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In April, a politician from Peru garnered near-worldwide fame by challenging Microsoft. Congressman David Villanueva Nuñez is the author of a bill that would require any software sales to the Peruvian government to be "open source," effectively closing that market to Microsoft sales. Needless to say, Microsoft protested loudly about this anti-competitive behavior, claiming it was unfair. Señor Nuñez penned what must be the most articulate refutation of Microsoft ever in his response of April 8. What makes this discussion interesting for our forum here is Señor Nuñez's key points in favor of a free or open source software solution. His points hit on some key aspects of long-term data storage that we haven't analyzed till now: 1. How available will today's stored data be tomorrow? 2. How long can this data be stored and remain accessible? For Señor Nuñez, his concern is as a public official. His responsibility is to see to it that the people of Peru can have long-term access to public data, something that he feels will be compromised by confining outsource contracts to proprietary technologies like Microsoft. But the same issues can be raised with regard to corporate or even personal data. With CD and DVD technologies, it is now possible to have a perpetual data store for corporate, Web, and personal use. In the past, our backup floppy discs and tape either routinely went "bad" or we no longer had a functional drive to access that data. Today, however, with proper care, a CD or DVD can last a century or more. But how useful would such a repository be if the data on those discs were created using WordPerfect 5.1 for DOS? Or if the video were stored using Real v1.0? Or if those all-important timing sheets or financial records were fossilized in Excel 4.5? In the first case, there is certainly some doubt about WP being around for much longer. If the company goes under, how will we access those files? Even though some versions of Microsoft Word support WP files, who hasn't seen that "unknown file format" error in Word when trying to open even newer versions of WordPerfect files? In the video case, we can rest assured that Real is going to be around for the middle-to-long term at least, but will their current player open files from much older versions? Finally, in the case of Excel, how likely is it that you will have a license for Excel to open those files in five, ten, or even fifteen years? (If Excel Y2KC can even open old-version Excel files?) In the past, your license for the software seemed like it would last almost forever—at least, that was the prevailing assumption. Now, with this new subscription-type model, the license could run out. What then? Worse, what happens to your content if the provider opts to discontinue the product line you used to prepare or store it? Will there be a continual license for accessing that content years from now? If so, at what price? If you opt to keep an unlicensed copy on your desktop "just in case," what happens if a well-publicized anti-piracy campaign comes through and puts you and your legacy files at legal risk? Will you erase that program—and with it your valuable data—rather than face "thousands of dollars" in fines for using unlicensed software? If the license does run out, what becomes of your content? Is it really yours now that it is locked away into a proprietary format? In effect, at what point does a third-party like Microsoft actually control the key to your business (i.e., intellectual property)? With a subscription model, unless you pay a monthly "rent" for the foreseeable future, you actually can be locked out of your own property. You can better understand now why Señor Nuñez proposes that public documents in Peru be preserved using open-source software rather than through a proprietary offering like Microsoft's. As he puts it, with open-source software, "the usability and maintenance of the software does not depend on the goodwill of the suppliers." Naturally, I anticipate the emergence of a cottage industry of software access providers who take on the expense of maintaining older pieces of software just to handle these sorts of cases. (Hey, that isn't such a bad idea, is it? Maybe my retirement plan is opening up…) But this still poses problems for confidential data. Would third parties of this sort be allowed open access to company financial or personnel information? Would they be allowed to manipulate as well as view it? What would the legal ramifications of this be? As a compromise, I propose that each software company provide a browser-based viewer to its proprietary file formats. This viewer could then be placed in an online archive owned by the Library of Congress or other disinterested party (preferably, one not even bound by affiliation with a single government or nation). This party could then maintain this viewer in perpetuity—allowing our future generations access to this otherwise closed data. More importantly, this approach would allow us to access our data how and when we choose without paying a toll.
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