Why Open Standards Matter

Tina Gasperson over at Newsforge (Also owned by VA Software) has an interesting writeup about her experience at the Government Day sub-conference at LinuxWorld Boston. Government Day addressed some interesting issues including some of the more tangible reasons behind supporting open standards. From the article: "Speaking to the audience of government workers, Villa said, 'Maybe 2006 is not the year that Linux ends up on your desktops.' But, he encouraged them, if they begin using software that supports open standards now, such as Firefox and OpenOffice.org, then when Linux is ready it will be that much easier to make a switch. 'And maybe you'll decide not to make that switch,' Villa said. 'But at least the choice will be yours.'"

Comments

author mistaken?

[phreakv6]

Has the author mistaken Open standards to Open source ?
We use Open standards very much in our everyday life dont
we?
HTML, TCP/IP, GSM, PCI , XMPP ( jabber, google talk ).. etc. etc.

Re:author mistaken?

[Fanboy Troy]

HTML, TCP/IP, GSM, PCI , XMPP ( jabber, google talk ).. etc. etc.

We use Open standards very much in our everyday life dont we?

Word, ppt, excel, smb, quicken, asf, wmv


Even more interesting: compare which of the above said standards actually fostered growth in technology and paved new ways of doing business:

The first set brought everyone the web, the internet, mobile phones, a plethora of choices for expansion cards, etc... all going down price-wise. Alot of opportunities of doing business also.

The second ones, well... made us have to pick certain platforms/vendors to be relevant... I don't know about everyone else, but over here the price of windows or Office is not going down! Magic food indeed.

Re:Getting the point across

[arendjr]

A very good illustration was made by David Wheeler at LinuxWorld about the importance of open standards, and it's probably even easier to understand for non-techies:

[...] He went on to show the audience, through another word picture describing a 1904 fire in Baltimore, how open standards can prevent unhealthy dependence on one vendor. "Firefighters were called in from all the surrounding states," Wheeler said. "But all they could do was stand and watch the building burn, because their firehoses would not fit on the fire hydrants." A standard fire hose coupler could have prevented much of the destruction. [...]

Open Standards

[dueyfinster]

My uncle is so non-technical, he struggles to play solitare, but I managed to get Ubuntu on to his machine, and he uses it occassionly..........for solitare.......ah well Anyway moral of the story is that I explained Open Source to him using his work: "Hey Tommy I want to tell you about Open Source, Ubuntu and why Microsoft is wrong" First I told him about Mass. Debacle.......he started to lose interest...... Then I started "Think of it as fittings, what if everyone used different ones, it would be impossible to have the right tool (He is a welder/fitter)" Then he totally got it, and went on ranting about how Americans don't use the biggest standard of them all (Metric System, that is) and why Microsoft are no differet......