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Transcript of Transcript of Workshop No 201, IGF Kenya
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T ransc r i p t
IGF 2011 W o r k shop Num be r : 201P r op r ie t a r y In f lu ences i n F r ee and Ope nSou r c e So f twa r e : Les sons to Ope n andUn i ve r sa l I n t e r ne t S tanda rds
Organized by Sivasubramanian M , President, Isoc India Chennai
S i x th An nua l M ee t in g o f t he I n te r ne tGov e r n an c e Fo rum ( 27 -3 0 Sep t embe r201 1 ) , Un i ted N a t i ons O f f i c e in Na i o r b i ,Na i r ob i , Ken ya
Sep t embe r 28 , 2011 11 : 0 0AM
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Acknowledgements
Richard Mathew Stallman's participation in this workshop began even before he
accepted to be a panelist by way of email exchanges wherein he factually
corrected the Workshop Theme Description. He went over the description line by
line, word by word, to spot factual and conceptual errors. Without his comments
and corrections, the Theme Description would not have been at least as clear as
it is now. He was in Italy at the time of the workshop, which was scheduled at
about the same time when he had to leave for the airport to take his flight back
to US. He stayed on the phone, not only to do his part, but also to listen to therest of the panelists; Alejandro Pisanty who Chaired the workshop is mentioned
second here because and only because he was on the organizing side, helping to
find a balance in the constitution of the panel, emailed his circle of friends to ask
for participation which brought in Scott Brandner, Pete Resnick to the panel as
also Fred Baker whose contributions have brought a significant focus to the issues
discussed; Venkatesh Hariharan and Sunil Abraham found the topic in tune with
their experience working on Open Souce in India and their contributions to the
theme has been meaningful, as Tracy Hackshaw's contribution as a panelsits fromTrinidad and Tobago; It did not require a Director of ICANN to manage remote
participation, but Sebastien Bachollet accepted the invitation to be the Remote
Moderator gracefully and handled the little task gracefully, with Joly MacFie staying
online to participate and support remote moderation when it was past midnight in
New York. So little is done to express the gratidude felt for the Chair and
Panelists for all this contribution by mentioning their names in this
acknowledgement column, I wish I could do a lot more to thank them enough.
Thank You .
--- Sivasubramanian Muthusamy
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Theme Desciription of the Workshop transcribed:
The Motor Vehicles Manufacturers Association in America before World War II
shared inventions among its members without a licence fee of any kind the same
way home cooking recipes have been shared across kitchens since the beginningof human culture. In the field of Computers, in the 50's and 60's software
produced by the Computer Science academics were freely shared. Software was
generally distributed in the spirit of sharing. Source code, the human-readable form
of software, was generally distributed with the software itself, to allow users /
developers to use, study, and possibly change and improve its design.
In the 1970s and early 1980s, the software industry began using technical
measures (such as only distributing binary copies of computer programs) toactually prevent computer users from being able to study and customize software
they had paid for. In the 70s, and to a limited extent in the early 80s, Unix made
its source code available. In 1983, Richard Stallman announced the the plan to
develop the GNU operating system, which would be Unix-compatible and entirely
free software. In 1985 the GNU Manifesto was published. A month later, the Free
Software Foundation (FSF) was founded. Linus Torvalds released the Linux Kernel
though it was not freely modifiable in 1991. Torvalds made Linux free software in
Feb 1992. Linux filled the last gap in GNU, so GNU+Linux made a complete freeoperating system, which attracted the attention of volunteer programmers. In 1998
Netscape released its Internet suite as free software. All of this furthered "software
freedom for all"
Netscape's act prompted an examination on how to bring free software principles
and benefits to the commercial software industry. They concluded that the Free
Softward Foundation's social activism was not appealing to companies like
Netscape, and looked for a way to rebrand the free software movement to
emphasize the business potential of the sharing of source code. The new name
they chose was "open source", and quickly O'Reilly, Linus Torvalds and others
signed on to the rebranding. In 1998 the Open Source Initiative was founded.
During the course of this history of Free and Open Source there been 'wars'
between the Free / Open Source movements with the Proprietary philosophies as
also smaller battles within the Free / Open Source ideologies. In many cases
these were not wars or even battles but parellel standards. There were on:
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1.Browser Standards: Describes the actions of Microsoft, Google, Mozilla, Apple
Inc., and Opera continuing to have a rearmament cycle of trying to create the
authoritative web browser.
2.Editor Formats: unix editor users are divided into two big groups. The users ofvi and the users of emacs.
3.Desktop Environments: KDE and GNOME desktop environments has the same
effect.
4.Operating system advocacy: between Net BSD, Open BSD, Free BSD,
GNU/Linux, Solaris, Windows and Macintosh. While relations between GNU/Linux
and BSD developers are not entirely friendly, but those whithin the Free andOpen Source Community do consider it a 'war'.
5.Format Wars: Of greater releavnce to the theme is the format wars which is
competition between mutually incompatible proprietary formats that compete for the
same segments. Format wars have happened and continue in several segments,
for instance in streaming media as wars between AVI, Quicktime (MOV), Windows
Media (WMV), RealMedia (RA), MPEG, DivX or XviD and Ogg. Ogg as a free
and open container format is unrestricted by software patents[4] and is designedto provide for efficient streaming and manipulation of high quality digital
multimedia. Ogg went though several hurdles in the process of establishing its
format.
While Proprietary Software thrives on differentiation, the Free and Open Source
Community finds itself drawn into a situation of mutliple flavors. Why do we have
a different set of command lines for some tasks in RedHat and Ubuntu, which
share the same kernel and most application software? Why do GNU/Linux
distributions differ in implementation? Why do we have some difficulties in some
computing across an Open Solaris Standalone connected to a network with
GNU/Linux nodes? Why is it difficult to seamlessly import from Eudora and
migrate to Evolution?
Some of the free software is 'free this far and no further' and some open source
code releases are partially closed. Somewhere along the path of the evolution of
Free and Open Source, commercial considerations have caused some players to
draw a visible or invisible barricade around their 'own' software, distribution or
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release. While this makes it possible for an Open Source enterprise to make the
enterprise commercially viable and profitable, it has also been a cause for
interoperability among what originated in free and open source code.
Open Source and Free Software is futher evolving and would gain even greaterimportance. But attention to drawn to the 'wars' and to what Richard Stallman
stated in the GNU Manifesto: "Software sellers want to divide the users and
conquer them, making each user agree not to share with others."
Open Source and free software have caused immense progress in Information
Technology as also in other areas. References are drawn here particularly to the
differences and gaps, NOT to elicit a debate on Open Source Software but with a
larger purpose of examining the diversity to contemplate and avoid mutliplicity inthe Unified Network of Networks.
How can the World Wide Web remain free of signs in Websites that say "Site
optimized for Internet Explorer" that annoy Tim Berners Lee? How can we ensure
that the Internet Architecture remains free of parellel standards that threaten the
Universal opearability of the Internet?
Have you organized an IGF workshop before?
Yes
If so, please provide the link to the report:
http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/index.php/component/chronocontact/?
chronoformname=Workshopsreports2009View&curr=1&wr=64
http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/index.php/component/chronocontact/?
chronoformname=Workshopsreports2009View&curr=1&wr=71
Provide the names and affiliations of the panellists you are planning to invite:
Alejandro Pisanty, National University of Mexico, Chair of the Workshop
Richard Matthew Stallman, GNU Project ( by remote participation)
Venkatesh Hariharan (Venky), Head of Public Policy and Government Affairs at
Google India
Tracy F Hackshaw, Chief Solution Architect, Government of Trindad and Tobago's
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National ICT Company (iGovTT)
Scott Bradner, University Technology Security Officer, Harvard University and
Secretary to the Board of Trustees of the Internet Society.
Pete Resnick, Applications Area Director of the Internet Engineering Steering
GroupSunil Abraham, Executive Director, Center for Internet and Society, Bangalore
Remote Moderator:
Sebastien Bachollet, Member, Board of Directors, ICANN as remote moderator with
help from Joly MacFie of ISOC New York
Provide the name of the organizer(s) of the workshop and their affiliation tovarious stakeholder groups:
Sivasubramanian M
President, Isoc India Chennai
Civil Society
Organization:Isoc India Chennai
http://www.intgovforum.org/cms/component/chronocontact/?
chronoformname=WSProposals2011View&wspid=201
( T ransc r i p t f o ll ows f r om the nex t page )
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Transcript of Discussions at this Workshop:( to be corrected for errors )
201: Proprietary Influences in Free and Open Source Software: Lessons to Open
and Universal Internet Standards
Sixth Annual Meeting of the Internet Governance Forum
27 -30 September 2011
United Nations Office in Naiorbi, Nairobi, Kenya
September 28, 2011 - 11:00AM
***
The following is the output of the real-time captioning taken during the Sixth
Meeting of the IGF, in Nairobi, Kenya. Although it is largely accurate, in some
cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or
transcription errors. It is posted as an aid to understanding the proceedings at the
session, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
***
>> SIVASUBRAMANIAN MUTHASAMY: Okay. Good morning, everyone. I'm Siva
from ISOC India Chennai. I'd like to welcome all the panelists to this workshop,
Lessons to Open Universal Internet Standards. I think that the part that says
developing country perspective, I've not said that, so I don't know how it crept in,
so it's okay. Oh, you're presenter. Fine, fine. Welcome to you, and I would
request Alejandro Pisanty to chair this workshop and totally leave it to him.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: You are too kind. Thank you very much. Thanks
for coming over here, panelists, other personally appointed or invited guests, and
everybody who has believed that we are going to deliver value. We will. There's
no way we can't on this, we really mess this up, because we have an
extraordinary set of speakers and attendees who are very expert. When Siva --
when is my abbreviation for Sivasubramanian -- from Chennai Civil Society, told
me about the idea of organising this meeting, I thought it would be a very
valuable one to discuss what the title says, and by implication, to be able to
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discuss the various meanings or shades that the word "open" or the word
"openness" mean in context related to IT for development and to Internet
Governance and their overlap.
Open source software, open software are words often used. We know wellthat there's a move -- that there's a lot of motion going on for the adoption of
open software or open source software, which are different terms, or free software,
different category.
In the development space, there are some municipal and even national
governments which have ordinances that give a preference to open source
software. On the other hand, we speak about open standards, and while these
are two worlds that coexist well, there are significant differences when you godown into the details. So that's very much what we want to explore.
Further, what's very important is to explore the proprietary influences.
Technology can be proprietary and still conform to open standards. Even software
can have proprietary components or a proprietary origin and then become open or
vice versa. People can take pieces of open software, and there are rules-based
ways to appropriate this software. It's only acknowledging a number of things that
will -- our speakers will explain.
I will -- Siva, are you in a position to introduce the speakers?
So I will ask the speakers to make brief introductions of yourselves. The one
thing I will say before we start is that we have assembled -- and I have, again,
to bow to Siva's great effort and calling power to bring together an outstanding
set of outstanding speakers and other participants with great expertise in -- not
only in their specific fields, but in the interrelationship of them all, and all with
personal history of service to the community and to the Internet.
We have as our first speaker, going by just geographical order in the room,
Tracy Hackshaw from the Computer Society of Trinidad and Tobago. Is the name
right? No? I'll leave the word to you.
The plan -- just for time management purposes, I think that we will be best
served by very quick and pointed participations and lively debate within the panel,
within the room, and we will be very, very attentive to remote participation. Thank
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you.
>> TRACY HACKSHAW: Good morning, everyone. Thank you, Alejandro.
Thank you, Siva, for inviting.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Speak slow so people who are hearing you and
are not native English speakers can understand, and to make the scribe's life
easy.
>> TRACY HACKSHAW: Thank you very much. My name is Tracy Hackshaw.
I'm actually from Trinidad and Tobago, which is in the Caribbean region. I am
with the Internet Society as well as DiploFoundation, and professionally the Chief
Solution Architect for the national ICT company for Trinidad and Tobago, which isthe Government of Trinidad and Tobago's national ICT company.
What I am going to do today is present on the topic Siva indicated we need
to speak on. Slightly different than maybe what you expect, but it's based on
what's happening in the developing world, specifically in the small isle developing
state area.
So just a couple slides. There's a main question that I think we have toanswer today. There are some fundamental issues that are facing the developing
world for free and open source software. Of course, (Inaudible) -- statement in
2004. The basic thing is that when you are developing country and you are
utilizing proprietary software, you are always playing catchup with everything, the
rest of the world, with businesses, with your people. The argument has always
been proposed that you don't have enough capacity to deal with open source
software, it's been advanced several times. If you don't start, you'll never catch
up. I think that's a very important point today. You'll have to pay forever and
ever, not ever learning everything from yourselves. That is a very powerful quote
that you may or may not have seen from a few years ago.
The fundamental issues, therefore, facing the free and open source movement,
software movement, in the developing world, as far as I can tell, are continuing
lack of adoption by large enterprises and Governments, for a myriad of reasons,
not to go into them today in the slide, but we'll discuss them later; as well as the
inability for us to effectively compete on a resource level against the larger players
in the market. I won't necessarily name them here, but it's difficult, especially in
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our part of the world, for developers of open source software as well as people
who are trying to encourage their use to compete effectively against -- in a tender
situation when you are looking to put open source software in, even within an
environment where you want to make that decision, make that choice. There are
always these deep pockets in certain countries -- I won't name them here --certain vendors -- I won't name them -- are able to -- are able to find a way to
speak to governments and fund very large initiatives that help the country. You
see things like centres of excellence, basketball courts, those kinds of things. And
it's very difficult for an open source movement to compete against that when
they're dealing with trying to adopt the movement of open source.
In particular, I'm seeing here the -- and this is like Siva's point -- is that
somehow the increased commoditization of open source software through what I'mseeing as a lot of mergers and acquisitions in the movement, as you would have
known Java, Mai SQL recently being acquired by another large vendor, stifles and
sort of puts a lock on the growth and development of open source software.
Other things will pop up on the slide. I'll try to move forward. However, for a
developing country, when you see these things happen, and even if you are
moving forward with open source and then a large player buys out that movement
that you are trying to adopt, it creates a real problem for you to advocate and tomove within in Government in particular, and even within private enterprise.
Just briefly, I am going to address suggested steps that I think we can
address.
Using this particular phrase, governments, countries, and all Nation States,
depending on which way you see it, can and should summon the political will to
bring a wider appreciation of us through adoption a matter of public policy in the
public interest. Alejandro mentioned several countries, municipalities, cities have
managed to provide policy documents and mandates, almost, to deliver for us as
a matter of course the success as the next -- I only have three success stories I
can quote on the next slide. But it's really something that needs to happen, and
we need to discuss it here.
As a matter of public policy, can you make open source software something
that you implement and advocate within, in my case, Government, as well as
within the entire country? Why is that? I'll go straight to the third point. You
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need to build capacity within your country to work with open source software.
Open source software can provide (Indiscernible) and TLIs with an institution-type
development that can grow your nation's development, can provide employment for
your citizens, and focusing on sustainable skills as opposed to license costs.
So therefore, in terms of the open source movement, we are not focusing on
licenses or selling licenses. You can't. It's open source. It's free in some
cases. We are looking at the skills that you need to bring to the table, your
country's capacity to learn, to grow, and to compete internationally with the larger
players.
In a small developing state, there is always this notion of having to follow and
to adopt and adapt to what the metropole and larger countries have. Opensource gives that country, a small land, a much bigger chance. The only way
that can happen is with municipal governments pushing it forward.
The second point -- this is a bit controversial, I would suggest, but I would
recommend that Government as well work with proprietary software entities to
encourage and incent development of open versions of their software. I know
places that have tried that before haven't very successful. But how important
would it be for a parallel to exist when we have open products from thatproprietary vendor on display for use by your country as well as the closed
environment you can sell on the market?
I've only found really three good ones that I can refer to, and Alejandro may
point to others. Obviously, Brazil, which we know has done extremely well with
this and has grown their industry through it. Vienna in Austria and Munich in
Germany have done reasonably successful deployment of open source software,
but only in bits and parts I think in a major way.
That's it. Auto that's my comments so far. Look forward to chatting with you
after.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Thank you, Tracy. Hariharan.
>> My name is Venkatesh Hariharan.
>> Please repeat your name slowly for the transcript or make sure it's okay.
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Good.
>> VENKATESH HARIHARAN: Before joining Google, I spent six and a half
years working at public policy and especially working on the area of open source
and open standards, and Tracy has pretty much said what I wanted to say, sowhat I'll do is I'll share the Indian experiences and what we are doing to advance
the cause of free and open source software.
The issue of public policy supporting free and open source software is
something that I have worked very closely in India, and if you have followed
what's been happening, one of the best things that has happened in the recent
past is that the Indian Government formulated an open standards policy, which is
probably one of the best open standards policies in the world, which said that --very clearly said that as far as egovernance goes, the Indian Government will use
standards that are free of royalties and are freely available.
As a follow-up to that, the Government is now working on a policy on device
drivers, which says that any Government procurement of peripherals and hardware
mandate really that will have a device driver which is available for -- you know,
so basically, the vendor is responsible for supplying the device drivers for free and
open source software along with the proprietary software.
And that, I think, is very important because in many Government procurement
situations -- and if you look at the Indian Government and eGovernment in India,
that is the largest commercial, you know, activity right now, apart from telecom
and the banking segment. So the Government is one of the largest purchasing
forces in India, and if the Government says that we want open source device
drivers, that is something that is going to create a huge groundswell of software in
the open domain.
So these are two major trends and two major policies that the Indian
Government has formulated.
At the same time, I also want to kind of widen the scope. We heard
someone come and speak in India a few years ago, I think actually last year, and
one of the most interesting things he said is that unlike the comments of the past,
the comments like, you know, grasslands, et cetera, the information comments has
a very fundamental difference in that the comments itself is an actor, and that's
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something that we need to recognize, the comments, knowledge comments is a
global good, and that's something that from a public policy perspective we need to
enshrine. We have seen some great success stories when that happens.
For example, the Government said that as far as the education sectors, we willmove the education sector to the free and open source software. And there are
studies which show that the Government has saved close to $10 million by using
free and open source software in over 12,000 high schools.
So you know, I can circulate copies that have study to people who are
interested, and my email ID is [email protected], and that study will give you a
lot more insight.
The micro-level finding of the study is that India can save close to $2 billion
by adopting free and open source software, and we need to do more of such
quantitative impact on the economy to kind of advocate the cause of free and
open source software with policymakers. So I think that's a very quick summary
that I wanted to give, and thanks.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Thank you. We have now Sunil Abraham.
>> SUNIL ABRAHAM: My name is Sunil Abraham, and I work at the Centre
for Internet and Society in Bangalore. Bangalore is supposed to be the Silicon
Valley of India. The term Bangalored has entered the English dictionary -- the
third city to enter the English dictionary. If you have been Bangalored, that
means you have lost your job to somebody in the developing world. But that's
just a myth because perhaps there are 2 million Internet or computer programmers
in India, but there are 2 million citizens in the country of Estonia. All of us use a
product that was created by citizens of Estonia, but none of us have ever heard
or ever used a product at least on a regular desktop that is made by the citizens
of India in the sense that the IP, the copyright, associated trade secrets, are
owned by Indian entities or Indian individuals. This is because the software
industry in India is mostly based on labour arbitrage. All the intellectual property
is owned by the companies that contract the entities within India.
And just like Nike's shoe factories can ship from one country to the other,
tomorrow, when the Chinese get better at English or the Filipinos get better at
computing, all the jobs that currently were moved from the U.S. economy or
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European economy to India will then switch to other economies. There's no
stickiness in the Indian business model. Perhaps that is where free software can
play a critical role in allowing emerging economies to get properly entrenched.
And the way that the proprietary companies treat us these days has changed.At one point, they used to call the GPL cancerous and people like Richard
Matthew Stallman a communist, but today an organisation like Centre for Internet
and Society has to compete with the large proprietary giant in Bangalore to host
the PHP community group meeting because they always can afford to give better
cake and coffee than we can. So that's a useful thing. Free software is now in
the heart of proprietary commercial business enterprise. Sorry.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: You are the third speaker that does not link to theInternet.
>> SUNIL ABRAHAM: In the sense?
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Internet Governance. What we are looking for in
this workshop -- I'm not meaning to interrupt you, but I am meaning to enhance
your speech by asking you to focus for a couple of minutes on the Internet and
open standards and the way open standards -- before Scott Bradner takes the micand will probably feel very uncomfortable to have to say that he is going to go
somewhere else.
>> I'm not uncomfortable to say.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: I know. I am saving them the discomfort.
>> SUNIL ABRAHAM: I think it depends where we draw the boundary around
this entity called the Internet. In my country, only 12 million people out of 1.2
billion have access to broadband. So when we experience the Internet in India,
we experience it in a very mediated fashion.
Perhaps open standards is one way to bring it to the Internet, and here I'd
like to introduce a new term which is open washing. The definition of free
software or open source software is more or less uncontroversial, and when
people use that term, they mean the same thing. But as Venky just said, when
people use the term "open standards," then it's not clear at all what they mean,
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and they could mean standards that have royalty implications or standards that
don't have royalty implications. And there is a tendency in the Internet age for
companies that are not quite open to use the term "open" constantly as a mantra,
but it is really an act of open washing, which is in most senses, it adheres to the
letter of free licenses and open licenses, but doesn't really adhere to the spirit ofsuch licenses.
So when people use the term "open" in the context of cloud computing, or
what Richard Matthew Stallman refers to as cloudy computing, then it's not at all
clear what the rights of citizens are protected and what rights of governments are
protected. And what we need is not really a homogenization of definition but
really consensus building so that when people use these terms, it's a little more
clear what rights are being protected or not.
Google, for example, says that Android is open source, but there was a project
called the Open Governance Index, and for them, it is the governance model that
really makes the difference between an open and closed project. And in the
world of open standards, if you looked at PDF, again, it is the governance which
undermines the status of PDF as a true open standard, not its compliance or
noncompliance to certain license terms.
To give you a very quick alternative space, where this becomes particularly
important is the business of mobile phones. So if the next 12 million Indians are
going to get online, they are most probably going to get online using smartphones
and not phones like this, which is a $300 BlackBerry, but phones that come from
Shenzhen for $150, you can get a phone with a projector, with a radio receiver,
with a TV receiver, with support for dual SIM cards, with boombox speakers, with
a tripod stand, with external speakers, shipped with an external battery.
You just go to Shenzhen, and you take on a menu card, and you provide a copy
of your GIF, and within 45 days, with a limited run of 5,000 phones, you'll get
your own customized ICT for D device. And that is happening in Shenzhen
because there is a kind of strange open source philosophy which is the bills of
materials of certain products are shared in an informal matter amongst the
manufacturers in Shenzhen, and that's why they have a 45-day innovation cycle,
not a 1.5-year innovation cycle.
And it's a similar advantage we saw in the birth of Silicon Valley in the U.S.
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It is the lack of enforcement of noncompete clauses that allowed programmers to
share information like this.
What we are seeing in the information age and the age of open washing is if
I do work in openness with a particular company, say Google, and that's notimmediately translatable when I join IBM -- there's a kind of Balkanization of the
community thanks to the way the industry is structured. Thank you.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Siva. Thank you, Sunil.
>> SIVASUBRAMANIAN: Sunil, thank you very much, and I have a question
for you. You talked about companies that use the word "open" as a mantra, and
then you talked about Balkanization.
Just assume that in a scenario there are some conflicts in the Internet
standard-making process, and if the same concepts are broadened to Internet
Protocol, what would happen to the Internet? If -- let's say I may not be
technically correct, but if we have a TCP/IP protocol, and if we have an alternate
or an additional TCP/IP fast lane protocol, which is kept as a proprietary protocol,
what would happen to the Internet? Or such scenarios?
>> Please.
>> SUNIL ABRAHAM: I think the broad -- at least what I've been led to
understand -- in the world of open standards and when it comes to key protocols,
having plurality is not necessarily a useful thing because it Balkanizes the network,
and then we have reduced network effects. But in the world of software
implementation, where these open standards are implemented, you've raised that a
bit in your comment, why is the command line so radically different, and why do
mail clients work in radically different way? In the world of software, their
pluralism is slightly more better phenomena. It's better for us to have a choice.
So regardless of what the de jure processes are, finally, it's whether the
community accepts your standards. So it's an issue that we need to solve at the
policy layer, but also in terms of adoption.
>> Thank you. I have a hand up from Venkatesh. Do you agree?
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>> VENKATESH HARIHARAN: So very quickly, the question you raise was at
the heart of the entire open standards debate in India, and the proprietary
standards companies were arguing that it's okay to have multiple standards
because that gives users choice, and we went back to the Government of India
and argued that that's probably the dumbest argument we have ever heard in thehistory of technology because, I mean, you can't have people driving on any side
of the road that they choose to. Standard is basically a social contract and that
everybody should adhere to that contract. That's because that's in the larger
interest of everybody.
And thankfully the Indian Government had the wisdom to understand that logic
and said that, you know, for eGovernment in India, we shall use only a single
standard. But that went on for two and a half years. It was a very, very toughfight.
But the point is that standards are meant to unify. Standards are meant to
bring people together. And multiplicity of standards completely, you know, militates
against the very purpose of having a standard. So that's a quick answer.
>> Thank you. We introduce now the speaker, panelist, Scott Bradner.
>> SCOTT BRADNER: Okay. So I'm Scott Bradner. I'm here representing
Aaron, but I'm also involved in the Internet Society and, in particular, in the
Internet Engineering Task Force, the IETF. I was on the Management Committee
of that for a decade and have been quite active for a long time and wrote the
standards process documents that include intellectual property rights rules for the
IETF. I have some background in this field.
I'll tell you a little story to begin with to tell you what standards are all about.
Back in the mid-'90s, when the ITU was just beginning to be able to spell
Internet, the then Chair of the Internet Activities Architecture Board and I went
over to the ITU and gave them a presentation on what this IETF thing was and
what this Internet thing was. And at the end of the presentation, the very first
question we were asked was how can you call your product standards if no
Government mandates their use?
Well, to echo what was just said, standards from the IETF point of view are
things that people use or companies agree to implement. You asked whether
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there was an issue with if somebody had proprietary extension, for example, to
TCP, would that be a problem? Yes, it would be a significant problem.
Let me back up a little bit further than that. So we are talking about open
standards. What do you mean by open standards? There are very differentmeanings. By some meanings, the W3C is, but IETF is not. IETF, anybody can
participate. Get online, participate. You see all the working documents, all the
final documents, you can add your own opinions to any discussion. In the ITU,
you have to be a member and pay money to be a member in order to be able
to see the working documents. You can see the final documents now. They've
opened those up. But you can't actually participate in the development of the
standard without being a member.
Which is open? Well, open standards have different definitions depending on
what point of view you have. The most common point of view is open standards
are standards developed in an open process, unlike, as was mentioned here, PDF.
PDF is developed by an individual corporation. But so in that context, even if you
have to pay money to be part of the crowd that's being -- that's in the openness,
you still can create open standards.
So the ITU standards are designated to be open standards. They aredeveloped in a standards process way.
Other people have defined open standards as standards which you do not
have to pay to get a copy of the standard. The ITU switched recently to that.
The IETF has been that from the very beginning. Other people look at open
standards and say well, they are standards that you can freely implement that
have no intellectual property rights, no licensing requirements to implement. That
is actually relatively rare. The ITU, the ITF, and most other standards bodies
other than the W3C don't insist that their products, their standards that come out
of recommendations, are intellectual property right free.
In the ITU, if somebody says we have a patent and we will license it fairly,
then they are to be considered completely on equal terms than anybody with any
technology, whether there's patents on it or not, whether it's free. In the IETF,
we leave it to the working group to evaluate whether a technology is important
enough to deal with the fact that you have a known patent on it and there are
licensing fees.
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Now, I emphasize "known" patent. Most patent cases show up after something
is done, after something's implemented, and it's out of left field. It's out of
somebody who doesn't participate in the standards process, and it just shows up
in a court suit. So the fact that the W3C says you cannot create a W3Cstandard that has any patents on it is, in some way, whistling in the dark,
whistling past the graveyard, because you get sued anyway because somebody
later on will say yes, I did that. That has happened to W3C. So if you are a
standards body, what do you do in that case?
There are have been proposals to withdraw standards. Well, standards
produced and people implemented. How do you withdraw it? So that whole area
of whether IPR, known IPR, should be included in open standards is an ongoingdiscussion. We have it in the IETF quite frequently.
There's another discussion we've had more recently, and this goes to the point
you were making, of how many standards are good to have. The IETF has
produced parallel standards from time to time, multiple standards to do the same
thing. We produce two vastly different things to do Internet telephony, Megaco
and SIP. They were different philosophies. One was an exploded phone switch
in how you connect pieces together, and the other is end to end. But weproduced both of those standards and let it to the marketplace to decide what to
do. And the marketplace actually chose both, in some sense, because there are
different places they are used.
We've also had situations where multiple standards have simply confused the
marketplace. There are two different standards for Megaco. There is a standard
that went in, an industry-developed one called MGCP, and one that came out of
the standards process.
We got a big push a year or two ago within the IETF to have open standards
in the sense of open software where anybody can modify them. But what is a
standard? A standard is a consensus agreement on the right way to do
something. If individuals can make their own standards, they can't be consensus
because it's -- I suppose you can consent with yourself, but it's a different
concept entirely.
So to the point that you made to the Indian Government, having a variety of
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ways to do things can be useful, but they shouldn't be a very small variance on
the same thing. They should be distinctly separate philosophies and architectures
of how to approach something. We have that. It's been very successful. The
ITU came up with something called H-323, which was their multiprotocol
communication standard for Internet telephony and video conferencing. IETF cameup with SIP. That's the same -- implementers targeted the same set of
customers with it. And SIP completely wiped out the H-323 when it came to
voice, and they are back and forth when it comes to video. It's healthy for the
environment to have that level of thing. Both of those standards are consensus-
based standards. They are not individual tweaks, modifications to an existing one.
So going back to the IETF and IPR. IPR is a very big issue. Patents where
the patents show up later or patents where you have to pay to implementsomething is particularly difficult for the developing world. The costs that are
asked by the patent holders can be extraordinary in that context and can be large
in the context of the U.S., but it can be extraordinary in another context.
In IETF, we decided to let the Working Group think about it. We require
disclosure where we can get it for the people who are participating in the
standards process. We require disclosure if they've got IPR. If they are not
participating, then of course we can't require it because they're not there. Thenthe Working Group looks at it and says well, maybe that's not the best way to
go. Maybe a different way to go where we have no known IPR is a better way
to go. But that's up to the Working Group, and they have a discussion about it.
Going forward, we're going to continue to get the pressure to say no known
IPR. I think it's unrealistic if you consider the rate at which the patents office
considers patents.
There was a story in the newspaper yesterday there was an incredibly weird
patent issued. There was a patent issued to exercise a cat with a laser pointer a
few years ago. They've issued something equally weird within the last week, and
I don't remember what it is. So we're in an environment where patents are going
to be there. Patents are not just in the U.S., but around the world. They're not
going to go away, so you can't make the assumption that anything that is it
developed -- any standard that's developed will ever be IPR free until all possible
patents that were created before it have run out. And that could be 20 years
later.
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>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Thank you, Scott. We have a question from Fred
-- or a comment from Fred Baker.
>> FRED BAKER: Well, I wonder, Scott, if you'd like to talk about licensingterms.
>> SCOTT BRADNER: Licensing terms are an interesting problem. Under U.S.
law, a standards body cannot negotiate licensing terms with an IPR holder. It's
called -- it's under antitrust. And we in the IETF request that IPR holders, when
they make a disclosure, provide licensing terms so it's in the mind of the Working
Group when they are evaluating the technology. We don't require it, though that
may change. But it is required in some other places. But all that's required inother places, such as the ITU, is the development of fair and nondiscriminatory.
It doesn't say what fair and nondiscriminatory means, but if they agree to that, it's
okay.
The IEEE had a case a couple years ago where they agreed to fair and
nondiscriminatory, they licensed three vendors for a product, stopped licensing, and
said we were completely fair and nondiscriminatory for the first three, then we
stopped. The IEEE in that case actually threatened to withdraw the standard.They can do that. We can't easily do that.
So licensing terms are something that we are not allowed to negotiate as a
standards body. It would be nice to be able to, but we can't.
>> FRED BAKER: Thank you. Where I was going with that was the RFC
1988-style licensing terms. I'm Fred Baker. I work for a company called Cisco.
You may have heard of us. And we use different kinds of licenses in different
places. For a long time, we didn't have much of anything, and we found that
various companies sued us for infringement on their patents, and we had the
choice of paying them money or finding some way to swap IPR with them. And
so we started developing IPR with the idea that we can swap it.
At the same time, we find ourselves working in the ITU and in the IETF with
different licensing expectations and really not wanting to have to deal with all the
issues of charging for IPR.
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So in the ITU, because that's the way things are normally done there, when
we walk in with IPR, we generally talk about brand licensing. In the IETF, we
use a variety of license where we say please implement. Go for it. We would
like to see it implemented, and we won't charge you unless you first charge us.
In that case, then all such licenses are off the table, and we'll discuss whateveryou need to discuss.
>> I can expand on that slightly, which is you actually do say FRNAD/RAND
in the ITF licenses, but then go on to say what we mean about --
>> FRED BAKER: The price is zero.
>> SCOTT BRADNER: You can license forever as long as you don't sue us.If you want to pay us money, you can do so. If it makes you feel better, you
can give us money, but it's a covenant not to sue. You define FRAND/RAND as
a covenant not to sue.
>> FRED BAKER: Yeah, so at least from our perspective, that gives the open
software people the freedom that they need in order to implement stuff. Because
they're not going to sue us. So you know.
>> SCOTT BRADNER: That is Cisco's position, that it gives the open source
people the right picture. It's not the open source people's position. They believe
that this is too much of an inhibition, and we've had that fight a number of times.
I happen to disagree with them. I think it's -- the Cisco license is a very good
one. I've actually -- I fronted for Cisco in one Working Group session to explain
the license, so I do know it. And I think it's a perfectly good license. But true
open source say -- some of the open source licenses -- GPL-type licenses are
not compatible with even that level of agreement.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Thank you. This has been really very -- to the
point of the workshop, I think this is actually let's say the coalition point we were
expecting to reveal, the layers we wanted to peel off the issue. Thank you very
much.
>> SCOTT BRADNER: Can I add one more thing?
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Just one management thing. We have been
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expecting Richard Stallman to take part remotely. I don't think that we've been
able to get the telephone connection to him to work or to find him. So just to
manage expectations and time. We have 15 minutes left. We want some -- as
much as possible discussion. So on that, please, Scott.
>> SCOTT BRADNER: Yes, very quick one. A number of times, there comes
up as a point of Internet Governance issue is who is going to make standards?
Back in 1994 at a Harvard meeting, I said that one of the two unresolved issues
of the Internet was who says who makes the rules? And by the rules there, I
meant standards of some of the rules.
The ITU and others have asked that the standards for the Internet, the
technical standards for the Internet, be done in -- within the ITU and that theIETF and others that are producing standards which are used on the Internet
would then put their standards through the ITU process in order to bless them.
This is a very basic Internet Governance issue is that many countries believe
that having this cacophony of locally developed standards is disadvantageous to
their local industries.
Back many, many years ago, the Wind Surf and Lyman Chapin offered to ISOto be the standards body for the TCP/IP. They turned it down. Because they
were concerned that the U.S. companies had too much of a head start on it and
that they wanted an even playing field.
This problem has not gone away. We've had proposals as recently within the
last couple of weeks to turn over standardization -- technical standardization of the
Internet, not simply business standards, technical standards of the Internet, to a
UN organisation.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Thank you very much. I would now go for a very
quick participations from the other panelists who are sort of jumping to this, and
we want to leave time for the audience. Mr. Sunil Abraham.
>> SUNIL ABRAHAM: Yeah, I think on the question of outgoing royalties from
a particular Nation State connected to standards with patent implications, RAND
and choosing between those options of royalty free and FRAND/RAND are not the
only options available. There are also options like royalty caps.
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In India, till two years ago, on any device, only 5% of the selling price could
be divvied up as royalty. That's another possible -- I am not 100% sure whether
this is strips compliant, but it seemed to be enforced in India until two years ago.
And also, kind of egging on people to pool patrons more aggressively on
CDMA and GSM, there are large pools, and it's easier for a manufacturer to be in
compliance. And there are so many other layers and thousands of other patent
tickets involved. And Government leadership in pushing for greater pools is also
useful policy option for Nation States to exercise. Thank you.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Thank you. I'm told by Siva that in the schedule
-- Siva is showing me a schedule that says that we can run through 12:30, whichI'm very glad for.
>> (Off microphone).
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Yeah, it seems that somewhere there was a time
shift for half an hour for the start and for the end, so also I am told that Richard
Stallman has been sent an email with the telephone number for his personal
remote participation, and he has not yet dialed in.
I would like to ask Sebastien Bachollet, who is handling the remote
participation, whether you have any questions or requests to participate for now.
>> SEBASTIEN BACHOLLET: We have two online participants, and no yet
questions. Thank you, Chair.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Thank you, Sebastian. I have a -- Sebastien. I
have questions here. I see hands up from (Indiscernible). I have Alex Gakuru.
>> ALEX GAKURU: Thank you very much. My name is Alex Gakuru from
Kenya. I think the area of free software and open standards is extremely
interesting and important because the growth of the Internet from when it started
is because it was not patented. This was shared as given out freely. So
whether the Internet now is taking the traditional cup of every company which
starts very nice, reaches a peak, then starts falling down because of IPR is I
think where we are headed.
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So from what I've just had Cisco, start to get defensive, so I think the Internet
is headed for self-destruct because the IPR, so it's the biggest threat on the
Internet.
In terms of the legality of adopting open standards and open documents and
eGovernment, certain countries, for example, this one, have requirements that a
document is admissible and qualifies as an electronic record -- legal electronic
record if it can be read subsequently by other systems.
So if you use proprietary standards in your document, I'm sorry, that's not a
legal document. I think that's a good thing because it enforces that what is
considered legal is something that can be read subsequently. I just wanted toshare and invite comments.
>> SCOTT BRADNER: This is a question that comes up on the IETF all the
time. IETF has used plain text for its standards from the very beginning. We
keep getting criticized for that because we don't have a way to put pictures in
there. I'll be right done. And every few years somebody comes up and wants
us to switch to Word or PDF, one of those proprietary standards, and we continue
to insist that it's ASCII. It's terrible to read if you want to put a picture in, butthat's the way it goes, because we can read them 40 years later.
>> Phone: Hello? Hello.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Richard, we can hear you. Please wait for a
second.
>> RICHARD MATTHEW STALLMAN: Okay. Just wanted to make sure you
knew I was there.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Yeah, thanks. Very happy to hear you.
>> RICHARD MATTHEW STALLMAN: I have a response to what that question
said, if it's okay.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Please come in. This is Richard Stallman on the
phone remotely from Italy, if I remember well.
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>> RICHARD MATTHEW STALLMAN: There is a tremendous danger to the
Internet from restrictive standards. Some of these standards are -- some of these
formats or protocols -- I shouldn't call them standards. They're formats and
protocols. Some formats and protocols are standards; some are not. But that'snot a big ethical issue. The problem is when a standard or protocol is either
secret or restricted by patents. And this is a big danger. And what we see now,
of course, is that this is spreading even to being able to boot your computer.
Windows wants to make computers that will only run programmes approved by
Microsoft.
But we have to be very careful not to use the confusing concept of, quote,
intellectual property, unquote, because this is a generalization about a dozen or sototally unrelated laws that have no similarity.
Even if we just look at copyright law and patent law, they are different in
every possible way, and the way they affect the field of computing is totally
different.
(Call dropped. Please stand by for captioning)
>> -- because the core protocols, the nonoptional protocols, are not things
which should be inhibited in any way.
The optional things, such as if you want to use a particular CODEC, that's
fine. There are other alternatives. But if it's the wheels that keep the train
running, we can't have intellectual property -- we can't have restraints on that use.
There are have been lawsuits saying that TCP is -- infringes certain patents,
but so far none of those have been successful. So to your point, the IETF does
not accept proprietary extensions to the core protocols.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Thank you. I think we have Richard again online.
I can hear some --
>> RICHARD MATTHEW STALLMAN: I'm just wondering can they hear me in
the room? Is it working?
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>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: We can hear you now perfectly clear. We stopped
hearing you when you criticized the concept of intellectual property in general. I
hope it was not a patent-induced thing in Danish interpretation systems, which is
the brand we have here.
>> RICHARD MATTHEW STALLMAN: Well, the question is how much of what
I -- at what point did you lose me? What was the last thing you heard?
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Maybe it's not specific enough when I said that
you were criticizing the concept of intellectual property in general.
>> RICHARD MATTHEW STALLMAN: Right.
>> SCOTT BRADNER: You said it was a collection of various different laws
and that copyright didn't have anything to do with patents, and that's where it cut
off.
>> RICHARD MATTHEW STALLMAN: Ah. Basically, if you hear someone use
the term "intellectual property," you shouldn't think that means he understands
deeply. Instead, you should think that person is deeply confused, and he's talking
about an incoherent collection of unrelated things, and he thinks he's sayingsomething meaningful, but he really doesn't understand.
The only intelligent statements to make about these laws are one at a time.
For instance, patents do threaten our use of protocols and formats, but it's
hard for a copyright to get in the way.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Richard, we lost your audio again.
>> RICHARD MATTHEW STALLMAN: Oh, what was the last --
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Oh, you just stopped speaking. Sorry. Pardon my
surprise.
>> RICHARD MATTHEW STALLMAN: It looks like this is not going to work.
>> It's working.
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>> It's working fine.
>> It's working fine. It's working fine. Please continue.
>> RICHARD MATTHEW STALLMAN: What was the last word that got
through?
>> Yeah, copyright is different was the last thing you said.
>> RICHARD MATTHEW STALLMAN: Damn, I can't remember whether that
was the beginning or the end. Did I finish? Did the whole statement about
someone is deeply confused and using incoherent concept get through?
>> Yes, yes, it did.
>> The last thing you said, it's hard for copyright to get in the way.
>> RICHARD MATTHEW STALLMAN: Ah, that's the last thing I said.
>> Yeah.
>> RICHARD MATTHEW STALLMAN: Maybe I should say over. Over.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Thank you. Thanks really clear. This type of
remote communication, that's very helpful. Comments. Again, I will ask Sebastien
Bachollet if there are comments coming from the remote online participants.
>> SEBASTIEN BACHOLLET: In fact, as you just heard Shirley makes a
comment to Richard. He takes a point. I have no questions.
>> RICHARD MATTHEW STALLMAN: You say he is responding to me, but I
can't hear his words. It's too low volume.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: We ask for that to be repeated, then.
>> SEBASTIEN BACHOLLET: We don't have question online.
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>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Questions, comments in the room?
>> I have a question. My question is to Scott, and I would like Richard also
to respond to that. First, I know that sometime back a standard called OOXML
was to be introduced as a standard, and it was not adopted. That was -- was itan example of a proprietary standard being introduced to the Internet, and can
you tell me the history about -- history of what happened?
>> SCOTT BRADNER: I don't know the history of that particular one. There
are others which have been. Perfect example is one of the anti-spam proposals
came out of Microsoft, and that was one where Microsoft attempted to do the
same thing that Cisco does in terms of their licensing, saying we won't sue you
unless you sue us. But they also inserted a "you actually have to take out alicense with us before you can do that, before you can implement it," and the
open source people went nuts on that, and the IETF did not get -- reach
consensus to support that document.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Sorry, this is Alejandro Pisanty. Please for a
second. I know that this is a -- you will notice that this is a critical point to
convey to you, a reminder that was made to me by Bernard, that UN rules are
unfavorable to all attacks, so I hope that --
>> It was a friendly description.
>> It was descriptive.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Richard, please comment.
>> RICHARD MATTHEW STALLMAN: I know about what happened in the
case of OOXML. Microsoft invented a basically bogus document standard so that
it could sabotage the adoption of ODF.
Now, Microsoft's so-called open format was designed with a specification that
was, I believe, thousands of pages long, and that was incomplete. So Microsoft
invoked a special emergency procedure or exception procedure in ISO where all it
had to do was get enough countries' standards organisations to vote in favor.
And then it went about buying the support or suborning the national standards
organisations.
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There was a worldwide fight, and Microsoft won. It succeeded effectively in
taking control of ISO for its own purposes, which is a very clear example of how
the empire of the megacorporations functions. And, of course, it threatens every
area of society. Even when the oil companies do it to promote global heating, itcould destroy civilization. In this case all it did was give people an excuse to say
oh, we're using Microsoft software, and it uses an open document standard. And
by the way, part of OOXML is -- there is a Microsoft patent that covers some
part of it, but I don't know what specifically.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Thank you, Richard. There's a hand up by
Venkatesh and by Mark, so Venkatesh.
>> VENKATESH HARIHARAN: I was part of the Bureau of Industry Standards
Committee which looked at XML, and we reviewed this for about 18 months, and
one of the key questions we asked when reviewing OOXML is if this specification,
which is a 6,000-page specification, was given to a software developer and he
was asked to implement that independently without taking recourse, you know,
going back to Microsoft and asking questions, would he be able to implement
that? And the final word on OOXML is 14 is to 3, 14 people voting against it
and 3 people of -- I think probably 5 people voting in favor of it.
>> RICHARD MATTHEW STALLMAN: I'm sorry. Could you repeat that? It
dropped out. I couldn't hear it, and it sounds very interesting. Just the last
sentence.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Please repeat speaking slower and closer to the
microphone.
>> VENKATESH HARIHARAN: So the final word on OOXML in India was 14
votes against OOXML and 5 votes in favor of it. And the key question was can
somebody independently implement the 6,000-page document and this so-called
format or so-called standard if they were asked to do it from scratch without
taking reference to Microsoft. And there were certain areas where, you know, the
standard or the proposed standard said this has to function like Word 95. And
that means basically that you had to go back to the author of the document to
figure out how exactly does this work, like Word 95, so it is not really an
independent standard which could be implemented based on the specifications that
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were given, and there were parts of it that were hidden. So that was the key
reason why it was voted out in India.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Thank you. I have a comment here by Mark. By
Mark Blafkin.
>> MARK BLAFKIN: My question is actually to you about this proposed -- oh,
sorry -- the concept a UN agency taking over the role of IETF, and what form is
that proposal coming in and from whom?
>> SCOTT BRADNER: It repeat. It's not a new proposal. The first time I
heard it was about a dozen years ago. The ITU plenipot was being asked to
vote that the ITU would be the standards organisation for this evolving thing calledthe Internet. Each plenipot since then has done the same. The proposal from
India, China, and Brazil hints at doing the same, the one that came out last week.
So it's a recurring theme that fundamentally the Internet is too important to leave
it to the people who know what they are doing.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Thank you. I have also a request for comment
from Alex. Sorry. If the comment as you signal me is going to be on the
OOXML or ISO 29,500 standard, please make sure we are speak being that andInternet Governance. -- speaking about that and Internet Governance.
>> ALEX GAKURU: May I just say to Richard Stallman to be with us for a
few more minutes while others react to what you say and join us in this panel.
Stay with us on the panel, on the line.
>> RICHARD MATTHEW STALLMAN: I will for a few minutes.
>> Alex: Very well, to tie that into the Internet Governance, freedom
standards, in terms of closure of standards, Kenya was also a voting member,
Kenya Bureau of Standards, so I do know what we went through on that. But I
do want to show how this privately owned and drive -- driven standards were
pushed all over the world.
We had a sudden interest in joining up by Microsoft (Inaudible) and friends into
a technical document committee, which normally they ask for volunteers, and
nobody comes forth. And so no matter what votes they get out of it, the very
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composition itself was actually suspect, and it was not in the best interest of
public interest and openness in terms of document, in terms of sharing documents
online, and in terms of general openness in the environment of ICT for
development. Thank you.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Mr. Bradner.
>> SCOTT BRADNER: This is a -- I want to get away from the specific to the
general. Industry pushing standards is not a new concept. It's happened since
the very beginning of the telecommunications standardization efforts and the
predecessor to the ITU. The best hope we can have is for open standards
processes which are truly open in the sense that what is brought in is -- is
thought through and modified by the standards process.
Cisco is actually quite a good example of that. Cisco came up with a
technology called tag switching, and brought it into the IETF, and what came out
isn't exactly tag switching. It's quite heavily modified. And that was a good
result.
That's not a universal result by a long shot. There are an awful lot of things
that are pushed through -- push is the wrong term -- are worked through theprocess in many standards organisations, I suspect occasionally in the IETF, which
wind up to be very much what the particular vendor brought in, and that's
unfortunate. I think it does -- it does inhibit the openness of the standards
process, and we get poorer results out of it.
But it can work. Cisco has shown it can work, and the results can be
accepted and be very, very successful.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Thank you. Richard, you have a comment to this?
>> RICHARD MATTHEW STALLMAN: May I speak?
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Yes, please.
>> RICHARD MATTHEW STALLMAN: What has changed since 50 years ago
is that now, when a format or protocol becomes a de facto or official standard, it
now -- if there are patents on that standard, it restricts all of us directly.
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50 years ago, that would only have interested various manufacturers, and if
they got along with the patent system, why should any of us have complained?
But now what happens is these restrict us from using software that we control
and leave us stuck with using software -- well, either -- we have the choice ofeither using software that controls the user, proprietary software which is,
therefore, unjust, or not communicating in that way. Well, my choice is clear. My
freedom is more important than being able to use any particular kind of
technology. If a certain kind of communication -- if the price of that is my
freedom, I won't pay. But many people don't think about this issue, and they do
pay that price. And that makes this problem an issue of overall social concern.
Therefore, governments ought to take action to make sure this cannot happen.Now, the first action they should take is make sure that software patents cannot
be valid in their jurisdictions. Patents should not be allowed to restrict the
development, release, and use of software to run on widely used computer
hardware. But aside from that, we also have to take care to make sure that
secret protocols and formats, which you can find being used by many Internet
services available now -- one well-known example is Spotified, which transmits
music in some secret format -- to make sure that these do not become widely
used. If they are being used at some small level, they are still unfortunate, butperhaps there's no need for public institutions to pay attention.
But the danger is that if it starts small, it might get big.
Over.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Thank you, Richard. No, that's -- thank you. I
have a request to speak from Siva, and then pall. Thank you.
>> SIVASUBRAMANIAN: I'm Siva, and it's actually a question to Richard
Stallman. A moment ago, Scott was talking about the ITU attempt to get into the
Internet standards process, and if there is a proposal again, do you think the
Internet user community should welcome the ITU with open arms to the standards
process?
>> RICHARD MATTHEW STALLMAN: I don't know a lot about the ITU, but
what I believe I recall I have heard is that it is very closely connected with
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telecommunications companies and that it will do what those companies want.
Now, what do they want? They want to abolish network neutrality. So I'd be
very suspicious of ITU involvement. But this is a memory of what people told me
quite a few years ago. It's conceivable I'm remembering wrong.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Thank you, Richard. Peter Resnick.
>> PETER RESNICK: My name is Pete Resnick. I am a man with several
hats. So some of the comments -- some of the comments I'm about to make
may seem surprising, depending on which hat you know me with. One of them is
that I work for Qualcomm. The other is that I'm an area director with the IETF.
Going to Richard's just earlier comments, I have scant little to disagree with
him about, but I am -- maybe this is a cynical comment. I actually don't believe
that this should affect the way we do Internet standards all that much. In that I
think the best way to keep things like software patents, which will restrict the rest
of us, at bay is to have an open standards process where one needs to come to
consensus because if the open software community comes to that open standards
process and they say we do not agree to use these kinds of technologies
because of their patents, because of the technology that they're using, then thatwill create a situation where a standard can't be produced, and they can move
the community to do something different.
It's something akin to the sunshine is the best cleanser theory, that if we have
an open process where people can come and participate openly, those things that
come to consensus will be built.
Now, that doesn't mean that there can't be standards. Let's just say
commonly used protocols that won't have this kind of closed technology. If a
group of people want to get together and say we want to use this technology, I
don't think we should do anything to prevent that from happening if that group
comes to consensus. But if we are all coming to the IETF to say let's
standardize a practice for doing this particular protocol, I think the folks who want
to do free and open software should be in the same position as people who want
to do commercial software in that conversation.
>> RICHARD MATTHEW STALLMAN: May I respond?
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>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Thank you, Richard. Yes, please.
>> RICHARD MATTHEW STALLMAN: First of all, it's as mistake to contrast
free software with commercial software. Many free programmes are commercial.And likewise, there are proprietary programmes which are not commercial.
>> PETER RESNICK: I nod my head in agreement, and I apologize for the
conflation.
>> RICHARD MATTHEW STALLMAN: Okay. Anyway, I am in agreement with
your main point. I am in favor of development standards committees developing
specifications through the kind of process I have participated in a couple of times.And by all means, let's continue to do that. We do have to worry, though, about
the danger that a company with a lot of money can corrupt the process like
Microsoft did with ISO. ISO's normal procedure is to do exactly what you are
championing, but it had this exception built to its rules that allowed Microsoft to
buy it. And that's one danger we have to worry about.
There's also the danger that much smaller companies try to cause an
organisation not to follow its rules. I don't remember the details, but there wassome proposed Internet Protocol standard. It might have been the -- the Internet
Society that was standardizing it. I don't know who does what in that area. I
don't remember the details. But basically, there were a few people involved in
the process who were accused of flagrantly disregarding the organisation's rules in
order to ram through a patented addition to some protocol. Well, I don't know
what happened, but it looked like there was some substance in the accusation at
the time. Maybe more needs to be done to to be able to stop this when it
happens. Because whether or not it happened that time, it could happen in the
future.
Finally, there's a fundamental error in saying if some group of people want to
use to get some patented protocol, why should we stop them? Well, presented
that way, I would agree, but what does this group really consist of? It consists of
some company which is participating because it set the scheme up, plus maybe
millions of people who never thought about it who were pressured in or lured in
by the network of friends and perhaps massive publicity, and this is not -- this
doesn't fit the idea of some people who knowingly decided to use a patented
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protocol.
If it really is that, I wouldn't try to intervene. If they're adults, right, they
should be able to do this thing that I think is foolish. Why should any of the rest
of us muscle into their decisions? But that's not the way it is nowadays, at leastnot in the case that is affect the most people. So it's very different what a
company should be able to do using either a patented or more commonly a
secret protocol with millions of people who didn't get together and decide they
wanted to be restricted in that way.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Scott Bradner, please.
>> SCOTT BRADNER: I want to come back to Internet Governance a bit andstart with a little history. Start with a little history.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: As you, yourself, say, show love to the mic.
>> SCOTT BRADNER: Yes, pretend you like the mic. So I mentioned that
event and Lyman offered ISO the TCP/IP standardization. They turned it down.
They produced the ISO protocol stream.
For many years, the ISO protocol stack, the -- was regulated as the answer to
telecommunications. In the U.S., if you were selling to the Government, you had
to sell products that met that. There were countries where it was illegal to use
TCP/IP on the public network, which was the phone network. You had to use the
OSI protocol stack.
That regulatory process wouldn't up costing a huge amount of money. In the
end, the ISPs that were providing Internet connectivity pretty much ignored the
regulations and went on and just did their thing and did it with IP.
But those ISPs are gone. Most big ISPs, certainly in the U.S. and in many
other countries, are what's left of the telephone company. These are companies
that are used to regulations. They're used to doing -- of helping to guide and
helping to create the regulations that they live under. And one of the arguments
that's made for somebody like the UN -- the UN through the ITU, to be the
Internet standards body and the Internet regulatory body is that that way the
regulators in country can have a better handle over this Internet thing. A lot of
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regulators in a lot of countries are very frustrated by the Internet. It's the only
major telecommunications scheme in history that is not heavily regulated
everywhere. Regulated to the extent of what products you can offer, what prices
that you have to charge, what functions you have, what you have to hand over to
the Government when, all of that.
The arguments in favor of pushing the Internet standardization into the ITU is
one in favor of regulation and in putting control back onto the telecommunication
infrastructure that has escaped control by moving to the Internet. This is a real
threat. The Internet Governance issue here is fundamental. It's moving from a
nonregulated Internet in a -- essentially nonregulated Internet. Certainly in
international communications and in many countries in local communications.
Some filtering to an environment where it is teleco regulations, where it takes tenyears to develop the simplest application.
Not stopping on a high note.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Thank you. We have seven minutes left. I would
like to see if we can just make a round of closing comments. Richard, would
you -- okay. So that was Scott's. One less left. Richard in particular, would
you like to make a comment?
>> RICHARD MATTHEW STALLMAN: I'd simply like to mention that there is a
difference that may be relevant between the free software movement and the open
source idea, which is mainly a development methodology, and you can find this in
GNU.org/philosophy, more information about it, so I won't take up your time. I've
got to get going. It's time for me to leave for my flight. Thank you for giving
me a chance to speak, and bye.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Thank you, Richard Stallman, for taking part in this
meeting despite stringent conditions. Thanks a lot.
Who wants to jump in? Tracy? Tracy Hackshaw.
>> TRACY HACKSHAW: Right. I listened to all the comments, and I'm a little
bewildered. In my country, we don't influence the Internet. We are receivers of
it. And all this information is very intriguing to us in our part of the world. I
guess what I would like to say at the end of it all is with the emergence of cloud
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computing and the mobile Internet, our position as a small-isle developing state as
an actor in the process as opposed to developer in the process is affected by all
the things that you discussed here today. I would like to just caution or point out
that in our part of the world, we haven't even reached the stages yet to discuss
how open standards affect Internet Governance and so on. We are still grapplingwith issues of even getting our entire country to understand what the Internet is
and what open source software means to us.
When I was invited to speak on this panel, I believe that open source and
open thinking has not arrived in our part of the world as yet. What I am hearing
today is that all of that is still being debated around the world.
Clearly, decisions are being made somewhere else that are affecting us, andclearly we need to get a voice in that. Right now, I am still not sure how, and if
there's any way you can help, I would be really appreciative of that right now.
Thank you.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Venkatesh Hariharan.
>> VENKATESH HARIHARAN: So I have been in the IT industry for about 15
years, and if somebody paid me a dollar for every time they used the word"intellectual property," I think I would be a million air by now.
It's amazing how much we look at everything through the lens of intellectual
property, and I think it is time to call for a balance and a counterpoint which, you
know, many people are now calling the knowledge comments that, you know, the
Internet -- the open standards are public goods and that it needs to be recognized
as such, and public policies need to be drafted keeping the Internet in mind as a
public good, as knowledge comments, and that knowledge comments are
something that should be actively cultured and nurtured. That's the note on which
I would like to conclude.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Sunil.
>> SUNIL ABRAHAM: Thank you. I think when we are discussing multiple
standards-setting organisations and perhaps multiple fora where a Nation State
gets to negotiate key clauses in really legal contracts that affect outgoing royalties,
incoming royalties, et cetera, it's easy to say that we must have as many foras as
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possible, but if one were to look at the Indian negotiator at WIPO, often it's the
same negotiator who has to negotiate patrons, copyrights, trademarks, et cetera,
and often she goes for a meeting and is ill prepared because there isn't sufficient
briefing from the ministry concerned, and perhaps even civil society. Unlike,
perhaps, the U.S. negotiator, who is followed by an entourage of advisors, bothfrom civil society and from private sector. He is much more capable of
participating in that negotiation.
We have 200 important languages in India. How many of us in India go to
Unicode for the negotiations there? So I think a rationalization of the standard-
setting process -- I understand the concerns raised about how slow the UN
process is and how slow telecom regulation could be. But multiplicity of fora don't
necessarily serve the cause of developing nations. Thank you.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Scott Bradner.
>> SCOTT BRADNER: I would like to speak to that. I completely agree that
just having more fora is not a good solution. I wasn't worried about -- and I am
not worried about -- the speed of development of standards. I would be calling
the pot black because the IETF's gotten very slow these days. It is the
mechanism, the final adjudicator of standards in the ITU and many traditionalstandards bodies are Government regulators who vote on the technical standards.
In the IETF and W3C and a number of fora, the final adjudicator are technical
people doing technical work, and that's a fundamental difference.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Thank you. I have a comment to be delivered by
Sebastien Bachollet.
>> SEBASTIEN BACHOLLET: A comment online. This is not directly on the
comment, but it seems to me that site like Facebook exemplify what Richard was
talking about. The space is being presented as open and perceived as open, but
in fact, it is a closed space that people are being lured into. Thank you.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Any comments from the panelists to that? I hear
a loud thanks from --
>> PETER RESNICK: This is Pete Resnick. I am happy to agree to that.
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There's been a lot of discussion about how open Facebook is and that everybody
can develop for it. But, of course, developing for something does not make it a
protocol that anybody can interact with, and having an interaction is really what
makes something open, that I can write something proprietary and talk to
something that is free and open. There's a little bit of an echo. And I'm veryglad that we can have those kinds of standards. Facebook is certainly not one of
them.
>> ALEJANDRO PISANTY: Well, thanks a lot. I think we -- time-wise, we
really have to close. I would like to make a very short statement as summary. I
think that this workshop -- I mean, thanks to the speakers and the dialogue -- an
extraordinary result in showing how the different ways open is used for open
standards, open source software, come together where they do collide, they docollide, where open standards do accept a certain level of proprietary control over
the technology yet still ways of sharing and licensing ar