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These days, when computers are commonplace, one would think that there
was incentive to promote common and widespread use of technology that
makes it easy to distribute, archive, and reuse data between
applications from different vendors, running on a variety of operating
system and hardware platform combinations. Unfortunately, that is not
the case
today. With Microsoft as the only really major player on the global
desktop software market, and indeed Microsoft software is often
everything most users are likely to ever get in touch with, why bother
with interoperability? After all, a company must seek to protect its
intellectual property
, right?
Wrong, wrong, wrong. First of all, Microsoft is not the only player on the software
market, even though through heavy use of FUD, as well as other monopoly
tactics, many users are seriously deprived of choices. With the recent
push of the concept of so-called trustworthy
computing
, particularily in the form of Microsoft's NGSCB (formerly
known as Palladium) technology, this looks like it is only going to get
worse in the next few years. This technology, along with
Microsoft's .Net initiative and the US DMCA law, is giving
large companies just about everything they need to not just stiffle
competition, but also lock customers – businesses and ordinary
people
alike – into whatever schemes the company dictates.
The hype word of the year must be the concept of intellectual
property
, which seems to be brought up by large companies any time
they
don't wish to let competitors into a market. Most often in the computer
industry, this involves
software and hardware interfaces (APIs and low-level
technical details necessary to write device drivers for hardware
perhiperals)
or file formats, although exceptions exist. Historically, most
companies have made sure that their software can at the very least read
files created using their competitors' products; nowadays, with Microsoft as close to
the
only player in the office software (word processing, spreadsheets,
etc.) market on the Windows platform, very few users are even aware that there are
choices. Indeed Microsoft software is far from always even compatible with
other Microsoft software designed to accomplish the same task. In a
market where commercial companies tried and failed
against Microsoft's huge PR machinery, however, open source software is
alive
and well, even on Windows. Come NGSCB, though, there is serious risk
that even this choice to users will no longer be available, or if it
remains, will not
be interoperable with commercial software.
The problem is that the DMCA for all practical purposes has outlawed bypassing any kind of security measures, or allowing others to bypass a security measure, no matter how weak, in the United States. Couple this with a combined hardware/software security system designed to restrict users' access to their own computers, software and data, along with Microsoft .Net storing data in (presumably non-interoperable) file formats in a location inaccessible to software not officially certified by Microsoft, and the fact that the open source development model makes any such certification impractical or possibly even impossible, and that much software development (both commercial/proprietary as well as open source) takes place within the United States, and the problem becomes more evident. We as computer users risk losing control of the very documents we create ourselves, and almost no one is reacting!
Software interoperability, and particularily publicly available
specifications of the file formats used by various applications
(whether such specifications are available as human-language written
documents, or computer software source code), will not resolve all of
these issues, but are certain to go a long way towards ensuring that
the documents that we create today will be readable to others, not just
today, but also in the future. If we do not take active steps
to
protect our own information from the hands of corporations,
chances are
that five, ten, or twenty years from now, very little of the
information that is available today is going to remain, whether at all,
in
formats or on media readable at that time without the use of obsoleted
equipment (look at the speed with which
5-1/4" floppy disks disappeared, and have you even heard of 8" floppy
disks?). There is no inherent contradiction between
availability of low-level specifications or even source code for
computer software, and ability to run a company. MySQL AB in Sweden,
the company behind the immensely popular MySQL database engine (on the web
site called the world's
most popular open source database
) makes
the source code for their main product available for free under an open
source
license termed viral
by Microsoft executive Steve
Ballman, yet the company employs
about 100 people worldwide, offering training, support, consultation
and other services based around their products, all according to their
web site. Red Hat, Inc. in the
USA (as well as several others worldwide) has built a company around
the operating system Linux, available under exactly the same license,
often even making their entire distribution CDs available for free
download by anyone, by offering value-added services to paying
customers. The list goes on and proves that even after the dot-com era,
companies do not have to keep everything secret in order to remain.
All this is why I make sure that whatever applications I use to create my works, whether I intend to release them to the public in digital or analog form, just distribute my works within a specific group of people (large or small), or indeed not release them at all, sufficient information is available under a free enough license so that anyone with the proper skills will be able to write a program that allows them to make use of the digital originals. It is my contribution to ensuring that the information will be preserved for the future, and I urge everyone to do the same.
This document was last changed in November 2003.
Listed in no particular order.