Hi,
This month's FSFE newsletter has an interesting tidbit about "exit cost"
that I hadn't heard elsewhere.
http://mail.fsfeurope.org/pipermail/newsletter-en/2012/000027.html
Besides these important steps at the local level, last month the UK
government has released a new Open Standards policy. In future all
UK Government bodies must comply with the Open Standards Principles
or apply for an exemption. FSFE welcomed this step[2], and
particularly its strong Open Standards definition. It also includes
┌ another long-standing FSFE demand: to take into account the software
│ exit costs. From now on, when UK government bodies buy a software
│ solution, they have to consider in the price a calculation of what
└ it will cost them to get out of this solution, in the future. This
means that government bodies could not simply avoid buying Free
Software solutions because they are locked into one particular
vendor's proprietary file formats. FSFE president Karsten Gerloff
analysed the new policy in detail[3].
2. http://fsfe.org/news/2012/news-20121101-02.en.html
3.
http://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/2012/11/01/the-uks-new-open-standards-policy/
Cheers, Ralph.
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