EC: IT standards policy should accommodate open source
The European Commission wants to update its IT standards policy to accommodate open source. The EC published a draft version of its new IT standards policy on 3 July, welcoming comments.
In its policy paper "Achieving A Modern Ict Standardisation Policy" the Commission writes that the IT standards policy needs clarification "especially concerning the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) policies in order to accommodate emerging software developing approaches such as the open source model."
The EC is concerned that when licencing is needed for patents which are essential to certain IT standards, this can hinder the uptake of open source.
"There are certain aspects of ICT standardisation with its focus on functional standards and interoperability, which make the treatment of IPR especially important and delicate in this field. Flexibility should remain however, to permit undistorted competition between different business models, including the increasingly popular open source model, whose use and implementation may be subject to conditions very different to the royalties encountered under a (fair) reasonable and non-discriminatory basis."
In a statement, Graham Taylor, CEO of OpenForum Europe, an advocacy organisation, welcomes this view, calling the document a very good step towards modernising the European standardisation system. "The impact of openness in ICT solutions on the internal market and the European economy is formidable. Open standards, stimulating global standard setting, and standardisation based on openness criteria across domains, can help usher Europe into a new era of competitiveness and growth."
IT news site Techworld quoted the Association for Competitive Technology (ACT) which expressed concern that the EC "seems to favour open source over proprietary software to achieve more interoperability."
The European Commission is inviting all interested parties to make suggestions for its IT standards policy. Comments can be submitted until 15 September 2009.
Update
ACT on 27 July clarified their comments on the policy draft. The organisation explained it had prepared a statement before the final policy paper was published. "The language that concerned us was not in the final version. There is no open source bias in the document, and the balanced approach proposed by the Commission should improve the environment for all software firms in Europe."
More information:
EC web site on ICT Standardisation
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