Anglo-Dutch relations

The Netherlands is a small but culturally significant country in Europe. It is known for windmills, wooden shoes, tulips and famous painters such as Rembrandt and van Gogh.

In Britain, the Netherlands is also important because of the historically close relationship between the British and Dutch monarchies, most famously of course in the Dutch Prince William of Orange who married Princess Mary of York and succeeded to the British throne as William III.

Both countries have a sea-faring tradition and both developed colonial ambitions. There are a large number of successful Anglo-Dutch companies and there are ferries that go from England to Amsterdam that are often used by stag nights (bachelor parties) and other English people out for a fun weekend away in Amsterdam. Britain also imports a large quantity of pork from the Netherlands, the bacon in an English breakfast is very likely to have come from a Dutch pig.

In Britain you will often hear the phrase 'Dutch courage', for example, a bride or groom might take a quick sip of whiskey before their wedding service (allegedly, Dutch sailors were famous for their alcohol-inspired bravery).

I have also heard people quip that "the Dutch are always ten years ahead", i.e. where the Netherlands goes first, Europe follows later; this is because liberal social policies are often implemented first in the Netherlands.

We could say that this trend started with Erasmus of Rotterdam, his humanism was the initial spark of modernism that would eventually lead to the Reformation, the Enlightenment and the Industrial revolution.

This protestant culture of humanism has carried on into the secular era, and while the Netherlands is famous for its cannabis coffee shops, it was also the first country in the world to legalise same-sex marriage, it has state- regulated prostitution and the world's most explicit euthanasia policy.

Apparently with all the art, churches, alcohol, sex, soft drugs, bacon, cheese and cycling, Dutch people have one of the lowest rates of depression in the entire world.

Cycle towards the future

The Netherlands has also adopted the controversial idea that you should be able to cycle without risking your life and limb, and they have built a network of cycle lanes to separate bikes from cars.

In Britain so many motorists are over the speed limit or drive without due care that six cyclists are hit by a car every day, meaning you are 30 times more likely to die on a bike than in a car. The victims are statistically boys and young men who get run over by increasingly larger and more deadly cars. Although total road accidents are going down in Britain, cycle deaths are actually going up by 10% per year, cars getting deadlier is one of the contributing factors.

In the age of global warming and mass obesity, a small but densely populated country like Britain could replace a high proportion of car journeys with cycle journeys. I could replace all my day to day journeys with cycle trips; but it would be suicide due to the speeding cars, indeed a lot of them almost hit me when I walk on the pavement (sidewalk), if I was sharing the roads I would have no chance at all.

The majority of able-bodied people could replace all their daily car journeys with bikes too. All it needs is the government to grasp the issue and provide dedicated cycle lanes. If the government started by requiring that all new roads had to have dedicated cycle lanes, then at least the problem would not be getting worse; it could then build in cycle lanes when resurfacing the existing roads. It would only take a few years for all our urban roads to have cycle lanes.

So Britain really needs to learn from the Netherlands in cycling policy, they are certainly at least ten years ahead there.

Netherlands and IT

The Netherlands leads the rest of Europe in social policies. However, will it lead the rest of Europe in IT as well? Can the British government(s) learn from the Netherlands in this area?

Well quite possibly, as this last Wednesday, the Netherlands' government produced a groundbreaking Open Source and Open Standards policy, More coverage here and in lots of other places.

Comply or Explain

The Dutch policy follows the principle called "comply or explain" which is a common idea in Europe. The European Corporate Governance Forum formally explains the principle (PDF).

The basic idea is that you have to comply with the policy or provide a public explanation of why you cannot follow a certain provision. The manager is then held accountable for this decision and for the quality of the explanation.

The explanation can of course be rejected. And over time, as different organisations solve problems and further best practice, less opt-outs are required as the best-practice is shared.

This virtuous circle allows the policy to be firmly and efficiently implemented yet also allows enough flexibility for organisational-specific problems to be worked through on the way.

Dutch IT policy

I haven't managed to track down an English translation of the whole policy, but I have found some well written blog posts from Dutchmen that quote the policy in depth.

The Dutch policy has three objectives:

• Increase interoperability between the various branches of the Dutch government by using open standards.
• Reduce dependence on particular suppliers in the use of ICT by accelerated deployment of both open standards and open source software.
• Promote innovation in the Dutch economy by promoting open source and giving preference to open source software in government contracts.

Policy Rollout

In the Netherlands, the policy is being rolled out as follows. For central government, who have already been working on this, the policy comes into force fully by April 2008.

For local governments and other institutions, they have to support open standards in steps according to certain deadlines throughout 2008, and also have open source software in place by the turn of 2009. Education, health- care and social security has until the turn of 2010.

The exception is that all government organisations must be able to read, write and share ODF documents by the end of 2008.

The final deadline is 2015 when only open standards are allowed and all exceptions expire.

On top of existing IT budgets, special help desks and transition grants will be made available by the central government to smooth the switch to Open Source Software and Open Standards.

For non-governmental organisations and consumers, the government is not going to ban the bundling of Windows with new PCs, but it will consider making it easier for consumers to exercise their right for a refund for any unused Microsoft licences.

Hidden pockets of computer illiteracy

When large organisations move from proprietary software to open source software, how they spend their IT budget changes.

In the proprietary model, a large proportion of the IT budget goes on licences. Often in this model, expenditure on the training of staff and professional IT support staff gets neglected, leading to many inefficiencies in how people work with computers.

When the switch comes to open source, some of the money previously used to pay for the licences will be redeployed into training and support and some will be returned to the tax-payer or shareholders.

Microsoft would have you believe that Open Source requires training while people pop out of the womb able to magically use Microsoft products. This is not true, all work with computers requires training.

Often large organisations contain hidden pockets of computer illiteracy, sometimes large wells of computer illiteracy. These are exposed when the switchover comes.

Computer illiterate people do not like being exposed in this way, but the correct policy to give them training and support not to sweep them back under the carpet by spoon-feeding them another generation of proprietary software.

The Borg Bites Back

PCs started out as hobbyist toys, then within a few years became a gateway to information, education, communication government services, business and entertainment. This change caught governments and regulators by surprise; regulation that was relevant for hobby equipment is not suitable for the role that PCs have taken in the modern world.

Microsoft was allowed to run a racket from the mid-eighties to the mid- nineties, the US courts caught up with it eventually, but then Microsoft gave a large amount of money to George W. Bush's election campaign; less than a year later, George W. Bush's administration dropped the case.

So the racket continued, and Microsoft was able to use monopolistic practices to force out competition from other companies, including Real and Netscape. However, eventually the European courts caught up with Microsoft and things are hopefully starting to change.

You see Microsoft is completely out of control. It basically has a licence to print money, and it's annual income is more than many governments. Like governments, it has embassies around the world. It sets up little local branches of Microsoft, to try and distract local regulators from the idea that there could be a domestic software industry.

Microsoft's problem is that it has hit market saturation point, and the only way is down. Instead of giving the customer want they want, providing open solutions with open standards, Microsoft instead tries to lobby, bribe and moan to get governments to assist it to continue it's monopoly. Authoritarian governments will do anything to stop their citizens from having freedom, likewise Microsoft will do anything to stop computer users having freedom and to prevent any real competition.

It seems there are no limits to what Microsoft will do, it seems to have become a moral free zone. The OECD said Finland is the least corrupt country in the world, no problem for Microsoft, it has managed to get a Microsoft employee to represent Finland on the forthcoming vote on whether Microsoft's fileformat should become an ISO standard, can there be a more blatant conflict of interest?

Dutch Courage

Through its new IT policy, the Netherlands' government expects to save tens of millions of euros, encourage competition and local IT development. So far it has managed to laugh off Microsoft's attempts at 'subverting the policy`_:

> "I am incredibly satisfied," said Martijn van Dam, a member of parliament from the ruling Labour Party. "The storm of protest that Microsoft has attempted to stir up is one of the greatest endorsements of this plan," he said in reference to Microsoft's lobbying. > > Arda Gerkens of the Socialist Party added: "The fact that a monopolist complains this plan would impede the market economy is beyond irony."

Abraham Lincoln said:

> "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time."

Microsoft's strangehold over computers is starting to crumble, and it can't control everyone everywhere all the time. The weapons that Microsoft has traditionally used are becoming blunt and its attempts to get into new markets have not been going that well. I think that is why it has gone completely crazy recently.

One of Microsoft's traditional weapons has been price discrimination, charging different people and organisations different prices for the same product. The most extreme form is when a significant organisation is about to switch to a competing product, it will fly in and offer reduced price or gratis copies of its products in the hope of locking them back in for the next generation, indeed sometimes Microsoft will even pay people to use their software.

To make the same amount of profit each year, every time Microsoft gives one organisation a discount, it has to increase the cost for someone else. This only works in absence of real competition, otherwise there will come a point when this strategy will be overstretched, when everyone will want a discount, every large organisation will threaten to use Linux or OpenOffice. Microsoft can try to call their bluff, but it will be hard pressed to tell between when people are bluffing or when organisations really don't want to use their products.

Another classic Microsoft weapon locking in its' users' data to proprietary formats, making the perceived short-term cost of switching seem higher than the benefits. It can only do this for as long as it controls the formats.

OOXML (or MOXML as some are suggesting we call it as it is not actually that Open) is Microsoft's last throw of the format dice, if it doesn't succeed on getting MOXML certified by ISO then this strategy completely falls apart. Many of us think that MOXML is technically inferior to ODF, if the longtime ISO technical experts manage to survive long enough (against the new Microsoft plants) to confirm that fact, then Microsoft begins to lose this weapon, at least for governments like the Netherlands that are committed to international standards.

The OpenOffice and the Linux desktop are starting to get a critical mass in large organisations in Europe. The Munich government say they are using Linux, it is cheaper and they prefer it, Vienna too. Soon we will be adding the Kingdom of the Netherlands to that list.

Britain would be well poised to follow the Netherlands' example. It would be good for British tax-payers and good for the British IT industry, more on this another day. However, I'm not optimistic for a quick change, the Labour Party has received donations from a certain 'Microsoft Ltd', so considering its current record on donations, I'm sure Labour will happily bend over and spend billions of tax-payers money on Microsoft's proprietary software. Micro$hafted.

P.S I just noticed that Croatia has an Open Source Policy (PDF) and a commitment to open standards. I haven't had time to read through it all yet, but it looks pretty impressive.

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Windmill courtesy of stillburning. Dutch waitresses courtesy of jcooke, used with permission.