Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
Neelie Kroes rules. She makes me proud to be Dutch. That does not happen too often. Soccer be damned.
Europe does a lot of stupid things, but it also does some amazingly brilliant things. This speech is brilliant, let's hope the follow-up isn't stupid. It's definitely a jab at Microsoft, but it's also a jab at ISO in the comments about not rushing things. I think Europe is most displeased with what is going on, or at least some senior figures within it. This does need to translate to action. Possibly on more than one front. If the European Courts are presented with evidence that Microsoft hijacked the ISO standards procedure in an effort to "comply" with prior rulings in a dishonest way, I imagine the court would not be pleased. Could it be considered contempt of court to attempt to mislead the court over compliance? Does the EU court system even have such a concept? If not, can/will the judges increase the fines to reflect the seriousness of the situation? Or given Microsoft's continual appeals and non-payment, are there any other penalties they can exact, such as suspending the business license for Microsoft's European branch?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
No one likes corruption and everyone is fed up with Microsoft. Kroes has done a fine job of expressing some of the world's contempt, but anywhere there's technical competence people are angry about the ISO hijack. South African, Brazilian and Indonesian citizens have all piped up. World wide corruption has produced world wide derision which will be followed by rejection.
should Microsoft decide to step straight into the fist as it's flying, that's their right. but then don't come whining about being decked by a girl.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Unix and C has been with us since the beginning. Anybody who didnt realize that fact shouldn't be in computers, period.
C will cannibalize any prior language on any platform (from stamps to supers). After that, Unix will not be long to follow, due to simple methods of controlling hardware/software.
Also, the MacOS is dead. Dead through and through. Unix and Windows are the only 2 choices. Just so happens that a company used the FreeBSD base and added a snazzy GUI.
Even since that, guess what is next to die? Microsoft. Why? 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.
Simple...
It's no longer possible to write a commercial desktop or server OS and expect to turn a profit from it... BeOS was great, but it wasn't compatible with microsoft and ultimately doomed.
Open source is barely competing, despite the obvious price advantage.
Similarly, you can't write a commercial office suite, just look at wordperfect, once the dominant player, now pretty screwed...
Novell faced a similar fate...
It's come to the stage that commercial competition with microsoft simply isn't viable... The only way to compete is very slowly through open source, leveraging the lack of cost and advantages of distributed development. Even then, the process of winning market share over from microsoft is far too slow to make a business selling competing software.
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The statement about monetary incentives is wrong because what the Commission just expects compliance with its rulings. Usually companies do comply. The competition authority acts similarly to a court. Competitors file a complaint, then the Commission rules, then the convicted monopolist complies. This is the way is works. Microsoft broken the rules and refused to comply, it delayed the process, bullied the Commission, lobbied aggressively, even let foreign nations intervene on their behalf.
The penalties are just for non-compliance, the difficulties of the myriads of Microsoft lobby outfits to "understand" what the Commission wants. When Microsoft sued the Commission it won just another enemy. Microsoft acted like a bully, bought politicians, harassed the Commission. This made so many people fed up. Parliament members file parliament questions on Microsoft. Lobbying for Microsoft got a pretty bad smell if you care about your career in public affairs.
Actually this doesn't matter at all as the ministries as users are irrelevant.
http://www.ososs.nl/noiv/en
The Netherlands will create a governmental lobby platform.
It is all about the domino effect, Microsoft is very afraid of it. The critical mass to get a massive shift. Microsoft will combat it and further worsen its position.
OSX is not an operating system, it's a whole heap of (very well done) toolkits and apps bundled with a *nix operating system.
Read your Tanenbaum son.
I take issue with:
1. Equating Stallman's fanaticism for free software, with the popular view of religious fanaticism is nothing but trolling. He isn't violent and he doesn't threaten bombings or beheading.
2. Fanaticism in the sense that Stallman portrays it is a good thing.
3. Demonstrably some people disagree with 'fanaticism is never good'. The fanatics quite like the idea for a start. Non-violent fanatics are a good thing, if only to remind us where we could do better/go further toward a goal.
Alex.