Article from Computerworld (English)

Mr. Schwartz starts off with talking about his visit to the US Patent Office site:

"The site, and the PTO, demand that all online patent applications be submitted using Microsoft Word. Now, why is that a problem? Well, it's a problem because my company doesn't use Microsoft products. Nor can most people afford them. And if you don't have a copy of Word, does that mean you have to pay Microsoft for the privilege of submitting a patent application? To protect your own intellectual property? And the government has mandated that? Something must be wrong here."

I didn't find this exact wording on the PTO site, but I did find that one can make applications by mail without using MS Word. I'm also wondering if it isn't enough to generate a document which is compatible with MS Word, which OpenOffice can do. But those questions can be left open for the moment. The point which Mr. Schwartz is making has to be addressed: "Focus on the open standards we follow. They matter far, far more."

In some ways this article is more confusing than helpful. For one thing, the best Open Source programs do use open standards; Linux and OpenOffice are good examples. Also Mr. Schwartz totally ignores the issues of freedom, security and continuity, some of the main reasons many governments are so anxious to use FLOSS. These are questions which are not addressed by the use of open standards but are addressed by open source.

I suppose Mr. Schwartz can be forgiven for all this. After considering his words, my conclusion is that we need some new terminology with definitions we can agree upon, and then we need to use the terms consistently in our speech and writing. And although FLOSS may be irrelevant to Sun, it's not irrelevant to the world at large. Mr. Schwartz sees the world from his desk at Sun, and this seemingly does
not require a much broader view than where Sun has been with its current and former customers. Let's hope that Sun can remain relevant in a world which is changing so rapidly.

Willy Smith, reporting from Costa Rica