A new battle won, an ongoing war

As we have recently told our English-speaking readers, in these last months there has been quite a lot of activity among non-Windows users in Spain, organizing campaigns to demand equal treatment for the differente platforms. The spearhead of those campaigns has been the spanish Linux users association (HispaLinux), and the main goal has been to achieve a multiplatform version of the PADRE application: the means for electronically presenting the income tax declaration to the Spanish administration, which is currently a Windows-only application.

As we previously reported, these campaigns resulted in a non-lawmaking motion in the Spanish Parliament urging the government to ensure "platform diversity" by making PADRE versions for all platforms.

To general surprise, this call from a minority parliamentary group sparked a reaction by the Spanish taxmen, who contacted HispaLinux about a meeting to discuss the matter. HispaLinux promptly called Macuarium to join them, both as a recognition of our support and as representatives of Spanish Mac users.

A team was set up comprising several Macuarium members and colaborators: Mac developer Faustino Forcén as expert in the actual application, Jose Felix Navarro as best liaison with the Spanish MUGs, Alf (AKA Alfonso Tejedor) as deputy project leader, and editor Miguel Cornejo as coordinator.

During several preparatory meetings of the team, with HispaLinux, developers and other parties, a proposal emerged and a strategy was decided upon. We decided to keep the matter under wraps until we knew wether this time the tax men were really ready to do something or just making concilliatory noises again.

Dates were eventually swapped back and forth and (as luck would have it) the meeting was set on July the 18th, half an hour after the end of Steve Jobs' keynote address. As you may know, Macuarium's editor and legal department were bound for the Expo, so the task of actually representing Mac users at the table fell onto our chief commentator, Alf (AKA Alfonso Tejedor) and Spanish MUG coordinator Jose Felix Navarro.

I'm glad to report they did very well :-).

The meeting

To cut a long story short (you can read it in Spanish here) the taxmen sounded reasonable from the beggining. We discussed the fairness of the windows-only policy, they agreed they would like to provide multiplatform versions of all 37 applications they make, and Linux users tried to get across the advantages of freeing the PADRE code. Then we got to work.

It was found that there is serious difficulty in porting the current PADRE application, as it is badly done (its core functions draw directly on the Windows foundation classes, instead of addressing an interface as good applications should) and correcting it would be more expensive than starting over from scratch. Still, we insisted and proposed an option that would limit the work.

We brought forward the possibility of substituting a series of PADRE versions for each platforms with a one-size-fits-all Java application. Since Mac OS's problems with Java would be a thing of the past after the two years that the tax men estimated as development time (we'll all be running Mac OS X, or we should), that would be a good answer for us.

Surprisingly, the tax men then proposed the option of non-windows users accesing PADRE via web: a web browser would be everything we needed to work with a server-side PADRE and generate our declaration or have it directly sent to the tax service. Actually, they said this option could be ready in eight months... in time for next year's income tax campaign :-). And the funniest part: to avoid server overload, it would only be available to non-windows users :-).

Of course, Linux users also brought forward the Open-Sourcing of the PADRE application. It was met with doubts about the security issues that would ensue, but not totally discarded.

Then our team drew out the agenda and began insisting on our main point: the recognition of our right to a PADRE, and the setting up of a serious timetable for further work. This is the point at which all other attempts to draw the tax men into developing a useful multiplatform PADRE have broken down...

But this time, it worked :-).

The results

The taxmen agreed and then proposed a new meeting after the summer holidays, to be called in September -October (let me guess... it'll be set just during the Apple Expo ;-)). They pledge to arrive at that meeting with:

- A viability study for a multiplatform solution.

- A landmark calendar for the development of it

- A definitive pledge on the availability of the web-based option

- A full collection of doubts and points in which they want help from Linux or Mac users.

A battle won, an ongoing war

If the tax men translate that pledge into a real action, we'll have achieved more than any other attempt before in the history of Spanish administration's relationship with Mac OS. A big if.

In any case, we plan to soldier on :-). The government agencies and administrations are currently involved in developing web-based access to their services as part of a Euro-wide initiative... and we need to ensure that this is done in a way that respects the right of every computer user to choose the platform he (or she) deems better for their interests. At least until Microsoft legally wins the right to be sole provider of software to the administration... and to every taxpayer ;-).

One of the achievements of the trip to Macworld Expo in New York was a (very brief) meeting with Chuck Joiner and other members of the Apple MUG Advisory Board. We count on them and -foremost- on the Spanish MUGs and their growing organization to help us keep up the pressure. And we modestly hope this can help on a new wave of Mac activism all over the world ;-).