&gt;annonserte&lt;/a&gt;
2531 versjon 2 av
2532 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.regjeringen.no/upload/FAD/Vedlegg/IKT-politikk/Referansekatalogen_versjon2.pdf&quot;&gt;statens
2533 referansekatalog over standarder&lt;/a&gt;, men trist da jeg leste hva som
2534 faktisk var vedtatt etter
2535 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad/dok/horinger/horingsdokumenter/2009/horing---referansekatalog-versjon-2.html&quot;&gt;høringen&lt;/a&gt;.
2536 De fleste av de valgte åpne standardene er gode og vil bidra til at
2537 alle kan delta på like vilkår i å lage løsninger for staten, men
2538 noen av dem blokkerer for de som ikke har anledning til å benytte
2539 spesifikasjoner som krever betaling for bruk (såkalt
2540 royalty-betaling). Det gjelder spesifikt for H.264 for video og MP3
2541 for lyd. Så lenge bruk av disse var valgfritt mens Ogg Theora og Ogg
2542 Vorbis var påkrevd, kunne alle som ønsket å spille av video og lyd
2543 fra statens websider gjøre dette uten å måtte bruke programmer der
2544 betaling for bruk var nødvendig. Når det nå er gjort valgfritt for
2545 de statlige etatene å bruke enten H.264 eller Theora (og MP3 eler
2546 Vorbis), så vil en bli tvunget til å forholde seg til
2547 royalty-belastede standarder for å få tilgang til videoen og
2548 lyden.&lt;/p&gt;
2549
2550 &lt;p&gt;Det gjør meg veldig trist at regjeringen har forlatt prinsippet om
2551 at alle standarder som ble valgt til å være påkrevd i katalogen skulle
2552 være uten royalty-betaling. Jeg håper det ikke betyr at en har mistet
2553 all forståelse for hvilke prinsipper som må følges for å oppnå
2554 likeverdig konkurranse mellom aktørene i IT-bransjen. NUUG advarte
2555 mot dette i
2556 &lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.nuug.no/uttalelser/200901-standardkatalog-v2&quot;&gt;sin
2557 høringsuttalelse&lt;/a&gt;, men ser ut til å ha blitt ignorert.&lt;/p&gt;
2558
2559 &lt;p&gt;Oppdatering 2012-06-29: Kom over &lt;ahref=&quot;
2560 http://www.regjeringen.no/upload/FAD/Vedlegg/IKT-politikk/Refkat_v2.pdf&quot;&gt;en
2561 rapport til FAD&lt;/a&gt; fra da versjon 1 av katalogen ble vedtatt, og der
2562 er det tydelig at problemstillingen var kjent og forstått.&lt;/p&gt;
2563 </description>
2564 </item>
2565
2566 <item>
2567 <title>Microsofts misvisende argumentasjon rundt multimediaformater</title>
2568 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Microsofts_misvisende_argumentasjon_rundt_multimediaformater.html</link>
2569 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Microsofts_misvisende_argumentasjon_rundt_multimediaformater.html</guid>
2570 <pubDate>Fri, 26 Jun 2009 13:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
2571 <description>&lt;p&gt;I
2572 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.regjeringen.no/upload/FAD/Vedlegg/Hoeringer/Refkat_V2/MicrosoftNorge.pdf&quot;&gt;Microsoft
2573 sin høringsuttalelse&lt;/a&gt; til
2574 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad/dok/horinger/horingsdokumenter/2009/horing---referansekatalog-versjon-2.html?id=549422&quot;&gt;forslag
2575 til versjon 2 av statens referansekatalog over standarder&lt;/a&gt;, lirer
2576 de av seg følgende FUD-perle:&lt;/p&gt;
2577
2578 &lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&quot;Vorbis, OGG, Theora og FLAC er alle tekniske
2579 spesifikasjoner overordnet styrt av xiph.org, som er en
2580 ikke-kommersiell organisasjon. Etablerte og anerkjente
2581 standardiseringsorganisasjoner, som Oasis, W3C og Ecma, har en godt
2582 innarbeidet vedlikeholds- og forvaltningsprosess av en standard.
2583 Det er derimot helt opp til hver enkelt organisasjon å bestemme
2584 hvordan tekniske spesifikasjoner videreutvikles og endres, og disse
2585 spesifikasjonene bør derfor ikke defineres som åpne
2586 standarder.&quot;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2587
2588 &lt;p&gt;De vokter seg vel for å nevne den anerkjente
2589 standardiseringsorganisasjonen IETF, som er organisasjonen bak HTTP,
2590 IP og det meste av protokoller på Internet, og RFC-standardene som
2591 IETF står bak. Ogg er spesifisert i
2592 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ietf.org/rfc/rfc3533.txt&quot;&gt;RFC 3533&lt;/a&gt;, og er uten
2593 tvil å anse som en åpen standard. Vorbis er
2594 &lt;a href=&quot;http://ietf.org/rfc/rfc5215.txt&quot;&gt;RFC 5215&lt;/a&gt;. Theora er
2595
2596 under standardisering via IETF, med
2597 &lt;a href=&quot;http://svn.xiph.org/trunk/theora/doc/draft-ietf-avt-rtp-theora-00.txt&quot;&gt;siste
2598 utkast publisert 2006-07-21&lt;/a&gt; (riktignok er dermed teksten ikke
2599 skrevet i stein ennå, men det blir neppe endringer som ikke er
2600 bakoverkompatibel). De kan være inne på noe når det gjelder FLAC da
2601 jeg ikke finner tegn til at &lt;a
2602 href=&quot;http://flac.sourceforge.net/format.html&quot;&gt;spesifikasjonen
2603 tilgjengelig på web&lt;/a&gt; er på tur via noen
2604 standardiseringsorganisasjon, men i og med at folkene bak Ogg, Theora
2605 og Vorbis også har involvert seg i Flac siden 2003, så ser jeg ikke
2606 bort fra at også den organiseres via IETF. Jeg kjenner personlig lite
2607 til FLAC.&lt;/p&gt;
2608
2609 &lt;p&gt;Uredelig argumentasjon bør en holde seg for god til å komme med,
2610 spesielt når det er så enkelt i dagens Internet-hverdag å gå
2611 misvisende påstander etter i sømmene.&lt;/p&gt;
2612 </description>
2613 </item>
2614
2615 <item>
2616 <title>Standarder fungerer best når en samler seg rundt dem</title>
2617 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Standarder_fungerer_best_n_r_en_samler_seg_rundt_dem.html</link>
2618 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Standarder_fungerer_best_n_r_en_samler_seg_rundt_dem.html</guid>
2619 <pubDate>Tue, 19 May 2009 11:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
2620 <description>&lt;p&gt;En standard er noe man samler seg rundt, ut fra ideen om at en får
2621 fordeler når mange står sammen. Jo flere som står sammen, jo
2622 bedre. Når en vet dette, blir det litt merkelig å lese noen av
2623 uttalelsene som er kommet inn til
2624 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad/dok/horinger/horingsdokumenter/2009/horing---referansekatalog-versjon-2/horingsuttalelser.html?id=549423&quot;&gt;høringen
2625 om versjon 2 av statens referansekatalog over standarder&lt;/a&gt;. Blant
2626 annet Abelia, NHO og Microsoft tror det er lurt med flere standarder
2627 innenfor samme område. Det blir som å si at det er fint om Norge
2628 standardiserte både på A4- og Letter-størrelser på arkene, ulik
2629 sporvidde på jernbaneskinnene, meter og fot som lengemål, eller
2630 høyre- og venstrekjøring - slik at en kan konkurrere på hvilken
2631 standard som er best. De fleste forstår heldigvis at dette ikke
2632 bidrar positivt.&lt;/p&gt;
2633 </description>
2634 </item>
2635
2636 <item>
2637 <title>Hvorfor jeg ikke bruker eFaktura</title>
2638 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Hvorfor_jeg_ikke_bruker_eFaktura.html</link>
2639 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Hvorfor_jeg_ikke_bruker_eFaktura.html</guid>
2640 <pubDate>Thu, 23 Apr 2009 23:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
2641 <description>&lt;p&gt;Telenors annonsering om å kreve 35 kroner i gebyr fra alle som
2642 ønsker papirfaktura har satt sinnene i kok, og pressedekningen så
2643 langt snakker om at eldre og folk som ikke behersker data vil få en
2644 urimelig ekstrakostnad. Jeg tror ikke jeg passer inn i noen av de
2645 kategoriene, men velger å holde meg unna eFaktura - som er det
2646 Telenor ønsker å få folk over på - pga. systemets egenskaper.&lt;/p&gt;
2647
2648 &lt;p&gt;Slik jeg har sett eFaktura til forbrukere så langt, så sender
2649 selger en elektronisk beskjed til kundens bank, som legger ut
2650 informasjon om fakturaen i nettbanken for godkjenning. Personlig
2651 ville jeg sett det som mer naturlig at det gikk en elektronisk beskjed
2652 fra selger til kunde, dvs meg, og at jeg så kunne bruke den videre
2653 mot banken eller andre hvis jeg ønsket dette. Mine innkjøp og
2654 regninger er jo en sak mellom meg og mine leverandører, ikke en sak
2655 mellom min bank og mine leverandører. Kun hvis jeg ønsker å betale
2656 fakturaen skal banken involveres. En faktura bør jo inn i
2657 regnskapet, og jeg ønsker mulighet til å legge det inn der. Når
2658 fakturaen sendes til banken i stedet for meg, blir det vanskeligere.
2659 Hele eFaktura-modellen virker på meg som en umyndiggjøring av meg
2660 som kunde.&lt;/p&gt;
2661
2662 &lt;p&gt;I tillegg har jeg ikke vært i stand til å finne
2663 eFaktura-formatets spesifikasjon, og det ser ut til at utsending av
2664 slike krever dyre avtaler med bankene for å få lov til å sende ut
2665 eFaktura til kunder. Jeg ser vel helst at fakturering på
2666 elektroniske formater kan gjøres f.eks. via epost eller HTTP uten å
2667 måtte betale mellommenn for retten til å lever ut en faktura, og
2668 liker rett og slett ikke dagens faktureringsmodeller.&lt;/p&gt;
2669 </description>
2670 </item>
2671
2672 <item>
2673 <title>Standardize on protocols and formats, not vendors and applications</title>
2674 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Standardize_on_protocols_and_formats__not_vendors_and_applications.html</link>
2675 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Standardize_on_protocols_and_formats__not_vendors_and_applications.html</guid>
2676 <pubDate>Mon, 30 Mar 2009 11:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
2677 <description>&lt;p&gt;Where I work at the University of Oslo, one decision stand out as a
2678 very good one to form a long lived computer infrastructure. It is the
2679 simple one, lost by many in todays computer industry: Standardize on
2680 open network protocols and open exchange/storage formats, not applications.
2681 Applications come and go, while protocols and files tend to stay, and
2682 thus one want to make it easy to change application and vendor, while
2683 avoiding conversion costs and locking users to a specific platform or
2684 application.&lt;/p&gt;
2685
2686 &lt;p&gt;This approach make it possible to replace the client applications
2687 independently of the server applications. One can even allow users to
2688 use several different applications as long as they handle the selected
2689 protocol and format. In the normal case, only one client application
2690 is recommended and users only get help if they choose to use this
2691 application, but those that want to deviate from the easy path are not
2692 blocked from doing so.&lt;/p&gt;
2693
2694 &lt;p&gt;It also allow us to replace the server side without forcing the
2695 users to replace their applications, and thus allow us to select the
2696 best server implementation at any moment, when scale and resouce
2697 requirements change.&lt;/p&gt;
2698
2699 &lt;p&gt;I strongly recommend standardizing - on open network protocols and
2700 open formats, but I would never recommend standardizing on a single
2701 application that do not use open network protocol or open formats.&lt;/p&gt;
2702 </description>
2703 </item>
2704
2705 <item>
2706 <title>Hva er egentlig en åpen standard?</title>
2707 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Hva_er_egentlig_en__pen_standard_.html</link>
2708 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Hva_er_egentlig_en__pen_standard_.html</guid>
2709 <pubDate>Sat, 28 Mar 2009 10:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
2710 <description>&lt;p&gt;Jeg møter alle slags interessante mennesker på min vei, og et møte
2711 jeg lærte mye av var å treffe på en svært kompetent IT-fyr som
2712 benektet ting jeg anser som åpenbart og selvfølgelig når det gjelder
2713 standarder. Det var interessant, da det fikk meg til å tenke litt
2714 nøyere på hvilke mekanismer som ligger til grunn for at noe oppfattes
2715 som en standard. Det hele startet med arbeid rundt integrering av NSS
2716 LDAP mot Active Directory, og problemer som oppstår pga. at Active
2717 Directory ikke følger LDAP-spesifikasjonen som dokumentert i RFCer fra
2718 IETF (konkret, AD returnerer kun et subset av attributter hvis det er
2719 mer enn 1500 atributter av en gitt type i et LDAP-objekt, og en må be
2720 om resten i bolker av 1500). Jeg hevdet måten dette ble gjort på brøt
2721 med LDAP-spesifikasjonen, og henviste til hvor i LDAP-spesifikasjonen
2722 fra IETF det sto at oppførselen til AD ikke fulgte
2723 LDAP-spesifikasjonen. AD-spesialisten overrasket meg da ved å
2724 fortelle at IETF var ikke de som definerte LDAP-spesifikasjonen, og at
2725 Active Directory ikke brøt den virkelige LDAP-spesifikasjonen som han
2726 mente lå til grunn. Jeg ble spesielt overrasket over denne
2727 tilnærmingen til problemstillingen, da til og med Microsoft så vidt
2728 jeg kan se anerkjenner IETF som organisasjonen som definerer
2729 LDAP-spesifikasjonen. Jeg fikk aldri spurt hvem han mente sto bak den
2730 egentlige LDAP-spesifikasjonen, da det var irrelevant for problemet vi
2731 måtte løse (få Linux og AD til å fungere sammen). Dette møtet
2732 fortalte meg uansett at det ikke er gitt at alle aktører er enige om
2733 hva en standard er, og hva som er kilden til en gitt standard. Det er
2734 vanskelig å enes om felles standarder før en først enes om hvem som
2735 bestemmer hva en gitt standard innebærer.&lt;/p&gt;
2736
2737 &lt;p&gt;Hva er så en standard? I sin abstrakte form er det noe å samles
2738 om. På engelsk er en av betydningene fane brukt i krig, du vet, den
2739 type fane en samlet seg rundt på kamplassen i riddertiden. En
2740 standard definerer altså et felleskap, noen som har noe felles. Det
2741 er naturligvis mange måter å utgjøre et felleskap på. En kan
2742 f.eks. enes om å gjøre alt slik som Ole gjør det, og dermed si at Oles
2743 oppførsel er standard. Hver gang Ole endrer oppførsel endrer også
2744 standarden seg uten noe mer organisering og prosedyre. En variant av
2745 dette er å gjøre slik som Ole har gjort det i stedet for slik Ole til
2746 enhver til gjør noe. Dette er ofte litt enklere å forholde seg til,
2747 da en slipper å sjekke med Ole hver gang for å vite hvordan ting skal
2748 gjøres nå, men hvis det Ole gjorde noe dumt den gang en bestemte seg
2749 for å følge Ole, så er det vanskeligere å få endret oppførsel for å
2750 unngå dette dumme.&lt;/p&gt;
2751
2752 &lt;p&gt;En kan også ta det et skritt videre, og istedet for å basere seg på
2753 enkeltpersoners oppførsel sette seg ned og bli enige om hvordan en
2754 skal gjøre ting, dvs. lage et felleskap basert på konsensus. Dette
2755 tar naturligvis litt mer tid (en må diskutere ting i forkant før en
2756 kan sette igang), men det kan bidra til at den oppførselen en
2757 planlegger å benytte seg av er mer gjennomtenkt. Det ender også
2758 typisk opp med en beskrivelse av ønsket oppførsel som flere kan forstå
2759 - da flere har vært involvert i å utarbeide beskrivelsen.&lt;/p&gt;
2760
2761 &lt;p&gt;Dette er dessverre ikke alt som trengs for å forstå hva en åpen
2762 standard er for noe. Der alle kan se på hvordan folk oppfører seg, og
2763 dermed har valget om de vil oppføre seg likt eller ikke, så er det
2764 endel juridiske faktorer som gjør det hele mer komplisert -
2765 opphavsretten og patentlovgivningen for å være helt konkret. For å gi
2766 et eksempel. Hvis noen blir enige om å alltid plystre en bestemt
2767 melodi når de møtes, for å identifisere hverandre, så kan
2768 opphavsretten brukes til å styre hvem som får lov til å gjøre dette.
2769 De har standardisert hvordan de kjenner igjen alle som følger denne
2770 standarden, men ikke alle har nødvendigvis lov til å følge den.
2771 Musikk er opphavsrettsbeskyttet, og fremføring av musikk i
2772 offentligheten er opphavsmannens enerett (dvs. et monopol). Det vil i
2773 sin ytterste konsekvens si at alle som skal plystre en
2774 opphavsrettsbeskyttet melodi i det offentlige rom må ha godkjenning
2775 fra opphavsmannen. Har en ikke dette, så bryter en loven og kan
2776 straffes. Det er dermed mulig for opphavsmannen å kontrollere hvem
2777 som får lov til å benytte seg av denne standarden. En annen variant
2778 er hvis en standard er dokumentert, så er dokumentet som definerer
2779 standarden (spesifikasjonen) beskyttet av opphavsretten, og det er
2780 dermed mulig for rettighetsinnehaver å begrense tilgang til
2781 spesifikasjonen, og slik styre hvem som kan ta i bruk standarden på
2782 den måten.&lt;/p&gt;
2783
2784 &lt;p&gt;Der opphavsretten innvilger et monopol på kunstneriske uttrykk med
2785 verkshøyde, innvilger patentlovgivningen monopol på ideer. Hvis en
2786 slik patentert idé (fortrinnsvis uttrykt i en teknisk innretning, men
2787 det er kompliserende faktorer som gjør at det ikke er et krav) trengs
2788 for å ta i bruk en standard, så vil den som innehar patent kunne styre
2789 hvem som får ta i bruk standarden. Det er dermed ikke gitt at alle
2790 kan delta i et standard-felleskap, og hvis de kan delta, så er det
2791 ikke sikkert at det er på like vilkår. F.eks. kan rettighetsinnehaver
2792 sette vilkår som gjør at noen faller utenfor, det være seg av
2793 finansielle, avtalemessige eller prinsipielle årsaker. Vanlige slike
2794 vilkår er &quot;må betale litt for hver kunde/bruker&quot; som utelukker de som
2795 gir bort en løsning gratis og &quot;må gi fra seg retten til å håndheve
2796 sine egne patentrettigheter ovenfor rettighetshaver&quot; som utelukker
2797 alle som ønsker å beholde den muligheten.&lt;/p&gt;
2798
2799 &lt;p&gt;En åpen standard innebærer for meg at alle kan få innsikt i en
2800 komplett beskrivelse av oppførsel som standarden skal dekke, og at
2801 ingen kan nektes å benytte seg av standarden. Noen mener at det
2802 holder at alle med tilstrekkelig finansiering kan få tilgang til
2803 spesifikasjonen og at en kun har finansielle krav til bruk.
2804 Pga. denne konflikten har et nytt begrep spredt seg de siste årene,
2805 nemlig fri og åpen standard, der en har gjort det klart at alle må ha
2806 komplett og lik tilgang til spesifikasjoner og retten til å gjøre bruk
2807 av en standard for at en standard skal kunne kalles fri og åpen.&lt;/p&gt;
2808 </description>
2809 </item>
2810
2811 <item>
2812 <title>Fri og åpen standard, slik Digistan ser det</title>
2813 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fri_og__pen_standard__slik_Digistan_ser_det.html</link>
2814 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fri_og__pen_standard__slik_Digistan_ser_det.html</guid>
2815 <pubDate>Sat, 31 Jan 2009 23:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
2816 <description>&lt;p&gt;Det er mange ulike definisjoner om hva en åpen standard er for noe,
2817 og NUUG hadde &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/dokumenter/standard-presse-def-200506.txt&quot;&gt;en
2818 pressemelding om dette sommeren 2005&lt;/a&gt;. Der ble definisjonen til
2819 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aaben-standard.dk/&quot;&gt;DKUUG&lt;/a&gt;,
2820 &lt;a href=&quot;http://europa.eu.int/idabc/servlets/Doc?id=19529&quot;&gt;EU-kommissionens
2821 European Interoperability Framework ( side 9)&lt;/a&gt; og
2822 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.teknologiradet.no/files/7polert_copy.htm&quot;&gt;teknologirådet&lt;/a&gt; omtalt.&lt;/p&gt;
2823
2824 &lt;p&gt;Siden den gang har regjeringens standardiseringsråd dukket opp, og de
2825 ser ut til å har tatt utgangspunkt i EU-kommisjonens definisjon i
2826 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad/kampanjer/standardiseringsradet/arbeidsmetodikk.html?id=476407&quot;&gt;sin
2827 arbeidsmetodikk&lt;/a&gt;. Personlig synes jeg det er en god ide, da
2828 kravene som stilles der gjør at alle markedsaktører får like vilkår,
2829 noe som kommer kundene til gode ved hjelp av økt konkurranse.&lt;/p&gt;
2830
2831 &lt;p&gt;I sommer kom det en ny definisjon på banen.
2832 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digistan.org/&quot;&gt;Digistan&lt;/a&gt; lanserte
2833 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition&quot;&gt;en
2834 definisjon på en fri og åpen standard&lt;/a&gt;. Jeg liker måten de bryter
2835 ut av diskusjonen om hva som kreves for å kalle noe en åpen standard
2836 ved å legge på et ord og poengtere at en standard som er både åpen og
2837 fri har noen spesielle krav. Her er den definisjonen etter rask
2838 oversettelse fra engelsk til norsk av meg:&lt;/p&gt;
2839
2840 &lt;blockquote&gt;
2841 &lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Definisjonen av en fri og åpen standard&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
2842
2843 &lt;p&gt;Den digitale standardorganisasjonen definierer fri og åpen standard
2844 som følger:&lt;/p&gt;
2845 &lt;ul&gt;
2846 &lt;li&gt;En fri og åpen standard er immun for leverandørinnlåsing i alle
2847 stadier av dens livssyklus. Immuniteten fra leverandørinnlåsing gjør
2848 det mulig å fritt bruke, forbedre, stole på og utvide en standard over
2849 tid.&lt;/li&gt;
2850 &lt;li&gt;Standarden er adoptert og vil bli vedlikeholdt av en ikke-kommersiell
2851 organisasjon, og dens pågående utvikling gjøres med en åpen
2852 beslutningsprosedyre som er tilgjengelig for alle som er interessert i
2853 å delta.&lt;/li&gt;
2854 &lt;li&gt;Standarden er publisert og spesifikasjonsdokumentet er fritt
2855 tilgjengelig. Det må være tillatt for alle å kopiere, distribuere og
2856 bruke den uten begresninger.&lt;/li&gt;
2857 &lt;li&gt;Patentene som muligens gjelder (deler av) standarden er gjort
2858 ugjenkallelig tilgjengelig uten krav om betaling.&lt;/li&gt;
2859 &lt;li&gt;Det er ingen begresninger i gjenbruk av standarden.&lt;/li&gt;
2860 &lt;/ul&gt;
2861 &lt;p&gt;Det økonomiske resultatet av en fri og åpen standard, som kan
2862 måles, er at det muliggjør perfekt konkurranse mellom leverandører av
2863 produkter basert på standarden.&lt;/p&gt;
2864 &lt;/blockquote&gt;
2865
2866 &lt;p&gt;(Tar gjerne imot forbedringer av oversettelsen.)&lt;/p&gt;
2867 </description>
2868 </item>
2869
2870 <item>
2871 <title>ODF-bruk i staten, ikke helt på plass</title>
2872 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ODF_bruk_i_staten__ikke_helt_p__plass.html</link>
2873 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/ODF_bruk_i_staten__ikke_helt_p__plass.html</guid>
2874 <pubDate>Thu, 22 Jan 2009 23:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
2875 <description>&lt;p&gt;I går publiserte
2876 &lt;a href=&quot;http://universitas.no/nyhet/52776/&quot;&gt;Universitas&lt;/a&gt;,
2877 &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.dagensit.no/trender/article1588462.ece&quot;&gt;Dagens-IT&lt;/a&gt;
2878 og &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article118622.ece&quot;&gt;Computerworld
2879 Norge&lt;/a&gt; en sak om at de ansatte ved Universitetet i Oslo ikke følger
2880 regjeringens pålegg om å publisere i HTML, PDF eller ODF. Det er bra
2881 at det kommer litt fokus på dette, og jeg håper noen journalister tar
2882 en titt på de andre statlige instansene også.&lt;/p&gt;
2883
2884 &lt;p&gt;Skulle ønske det var en enkel måte å sjekke om ODF-dokumenter er i
2885 henholdt til ODF-spesifikasjonen, og en måte å teste om programmer som
2886 hevder å støtte ODF forstår alle delene av ODF-spesifikasjonen.
2887 Kjenner kun til ufullstendige løsninger for slikt.&lt;/p&gt;
2888 </description>
2889 </item>
2890
2891 </channel>
2892 </rss>