[WSIS CS-Plenary] article "Open Source Ardor Cools at WSIS"

[Sasha Costanza-Chock]

It seems we'll have to restoke the fires of FLOSSy ardor...
sc

---
Open Source Ardor Cools at WSIS
>From Computerworld, October 9, 2003
By Stephen Bell

A push at a series of international "information society" conferences to
adopt open source software as an aspect of electronic "common land" has
assumed a lower profile with the apparent entry of lobbying from proprietary
business interests.

A "plan of action" being prepared for the December World Summit on the
Information Society (WSIS) championed wide adoption of open source software
in June.

Suggested text in the draft then promoted open source awareness, the
creation of intellectual property mechanisms supporting open source, and the
formation of a UN "Programmers Without Frontiers" body to support open
source software (OSS) in developing nations. "Open-source/free software
shall be adopted by all public authorities and bodies," the draft stated
ambitiously.

The Club of Rome economic think-tank came out particularly strongly in
favour of open source in its submission to WSIS in August. It labelled OSS
as one of the "common goods of mankind" and an aid to advancing the
productive use of ICT in developing countries, where proprietary software is
particularly expensive in real terms.

The latest form of the plan of action, however, replaces the open source
endorsement with a recommendation to "encourage research and promote
awareness among all stakeholders of the possibilities offered by different
software models, and the means of their creation, including proprietary,
open source and free software, in order to increase competition, freedom of
choice and affordability, and to enable all stakeholders to evaluate which
solution best meets their requirements."

Observers at the latest preparatory conference to the summit (Prepcom-3) in
Geneva, said the changes were made after input from several nations uneasy
with excluding mentions of proprietary software from the plan, and from the
business lobby, which came out strongly against open source.

Delegates from the US and European Union, they said, were prominent among
those asking that commercial software interests get a fair representation.

The summit itself is due to be held in Geneva in December. Prepcom-3 was to
have been the last preparatory conference, but emergency meetings have been
scheduled next month to knock still vague documents riddled with alternative
phraseology into a more definite shape before the summit.