Dear Friends,
On Sun, 2009-10-04 at 20:57 +0530, Krishnakant wrote:
> I wanted Sunil's response not to know what and why his organisation
> takes a certain stand, but to know the view behind that.
>
> If some individual or organisation favoring proprietory technologies
> was
> in question then there is no point debaiting.
> But Sunil is one of my friend and I know him to b a great supporter of
> FOSS. He also has his view and since he has taken the stand in
> question. It is very essential to know his understanding or idea.
First, apologies for taking so long to respond to this thread. I have
been traveling with limited access to the Internet.
There are several questions that have been raised in this thread - I
will try and address as many as I can. I will be happy to answer any
additional questions if people point them out to me.
1. Status of the policy in the formulation process: At the moment
we have had two closed door meetings. An initial draft of the
policy has been prepared by Barrier Break and NCPDEP. This draft
has not been considered ready of public circulation. The second
draft will be shared for public feedback - at that point
FOSSCOMM as a whole or FOSSCOMM members individually are
strongly encouraged to send feedback.
2. Participation in the closed door meetings: If FOSSCOMM members
who are interested in participating should write to Dr. Govind
<drgovind AT nic DOT in>, N. Ravi Shanker <nravishanker AT nic
DOT in> and SK Aggarwal <saggrawal AT mit DOT gov DOT in> with
details on their involvement in accessibility. The bureaucrats
concerned are quite friendly and progressive - therefore I am
quite sure that FOSSCOMM members will be invited.
3. Deletion of Open Source: The DIT had asked us (Nirmita and I
from CIS) to provide feedback to the policy based on our review
of other national accessibility policies. We reviewed the
policies of Australia, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan,
Korea, New Zealand, The Philippines, Portugal, Sweden, Thailand,
United Kingdom, United States and European Union. We have
prepared a 100 page analysis of these policies called
"Accessibility policy making: an international perspective."
This report will be shortly published online for public/peer
feedback. I am happy to share it in advance with FOSSCOMM
members who send me a personal mail. None of the policies we
examined had pro-FOSS language in them. This is not surprising
since accessibility policies deal with standards and not
software. Therefore I recommended the deletion of "Open Source"
in order to ensure that the Indian policy follows international
precedent. As an afterthought, I offered that we could
explicitly mention both FOSS and proprietary software. But
having read emails on this thread from Krishnakant, JT and
Anivar - I now feel that the solution I offered harms the
interest of the FOSS movement. I offer my sincere apologies to
the community - and as a member of the drafting committee will
do my best to ensure that all references to software are deleted
from the next draft before it is available for public feedback.
In order to fast track this policy and take advantage of the
proactive bureaucracy - I would request FOSSCOMM friends not to
push for pro-FOSS language in the policy. Let me assure you that
mandating WCAG will go a long way in ensuring rapid adoption of
FOSS tool for producing and consuming web-content.
4. Definition of Open Standards: The FOSS community globally and
regionally (who I have worked with quite closely during my time
at IOSN.NET) have tried to resist the capture of the definition
of Open Standards by the proprietary lobby. To ensure that our
national policy making (Draft Policy on Open Standards and
Interoperability Framework for E-Governance) are not vain - I
would request my FOSSCOMM friends to continue to resist
definition capture. Please do not take the easy route out and
say "Open and Unencumbered Standards." If it is encumbered (by
RAND for example) then it is not an Open Standard. For an ICT
standard to be Open it should be fully implementable by
community produced FOSS. As Simon Phipps of Sun Microsystems
says FOSS is the canary in the coal mine for Open Standards. As
the UNDP/APDIP GIF study (which I had designed) has revealed
many countries across the globe are adopting Open Standards
policies especially using Government Interoperability
Frameworks. A majority of these GIFs include a FOSS friendly
definition of Open Standards. Some countries like UK of course
have got it wrong. But yesterday, I spoke to the IT advisor of
the conservative party and he assured me that there is a plan to
fix this. Let us please follow international precedent here and
avoid charting our own unique course and dismantling the years
of lobbying by the FOSS community worldwide. Lastly, please note
that WCAG is an Open Standard and is fully implementable by
FOSS. For example my favorite CMS - Plone is WCAG compliant.
5. Capture of Standards Setting Organisations: After facing heavy
resistance on definition capture the proprietary lobby has
started to capture SSO both at the national and international
level. The most famous example of course is OOXML. Here we need
a different strategy - not one focused on definitions - but one
focused on transparency and accountability. As FOSSCOMM or
individual/institutional members we need to
attend/participate/monitor the meetings and ensure that FOSS,
Open Standards, Free Culture etc. are protected. Dr. Nagarjuna
has done this very effectively in the past and we must follow
his lead.
With apologies for hurting the interests of the FOSS community with my
strategically unwise suggestions.
Best wishes,
Sunil
P.S. I am still on the board of Mahiti Infotech (mahiti.org) while my
full time job is with the Centre for Internet and Society
(cis-india.org). Today Mahiti employs around 60 plus FOSS engineers in
offices in Bangalore and Mysore. So I do my best to combine business and
NGO perspectives when advocating for FOSS. However, I am still learning
so I look forward to feedback and advise from members of FOSSCOMM.
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