OSAIA and parent CCIA commended the French Minister for State Modernization for his Agency''s determination to establish of OpenDocument Format as a state standard.

Text of the letter to M. Frank Mordacq follows:

------------------

CCIA
OSAIA

June 15, 2006

M. Frank Mordacq
Directeur de l’Agence de Modernisation de L’Etat

Mr. Director:

On behalf of the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) I thank you for this opportunity to comment on the Referentiel General d’Interoperabilite, in particular Section 4.1.4, which deals with OpenDocument Format (ODF).

CCIA has, for more than 30 years, been the leading proponent of “open markets, open systems and open networks.” We are an international, nonprofit association of computer and communications industry firms that employ more than 600,000 workers and generate annual revenues in excess of $200 billion. Our open source initiative, the Open Source and Industry Alliance, represents the interests of open-source developers and users around the world. Thus we greet with great enthusiasm your proposed adoption of ODF.

Competition
As you know, electronic documents are typically stored in proprietary file formats, formats that cannot be guaranteed to work with more than one developer’s word processor, spreadsheet, graphics packages or database program. Such exclusivity naturally leads to a dependency on one or two suppliers who cannot be relied upon to insure that documents, once produced, will remain accessible to all. Indeed, once “locked in” to one or two vendors, governments may effectively lose control of public records in their possession.

Real problems caused by proprietary formats
Worries over long term access to documents are real. The world’s most popular office software, for instance, often fails to open documents produced before 1996. What’s more, other, older documents from other companies are sometimes completely indecipherable because the technical specifications used to produce them are not available. ODF’s entirely open nature solves all of these problems.

This situation was problematic when the Internet and desktop computing were largely separate. Convergence of the two have, nonetheless, made it intolerable. The OpenDocument Format (ODF) offers an answer to the problem.

ODF is owned by the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (www.oasis-open.org) and was created by multiple companies and organizations, CCIA members among them. Since the technical underpinnings of documents saved in ODF are available to everyone, developers can produce software that will, in turn, generate documents that are entirely compatible with competing products. This new lingua franca is vitally important to government and citizens alike. For the first time in memory, they will be able to switch from office software made by one maker to that of another without worrying about incompatibilities between the two. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO), and International
Electrotechnical Commission recognized the versatility of ODF when they declared it an international standard in May.

Open government
Free peoples can remain so only when their laws and history are shared by all. Governments thus have a basic responsibility to assure that their documents are open to all and will remain so forever. There can be no such guarantee as long as the technologies used to produce those documents remain in the hands of a few. ODF is and will remain free because the process used to develop it was entirely transparent, because it is entirely free of royalties or other encumbrances, and because it is completely supported by many vendors and not-for-profit organizations.

Innovation
Your decision to adopt ODF will do much to encourage innovation inside and outside of government. Open standards minimize barriers to entry, ensure full, fair and open competition, and compel vendors to compete on quality, design, service, and performance, rather than the design of incompatible file formats.

Customer Control
Your Agency has plainly recognized the importance of these basic principles. By committing to ODF, you have cast aside the parochial interests of the few and replaced them with something more important: competition on the merits. Your agency, we believe, has embraced the vanguard of technology with this latest initiative and will reap the benefits. Rather than remaining dependent on a handful of vendors, governments like yours can assume the normal posture of customers in a competitive market and demand from suppliers the features that they need. In short, open standards such as ODF improve the welfare for government, business and consumers alike.

ODF is based on an entirely non-proprietary implementation of XML which itself gives users unsurpassed flexibility in the interchange of data across organizations. ODF, together with other XML technologies, will give France unprecedented flexibility and control over public documents, allowing for more and better communications between departments and with the general public

Standards and Networks
ODF follows a long line of non-proprietary innovation in technology. Examples are numerous, and include the full suite of Internet standards as well as XML. The nonproprietary nature of these standards means that everyone is free to use them. This openness has proven essential to their widespread adoption and ultimately resulted in the creation of Internet- and Web-based software, services, and business models.

France, Denmark, Norway, Thailand and the state of Massachusetts have all taken note of these facts. We are active in these debates and look forward to spreading the good news about ODF and open standards broadly. CCIA and dozens of other companies and organizations are fanning out across the globe to assure timely acceptance of this and other vitally important, open standards.

Mr. Director, I wish again to offer my firmest support for your actions with regards to ODF. Do not hesitate to contact me if there is anything we can do to be of further service.

Sincerely,

Ed Black
President
Computer & Communications Industry Association

June 22, 2004

Washington, DC – The Open Source and Industry Alliance (osaia.org) today endorsed The Digital Media Consumers Rights Act, a bill that promises to undo a wide variety of harms that overreaching copyright laws have caused to cyber security, innovation and consumer expectations. The bill, also known as HR 107, is expected to move to a Committee vote in the House of Representatives within weeks.

In 1998 Congress banned any effort to go around copy- and access-control technologies placed on CDs, DVDs and other digital goods. It did these things to stop illegal copying of creative works. Unfortunately, imprecise and overly broad wording in the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) has done little to stop illegal copying. Yet, untold numbers of open source developers, researchers and ordinary citizens can no longer engage in acts that Congress clearly thought should be legal.

“The DMCA has confused the legal landscape,” OSAIA President and Ed Black said. “Special interests have muddied the difference between legal scholarship and illegal copying for their own ends to the detriment of the rest of us.”

The DMCA, in fact:

Endangers national security by exposing computer security researchers to possible litigation for merely searching computer products for vulnerabilities that real criminals and terrorists could exploit;
Imperils American competitiveness by making it effectively illegal to take apart and analyze competitive products simply to assure that one's own goods will work with others in the marketplace.
Threatens the ability of ordinary consumers to protect their children from undue violence, explicit sexuality and other content they may deem inappropriate for their family.

HR 107 would correct these problems by clarifying what Congress wanted in the first place: to afford citizens the right to employ digital goods for a wide variety of uses, as long as those activities do not trample the rights of their producers to be recognized and paid for their work.

“Computer security, consumer electronics and creative tinkering used to be matters for engineers,” OSAIA President and CEO Ed Black said. “Each of these is increasingly looking like a legal specialty. We need HR 107 to protect the process of innovation and ensure our country's progress.”

Since many open source developers are individual programers, small business owners and academic researchers, open source is especially vulnerable to nuisance suits brought by overzealous copyright interests. OSAIA, therefore, stands with the rest of the open source community in calling for passage of HR 107.

OSAIA parent CCIA recently filed an amicus brief in support of Skylink, maker of a universal remote for garage door openers. The case exemplifies the problem faced by so many innovators today: Chamberlain sued Skylink because Skylink had bypassed codes that limited the remote controls that would work with Chamberlain openers. Although the case was ultimately dismissed, the ruling court suggested Chamberlain could forbid others from producing competitive products by merely saying so. Neither plaintiff nor judge suggested that Skylink intended to copy and distribute anything written by Chamberlain.

Researchers today are under assault from special interests that prefer that their products never faced the scrutiny necessary for computer security. Developers of anti-smut technologies face the real possibility that Hollywood will misuse the nation's laws to thwart their efforts to protect children from inappropriate materials in their own homes.

Indeed, legal action that has sprung up around legitimate research has led many computer scientists to cease working on anti-terror systems for fear of litigation by others who do not want them examining the ins and outs of their software.

OSAIA, together with more than 25 other industry, consumer and scholarly organizations, is committed to restoring freedom, fairness, innovation and security to our nation's copyright laws.

OSAIA is dedicated to the creation, use and sustainability of open source software.

© 2004, Open Source and Industry Alliance

For Immediate Release
February 9, 2006

Contact: Will Rodger
+1 202-783-0070 ext. 105

The Supreme Court must rein in a special appeals court with nearly exclusive jurisdiction over patent cases, the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) argued in a “friend-of-the-court” brief yesterday.

CCIA is the parent organization of the Open Source and Industry Alliance (OSAIA).

The Appeals Court for the Federal Corcuit, CCIA told the court, has become a “booster of its own specialty,” harming innovation and increaseing litigation as a consequence.

CCIA's latest brief argues that the Federal Circuit erred when it ruled that plaintiffs need not prove patent infrignement before obtaining injunctions blocking the use of their patents.

This decision, CCIA said, was o ne example of the larger problem represented by the Federal Circuit''s unsupervised expansion of patent law.

The Federal Circuit “has made patents more potent, easier to get and assert, and available for an unlimited rang of subject matter,” CCIA told the court. CCIA continues to criticize these practices for setting the patent system o n an inflationary spiral that fosters litigation and undermines innovation.

Read the brief here:

Last night's filing follows a September brief in which CCIA and others urged the Supreme Court to hear arguments on a ruling that barred eBay from using a fixed price purchase feature patented by MercExchange LLC. The Court agreed to hear the case in late November.

For more information on the filing, contact:

Matt Schruers
+1 202-783-0070, ext. 109

Brian Kahin
+1 202-783-0070, ext. 101

ABOUT CCIA

OSAIA, (www.osaia.org) a project of the Computer & Communications Industry Association (www.ccianet.org), represents the interests of open-source developers and users around the world. Members include many of the world’s most prominent open-source companies and organizations, all of which support the right to use, develop, modify and share open source software.

CCIA (www.ccianet.org) is an international, nonprofit association of computer and communications industry firms, representing a broad cross section of the industry. CCIA is dedicated to preserving full, free and open competition throughout its industry. CCIA members employ more than 600,000 workers and generate annual revenues in excess of $200 billion.

August 22, 2005 -- The U.S. Copyright Office should assure that one of its key websites works with all popular browsers, the Open Source and Industry Alliance (OSAIA) said in comments filed with the Office today. Indeed, the Office should be prepared to accept paper submissions when necessary until compatibility problems can be fixed, association officials said.

The submission was filed by the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA), OSAIA’s parent organization, in response to an inquiry that was issued earlier this summer. The Office asked what, if any, would be the effect of a website that did not work with browsers other than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. The Office asked the question because its website will soon allow copyright owners to register their works prior to publication.

OSAIA and CCIA urged the Office to consider the effect on the marketplace as a whole when determining site design.

“The long-term gains from ensuring compatibility with a variety of software alternatives … prove to be substantial,” OSAIA and CCIA told the Office. “Interoperability promotes the transfer of information between different computing environments, improves accessibility, promotes consumer choice, and in our Internet-enabled economy constitutes the cornerstone of electronic commerce.”

Consensus standards organizations such as the World Wide Web Consortium provide a clear roadmap for the broadest compatibility, the associations said.

“As the Office develops its new system, CCIA encourages it to support open web standards such as those propounded by the World Wide Web Consortium (‘W3C’), whose membership spans the public and private sectors of the Internet, and includes both the Library of Congress and several CCIA members … By designing a system to open standards rather than the specifications of individual applications, the Office will further its function and improve users’ experiences, while promoting the vitality of the software market by not ‘picking winners.’”
Read the comments filing here

Open Source And Industry Alliance
US Phone: +1 202.783.0070
Fax: +1 202.783.0534
http://www.osaia.org

For Immediate Release
July 6, 2005

For further information contact:

Will Rodger
Director of Public Policy
will@osaia.org
+1 202-486-6774

Following the overwhelming vote in the European Parliament rejecting the so-called computer-implemented inventions directive, a statement published by the European Commission generously identifies OSAIA as the leading critic of the directive and the push towards greater patentability of software. OSAIA and its parent organization, the Computing and Communications Industry Association, support patent protection when reasonably applied, but recognize that excessive patent practices can be extremely harmful to the very innovation they are supposed to promote.

“We were certainly pleased to play a role in this crucial debate,” stated Ed Black, President and CEO of CCIA. “The Commission’s draft of the directive would have greatly expanded the patentability of pure software inventions across Europe, leading to a U.S.-style patent regime and crippling innovation. However, credit for stopping it belongs to many other organizations and, principally, the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure, which fought against the directive from the beginning.”

The directive was originally proposed by the Commission in February 2002 in the name of harmonizing patent practice among the member states of the European Union. Yet as a practical matter, the directive would have endorsed Europe’s drift towards U.S. practice and legitimized over 30,000 software patents issued by European Patent Office. In September 2003, the European Parliament drastically amended the directive to clearly proscribe patents on pure software.

However, the Council of the European Union ignored the Parliament’s concern and adopted an even more pro-patent version of the directive than the original Commission version. The Parliament’s massive rejection by a vote of 648-14 signaled its frustration with the process and the uncertainty of the possible outcomes that might have resulted from the hundreds of filed amendments that it would have had to vote on.

Contact: Will Rodger, 202-783-0070 ext. 105
For Immediate Release
March 1, 2005

OSAIA parent Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) filed a friend-of-the-court brief today with the Supreme Court in the copyright case of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc. v. Grokster, LTD. CCIA, together with other members of the High Tech Coalition, made its plea in an effort to deny the entertainment industry veto power over the next generation of consumer and high-tech devices and services.

See the filing here:

CCIA, together with the Consumer Electronics Association and the Home Recording Rights Coalition, filed in support of full affirmance of the Betamax Doctrine. This doctrine of “capable of substantial non-infringing use” stands as the Magna Carta of the Digital Age and of the information technology industry.

CCIA’s President and CEO, Ed Black stressed that its members believe that “intellectual property protection is a vital component of the innovation process, but excessive protection can be as harmful as too little. Vigorous competition and interactive innovation, the keys to the success of all technology industries, require a well-balanced system.”

As a trade association committed to representing the interests of the technology industry and its customers, CCIA has long promoted a balance between the dynamic flow of information necessary to support innovation and the protection of copyright. Manufacturers of technology products should not be under any obligation, whether legislative or judicial, to design their devices in any particular way.

CCIA and others in the High Tech Coalition told the court the Betamax doctrine has been at the foundation of this nation’s explosive technological growth over the last twenty years. Although neither CCIA nor the other groups on the brief condone any business that has been built with the specific intention of inducing other to infringe copyrights, the brief stresses that the Betamax doctrine must be preserved to safeguard continued technological innovation and progress.

“Some in the content industry want to extend the power of copyright far beyond what they make themselves,” CCIA and President Ed Black said. “They wish to impose on industry and consumers alike a new sort of liability, one that would severely restrict the designs of products and services and chill new technology. What they want is little short of veto power over the development of new software and other digital technologies.

“If the past is any indication, they would seek to restrict designs of many products and services capable of lawful and valuable uses, chilling any new technologies,” Black continued. “Let us remember that the content community tried to block VCR, MP3 player, DVD player, the piano player and even Xerox’s photocopier. In the time since the protection provided by the Betamax ruling, the pace of innovation has only increased.

“We should not try to go back to a quaint time that never really existed,” Black concluded. “The problems of piracy have been with the technology community for decades and yet the market has always found a way. We ask the Court to trust in those markets again, and prevent the imposition of hindrances to innovation.”

The Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) is a nonprofit membership organization for companies and senior executives from diverse sectors of the computer and communications industry. Ranging in size from small entrepreneurial firms to some of the largest companies in the industry. CCIA members employ over half a million workers and generate over $200 billion in annual sales. For over three decades CCIA has been dedicated to promoting open markets, open systems, open networks and full, fair and open competition. CCIA’s mission is to be the leading industry advocate in promoting open, barrier-free competition in the offering of computer and communications products and services worldwide.

Open Source and Industry Alliance
US Phone: +1 202.783.0070
Fax: +1 202.783.0534
www.osaia.org

For Immediate Release
January 25, 2005

For further information contact:

Will Rodger
Director of Public Policy
Open Source and Industry Alliance
will@osaia.org
+1 202-783-0070 x 105

KEEP COMPETITION, REJECT FALSE COPYRIGHT CLAIMS, OSAIA AND CCIA TELL FEDERAL COURT

The Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) and The Open Source and Industry Alliance (OSAIA), filed a friend-of-the-court brief Monday in the Federal Appeals Court in St. Louis responding to yet another threat to innovation, open source, and competition in the software industry.

Davidson & Associates, on behalf of its subsidiary Blizzard, sued Internet Gateway over alleged violations of US copyright law. Among other tihngs, Davidson claims that Internet Gatway violated its copyrights when it effectively duplicated the appearance and many of the functions of Blizzard’s online game site, battle.net. The company also claims that Internet Gateway violated aspects of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act when it desgined its competing service without including a way to verify whether players were using legal copies of Blizzard games when they played on the site.

The groups told the Appeals Court the law does not shift the burden of enforcing Davidson''s copyrights to an independent software developer such as Internet Gateway. They urged the court to overturn the lower court ruling. CCIA and OSAIA point out that numerous courts and federal law already protect the right of software developers to produce software that mimics others.

“Once again, some copyright holders want to choke off lawful and legitimate competition by using current law to thwart efforts to create interoperable products,” OSAIA President Ed Black said. “When Congress passed the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), it specifically granted an exemption permitting exactly these sorts of acts. This is a reoccurring pattern of abuse that must be rejected by the courts.

“The impact of a negative ruling will stifle innovation and reduce the number of competing firms,” Black continued. “No company should be prohibited from producing a better, cheaper product that does everything the competition does. We need more groups like Internet Gateway and its open source Bnetd software, not fewer.”

See the brief here:

###

About OSAIA
OSAIA, an association of companies, not-for-profit organizations and individuals dedicated to the creation, use and sustainability of open source software.

OSAIA parent Computer & Communications Industry Association urged members of the European Council of Ministers to reject the Council's proposed Directive on Computer Implemented Inventions.
OSAIA and CCIA believe that, contrary to suppoters' claims, the directive would effectively allow patents on basic software throughout the European Union. Text of the CCIA letter follows the press release below

CCIA: EU Patent Proposal Comes at a Cost of Innovation and Competition
Computer & Communications Industry Association
US Phone: +1.202.783.0070 Fax: +1.202.783.0534
www.ccianet.org

For Immediate Release
February 15, 2005

For further information contact:

Ed Black
President & CEO, CCIA
eblack@ccianet.org
Office: 202-783-0070
Mobile: 202-297-2242

Will Rodger
Director of Public Policy
wrodger@ccianet.org
Office: 202-783-0070 x 105
Mobile: 202 486 6774

CCIA: EU Patent Proposal Comes at a Cost of Innovation and Competition

A European Union proposal to give software developers significantly greater patent rights would likely come at the cost of innovation and competition, the Computer & Communications Industry Association told top EU ministers.

In a letter sent Monday evening, CCIA President Ed Black told members of the Council of Ministers that the Council’s version of the controversial European Directive on Computer Implemented Inventions would lead to numerous, unjustified patents on many of the most basic building blocks of software. Black warned of the consequences of unchecked patenting.

“Weak limits (on patents) are vulnerable to dominant providers, speculators, and intermediaries eager to expand the volume of their business” he wrote. “Senior managers now assume that rank and file engineers are inevitably technically infringing the patents of others, even though their work is entirely original.”

Underway for several years, the EU’s proposed software patent directive has undergone numerous revisions. And although it has received support from a limited number of multinational companies, the measure has proven unpopular with a wide swath of the technology community.

Text of the letter follows:

February 14, 2005

Mr. Jorgen Samuelsson
Head of Section
Ministry of Industry, Employment and Communications
SE-103 33 Stockholm
Sweden

Dear Mr. Samuelsson,

The Computer & Communications Industry Association, an association of ICT companies from around the world, is a leading advocate of open markets, open systems, and open computing networks since 1972. Our members include large, small, and mid-sized enterprises representing total annual sales in excess of €200,000 million. We have long been intimately involved in the development and implementation of intellectual property policy because it establishes key ground rules for competition and growth in the ICT sector. We played an active role in the debate and development of the 1991 European Software Directive.

We write you to express our concern over the proposed common position on the Directive on Computer Implemented Inventions, which had been expected to pass on the A-list agenda of the Council of the European Union on 17 February.

Like the Commission’s version of the Directive, the Council’s version is ambiguous and appears to limit patentability only in a nominal way. Experience in both the U.S. and Europe has shown that weakly defined limits invite relentless assault and circumvention. Weak limits are vulnerable to dominant providers, speculators, and intermediaries eager to expand the volume of their business.

The Council should be wary given the widespread difficulties we now confront in the United States: more litigation, chilling of the marketplace, and opportunists seeking to hold up investments in industry standards and finished products. It is difficult to overemphasize the importance of this issue to all technology companies, especially in light of the recent studies by the US Federal Trade Commission and National Academy of Sciences. Despite the fervent support for the Council’s version of the Directive by some in the patent community and a limited number ofmultinationals, we believe that top management of most ICT companies have become deeply concerned over the way the patent system is evolving. Senior managers now assume that rank and file engineers are inevitably technically infringing the patents of others, even though their work is entirely original.

While these concerns extend throughout the ICT sector, software activities are especially vulnerable. Nowhere else are the transaction costs of the patent system so disproportionate to the cost of creation. Nowhere else is the potential liability for users, especially large companies and public agencies, so great. There are tens of millions of programmers and developers in the world, few of whom have the time, training, or legal assistance needed to read, evaluate, and navigate patents in their field. In particular, the phenomenon of open source development is unknown in other fields, because it is closely reliant on the unique economics of software development and distribution.

We believe that restarting the Directive in the Commission with its investigative and analytic resources will lead to a much better understanding of how patents affect competition and innovation. The European Commission would benefit by building on the work of the Federal Trade Commission, by conducting a fully developed economic and policy analysis that examines the real-world impact of patents on innovation and the marketplace.

Sincerely,

Edward J. Black

President & CEO
Computer & Communications Industry Association
###

Washington DC -- The open source community is under attack.

Faced with a growing array of open source competitors, a handful of dominant software companies are moving to turn governments around the world against open source.

This political activity escapes the notice of most people, even technologists. Thus, OSAIA's Open Source Policy Tracker. The Tracker traces changes in executive, legislative and judicial bodies the world over.

See OSAIA's Policy Tracker here

In the United States, in particular, bills that would have affirmed the rights of open source developers have sailed through committee votes, only to fail at the last minute in states such as Oregon, Texas and Oklahoma.

Open source bills have had greater success in other countries. No nation has yet written into law any preferences for open source software over proprietary. OSAIA, with the rest of the open source community, applauds any measure that protects the right of open source developers to compete on an equal footing with producers of closed source software.

OSAIA's World Policy Update will be revised as frequently as conditions change worldwide. If you know of activity transpiring, c

Contact: Will Rodger, 202-783-0070 ext. 105

For Immediate Release January 11, 2005

IBM Patent Grant a Boon to Innovation, OSAIA says

Washington, DC – IBM's decision to give the open source community rights to more than 500 patents underscores the urgent need for patent reform, the Open Source and Industry Alliance said today.

“IBM, the world's largest patent holder, has helped the open source community enormously with this grant,” said Ed Black, President and CEO of the Open Source and Industry Alliance. “These patents are of real value to a community that is particularly vulnerable to nuisance suits. Yet, innovation should not depend on the goodwill of enlightened management alone. Government needs to address the underlying problems of poorly vetted and erroneously granted software patents. OSAIA will work with anyone who wants to reform the way software patents are granted in the US and abroad.”

Years ago, few software developers patented their products, since they thought that most of what they did was either too obvious or too costly to protect. But a steady stream of erroneous patents has demonstrated that even obvious ideas can win approval from the US Patent Office. Now, many small competitors avoid much of the software market for fear of being sued for “infringing” patents of questionable quality. Far from encouraging innovation, bad software patents now threaten it altogether. The US Patent Office must reform the way it grants patents.

“Open source programers, like small companies, have little hope of prevailing over large corporations in civil court.” Black said.”The continued success of this most dynamic software market depends on reasonable and balanced patent policy.”

The Open Source and Industry Alliance (OSAIA) sent the following letter to the Secretary Chao of the US Department of Labor. The letter commends the Department for distributing its Workforce Connections software package under an open source license. The Labor Department tells us the program has saved taxpayers millions of dollars in software and labor costs. This package shows the Department of Labor appreciates the benefits that redound to those choosing openness. We encourage other departments and agencies to study the Labor Department's example and consider open source software for their computing needs. A pdf copy of the letter can be found here.

March 31, 2004

The Honorable Elaine Chao
Secretary
U.S. Department of Labor
Frances Perkins Building
200 Constitution Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20210

Dear Secretary Chao:

As you know, information technology has done much to improve productivity in business and government alike. From the rise of the Internet to the Bush Administration's e-Gov initiative, computing has altered -- perhaps forever – economists' perceptions of how economies grow.

We at the Open Source and Industry Alliance congratulate the Department of Labor on its recent release of Workforce Connections (www.workforceconnections.gov). Workforce Connections is a free and innovative software package used for Web-based education and Web site construction. Labor Department officials tell us that this single program has already saved the Federal Government millions of dollars in software and labor costs, and promises to save taxpayers still more as it comes into wider use by state and local government. OSAIA member devIS of Arlington, Va., developed the code under government contract, and transferred its copyright to the Department at its request.

OSAIA is a project of the Computer & Communications Industry Association, an international, nonprofit association of computer and communications industry companies. CCIA is dedicated to preserving full, fair and open competition. Our members employ nearly a million workers and generate annual revenues in excess of $300 billion.

Workforce Connections is distributed under a form of “open source” copyright that gives everyone the right to use, copy and redistribute software free of charge as long as they make available the software's underlying technical specifications when they pass on software to others. DevIS, in other words, struck a simple bargain based on distribution and information sharing, rather than direct payment.

Although they vary in details, open source software licenses permit public disclosure and sharing of source code. Distributing software this way has an obvious benefit: Anyone at all can use open source software free of charge. But there are other, arguably more important benefits to open source software. Because all code is shared, it passes through a peer review process that often yields excellent quality. And since developers can modify software to fit their particular needs, open source projects encourage unparalleled creativity. Indeed, the remarkable rise of the Linux operating system has come about because millions of developers were willing to put aside whatever commercial differences they had in order to produce an operating system that all could use without fear of discrimination or unreasonable licensing terms.

Today, companies from IBM to Oracle, Ford Motor Co. to the Bank of America and countless smaller firms develop, distribute and enthusiastically use software whose source code can be examined and modified by anyone. All of the Fortune 50 and a large number of the Global 2000 use some kind of open source software in their daily operations. The Labor Department's decision to release publicly funded software back to the public shows that the Department of Labor, too, appreciates the benefits that redound to those who choose openness.

Secretary Chao, today millions of software professionals are changing the way we all think about technology. We congratulate you for helping to lead the Department into the future.

Sincerely yours,
Ed Black
President
Open Source and Industry Alliance

The Open Source and Industry Alliance (OSAIA) sent the following letter to the Secretary Chao of the US Department of Labor. The letter commends the Department for distributing its Workforce Connections software package under an open source license. The Labor Department tells us the program has saved taxpayers millions of dollars in software and labor costs. This package shows the Department of Labor appreciates the benefits that redound to those choosing openness. We encourage other departments and agencies to study the Labor Department's example and consider open source software for their computing needs. A pdf copy of the letter can be found here.

March 31, 2004

The Honorable Elaine Chao
Secretary
U.S. Department of Labor
Frances Perkins Building
200 Constitution Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20210

Dear Secretary Chao:

As you know, information technology has done much to improve productivity in business and government alike. From the rise of the Internet to the Bush Administration's e-Gov initiative, computing has altered -- perhaps forever – economists' perceptions of how economies grow.

We at the Open Source and Industry Alliance congratulate the Department of Labor on its recent release of Workforce Connections (www.workforceconnections.gov). Workforce Connections is a free and innovative software package used for Web-based education and Web site construction. Labor Department officials tell us that this single program has already saved the Federal Government millions of dollars in software and labor costs, and promises to save taxpayers still more as it comes into wider use by state and local government. OSAIA member devIS of Arlington, Va., developed the code under government contract, and transferred its copyright to the Department at its request.

OSAIA is a project of the Computer & Communications Industry Association, an international, nonprofit association of computer and communications industry companies. CCIA is dedicated to preserving full, fair and open competition. Our members employ nearly a million workers and generate annual revenues in excess of $300 billion.

Workforce Connections is distributed under a form of “open source” copyright that gives everyone the right to use, copy and redistribute software free of charge as long as they make available the software's underlying technical specifications when they pass on software to others. DevIS, in other words, struck a simple bargain based on distribution and information sharing, rather than direct payment.

Although they vary in details, open source software licenses permit public disclosure and sharing of source code. Distributing software this way has an obvious benefit: Anyone at all can use open source software free of charge. But there are other, arguably more important benefits to open source software. Because all code is shared, it passes through a peer review process that often yields excellent quality. And since developers can modify software to fit their particular needs, open source projects encourage unparalleled creativity. Indeed, the remarkable rise of the Linux operating system has come about because millions of developers were willing to put aside whatever commercial differences they had in order to produce an operating system that all could use without fear of discrimination or unreasonable licensing terms.

Today, companies from IBM to Oracle, Ford Motor Co. to the Bank of America and countless smaller firms develop, distribute and enthusiastically use software whose source code can be examined and modified by anyone. All of the Fortune 50 and a large number of the Global 2000 use some kind of open source software in their daily operations. The Labor Department's decision to release publicly funded software back to the public shows that the Department of Labor, too, appreciates the benefits that redound to those who choose openness.

Secretary Chao, today millions of software professionals are changing the way we all think about technology. We congratulate you for helping to lead the Department into the future.

Sincerely yours,
Ed Black
President
Open Source and Industry Alliance

Under Secretary of Commerce for Technology Phil Bond today said that the Bush Administration will remain neutral in the brisk competition now evident between Open Source software and more established, proprietary software vendors.

Speaking at the LinuxWorld Exposition in New York City, Bond said “healthy competition” between the two development methodologies is “good for the market place ... We don't perceive it as a policy of either/or, but both,” he said. The Open Source and Industry Alliance praised the Secretary's remarks.

Bond's comments came just days after a handful of Open Source opponents launched a lobbying campaign aimed at defaming open-source developers and undermining the copyright protections central to their work.

“We particularly welcome these comments from the Administration’s top Technology official because some others in the Administration have occasionally taken positions antithetical to open source methodology,” OSAIA President Ed Black said.

“Just days ago, a failing software company sent Congress a letter that defamed the thousands of developers of the GNU/Linux operating system. Secretary Bond's comments will show Members of Congress and other policy makers the absurdity of falsehoods spread by those who would rather sue than compete with open source.”

“We thank the Secretary for speaking out.”

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OSAIA is an association of a number of the world's most prominent high-tech companies, including those that use and develop both proprietary and open source software. OSAIA, an organization affiliated with the Computer & Communications Industry Association, promotes the understanding and adoption of open standards and open source software worldwide.

SCO is expanding its campaign to spread Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt about open source software to Congress. The excessive hyperbole and “the sky is falling rhetoric” underlines the failure SCO has had in advancing its apparently frivolous claims against other companies which still create technology products and innovate.

The company has been spreading FUD through past letters and lawsuits, and now SCO executives are telling Congress that Linux, open source software in general, and specifically, the General Public License (GPL), which protects most open source software is:

a threat to the U.S. information technology industry;
a threat to U.S.’ competitive position; and
a threat to national security.
All of these assertions are outrageous and false.

SCO, which long ago abandoned a business model of creating innovative and exciting software, has placed all its corporate eggs in the licensing and litigation basket. Without providing any demonstrable evidence, SCO is claiming that vast amounts of its UNIX based code has made its way into Linux.

Over the past year, leading industry experts including those intimately involved in developing Linux have successfully rebutted every assertion made by SCO. The only thing SCO has been able to show for its efforts is a string of excessive claims and threats written in letters to software developers, Linux users, stockholders, and now, Congress.

This latest missive from SCO, again, provides no evidence.

SCO continues to be unable to prove any of its allegations of intellectual property infringement. Instead, it argues that Linux users undermine the economy by not purchasing more expensive products from others such as SCO.

Ed Black, President and CEO of OSAIA responds by saying: “A company that is being out-innovated by the open source community wants us to accept a bizarre notion: that top of the line, enterprise grade software produced at a low cost is a threat to the economy. Software adopted by hundreds of the nation's largest tech and non-tech companies is a threat to no one except those who can’t innovate and compete. Software embraced by the likes of Novell, Oracle, IBM, HP, Gateway, Sun and tens of thousands of companies worldwide represents a sea change in our industry. It will spur even greater value added innovation, which will ride upon open source products, and is a hallmark of competition that should be driving the nation."

SCO claims Linux is a threat to national security because it is freely available to any dictator. But the plain fact is all U.S. software developers are bound by the same export controls that restrict licensing of SCO’s products. The only way to bind all software by U.S. export controls is to prevent foreign developers from creating software. “Perhaps SCO believes that only U.S. developers have the ‘right’ to develop software,” OSAIA's Black said. “They should understand that it is a big world, and developers outside the U.S. have helped make the tech industry what it is today.”

In short, SCO is continuing its campaign of distortion and attack. Considering this campaign has been the only “product” they have been able to create that has helped its stock price, it may be an understandable, while not laudable position. However, when they take this campaign to Congress, OSAIA can no longer stand by. OSAIA will actively engage Congress to explain the full benefits of open source software to the economy, how the GPL relies upon and is consistent with U.S. copyright law, and refute SCO’s baseless claims of IP theft.

These issues will be a primary topic at a session hosted by OSAIA at LinuxWorld New York, in the Javits Center, Room BOF 10 at 5:45 PM, on January 22.

OSAIA is an association of a number of the world's most prominent high-tech companies, including those that use and develop both proprietary and open source software. OSAIA, an organization affiliated with the Computer & Communications Industry Association, promotes the understanding and adoption of open standards and open source software worldwide.

The letter from SCO can be read at http://www.osaia.org/letters/sco_hill.pdf.

Computers and critical technological infrastructure worldwide are increasingly vulnerable to attack because of the dominance of a single operating system, a groups of distinguished computer security experts wrote in a recent report. Principal author Daniel Geer and six co-authors recommend the simultaneous use of various operating systems such as Linux, different varieties of BSD Unix and Apple Macintosh. The report, which was produced without payment or consideration to its creators, was published by the Computer & Communications Industry Association, an affiliate of OSAIA.

Read the report here.