Library of Congress's $3M Deal With Microsoft

Cory Doctorow sounds the alarm over a Library of Congress deal with Microsoft that will have collections locked up in Silverlight. I'll double the Microsoft deal and offer them $6M in perl scripts and an infinite value of free OS software if they let me (or Google or any other honest company) publish their collections in free formats. "This deal involves the donation of 'technology, services and funding' (e.g., mostly not money) with a purported value of $3M from Microsoft to the Library of Congress. The Library, in turn, agrees to put kiosks running Vista in the library and to use Microsoft Silverlight to 'help power the library's new Web site, www.myloc.gov.'"

where's the advantage?

Okay so they traded off having to use use silverlight in order to use Vista kiosks? That seems like a bit of a lose-lose deal to me. They must have some pretty stupid negotiators. Plus, how could anyone be so stupid that they put something that important into a super proprietary format?!

Re:where's the advantage?

Yes they are stupid about it, it IS a lose lose situation, anyone want to email the Library of Congress? Time for some registered voters to get involved instead of arguing on slashdot. http://www.loc.gov/help/contact-general.html [loc.gov] That;s the contaxct info, I'm not sure which of those categories it falls under, but someone should write out an email and have a load of people send it in. Congress don't listen to common sense, they DO listen to voters.

Re:where's the advantage?

To Whom It May Concern:

In my opinion, it is a bad idea to restrict access to some of this nation's most prized possessions by requiring a non-standardized, non-open software package in order to access valuable information both in an online format and to visitors at the Library in Washington D.C.

Microsoft's Silverlight is an unproven and immature new technology. While Microsoft believes that the software will become very valuable, it does so by restricting access to operating systems and web browsers that only Microsoft deems worthy of using this new technology. With respect to Microsoft's anti-trust history, it would behoove the Library of Congress to steer clear of this technology. Especially considering several states fear Silverlight may be a source of future anti-trust violations.

I would strongly urge you to reconsider implementing Microsoft's Silverlight in favor of an open and freely available technology such as AJAX, SVG, and H.264. By using open and free standards and technology, you will be: 1. Allowing open access to all citizens, not just those deemed worthy by Microsoft. 2. Guaranteeing open access to all citizens for the foreseeable future, without restrictions imposed by Microsoft as upgrading becomes a necessity. 3. Guaranteeing open access to all citizens for the foreseeable future, should Microsoft demand a fee for access to its technology. 4. Allowing open access to all citizens without requiring them to bow to Microsoft's restrictive licensing agreement.

Thank you,
(your name here)

Re:where's the advantage?

Cataloging and Acquisitions I would think...
http://www.loc.gov/aba/contact/ [loc.gov]

All the way at the bottom.

I'm using this one, someone please post if there's a more appropriate place.

Web Site Comments. Let them know what you think.

Web Site Comments [loc.gov] looks like the appropriate place to tell them what you think of non free information and non free formats.

The LOC should not host works that can't be exactly reproduced for non commercial purposes. Rights holders who disagree with that can host content on their own dime and pay for their own advertising. At the very least, the copyright status of works on the LOC site should be unambiguous. Serving them that content with restrictions is a waste of everyone's time and money. Sooner or later, all of the work will have to be redone because non free formats are always flash in the pan. Non free content will violate everyone's rights and pocketbook in the mean time. There's no amount of equipment, software or money that M$ can come up with overcome the cost of giving them control of our national library. Our heritage and freedom is worth more than the $20 billion in cash they have.

Re:where's the advantage?

Unfortunately, M$ is already well on the way to locking down content in libraries...check out this mysterious new machine that recently appeared in our local library...'free' audiobooks for download. Which aren't free in any way, shape or form, of course. Microsoft windows DRM encumbered/infected/infested audio files, which librairies have been brainwashed into purchasing, for literally tens of thousands of dollars, and ignoring/publicizing truly free(dom) sites such as libravox.org

Check out this site for all the horrifying details of how librairies are selling out:
http://www.stratford.library.on.ca/downloadlibrary.html [library.on.ca]

It is not an issue of mac or linux users,

No, Mac users can use silverlight [wikipedia.org], and have been able to for quite some time. Linux users will be able to use it soon [wikipedia.org], although I don't know about licensing and patents.

So, from a user's perspective, this is irrelevant. The concern in this new technology is on the server side of things, and in Microsoft's market position. Silverlight's purpose in life is to dynamically load xml within the DOM tree, which should sound familiar since that is essentially what Ajax does. Ajax, however, has some short comings, for which the w3c developed the E4X [ecma-international.org] standard.

However, given the high quality of web applications written in Ajax, Microsoft rightly assessed that E4X threatened their office and email monopolies, and therefore their OS monopoly, because such applications are platform-agnostic. It is no coincidence that MS really started to push Silverlight development shortly after Google started testing high quality Ajax-based office, email and collaboration software.

Therefore, IE, which is already pretty non-standards compliant in its javascript syntax, still does not support it at all [w3schools.com], although all other major browsers have for years. By creating and promoting silverlight, MS is essentially embracing and extending to get control of dynamic web page standards away from the w3c. They will try to promote silverlight in as many places as possible, and hobble Ajax in IE. They will develop a series of neat free tools that make it easy to develop in silverlight. Once there is a critical mass of pages that use silverlight, they will start to make "improvements" to the standard but only integrate those changes into their Windows plugin. When that happens, all web users will once again be locked into Microsoft. It will MS will also have the bonus of also being able to integrate features that depend on asp, forcing their way into the server market.

If you don't believe MS would use a strategy like this, just ask yourself why there was an IE5.5 for Macs and no IE6 for Macs.

Thus, improvements in technology that should be happening around an open standards making body, indeed would happen faster and more effeciently in this standards making body, are going to go into the hands of one company at proceed at a much slower rate. It's a classic embrace/extend/extinguish. It is just sad that the US government is supporting this.

Re:where's the advantage?

The important thing is not the kiosks, but if they also are going to run Silverlight on the publicly accessible parts of their services. In that case they are limiting the access to their records to those that are able to run Silverlight.

Re:where's the disadvantage?

Not every network-connected computing device is a desktop PC. Citizens with handhelds, rich-interface cell phones, and internet tables all should be able to access the information at the library of congress. Indeed, even users without access to install specialized plugins should have access.

There's really no need for silverlight here.

Re:where's the disadvantage?

It's just another piece of software that will need to be installed to access information. They haven't excluded anyone that I am aware of, unless you're still using a Commodore VIC-20.

Access in 20 years is not guaranteed. Silverlight is proprietary. Micorosoft have made it accessible to other operating systems but ongoing accessibility is absolutely dependent on the whim of Microsoft maintaining the availability and leaving the format untouched.

In addition to libraries, many Records Management Systems in many Universities and public services are equally tied to proprietary formats.

What happens in 20 or 30 years. I can still read documents that are hundreds of years old that are on paper.

Microsoft's record in the past 20 years doesn't give me much confidence in their ongoing behaviours.

It also assumes that current storage media will stay the same or similar. In only the last 20 years, my 8" floppy disks have become redundant, cassette tapes are almost unusable now, some old computer tapes no longer have drives that can read them and on it goes.

This approach to important documents is so myopic, I find it difficult to believe that librarians and records management experts can't see that far ahead.

Re:where's the disadvantage?

And Flash is?

Flash would be as inadequate as Silverlight for publishing information.

Silverlight is worse than Flash for several reasons. 1) It's from Microsoft, a company that has been known for introducing proprietary technologies to lock in people to their products. 2) It's a new, unstable and unproven technology; Flash at least has been around for many years now. 3) Silverlight seems to be patent encumbered, and it seems Microsoft will try to use it against free software and the GPL.

However, ultimately I believe that Silverlight will fail for the same reasons Flash failed. 10 years ago I remember that every single company was converting their websites to Flash. Every webdesigner at that time was versed at that technology and it was being pushed very strongly. At that time, the incompatibilities and bugs in implementations of HTML (introduced by... can you guess it? Of course! Microsoft's IE!) made a big case for starting to use Flash and have consistent look and feel among different browsers and platforms.

But now most companies are back to having HTML based websites, and using Flash sparingly, and not for publishing content. They realised that using Flash had many shortcomings, and that they would have to use HTML if they wanted to:

• Have search engines index their sites. In a world where most company websites are reached through Google, no company would want a Flash website that will never be reached because it's not properly indexed.
• Allow people to bookmark or link specific pages. In the blogging era this is very important, as bloggers want to point readers exactly to the page and snippet where the relevant information is. If a blogger starts to have to write instructions ("follow this link then click on 'Products' and then search for 'Name' and click on the tab for 'Data Sheet'"), they'll not link to you at all, and maybe even try to find the information from your competitors.
• Mashups. Same as before. Your content will only be usable if it's accessible.

The need for plugins is not longer the reason why people don't use Flash (and won't use Silverlight). When content is king, it has to be served in an open standardized format, that allows it to be accessed, indexed, linked and ultimately used. That's what the Web 1.0 was about, and the Web 2.0 kind of tried to bring these core ideas back, after technologies such as Flash were being misused for content publishing.

We've already been mistaken once. Are we going to do it again? I really hope not.

Re:where's the advantage?

The benefit is wizzy 3d effects!

I hope all the linux users here like using Novell's distro, here's some evidence that Silverlight is entirely patent encumbered

"to avoid patent problems over Silverlight, when using or developing Mono's implementation (known as Moonlight), it's best to get/download Moonlight from Novell which will include patent coverage."

Moonlight will be able to run on any distro supported by Mono, which is most of the major distros. Under the terms of the agreements we have with Microsoft, Novell customers are covered by Microsoft's covenant not to sue over patents. In terms of Moonlight, that means that, if you download Moonlight from Novell (which is free of charge), you are considered a Novell customer of Moonlight, whether you run it on SUSE Linux Enterprise or on another distribution. If you get the Moonlight code from elsewhere, you are not considered a Novell customer, and so don't fall within the covenant.

That's Miguel and Novell speaking.

Unproven Technology

Aside from vendor lock-in, this product is far too new to be relying on like this.

Locked up?

Can someone explain to me where the term "locked up" applies to this news article? I read the (very brief) article linked to - and didn't see how anything in the library would become 'locked up', which I assume to mean, available only to people using Windows software. Yeah, they're going to accept some 'donations' of OS's and stuff (so Microsoft spends $10 burning a bunch of CDs and calls it a multi-million-dollar donation, with all the relevent tax perks as well - why does the government let them get away with this?) for their new kiosks (which if my experience with Windows kiosks is anything to go by, will be sitting at a blue screen or an empty Windows desktop 50% of the time), but how does this equal anything being 'locked up'?

Re:Locked up?

The concern is over the use of Silverlight for the website. Silverlight as of yet does not have a end-user ready version for several operating systems, including free ones such as Linux. There is however a Moonlight project by the Mono guys to bring Silverlight to those operating systems.

LOC website = horrible

As I noted on Slashdot recently [slashdot.org], the library of congress website is possibly the most dysfunctional site on the internet. If you ever browse their collections, it's literally impossible to get a permanent URL (which makes it incredibly difficult to copy their public domain stuff to Wikipedia - all the URLs to confirm the copyright status break after an hour) What's even worse, it feels like somebody spent a lot of my taxpayer money to put together something that is functionally useless.

Money, bribery & Free software

If you're tired of seeing these things happening, support Lawrence Lessig's movement "Change Congress" and if you happen to vote in California 12th in the Congress elections, take a look. http://lessig08.org/ [lessig08.org]

Bad decisions like this one are either caused by incompetence or economy of influence. Time to change congress!

Re:Related

Imagine that in order to drink these Pepsi bottles from your school, one needs a special bottle-opener which is only sold by Pepsi for $100, and that it's illegal (for good reasons) to share your bottle opener with your friends, so each of you needs to buy your own. Assume also that Coca-Cola bottles can be opened by any old bottle-opener, including bottle-openers you make yourself, and that it's perfectly legal to share bottle openers for Coca-Cola bottles. Would you still be OK with Pepsi buying off the retailer to only stock Pepsi?

Re:Related

Yeah, I'd be fine with that so long as I can still readily buy Cokes elsewhere, or even if I preferred Pepsi in the first place. What I *wouldn't* be fine with is having to buy a Pepsi-opener in order to view publicly-funded archives of my nation's history (er, to drink the free soda my government is entrusted with preserving for the benefit of all humankind--hey, it was *your* analogy!).

Re:Silverlight - it's actually illegal!

It's actually illegal to remove Section 508 compliance from a government website (hence why many of them suck so much)... and Silverlight, true to typical usages of it, will break that compliance in a big way. So Microsoft (and LOC's move) may actually be illegal depending on how it's implemented. I would hope that Cory, or anybody who has some sway, will realize this and call them on it.

I actually make an effort (have since 1996) to design every one of my sites I run to be complaint (as much as possible) with section 508 Handicap Web Accessibility rules. I used to use Bobby at CAST to do some preliminary checks. I'm actually appalled how many of the sites out there are broken on those simple accounts (table nesting, bad CSS and not ALT tags), and now even thinking about compliance on mobile browsers (iPhone, Palm, Windows Mobile, Symbian, etc.) that these sites also suffer from in accessibility.

Re:Silverlight

The issue with Moonlight is that its patent encumbered, and the only vendor that Microsoft has a licensing agreement with is Novell. While they've indicated that they don't intend to sue users of Moonlight even if they don't use Novell Linux, they haven't entered into any soft of legally binding covenant and could go back on that decision at any time. Therefore, unless you use Novell Linux, you have nothing other than Microsoft's word protecting you from a patent infringement lawsuit if you use Moonlight.

Re:Silverlight on Linux

That's not the point. The point is that it's a Microsoft controlled format, and Microsoft has a track record of continually updating their software, which in turns, often ends up breaking compatibility with free implementations of said software, making it a game a perpetual catch-up to be able to read their formats. Not to mention, this is a government website, which shouldn't be forcing people to use a certain operating system just to view their website.

Re:Silverlight on Linux

Obviously you are new to using MS products in a mixed environment:

- Microsoft provides a version of X for Mac and/or other platform (case in point MS made for Macs: MS Project, Outlook, FoxPRO, Windows Media Player, Office VBA, Internet Explorer, Virtual PC, Frontpage, Fight Simulator, etc).

- Updates usually go to windows versions first, but due to "technical problems" (or something similar) X version does not always receive all of the updates.

- Second generation of product comes out employing some more Windows-only exclusive technology - the version for platform X is kind of crappier and not compatible (no explanation just some short "use Applescript instead" for the missing features).

- MS announces that the X version of the software will be discontinued due to lack of 'customer interest' (more so on MSs part)

- MS touts how great they are at supporting multiple platforms on their next product... (repeat)

Re:Another 50 Years

SO TRUE!

I remember actually going to the library of congress, and they refused to allow me in. Why? Because I didn't actually have anything specific to research... I just wanted to check out what the library had to offer, browse around, read a book or two. Of course I waited five minutes and invented a research topic, but nonetheless it's absurd not to allow me, a taxpayer access to my library.

Bureaucracy.

Re:So?

Or they could do it with (amongst others and just as big names I know): Google, Redhat, Novell, Canonical and dozens of other companies who are FOSS and provide paying customers with support.

Yes, and more to the point, this is the Federal Government we're talking about here, with the resources to hire the right people and provide in-house support if it really needed to do so. The need for support is simply not a deciding factor in this case ... the GP doesn't have the bigger picture. Honestly, the Feds would be far better off coming up with their own solution to the problem: hire somebody really good to lay out the system and then build a staff to maintain and improve it. In the long run, they'll end up with a system that will do what they want, not what Microsoft tells them they want, and serves the needs of We the People.

It isn't just proprietary, closed-source companies who offer support.

Not only offer it, but in Red Hat's case it's their bread-and-butter.