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EU Calls For Use of Open Standards
fondacio writes "In a speech that is being reported as taking a swipe at Microsoft, EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes has called for businesses and governments to use software based on open standards. While not mentioning Microsoft by name, Ms. Kroes referred to the fact that '[t]he [European] Commission has never before had to issue two periodic penalty payments in a competition case' until this befell Microsoft. The things she told a conference in Brussels will not come as a surprise to Slashdot readers, but it's encouraging to hear the following quotes from someone in her position: 'Where interoperability information is protected as a trade secret, there may be a lot of truth in the saying that the information is valuable because it is secret, rather than being secret because it is valuable... we should only standardize when there are demonstrable benefits, and we should not rush to standardize on a particular technology too early... I fail to see the interest of customers in including proprietary technology in standards when there are no clear and demonstrable benefits over non-proprietary alternatives.'"
Off-topic and no offense, but why did you repost one of the links in the summary?
I'm not sure how Microsoft is destroying peoples' careers. I mean, I'm a .Net developer and get offers for Java, C++, etc positions, so I can't imagine how Microsoft could kill someones' career unless they do not keep up with the latest technologies.
Advertisements aren't squandering money either. It one way you generate public knowledge and interest in your product, which translates into sales. And I'm not sure that I'd put advertising in the same breath as corruption unless your advertisement strategy is unethical.
And he probably got confused, he posted the same thing to a Firehose submission and didn't read the one that actually made it to the front page.
When you're in a desperate rush to stock up on karma and shill your own posts you tend to make those mistakes, I guess.
Web2.0: I love when people Flickr my cuil and digg my boingboing until my google is reddit and I start to yahoo
Europe is not a single country, my friend. A lot of countries allow "hate speech" to an extend. Here in Denmark for instance, any kind of organisation, except if they publicly encourage to violence. Which makes perfect sense to me.
The strict gun-control is just something people want. So that is not stupid at all. Different laws for different people.
The ISP case was not a European event either, it was a national event. And censorship is a lot lessen in Europe than it in most of the world, including the US. At least in the Nordic countries.
However, I agree, Europe may have done some stupid things, but those are not those.
Clicked pie.
>Europe does a lot of stupid things
Europe does not do a shit, it is a geographical region. European union does do things, it is a political entity.
Say: It was a real blow with a diplomatic Commissioner who did not mention the elephant in the room. The European political class is pissed by Microsoft's lobbying against open standards and interoperability, its software patents agitation, the OOXML debacle and its disobedient treatment of the Commission. Microsoft has public affairs problems in different parts of the Commission. Lobbying for Microsoft is generally perceived as working for Tobacco lobby groups.
a) Nelly indirectly endorsed the OFE Open Parliament petition and the Hague Declaration.
b) Nelly spoke of proprietary vs. non-proprietary standards, a terminology not used by the Commission before.
c) Nelly recommended Munich and the Netherlands as best practice. There is much to learn from other public bodies such as Munich - and I am delighted to have the Mayor of Munich here this morning to tell us about his experience. But Munich is not alone: there is also the German Foreign Ministry [switched to Linux and open standards], and the French Gendarmerie. The Dutch Government and Parliament are also moving towards open standards. d) Munich's Mayor Christian Ude took the floor and explicitely condemned OOXML after her speech and spoke of the 'free software' used in his municipality. Original reason: no extended support for Win NT 4
e) Ditmar Harhoff, an economist, called for patent reform. Europe would be well advised not to follow the US
g) Graham Tailor from Open Forum put emphasis on the Freedom to Leave.
From the speech of the Commissioner: The Commission must do its part. It must not rely on one vendor, it must not accept closed standards, and it must refuse to become locked into a particular technology â" jeopardizing maintenance of full control over the information in its possession.
This view is born from a hard headed understanding of how markets work â" it is not a call for revolution, but for an intelligent and achievable evolution.
But there is more to this than ensuring our commercial decisions are taken in full knowledge of their long term effects. There is a democratic issue as well.
When open alternatives are available, no citizen or company should be forced or encouraged to use a particular company's technology to access government information.
No citizen or company should be forced or encouraged to choose a closed technology over an open one, through a government having made that choice first.
These democratic principles are important. And an argument is particularly compelling when it is supported both by democratic principles and by sound economics.
I know a smart business decision when I see one - choosing open standards is a very smart business decision indeed. and: Non-proprietary standards avoid the need for licence agreements and royalties. They avoid the need to ask permission if you want to use or develop the technology â" follow-on innovation may be easier. They avoid subjecting the future development of the standard and the technology to the commercial interests of the technology's originator.
Switzerland is not part of the European Union.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
"OSS people need only make the 90% solution, because that "90% @ free" is better than "100% @ big_money" according to many many people.When people realize that one doent need a 200$ operating system to take care of most tasks, they will switch. Acer, Dell, IBM, Asus, and the rest of the gang will make sure of that."
From my experience, it is a sad fact that people won't realise this - however much you try to suggest that there's no point paying £200 for an office suite when they only use the bits that come in the free one.
I use OpenOffice entirely, whereas the majority of everyone I know insist that they "need" MS Office. So I will try to say to them that for schoolwork/writing letters, OO.o has everything they need, but without the price tag. I will then go on to say that it can save the MSOffice formats, so there won't be any compatibility issues, and that there's barely any difference in the interface, so it's not like they've got to learn a new piece of software. yet somehow, they still end up spending £200 on MSOffice.
However, what is more interesting is that people will tend to try firefox over internet explorer, despite IE being free.
So maybe people do value that 10% they pay £200 for, even if they don't use it. Or do people just distrust free software, having had bad experiences of malware. Or is it just a large case of corporate brainwashing?
What about japan? They have extremely strict gun laws, as far as i remember, and very low rates of violent crime compared to other countries.
It's still gaining market share, therefore the OS is not dead.
You are still misunderstanding. No one said OSX is dead. MacOS died at version 9, and OSX replaced it. OSX is a *NIX based operating system. Thus the statement that only UNIX and Windows remain.Hopefully that is straight forward enough. OSX is a Unix varient, and very much alive.