Este Domingo, não há motivo para não votar

This blog post is regarding the Portuguese elections that will occur next sunday. Thus, it is written in Portuguese.

Domingo Portugal vai a eleições. Para aqueles que acham que não vale a pena ir votar, ou vale mais branco ou nulo, porque "são todos iguais"... Aqui vai um pequeno (e incompleto) resumo das várias opções. Lembrem-se: o boletim de voto não tem só dois ou três quadrados.

BE - A favor do Software Livre. Contra as Patentes de Software. Combate aos paraísos fiscais. Criação de milhares de empregos na recuperação da ferrovia. Transparência na Administração Pública. Orçamento zero. Contra as medidas da Troika. Revisão de todas as Parcerias Público-Privadas. Contra a extinção do Ministério da Cultura.
CDS-PP - Contra o Software Livre. A favor das Patentes de Software. Signatário das medidas da Troika. A favor do DRM. Comprador de submarinos. Suspensão do TGV. Adiar o novo Aeroporto.
CDU - A favor do Software Livre. Contra as Patentes de Software. Taxa de 20% na banca. Aumento do Salário Mínimo. Redução do IVA. Redução das Taxas Sociais. Transparência na Administração Pública. Contra as medidas da Troika.
MEP - Apoio à reestruturação das dívidas das famílias aos bancos. Cheque-emprego famílias. Ensino pré-escolar universal aos três anos. Transparência nas aquisições públicas. Contra o aborto.
MPT - Prioridade à defesa do Mar. Utilização submarinos para combate à droga e contrabando. Recuperação das actividades marítimas. Criação de um Ministério do Mar. Contra as medidas da Troika.
PAN - Reconhecimento legal e constitucional da senciência dos animais, e criminalizar o seu abandono e maus-tratos. Promover o vegetarianismo. Revisão de todas as Parcerias Público-Privadas.
PCTP/MRPP - Ruptura com a União Europeia. Semana de trabalho com 30 horas. Definição de um salário mínimo Europeu. Defesa do direito não-discriminatório de todos os partidos políticos candidatos se apresentarem à população.
PDA - Acabar com o cargo de representante da República nos Açores. Contra o Plano Nacional de Barragens. Contra a anexação da APDL. Contra a privatização da ANA. Reforço do papel das Universidades na gestão dos fundos comunitários e na definição das políticas regionais.
PH - Direito de voto aos imigrantes com cinco anos de residência. Generalização do voto electrónico. Fim dos governos civis. Renegociação da dívida externa. Eliminar os falsos recibos verdes com mais fiscalização. Adopção de crianças por casais do mesmo sexo.
PND - Combate à corrupção, ao clientelismo e ao amiguismo. Redução drástica do número de deputados. Defesa do direito não-discriminatório de todos os partidos políticos candidatos se apresentarem à população.
PNR - Serviço Militar Obrigatório, Suspensão do Acordo de Schengen, Controlo de Fronteiras, Repatriamento imediato de imigrantes ilegais. Contra o encerramento de escolas. Aumentar a Polícia.
POUS - Contra o plano de resgate imposto pela União Europeia e pelo FMI. Saída da União Europeia. Proibição dos despedimentos. Contra a privatização das Empresas Públicas. Renacionalização da banca e de outros sectores estratégicos da economia sem indeminização nem resgate.Contra a privatização das Empresas Públicas. Renacionalização da banca e de outros sectores estratégicos da economia sem indeminização nem resgate.
PPM - Restabelecimento da monarquia. Alargamento dos horários de funcionamento dos museus. Redução em 50% o número de institutos, fundações e empresas municipais. Contra as Parcerias Público-Privadas.
PPV - Não ao aborto. Não à eutanásia. Não ao casamento homossexual. Reestruturação da Função Pública. Contra fecho das urgências da maternidade D. Estefânia. A favor da manutenção do Ensino Público.
PS - Contra o Software Livre. A favor das Patentes de Software. Signatário das medidas da Troika. Contra a liberdade dos autores poderem ceder os seus direitos ao público em geral. A favor do DRM. A favor do Plano Nacional de Barragens. Contra a extinção do Ministério da Cultura.
PSD - Contra o Software Livre. A favor das Patentes de Software. Signatário das medidas da Troika. Contra a liberdade dos autores poderem ceder os seus direitos ao público em geral. A favor do DRM. A favor do Plano Nacional de Barragens. A favor da extinção do Ministério da Cultura.
PTP - Eliminar a corrupção e o compadrio. Aumentar o salário mínimo nacional. Reposição dos cortes salariais. Acabar com os falsos recibos verdes. Mais esquadras de bairro. Mais médicos de família.

Se quiserem ver os projectos de cada um dos partidos com mais detalhe, têm aqui uma lista dos vários partidos, com link para cada um deles.

Se não houver aqui claramente motivos para se votar num determinado partido, estou convito que haverá, pelo menos, motivos suficientes para não se gostar de vários destes partidos. Estamos sempre a criticar qualquer coisa que há de errado. Há sempre opiniões com as quais não conseguimos concordar. Há, por vezes, um certo sentimento de frustração, como que uma "inevitabilidade" em relação ao caminho que a vida leva. Mas é possível marcar a diferença. Domingo é o dia.

Portugal's biggest political party wants to turn Creative Commons Licenses illegal

I've just came back from a two hours and a half long presentation and debate on the Portuguese Culture Ministry's new law proposal regarding private copies.

The announcement of this event raised me doubts and fears from the first moment, and during the event, with the proposal's text presented in my hands and the debate that followed, some of my fears came true. They are several, in fact, but for now I'm going to talk about one of them:

The Socialist Party will present this new proposal for approval in the next Government, no matter if they win the elections or not. In regards to Creative Commons, they support a vision where Creative Commons harm Culture, and in this law proposal they intend to turn them illegal. Here's how (quick translation, I'll soon post the whole proposal in Portuguese online, so others can make their own translation; this is only the part regarding written works, but there are similar items in "Article 3" for other works, except software):

Article 3, point 1 - The authors have the right to the perception of a compensation equitable for the reproduction of written works, in paper or similar support, for instance microfilm, photocopy, digitalization or other processes of similar nature.
[...]
Article 5 (Inalienability and non-renunciability) - The equitable compensation of authors, artists, interpreters or executives is inalienable and non-renunciable, being null any other contractual clause in contrary.

Here: in sum, every author (except software authors, so thankfully free software isn't affected) has the right of getting money out of private copy, and they can't renounce it, so every Creative Commons license, where saying "You are free to share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work" (or actually, in legalese, "licensor hereby grants you a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, perpetual license to reproduce the Work") is illegal.

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Update: Here's the whole event was audio and video recorded by several people. One of those recordings (only an excerpt of the debate) is now available online:

Gravação parcial da sessão de discussão da apresentação da PL da Cópia Privada

Update 2: There's a (low quality) scan of the booklet, made by Miguel Caetano, here: part I, part II, part III. Each PDF is two pages of the booklet, there's at least one person wanting to turn this scans into one document only, for easier reading, but - for now - this is what's have available.

Update 3: Here's the "almost full" (only missing the very first part) audio of the whole session:

Download available here.

OOXML approved as an ISO standard

Specially during the last year, I talked about OOXML several times in this blog. Despite already existing already an open standard for documents, Microsoft pushed its own format to be an ISO standard, and, using polemic tactics, they finally made it. The official press release isn't out there yet (it will be today), but both ECMA and Microsoft already made press releases announcing the approval.

What does this mean? Is it a defeat? As you know if you've read my previous comments on OOXML, I was against it being an ISO standard. Now that it is, it is important to stress the importance that there are two standards, ODF and OOXML, and of those only ODF is open. But I don't consider all the work made to rise issues on OOXML was in vain. The discussion arose lots of awareness about OOXML problems. OOXML was modified since its submission, and while it still has several critical problems, it is now better than it was one year ago. And the whole issue isn't over yet.

What is there to be done? Well, first of all, it's important to act wisely and understand that now that OOXML is an ISO standard, it should be supported in the biggest number of applications and platforms. For instance, OpenOffice still doesn't support OOXML (although it is already in their roadmap). Also, standards aren't immutable. The work into maintaining and enhancing document standards just doubled, but it's something that must be done. There's already work being done for ODF 1.2 (expected to be an ISO standard on Summer 2009), but surely there will be plans to release new versions of OOXML. This is quite important and shouldn't be ignored, also by (maybe specially by) people that, like me, don't like OOXML. That is the opportunity to fix OOXML problems, but there's an huge risk of having new versions pushed by Microsoft using the same tactics that were used now, making OOXML even worse for everyone but Microsoft. We all should have our eyes open to that possibility, specially because many people might expect that new versions should be automaticly approved just because the actual specification is already an ISO standard.

It that it? Will we have to deal with two standards, implement two standards, do twice the work? Well, maybe it's time to - without prejudice into the work on ODF and OOXML - create yet another format that deprecates both ODF and OOXML. This is something I really don't like, and don't think I'm recommending that, but I'm afraid that, in a not so distant future, that might be the only way of fixing all this double standards mess.

But, but... What credibility can have a standard that was approved like this? Well, not much - for those of us who know what happened, and what are the flaws in OOXML. But for non-tech people, like politicians, librarians, teachers, and everyone else, it will not be clear that this standard isn't a good choice. And here's where we must act. For instance, EU wants to have all their documents in a standard format. We (Europeans) are the ones who should show them why they shouldn't choose OOXML. Who else?

UPDATE: ISO official announcement here

Good news to Portugal

Good news to Portugal: next 4th of October, around 15:00, the Portuguese Parliament is going to debate and vote two iniciatives presented by PCP:

• Aproove an iniciative called "Free Software in the Parliament";
• Create the National Council for Information and Comunication Technologies.
  

If this is aprooved, then we will finally have some good news from the "Technological Plan" our government is pulling out...

Petition for guaranteed public access to publicly-funded research results

In January 2006 the European Commission published the Study on the Economic and Technical Evolution of the Scientific Publication Markets of Europe. The Study resulted from a detailed analysis of the current scholarly journal publication market, together with extensive consultation with all the major stakeholders within the scholarly communication process (researchers, funders, publishers, librarians, research policymakers, etc.). The Study noted that 'dissemination and access to research results is a pillar in the development of the European Research Area' and it made a number of balanced and reasonable recommendations to improve the visibility and usefulness of European research outputs.

One year has passed, and we're still not seeing the recomendations being fulfilled entirely. The first recomendation was:

RECOMMENDATION A1. GUARANTEE PUBLIC ACCESS TO PUBLICLY-FUNDED RESEARCH RESULTS SHORTLY AFTER PUBLICATION

Research funding agencies have a central role in determining researchers' publishing practices. Following the lead of the NIH and other institutions, they should promote and support the archiving of publications in open repositories, after a (possibly domain-specific) time period to be discussed with publishers. This archiving could become a condition for funding.

The following actions could be taken at the European level: (i) Establish a European policy mandating published articles arising from EC-funded research to be available after a given time period in open access archives, and (ii) Explore with Member States and with European research and academic associations whether and how such policies and open repositories could be implemented.

If you, like me, think that this recommendation should be implemented as soon as possible, please consider signing this petition.