Ján Husár

Jan Husar (born April 29, 1982) is a Slovak activist, writer and journalist. Lives with his wife, labrador and a senegal parrot in Bratislava, a lot of time in Brussels and mostly traveling.

Work

Husar founded SKOSI, which stands for Slovak Open Source Initiative back in 2003 because he was upset with the current situation of egovernment, especially the misuse of public money, loopholes in the electronic standards law and political corruption within the public procurement. Since than is serving as freelance consultant for several governments, EU institutions, NGO and companies. He is also interested in Entrepreneurship.

SKOSI

SKOSI is the group of activists in the field of open source, software patents and open standards, ACTIVE in the area of Slovakia with activities in Brussels and several European countries via close partners.

SKOSI is involved in the localization of mozilla . It is supporting the software freedom day . It is supporting the KDE Localization . It is promoting linux It is partner with the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure Foundation_for_a_Free_Information_Infrastructure.

homepage

Open Source

In 1996 he started to explore the FLOSS world as system administrator and grey hat, what he was doing for another 8 years. After founding SKOSI, he started to specialize on understanding the EU law and it's problems for citizens and local businesses. As a public representative in the IDABC project of European Commission, he is also volunteering his time to other open source projects like software freedom day, ubuntu, Digital Standards Organization, etc.

Software Freedom International

Jan is a former board advistor of SFI and currently holds a board member function since 2009. SFI is a non-profit company based in the USA whose primary function is to coordinate Software Freedom Day all around the world. All contributors to the success of SFD volunteer their time.

Digital Rights

In 2005 he becomes involved with EFF and similar open rights groups in Brussels working on EU legislation.

Open Standards definition within Digital Standards Organization DIGISTAN

The Digital Standards Organization (DIGISTAN) states that "an open standard must be aimed at creating unrestricted competition between vendors and unrestricted choice for users". Its brief definition of "open standard" (or "free and open standard") is "a published specification that is immune to vendor capture at all stages in its life-cycle". Its more complete definition as follows:

  • "The standard is adopted and will be maintained by a not-for-profit organization, and its ongoing development occurs on the basis of an open decision-making procedure available to all interested parties.
  • The standard has been published and the standard specification document is available freely. It must be permissible to all to copy, distribute, and use it freely.
  • The patents possibly present on (parts of) the standard are made irrevocably available on a royalty-free basis.
  • There are no constraints on the re-use of the standard.

A key defining property is that an open standard is immune to vendor capture at all stages in its life-cycle. Immunity from vendor capture makes it possible to improve upon, trust, and extend an open standard over time."

This definition is based on the EU's EIF v1 definition of "open standard", but with changes to address what it terms as "vendor capture". They believe that "Many groups and individuals have provided definitions for 'open standard' that reflect their economic interests in the standards process. We see that the fundamental conflict is between vendors who seek to capture markets and raise costs, and the market at large, which seeks freedom and lower costs... Vendors work hard to turn open standards into franchise standards. They work to change the statutory language so they can cloak franchise standards in the sheep's clothing of 'open standard'. A robust definition of "free and open standard" must thus take into account the direct economic conflict between vendors and the market at large."

References

  • founders of Digital Standards Organization, 2.
  • committee for electronic standards in government, 3.
  • Open Source is a shark; Interview with Mr. Husar in 2008, 4.
  • It's hard for Open Source in Slovakia; Interview with Mr. Husar in 2007 5.
  • LinkedIN profile, 6.
  • Speaker at 1st software freedom Kosovo Conference, 7.