Indian Open Standards policy finalized--major victory for the FOSS community

After three years of continuous running battles, India's Department of Information Technology has finalized the National Policy on Open Standards for e-Governance. This incorporates many of the key points submitted by Red Hat. Over the last three years, we worked with our friends in government, academic, civil society and the media to push the Indian government in favor of a policy that mandates a single, royalty-free standard. The final policy and the comments that Red Hat had submitted are attached.

In the previous draft dated 25/11/2009, our major objection was to section 4.1.2 of the policy which said,

"4.1.2 The essential patent claims necessary to implement the Identified Standard should preferably be available on a Royalty-Free (no payment and no restrictions) basis for the life time of the standard. However, if such Standards are not found feasible and in the wider public interest, then RF on Fair, Reasonable and Non Discriminatory terms and conditions (FRAND) or Reasonable and Non Discriminatory terms and conditions (RAND) could be considered."

The comments I submitted on behalf of Red Hat reads:.

While the term “Mandatory Characteristics” indicates that section is binding, the usage of terms like “should preferably” conveys the impression that this is non-binding. Since thousands of government agencies, systems integrators and others connected with e-Governance will look up to this policy for guidance, we request that the mandatory characteristics should be laid out clearly and unambiguously. As with the previous section, we feel that the intent and will of the GoI should be clearly expressed in this section. In any case, Sections 4.3, 4.4 and
5 deal with the exceptions.

The term “essential patent claims,” is not defined in the policy and this could prove to be a huge loophole. This term is also a new introduction and it would have been helpful to know the rationale for its introduction. Ultimately, any patent necessary for the implementation of a standard is an “essential patent claim” because a
standard cannot be implemented partially. In this context, I would like to point out that the Chinese government has issued a notification for the compulsory licensing of patents related to standards used in China. An English translation of this notice is attached with this letter for your reference.

Recommendation: We request that the wording of this section should be changed to "ALL patent claims necessary to implement the Identified Standard should be available on a Royalty-Free (no payment and no restrictions) basis for the life time of the standard.” We also request that the following statement, “However, if such Standards are not found feasible and in the wider public interest, then Fair, Reasonable and Non Discriminatory terms and conditions (FRAND) or Reasonable and Non Discriminatory terms and conditions (RAND) could be considered,” be moved to the sections dealing with exceptions. We feel that this section is the heart of the Draft Policy and placing an exception statement in the very heart of the policy will send out wrong and conflicting signals.

As you can see from the extract below, the points mentioned above have
been incorporated In the recently finalized policy. This section now reads:

4.1.2 The Patent claims necessary to implement the Identified Standard
shall be made available on a Royalty-Free basis for the life time of the
Standard.

Overall, I'd say this is a major victory for the Indian FOSS community
and more than three years of hard work have paid off. Now I need a loooooong break!

OSFI comment on India's No vote on OOXML

The open source and free software communities are motivated by the
desire to build an inclusive information society. Open standards are
the foundation of this vision. With respect to Microsoft's OOXML
proposal submitted to International Organization for Standards (ISO)
through ECMA, the open source community has consistently pointed out
that ISO's "fast-track" processes were never meant for a complex,
6,000 page proposal like OOXML. Several serious ethical and governance
issues were also pointed out with respect to the Ballot Resolution
Meeting (BRM) on OOXML that was held in Geneva in February 2008 and
the European Union has initiated an investigation into OOXML. The
Indian committee consisting of government, academia, industry and
software exporters voted overwhelmingly against approving OOXML as an
industry standard with 13 votes against and only five votes in favor.
It is worth noting that the academia consisting of the most respected
Indian institutes; and the government voted against OOXML.

The Open Source Foundation of India believes that all stakeholders
should collaborate on the creation of standards and should compete on
creating the best implementation of these standards. As we have seen
in countless standards battles (VHS versus Betamax, Blu-Ray versus
HD-DVD, Microsoft's proprietary extensions to HTML versus Netscape's
proprietary extensions) battles over standards end up hurting
consumers and the industry. On the other hand, unified standards like
the HTML standard that governs the Internet, ends up benefiting
everyone. Standardization around HTML has converted the Internet into
a global platform that is now used by 1.2 billion users. The amount of
innovation we have seen in terms of social networking, search engines,
Web 2.0 etc would not have been possible if the Internet was a
fragmented platform. We therefore believe that vendors should stop
pushing their own standards, which leads to wasteful competition.
Instead, they should collaborate with all stakeholders to create
unified and open, royalty free standards as this delivers the best
outcome for all stakeholders.