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Submission + - What is Open Source Pharma (and why should you care)? (consortiuminfo.org)

Submitted by Andy Updegrove
Andy Updegrove writes: Humanity today is almost completely dependent on huge pharmaceutical companies to create the drugs we need. But these companies focus exclusively on drugs that can be sold at high prices to large populations — in other words, to patients in developed nations. This means that those who live in the emerging world that suffer from the remaining "neglected diseases," like Malaria and drug resistant TB, have no one to depend on for relief except huge charities, like the Gates Foundation. They also have no way to afford many of the patented drugs that do exist. But there is another way, modeled on open source software development, which relies on crowd sourced knowledge, highly distributed, volunteer efforts, and advanced open source tools. That methodology is called Open Source Pharma, and it has the potential to dramatically drive down drug development while saving millions of lives every year.

Submission + - Dept. of Justice Blesses IEEE Rules on Injunctions and Reasonability (consortiuminfo.org)

Submitted by Andy Updegrove
Andy Updegrove writes: During the mobile platform patent wars of recent years Apple, Microsoft, Samsung, Motorola and the rest of the major vendors sought injunctions against each other to prevent their competitor from selling their products at all. The suits were often based on claims that a vendor had to pay a reasonable royalty on a “standards essential patent.” The resulting litigation clogged up the courts, and the regulators were not amused. Now, after almost two years of vigorous debate, the standards development organization behind WiFi and thousands of other ICT standards (IEEE-SA) has received the blessing of the U.S. Dept. of Justice to forbid members that have pledged to license such patents from seeking an injunction until all other remedies have been exhausted. Whether other standards organizations will follow suit remains to be seen.

Submission + - Linux Foundation Announces Major Network Functions Virtualization Project (consortiuminfo.org)

Submitted by Andy Updegrove
Andy Updegrove writes: The Linux Foundation this morning announced the latest addition to its family of major hosted open source initiatives: the Open Platform for NFV Project (OPNFV), Its mission is to develop and maintain a carrier-grade, integrated, open source reference platform for the telecom industry. Importantly, the thirty-eight founding members include not only cloud and service infrastructure vendors, but telecom service providers, developers and end users as well. The announcement of OPNFV highlights three of the most significant trends in IT: virtualization (the NFV part of the name refers to network function virtualization), moving software and services to the Cloud, and collaboratively developing complex open source platforms in order to accelerate deployment of new business models while enabling interoperability across a wide range of products and services. The project is also significant for reflecting a growing recognition that open source projects need to incorporate open standards planning into their work programs from the beginning, rather than as an afterthought.

Submission + - U.K. Cabinet Office Adopts ODF as Exclusive Standard for Sharable Documents (consortiuminfo.org)

Submitted by Andy Updegrove
Andy Updegrove writes: The U.K. Cabinet Office accomplished today what the Commonwealth of Massachusetts set out (unsuccessfully) to achieve ten years ago: it formally required compliance with the Open Document Format (ODF) by software to be purchased in the future across all government bodies. Compliance with any of the existing versions of OOXML, the competing document format championed by Microsoft, is neither required nor relevant. The announcement was made today by The Minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude. Henceforth, ODF compliance will be required for documents intended to be shared or subject to collaboration. PDF/A or HTML compliance will be required for viewable government documents. The decision follows a long process that invited, and received, very extensive public input – over 500 comments in all.

Submission + - Microsoft Circles the Wagons to Defeat ODF in the UK (consortiuminfo.org)

Submitted by Andy Updegrove
Andy Updegrove writes: Three weeks ago, we heard that Francis Maude, a senior UK government minister, was predicting the conversion to open source office suites by UK government agencies. Lost in the translation in many stories was the fact that this was based not on an adopted policy, but on a proposal still open for public comment — and subject to change. It should be no surprise that Microsoft is trying to get the UK to add OOXML, its own format standard, to the UK policy. Why? According to a messaging sent to its UK partners, because it believes that a failure to include OOXML "will cause problems for citizens and businesses who use office suites which don’t support ODF, including many people who do not use a recent version of Microsoft Office or, for example, Pages on iOS and even Google Docs." Of course, that's because Microsoft pushed OOXML as an alternative to ODF a decade ago. If you don't want the same objection to be valid a decade from now, consider making your views known at the Cabinet Office Standards Hub. The deadline is February 26.
Microsoft

Submission + - Office to Become Fully Open XML Compliant (at last) (consortiuminfo.org)

Submitted by
Andy Updegrove
Andy Updegrove writes: "Between 2005 and 2008, an unparalleled standards war was waged between Microsoft, on the one hand, and IBM, Google, Oracle and additional companies on the other. At the heart of the battle were two document formats, one called ODF, developed by OASIS, a standards development consortium, and Open XML, a specification developed by Microsoft. Both were submitted to, and adopted by, global standards groups ISO/IEC. But then Microsoft never fully adopted its own standard. Instead, it implemented what it called "Transitional Open XML," which was better adapted for use in connection with documents created using older versions of Office. Yesterday, Microsoft announced In a blog entry — http://tinyurl.com/c5ppkwz — that it will finally make it possible for Office users to open, edit and save documents in the format that ISO/IEC approved."

Comment Yes, it does stand as a precedent (Score 4, Informative) 36

by Andy Updegrove (#31201876) Attached to: Jacobsen v Katzer Settled — Victory For F/OSS
Yes - the rulings made by the court do stand as precedents, notwithstanding the fact that the case settled. What the settlement means is that those rulings can no longer be appealed. If it had settled before going to court, then the settlement would have been irrelevant, but that's not the case here. - Andy
Software

Submission + - A Big Victory for F/OSS: Jacobsen v. Katzer is Set (consortiuminfo.org) 2

Submitted by Andy Updegrove
Andy Updegrove writes: A short while ago the parties to one of the most closely watched FOSS cases filed a settlement agreement with the U.S. Federal District Court for the Northern District of California ending one of the most important FOSS legal cases to date. That case is Jacobsen vs. Katzer, and the settlement marks a complete victory for Jacobsen, a member of the Java Model Railroad Interface (JMRI) Project. Jacobsen's victory establishes several important rights for the first time in the U.S.: the right to prevent their copyright and authorship acknowledgments from being removed from their code, and the right to collect damages if the terms of the licenses they choose are violated. Until now, those rights had never been tested in court. Read on for the details of the case, the litigation, and the settlement.
Movies

Submission + - Here We Go Again: Video Standards War 2010 (consortiuminfo.org)

Submitted by Andy Updegrove
Andy Updegrove writes: Think of the words "standards war," and if you're of a certain age you're likely to think of the battle between the Betamax and VHS video tape formats. Fast forward, and you'll recall we just finished another video standards war between most of the same companies, this time between HD DVD and Blu-ray. Well, here we go again, except this time its the movie studios that are duking it out, and DRM issues is a big part of it. On the one side are five of the six major studios, dozens of cable, hardware, software, distribution and device vendors, and on the other side there's just Disney — and maybe Apple as well, and that's enough to have the other side worried.
Microsoft

Submission + - All Quiet on the CodePlex Front: 100 Days No Board (consortiuminfo.org)

Submitted by Andy Updegrove
Andy Updegrove writes: As you may recall, Microsoft announced back on September 10 that it had launched a new, open source organization called the CodePlex Foundation. Since then, it has announced Project Acceptance and Operation Guidelines, its first "Gallery" (a project area), supporting Microsoft's ASP.NET, and two projects in that gallery. But it had also launched in a "less than open" state with an interim Board of Directors, and a promise to elect a permanent one in 100 days. Problem is, December 19 — the 100 day mark — passed quietly, with no announcement of a new Board or a status update on the other goals it had set for the launch period. So what's up with the CodePlex Foundation, and its pledge to promptly transition into a more independent organization?
Microsoft

Submission + - Don't Forget UOF: Here Comes EIOffice 2009 (consortiuminfo.org)

Submitted by
Andy Updegrove
Andy Updegrove writes: "Long time followers of the ODF-OOXML story will recall that there is a third editable, XML-based document format in the race to create the documentary record of history. That contender is called UOF — for Uniform Office Format, and it has been under development in China since 2002. Last summer, UOF was adopted as a Chinese National Standard, and on Friday the first complete office suite based upon UOF was released. It's called Evermore Integrated Office 2009 (EIOffice 2009 for short). How successful could this new entrant be in China? For starters, Evermore Software Co. Ltd., its developer, is reportedly the largest software vendor to the Chinese government. And then there's price: Evermore's professional edition is less than a quarter of the price of the comparable version of Office 2007. And finally, it's clearly no coincidence that on July 11, Evermore Vice President Cao Shen called for Microsoft to be the first target for the China's new anti-monopoly law, which will take effect in just ten days' time. Whether Shen is speaking to, or for, the government remains to be seen."

Comment Correction on "save to" capability (Score 4, Informative) 377

by Andy Updegrove (#23495990) Attached to: Microsoft Office 2007 to Support ODF - But Not OOXML
Kevin J. O'Brien, reporting in the International Herald Tribune, reports that the ODF update will in fact permit users to "adjust Office 2007 settings to automatically save documents in the rival format." A knowledgeable source tells me that this report is likely to be accurate.

Andy
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft Office 2007 to Support ODF - and not OOX (consortiuminfo.org)

Submitted by
Andy Updegrove
Andy Updegrove writes: "About two hours ago, Microsoft announced that it will update Office 2007 to natively support ODF 1.1, but not to implement its own OOXML format. Not until Office 14 is released (no date given so far for that) will anyone be able to buy an OOXML ISO-compliant version. Why will Microsoft do this after so many years of refusal? Perhaps because the only way it can deliver a product to government customers that meets an ISO/IEC document format standard is by finally taking the plunge, and supporting "that other format." Still, many questions remain, such as when this upgrade will actually be released, how good a job it will do, and whether the API Microsoft has said it mill make available to permit developers to supply "save to ODF" default plugins will be supported by a patent non-assertion promise allowing implementations under the GPL (the upgrade supplied by Microsoft will not allow ODF as the default setting."
Microsoft

Submission + - OOXML Vote Tracker and Calculation Guide (consortiuminfo.org)

Submitted by
Andy Updegrove
Andy Updegrove writes: "Today, the final vote on Microsoft's OOXML will close. The final result will not be announced (or leak) before sometime early next week, but the votes of individual countries continue to come in, with more of those reported switching in favor of OOXML than against it. For the benefit of those that want to keep track of how the vote is tending until the official result is released, I'm posting the running tally of which votes have switched, what the net change has been, now many votes have come to light, and how many remain to be announced. It is likely that it will not be possible to know the final vote until all votes are in, due to the complex, double test for approval, which is complicated by the fact that the final number of abstentions, and whether they move from "yes" or "no" votes, can decrease the number of votes that need to switch to "yes" votes. For that reason, I also include an explanation of how each part of the approval requirement will be calculated."
Software

Submission + - Format Standards Committee "Grinds to a Halt&# (consortiuminfo.org)

Submitted by
Andy Updegrove
Andy Updegrove writes: "As you may recall, Microsoft's OOXML did not get enough votes to be approved the first time around in ISO/IEC — notwithstanding the fact that many countries joined the Document Format and Languages committee in the months before voting closed, almost all of whom voted to approve OOXML. Unfortunately, many of these countries also traded up to "P" level membership at the last minute to get more influence. Now, the collateral damage is setting in. At least 50% of P members must vote (up, down or abstain) on every standard at each ballot — and none of the new members are bothering to vote, despite repeated pleas from the committee chair. Not a single ballot has passed since the OOXML vote closed, and In his words, the committee has "ground to a halt." Sad to say, there's no end in sight for this (formerly) very busy and influential standards committee."

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