Tussling for the Soul of EU's Digital Economy Agenda

A little while ago I wrote about the worrying signs that the imminent Digital Economy Agenda, currently being drawn up by Neelie Kroes, was under massive pressure to water down its commitment to openness and interoperability. The good news is that ranged against those negative forces, there are others working for a fairer approach, as manifest in the Granada Ministerial Declaration on the European Digital Agenda[.pdf]:

On Open Enterprise blog.

Open Source and Open Standards under Threat in Europe

Open source is under attack in Europe. Not openly or obviously, but in the background, behind closed doors. The battleground is the imminent Digital Agenda for Europe, due to be unveiled by the European Commission in a month's time, and which defines the overall framework for Europe's digital policy. According to people with good contacts to the politicians and bureaucrats drawing up the Agenda, Microsoft is lobbying hard to ensure that open standards and open source are excluded from that policy - and is on the brink of succeeding in that aim.

We need to get as many people as possible writing to the key Commissioners *now* if we are to stop them. Details of who to write to are given below. To help you frame things, here's some background on what's at stake.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Governments Have Political Agendas? Surely Not

This interview about the EU's intervention on the Oracle-Sun deal made me chortle:

Q: What is the motivation for the EC itself?

Weiss: We have a pretty common position in Gartner that there is either a misunderstanding or lack of knowledge on the part of the EC where it feels open source can be used as a competitive threat in the market. ... That commission is there to protect the European vendors and opportunities for European common market members. There are vendors with databases that would find Oracle an intimidating presence and may be competing with Oracle not only on the database level but also on the applications level.

Feinberg: It's a political agenda. And although it's pretty strong, for a lack of better term it is the re-emergence of protectionism by a governing body of some organization. The EU is looking for how it can protect the companies in Europe.

I see, so what they're saying is that the EU has a political agenda, and is trying to protect companies in Europe. And this would be different from what the US does, or Japan, or China, exactly *how*....?

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Desperately Seeking Chandler

On Open Enterprise blog.