Using Closed Standards To Pay For Open Ones

An anonymous reader points to a story at NewsForge, writing "EGOVOS analyzes the recently passed South African OSS plan and proposes a great way to fund Open Source education and development until companies comply with open standards. Microsoft pays a 10% penalty until their products comply with open standards. That would be billions of dollars to Open Source to compensate for an unlevel playing field until it is leveled. All the policy guidelines for governments are worth reading. This looks like a workable plan from a credible group." Reader johndiii clarifies: "From what I have been able to see, the strategy document is 'proposed,' not 'recently passed,' and is not yet official policy of the South African government."

Comments

Re:That's great!

[deadsaijinx*]

ehhh, that's why you have two nuts

Are half the people on slashdot stupid?

[rzbx]

I keep reading posts on this being a bad idea because it goes against a free market. Or that it prevents competition. OPEN STANDARDS help keep competition. Microsoft has been killing competition by closing formats and such. This will simply cause companies like Microsoft to pay for their anti-competitive practices. Thus, it will increase open standards in government and create more competition. It is bad enough many slashdotters don't read the articles, but not reading and understanding the summary post and making an ignorant comment about it, that just pisses me off.