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No, these are not the pillars on which today's computing is based. These are the pillars on which, to the best of my knowledge, it should be based. Of course, this is widely debatable. That is precisely the idea. Let you reflect and share your opinion with us.  |
Free access
The so-called free access (in English, open access) is the free, immediate, and unrestricted access to educational and academic digital material, mainly scientific research articles from specialized journals with peer review ('peer review').
This means that any individual user can read, download, copy, distribute, print, search or link the full texts of scientific articles, and use them without other economic, legal or technical barriers than those posed by the Internet itself. In return, the authors of these works can publicize their discoveries more widely, increasing their visibility and popularity, as well as the number of citations to their works.
In other words, free access is a free and open way of accessing educational and scientific literature. It also extends to other digital content that the authors wish to make freely accessible to online users.
While it is true that there is no such thing as "free information or knowledge," as there are costs involved in its production, the advent of new technologies has made its compilation and distribution increasingly economical (whether it is educational material). , academic, scientific or of any other nature). For this reason, those who defend free access for all humanity without restrictions, argue that this is only possible thanks to the emergence of the Internet, which allows the availability of information in real time at practically no cost.
Finally, the concept of free access to information can be applicable to other aspects of life, such as information produced by government agencies, public service companies, etc.
But, it is not possible to carry out a true free access to information if we do not have free standards.
Free standards
When we talk about standards, we generally refer to formats and / or protocols. In generic terms, an open standard is a publicly available specification to accomplish a specific task.
The specification must have been developed in an open process for the entire industry and must also ensure that anyone can use it without having to pay royalties or submit conditions to anyone else. By allowing everyone to obtain and implement the standard, they can increase and allow compatibility and interoperability between different hardware and software components, since anyone with the necessary technical knowledge and resources can build products that work with those of other vendors, which they share the standard in their base design.
So what is a standard? Some people believe that if the IETF or the W3C approves a protocol or format, thereafter it becomes standard. But standardization is not a matter of approval by an agency; rather, it is a question of acceptance in "the community." What is the community? A complex network of projects, interests, people and organizations that develop and use these technologies. There are numerous examples of standards not devised by these bodies and which were accepted, due to their widespread use, as standards. Some of them are not even open standards (for example, the DOC -MS Word- or PPS-MS PowerPoint- format). In turn, although many free software projects depend on open standards (for example, Apache depends on the open HTTP protocol, Mozilla on HTML / CSS / Javascript, Sendmail on SMTP, etc.) there are also proprietary products that depend on those. Same standards (IIS, IE, Exchange).
This means that the introduction of open standards does not necessarily imply the elimination of proprietary software, just as the use of proprietary standards does not imply, in itself, the death of free projects based on those standards. We see this in office suites like Abiword or OpenOffice: both read and allow the creation of documents in Microsoft's closed DOC format with a certain level of precision. We also see this in the area of ​​instant messaging with clients like Empathy or Pidgin that allow users to connect through the Jabber network (which is an open protocol), as well as through "proprietary" services used by other clients. messaging (AIM, ICQ, MSN and Yahoo). On the other hand, we said that closed standards do not necessarily mean the death of free software projects. However, the use of open standards gives software developers greater freedom (since they do not have to pay royalties for the license to use the standard - be it a protocol, a format, etc.) and does not limit their possibilities to the whims, desires and interests of the creators of those standards. Unfortunately, in those cases, developers of free projects can hardly try to make as decent copies as possible of the functionalities and features offered by the "original" programs with support for these standards (happens with DOC, PPS and many other closed formats and protocols ).
On the other hand, not only is it not necessary that what these super-organisms that bring together the large companies in the market say automatically becomes a standard, because for this it will require the acceptance of the community, but in some cases even Its 'open standard' character could even be questioned since like everything else in life, it all boils down to a question of power: large companies generally prefer to control standards (either owning or influencing the organisms that create them). That is why they tend to "dominate" these supposedly open bodies, like the IETF or W3C, or the MPEG consortium or the Open Mobile Alliance. Frequently, the standards created by these bodies leave out the interests and ideas of smaller companies or even worse, that of end users (is it wrong if I say that also those of the States or at least that of the smaller States? ).
Free software
Free software (in English free software, this name is also sometimes confused with free because of the double meaning of English free in Spanish) is the name of the software that respects the freedom of users regarding their purchased product and, therefore, a Once obtained, it can be freely used, copied, studied, changed and redistributed. According to the Free Software Foundation, free software refers to the freedom of users to run, copy, distribute, study, modify software, and distribute modified software.
Free software is usually available for free, or at the cost of distribution through other means; however, it is not mandatory that this be the case, therefore free software should not be associated with "free software" (usually called freeware), since, while preserving its free character, it can be commercially distributed ("commercial software"). Similarly, "free software" or "free" sometimes includes source code; however, this type of software is not free in the same sense as free software, unless the rights to modify and redistribute such modified versions of the program are guaranteed.
Nor should free software be confused with "public domain software." The latter is software that does not require a license, since its exploitation rights are for all humanity, because it belongs to everyone equally. Anyone can make use of it, always for legal purposes and stating its original authorship. This software would be the one whose author donates it to humanity or whose copyright has expired, after a period from the death of this, usually 70 years. If an author conditions its use under a license, however weak it may be, it is no longer in the public domain.
For more information on the importance of free software I recommend these other posts: «What is soft. free","Decalogue of soft. free in the state","Why the soft. free makes sense«, And other posts with the tag«FOSS«.
Free, plural and open community
A free standard or a free software project dominated by the decisions of large companies does not constitute a healthy ecosystem. For it to be really successful, in addition to combining the 3 variables that we mentioned at the beginning (free access, free standards and free software), the existence of an open community is essential, in which large and small companies and even independent developers can collaborate. some private projects and others free, etc. All of these implementations should create a community of developers and users who can easily share information and learn from each other.
Sources:
- Open Source and Open Standards
- Wikipedia: Free software, Open standards,