International Call for Open Standards

tengu1sd writes "The New York Times is carrying a report urging nations to adopt open-information technology standards as 'a vital step to accelerate economic growth, efficiency and innovation'. Sponsored by The Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard, it also points out that 'open technology standards - the digital equivalent of a common gauge for railroad tracks - are not the same thing as open-source software. Open source is a development model for software in which code is freely shared and improved by a cooperative network of programmers'. This leaves room for companies willing to accept standards, but closes the door to companies unwilling to play nice."

Comments

Re:Standards just wont happen

[cyborg_zx]

But standards *do* happen. There are just too many areas in life that would become totally inoperable if everyone did things differently. Like driving for example. But then having a standard doesn't necessarially mean 'everyone is uniform' - in this context it usually just means everyone can understand the interface or specification for your standard without needing the use of dowsing, divine revelation, mediums or perhaps reverse engineering to work with that interface of specification.