TSO

The TSO bull is back in the ITIL china-shop. Tweet this. The legal department of The Stationery Office (the publishers of ITIL) sent a letter to the publisher Lulu.com (not me) complaining that my book Owning ITIL® "contains the Intellectual Property associated with ITIL". This was puzzling. More than that, it was bloody annoying, as Lulu delete a disputed book without recourse, the big pussies.

It was especially annoying once I established just how trivial and vexatious the complaint really was. TSO are acting like a legal bully and the world should know it. Especially they should know it right now, as the Cabinet Office are negotiating the sale of ITIL's rights.

If this is Castle ITIL's idea of how to build a community, then ITIL's demise looks ever more certain. It is disheartening.

Further to my recent post on Free ITIL, several people are still asking "Why?", so let me elaborate a little on why it should happen and why you should support the idea.

The online world is used to free content. In many minds, this has come to mean free as in free beer not free as in free speech, i.e. gratis not libre. This is unfortunate but not part of the discussion today. Here we are talking about free libre content. It is how the 21st Century world will work.

I flushed out some interesting feedback by talking favourably about OGC's IP protection. ITIL depends on volunteers and it is a fragile arrangement. When those volunteers' first direct official contact ever with OGC or TSO or APMG is not a certificate of appreciation but rather a cease-and-desist letter from a lawyer, that does not contribute to good will. Nor does it create the impression that we're all in this together, creating a body of knowledge for the public good. (When are you ever going to say thank-you, OGC?)

Why did OGC get control of ITIL licensing content back from the British Government agency (OPSI) that is tasked with making government IP freely available to the public or at least free from monopolistic trading on it? Did TSO spit the dummy at the competition for their ITIL product sales? Or is it just that OGC are tasked with becoming a profit centre instead of a body for the public good? And where does that leave all the volunteers who so willingly contribute to the promotion and translation of ITIL? Who are they working for? We've had our share of commercial dirty deeds in ITIL's past but this latest lot may be the most troubling. (and check out this amazing video from the 1970s: AC/DC in their early days on Australian TV)

Fresh out of the pan today, the Scope and Development Plan: ITIL® V3 Update is released. (Thanks Liz for the tip!) I'm getting ready to leave for the Pink Elephant conference in Las Vegas (see you there! Come to my sessions, or see me in booth 203), so I may not get time to comment on this document. We all welcome your comments - leave them here.