
UK Government Betrayal of Open Standards Confirmed  - strawberryshake
http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/01/uk-cabinet-office-betrayal-of-open-standards-confirmed/index.htm
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tehwalrus
As a Lib Dem, I'm actually very embarrassed about this. Especially since it
was Vince Cable's department (BIS) who seems to have led the charge against
OSS from within government. Ridiculous.

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mjwalshe
err actually I think you (lib dems) have a lot more to worry about than some
pious (used in its political sense here) belief by OS Zellots and hobby
programmers that some how Open Office is a better solution than MS Office for
a huge (largely non technical) user base.

The cost of a MS licence is so tiny when compared to the cost of employing
some one - and when you factor in the cost of retraining it makes very good
sense - whose hospitals or schools would you close to pay for all this.

~~~
jsmcgd
Where governments are concerned, MS Office licences can be huge and will
always be more expensive than free. They will always always be more
restrictive too than free software, by definition.

I agree that a licence by itself won't be the biggest expense a government
will have, but the sleazy insidious contracts that they are normally bundled
with are the most dangerous aspects licensed software. One example: why do so
many government institutions still use IE6? It's because of the eye-watering
expenses they're obliged to pay to upgrade their own systems.

This type of type of contractual bondage must end. Especially when it comes to
tax payers money. Unnecessary licences for sub standard MS software comes out
of the same purse as that used to pay for life saving operations. It's always
worth bearing this in mind.

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mjwalshe
Its not cheaper if you have to retain a lot of people - and Open office is not
well liked by ordinary users "its shit" was one comment by a coworker at my
last place

And look at any advert for a Govenment IT project its always to many chiefs
and not enough experianced devlopers.

IE6 lock in is due to cheap and shoddy work by the "outsourced" developers and
a lack of technical nous (incopentance being more blunt) in the specification
stage PPI has a lot to answer for.

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jiggy2011
This article is a little vague.

Personally as a UK Taxpayer I don't really care whether the desktop PCs and
downing street or Whitehall run Windows , Linux or Mac they could run Haiku
for all I care.

What I am more concerned about as more government functions can be interfaced
with online is whether this will be done using the most standard and open data
formats etc possible.

If I need to buy a specific piece of proprietary software to submit my tax
information online or if all applications for public sector jobs are
distributed in the latest MS Word format that I can't open without buying a
new version of Windows and office then that is something I at least
potentially care about.

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DrCatbox
"f I need to buy a specific piece of proprietary software to submit my tax
information online or if all applications for public sector jobs are
distributed in the latest MS Word format that I can't open without buying a
new version of Windows and office then that is something I at least
potentially care about."

Thats the point of this Microsofts lobbying, lock-in. Can you today require
open documents from your government? Here in Sweden, no. You get .doc most of
the time, if it is a local government then perhaps a PDF.

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jiggy2011
For the most part you can, sometimes you will get a .doc it's almost always
available in another format or it's an old enough .doc format that opening it
is not an issue.

You can also grab lots of data from parliament in XML format and people have
done some cool things with it (<http://www.theyworkforyou.com/>) for example.

There's lots of government depts that can be interacted with using various XML
formats and they will provide you with all the schemas you need.

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Silhouette
Point of order: Please be careful to distinguish between the concepts of open
standards, portable data, and Open Source software in this discussion.

~~~
tehwalrus
Indeed, I hadn't spotted the difference - thanks.

Reading the linked articles, the Free Software lobby is saying that this
decision will destroy the coalition agreement commitment to create a level
playing field (
[http://www.direct.gov.uk/prod_consum_dg/groups/dg_digitalass...](http://www.direct.gov.uk/prod_consum_dg/groups/dg_digitalassets/@dg/@en/documents/digitalasset/dg_187876.pdf)
p21, "Government Transparency", 8th bullet,) which may or may not be true.

Given that the argument is all about patent royalties on interfaces, though,
that argument (that OSS, which doesn't do royalties ever, won't stand a
chance) seems to hold water to me.

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tomelders
Just emailed 10 Downing street asking for an explanation, if they have one. I
encourage other people to do the same.

~~~
pyre
Don't expect anything but a canned response. Something like, "We reviewed all
the available options, and feel that Microsoft is the best solution for us."

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fractallyte
Considering how the previous government blew _12 BILLION_ pounds of the
nation's money on the infamous NHS project ([http://www.cs.st-
andrews.ac.uk/~ifs/Teaching/Socio-tech-syst...](http://www.cs.st-
andrews.ac.uk/~ifs/Teaching/Socio-tech-
systems\(LSCITS\)/Reading/PrivateEye.pdf)), I'd have thought they should now
be treading very, _very_ carefully in matters of national IT policy...

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JS_startup
The author certainly didn't make an attempt at being objective or hiding his
allegiances. Most humorous is his assertion that businesses should have no
voice in the decisions of government because that is "interfering"

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runn1ng
Isn't Office Open XML (Microsoft Office's XML format) an open standard, too?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_of_Office_Open_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standardization_of_Office_Open_XML)

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hammock
Can someone summarize what is going on in layman's terms?

~~~
tehwalrus
The UK government is rolling back on a proposal to require that interfaces
between components of Government purchased software comply with Open Standards
(i.e. ones without attached patents).

This would prevent Open Source components being used (since they don't ever
use patented Standards, since there is no vendor to pay royalties) and thus
renege on a part of the "Government Transparency" section of the coalition
agreement, which stated that Open Source Software should be given a level
playing field in government procurement.

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mjwalshe
I know we have to use this shoddy half assed TCP/IP instead on the nice
ITU/ISO standrads that all the countries agreed to years back :-)

~~~
kabdib
(laughter)

Yeah, the people behind OSI should be forced to use the standards they
designed :-)

~~~
mjwalshe
well we did it was just you uppity Subs that spoiled that :-) I

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jwcacces
The problem with this article is the sensationalism.

Did Microsoft lobby? Certainty, did they "interfere with a sovereign nation's
decision to create a level playing-field"? Please, give me a break, they
interfered with your desire to do something, and whether right or wrong, the
last time I checked, you weren't a sovereign nation.

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jahewson
The UK _is_ a sovereign nation.

~~~
jwcacces
Yes, but the author is not.

Lobbying is lobbying. It is not interfering. That's my point.

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tankenmate
Considering that both the Conservatives and Lib Dems were trumpeting this
before the elections only to drop it afterwards smacks of either deceit or
stupidity; take your pick.

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estel
Trumpeting? It might have been touted as an element of policy after
questioning, but "support for open standards" is never going to be a vote-
winner in an election.

~~~
toyg
There is a large number of UK geeks who genuinely believed Tories and
(especially) LibDems would have reduced the influence of Microsoft on public
procurement once elected. I know because I've been surprised by this over and
over (I live in the North of England, where being a Tory is, er, very
unpopular by default, and with reason). For them, this issue was indeed a
vote-winner, so this u-turn will hurt, especially among LibDems... but then
again, hardly surprising by now.

