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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."
Q. What's the difference between a proprietary format that everyone uses and an 'open' standard that very few people use?
A. The open standard is useless.
Q. What do you call a proprietary format that is well understood and widely used by the computer-using community and which is unencumbered by fees or intellectual property claims?
A. I call it an 'open' standard.
Argue all you want, but the 'propriety' format which is unencumbered, well understood, and in wide adoption is going to be more 'open' than an unused 'open' standard. It will be more 'open' because I can write a program that I know will be able to communicate with the rest of the world. _That_ is the goal of open standards and _that_ is very often achieved with 'proprietary' standards that gain wide adoption.
tw