I'm strongly supporting your efforts to increase the mobility of Europe's cell phone users by reducing the current roaming charges paid to European telecoms. I thought you might find another thing of the same kind interesting: the software interoperability.

1. Problem statement

It is becoming more and more common practice that the producers of software keep the information about the interfaces confidential or - if it's technically impossible - try to protect these interfaces as their intellectual property. I am afraid that - in a long run - it will result in slower development of information society and limited choice for EU consumers.

Let's look at the example. Let's assume that there is an innovative company that develops a unique, very good voice synthesis software and a very poor e-mailing software. The handicapped consumer (i.e. a blind person) would choose to have their voice synthesis software and use it together with someone else's e-mailing system. However, the supplier of voice synthesis software has 'hidden' the interface, either by not documenting it or by declaring it the intellectual property. Any use of the voice synthesis software alone (e.g. without e-mailing system from the same company) would be a violation of license condition.

You may compare that to the situation when an electricity provider requires use of special electrical plugs and the consumers are forced to buy refrigerators or vacuum cleaners from this provider. Any use of any other refrigerator or vacuum cleaner would be the violation of the contract with the electricity provider, since the electrical socket is protected as their intellectual property. This, of course, is not possible with the electrical devices, since this branch of engineering is more mature. But, in fact, a similar situation would be possible with software industry.

2. Motivation

I am afraid that software companies may be using (now or in the future) patent or intellectual property protection for limiting rights of other companies or independent individuals to develop new systems exchanging the information with their systems. By doing this, the software companies put unjustified limitation to the citizen rights in European Union and narrow their market choice. In long run, this would result in weaker competition and higher prices of goods and services, and - as a consequence - slower development of information society in EU.

3. Regulation

I strongly believe that the European Union should introduce regulations that would require all software producers to publish complete and free documentation about their applications' interoperability interfaces. In this way they would allow other producers and individuals to easily integrate with their applications. It would be disallowed that one system uses undocumented ('hidden') functions of another system from the same software producer.

I believe that such regulation would be an advantage to the competition and consumer rights in EU and - in a long run - it would speed up the development of information society in Europe.

I look forward to hearing your comments on my proposal.

Yours faithfully

Jakub Chabik