Open Source? Open Standards!
Posted on December 6, 2006 • 1 min read • 175 wordsThe following article appeared on nu.nl
“Eight major municipalities are jointly opposing the dominance of Microsoft software on their employees’ computers. They hope to persuade the companies they do business with in IT, automation companies like Centric and Getronics PinkRoccade, to support alternatives that are often much cheaper.”
As is often the case, I get the feeling that the people who wrote this article don’t really understand what they are talking about. Is it about Open Source (access to the source code of software) or Open Standards (WWW, LDAP, SMTP, etc.).
The big difference is that Open Standards do not necessarily require Open Source, as we see, for example, with the use of web browsers (www) and email (pop3/smtp). Open Source, like all other software, requires Open Standards.
In my view, the use of open standards is more important than open source. I would rather be able to exchange files between Microsoft Office and OpenOffice than be able to recompile Microsoft Office.
Of course, I do support Open Source, but that’s for a next item.