Open Source and Open Standards under Threat in Europe

http://www.computerworlduk.com/community/blogs/index.cfm?entryid=2878&blogid=14

Open source is under attack in Europe. Not openly or obviously, but in the background, behind closed doors. The battleground is the imminent Digital Agenda for Europe, due to be unveiled by the European Commission in a month's time, and which defines the overall framework for Europe's digital policy. According to people with good contacts to the politicians and bureaucrats drawing up the Agenda, Microsoft is lobbying hard to ensure that open standards and open source are excluded from that policy - and is on the brink of succeeding in that aim.

Doesn't look good at all

 

What isn't under attack in Europe? There's a hell of a lot more that will affect you personally under attack in Europe to be worrying about open source. Worry about your rights first, THEN your software. On topic, why on earth would the European Commission be listening to anything Microsoft had to say? Have they already forgotten the whole "You're a monopoly and we're going to set you straight" thing they went through for YEARS, collecting fine after fine and then forcing Microsoft to do the ballot nonsense?

 

Old news:

http://www.h-online.com/open/news/i...n-of-open-standards-within-the-EU-854651.html

 

The funny thing is that some people get the idea that all of us Linux enthusiasts are communists looking to destroy all free enterprise. As this story proves, the ones that want to destroy your freedom are the mega-corporations like M$. Us open-source peeps don't want to destroy the competition (as M$ does), but merely want people to have a choice between evil corporation X and alternatives.

 

Its quite wrong, Linux actually is spawning small software houses and enterprises due to its open and free or low cost development tools. Its about spreading the wealth to all and just not one big behemoth. Anyways, the writing is on the wall, the big three bases of Linux would be China, India and Africa and then it would be in everyone's interest to cooperate instead of resorting to these silly tactics.

 

Just remember open standards, though strongly embrased by the open source community is not excluse to open source.

I find it ammusing that Microsoft is lobbying this, a company that readily uses open standards themselves (everything from TCP/IP to CD-ROM standards), yet will lobby against open standards that compete against their own products based on closed standards.
Even worse is that they allow C# to be an open standard, but then patent important parts which makes it illlegal to fully implement the language freely (This is one of the reasons for the Novell- Microsoft patent agreement, allowing development of Mono).

I suspect the choices of when they choose to embrase open [source|standards] and when to fight against are profit driven.

 

Don't forget who is behind SCO in the SCO versus Novell drama, its good old MS.

 

Atleast that ones settled

 

Hopefully for now, knock on wood and fingers crossed. Need to find some sort of antidote for all the witchcraft coming out of MS lately.

 

I can understand Microsoft to be honest. I don't consider corporations "evil", but a necessary part of an economy. Microsoft SHOULD be allowed to make as much money as they can. However, what they are failing to realize or choosing to ignore, is that competition is beneficial for both corporations and us little folk. Competition, if you're any sort of decent business, forces you to not twiddle your thumbs and "get comfortable". To stay ahead or at least keep pace, you must think outside the box, control your pricing, even give slightly more for slightly less.

Open source doesn't equal free 100% of the time, there are paid open source programs out there. With open source, you often have the benefit of keeping your product more secure, which is incredibly important now. I wonder what a world with open source Windows would have been like. Would we have needed a "Patch Tuesday"? Would we have needed a Service Pack every few months? I'd like to think none of that would have been necessary.

 

Sadly some if not all folks relate open source and Linux users to bunch of pinko commies who need to be obliterated for the good of the free world and capitalism unfortunately.

 

If they are obliterated, it wouldn't be such a "free world", now would it?

 

Sadly the word free world today is the most misquoted, abused, misnomer around.