Digitaliseringsstyrelsen (Agency for Digitisation) in Denmark have created an accessibility product called "acces for all" og "adgang for alle", which is basically a screen reader. It's available for Windows and MacOS, and for GNU/Linux-based operating systems it will work with an extension for Chrome or Chromium:
Basically, it's a Danish screen reader for people who are visually impaired, including the blind.
It's available for download and anyone is free to use it, however it is published under a very restrictive proprietary license.
Among the conditions in the license are
* Non-commercial use
* No copying or distribution of any kind, under threat of "serious civil and penal legal consequences".
* No distribution within an organisation - an organisation such as e.g. a library may *not* have the program on its servers in order to install it on public-facing clients.
There's one very curious thing about this product: Often, organizations have software made by private vendors, and the private vendors will retain their copyright and their right to keep it proprietary. In this case, it's the Agency for Digitisation *itself* that claims the copyright and threatens with draconian consequences to anyone who dares use their product e.g. on the job and not just in their spare time.
So it's Danish people's tax money preventing Danish people from using, let alone sharing, studying and improving this software - created by Danish tax money - and once again, it's us as taxpayers who are financing the very agency that's withholding this software from the public.
I find it surreal and close to a textbook example of how *not* to do things.
Best regards,
Carsten
Thank you for this interesting case.
In Norway it is an issue that people with impairments of different types struggle to get a job. I would think it is an issue in Denmark as well. It is a lot of effort to become fluent in tools, and having to learn two with identical purpose makes no sense. I would have though that helping people with tools that makes it easier to participate in both work and social life is a wanted thing. A free licence would have given the tool a chance to be used in a much wider sense, and given the tool a chance to be further developed by contributors so that it could be even more suited for different lifes.
I work as a tester here in Norway, to me it is difficult to get a hold of tools that are relevant for impaired users. So we make due with what we have (differs in every project). Unless impaired is a specific target group the extra effort for testing for different solutions is hard to justify, so it becomes a question of minimal effort/ compliant of laws. Making development of good solutions for impaired so much slower that it could have been.
I am curious to why the Agency of digitization thinks this is the most viable model for their product.
On Thu, Dec 12, 2019 at 9:26 AM Carsten Agger agger@modspil.dk wrote:
Digitaliseringsstyrelsen (Agency for Digitisation) in Denmark have created an accessibility product called "acces for all" og "adgang for alle", which is basically a screen reader. It's available for Windows and MacOS, and for GNU/Linux-based operating systems it will work with an extension for Chrome or Chromium:
Basically, it's a Danish screen reader for people who are visually impaired, including the blind.
It's available for download and anyone is free to use it, however it is published under a very restrictive proprietary license.
Among the conditions in the license are
Non-commercial use
No copying or distribution of any kind, under threat of "serious civil
and penal legal consequences".
- No distribution within an organisation - an organisation such as e.g.
a library may *not* have the program on its servers in order to install it on public-facing clients.
There's one very curious thing about this product: Often, organizations have software made by private vendors, and the private vendors will retain their copyright and their right to keep it proprietary. In this case, it's the Agency for Digitisation *itself* that claims the copyright and threatens with draconian consequences to anyone who dares use their product e.g. on the job and not just in their spare time.
So it's Danish people's tax money preventing Danish people from using, let alone sharing, studying and improving this software - created by Danish tax money - and once again, it's us as taxpayers who are financing the very agency that's withholding this software from the public.
I find it surreal and close to a textbook example of how *not* to do things.
Best regards,
Carsten
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On Wednesday 11. December 2019 12.57.10 Carsten Agger wrote:
There's one very curious thing about this product: Often, organizations have software made by private vendors, and the private vendors will retain their copyright and their right to keep it proprietary. In this case, it's the Agency for Digitisation *itself* that claims the copyright and threatens with draconian consequences to anyone who dares use their product e.g. on the job and not just in their spare time.
I imagine that there is a certain amount of pressure from proprietary software companies to prevent the wider proliferation of products like this. One might think that making accessibility software widely available would be a good thing for society, but there are vendors who make high-margin products in this sector, with the high prices often being paid on behalf of individuals by state agencies.
Certain kinds of politicians don't want the state to be doing anything that might interfere with the supposed "right" of people to make good money, especially when it is good money off the state. So with some persuasion, revenue streams are protected by imposing limitations on what taxpayer-funded works may be used for.
So it's Danish people's tax money preventing Danish people from using, let alone sharing, studying and improving this software - created by Danish tax money - and once again, it's us as taxpayers who are financing the very agency that's withholding this software from the public.
Sounds like a perfect target for the Public Money Public Code campaign.
I find it surreal and close to a textbook example of how *not* to do things.
Maybe it would be interesting to hear what their justification is for being so restrictive. There are usually a few excuses, none of them truly persuasive.
Sometimes, commercial partners force the agency concerned to restrict access to the code or technologies: this was a factor in some Norwegian e-voting scheme I blogged about a few years ago [1], of which I have heard nothing since. Sometimes, there is an ambition to commercialise some idea or technology internationally, which for smaller countries like Denmark and Norway are usually delusions of grandeur.
One might wonder how allowing commercialisation in state entities is compatible with keeping state entities out of the realm of business. Of course, the "answer" from the politicians who entertain these thoughts in their heads simultaneously is "privatisation". By setting the stage for those state entities to become private or semi-private businesses, freeing them of many of their obligations and, more often than not, providing some investment opportunities for well-connected individuals.
Paul
On 12/12/19 7:16 PM, Paul Boddie wrote:
On Wednesday 11. December 2019 12.57.10 Carsten Agger wrote:
Certain kinds of politicians don't want the state to be doing anything that might interfere with the supposed "right" of people to make good money, especially when it is good money off the state. So with some persuasion, revenue streams are protected by imposing limitations on what taxpayer-funded works may be used for.
The funny thing is that this goes completely against what some other government agencies are doing - in the state as well, but especially local governments.
I should know, our company is working a lot with the municipalities in the OS2 collaboration:
which is basically about municipalities building and sharing free ("open source", as they call it) products, mostly (but not always) hiring external companies like ours to do the coding. And they're definitely going in the direction of "more of this, please" since they are getting tailor-made software and are saving a lot of money in the process.
But that said, yes it probably *is* due to not wanting to "compete unfairly". It's just that it goes against their policy in other respects (the Digitisation Agency also have free software produced from time to time). Maybe they were lobbied specifically about this product from potential competitors, like you suggest.
It's just an especially absurd example of state-funded software that (strictly speaking, they might allow it in practice) can't be used in public libraries since that's really "commercial use".
So it's Danish people's tax money preventing Danish people from using, let alone sharing, studying and improving this software - created by Danish tax money - and once again, it's us as taxpayers who are financing the very agency that's withholding this software from the public.
Sounds like a perfect target for the Public Money Public Code campaign.
Indeed, what I was thinking.
Best regards,
Carsten