Hi Michael, On Fri, Jul 13, 2007 at 11:03:31AM +0100, Michael Meeks wrote: > AFAICS - Standards may be open or closed, but Free software will > eventually support them all.
I think this is naïve since even though they may be eventually supported, they might not be used at all in business due to software patents (example: Red Hat and Red Hat derivatives like Fedora do not support MP3 and other interesting things that are otherwise very well supported but quite problematic in the US and other countries RH operates) > From my (no doubt highly > not-thought-through) viewpoint: Open Standards, is just a game that big > companies play so their proprietary software can compete & with which > they bludgeon each other in public. It also seems to be a game that > Microsoft knows how to play. Here in Portugal, in the OOXML fake-standard debate, the position of Free Softwar activists has been that it's impossible to fully implement, or might even be downright illegal to do it independently, closed formats. True standards can't rely on hidden information (with special agreements that need to be signed with Microsoft for certain parts of OOXML, as has been found in a document Microsoft was forced to disclose in Spain). If you want Free Software to be usable by business (big and small alike), then you can't have legally dubious portions, or you risk losing it all big time. Rui -- Hail Eris, Hack Linux! Today is Prickle-Prickle, the 48th day of Confusion in the YOLD 3173 + No matter how much you do, you never do enough -- unknown + Whatever you do will be insignificant, | but it is very important that you do it -- Gandhi + So let's do it...? _______________________________________________ foundation-list mailing list foundation-list@gnome.org http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-list