Open standards 'essential to Europe's IT future'

It's far more than the IT sector, the entire EU economy benefits from open standards.

Why focus on just the IT sector? It's fun, but it's small. Let's bring this into perspective. There rest of the economy, despite being outside the IT sector, is nonetheless fully dependent on software and data standards.

So the corrected statement should be,
"we propose that our European partners adopt the principle of interoperability as regards data processing, to guarantee the development — even, in certain sectors, the survival — of European industry."

it's ( standardisation and organisations)

http://philipdavidson.blogspot.com/

Dare I say: "essential to Europe's future is not to be governed or controled by any outside entity which likely has its own (hidden) agenda to meet"?

On paper the European Union might be the largest economic consumer force currently. But on the outside it certainly doesn't look that way. Looks more like apples ready for the taking. Keep that attitude up for a couple of more years and then it certainly will be reality. And most likely stay that way because others will have learned from our mistakes by then and thus will not be likely to repeat them.

"Given how much energy it takes to become, be and stay the underdog one has to wonder what kind of (brain) power is required to transform such vast amounts of energy into so much waste."

Something doesn't add up here. It's almost as if we want to. Or wants us to.

We've been here many times before X/Open OSI POSIX X400 Open group, the list goes on.

Proprietary suppliers such as Microsoft then decide which of these standards they accept and which they deem inappropriate because they wish to impose their own a de facto standard. Even when they appear to accept a standard they, over time, often impose a prorietary superset of features -for the benefit of its own customers.

When government's or companies take on open standards they always face an ongoing campaign against such decisions because they take business away from those suppliers offering a proprietary solution. they claim open standards "restrict choice" or "impose the lowest common denominator" "fail to move with technological developments" or "are less secure" etc.

When IBM was deemed to be a monopolist their loby against open standards was not aimed at the techical team of companies or govenment but at the managemnet. The phrase used to be, "dare you rrisk your company by not buying IBM". Microsoft seem to sell the same sort of message to the same sort of people.

Long term it does not matter that technical staff believe in open standards. They will only happen when non technical business managers understand their benefits or see through the snake oil salespersons.