Globe & Mail article on FOSS use by Cdn gov't

[Robert P. J. Day]

On Sat, 20 Jun 2009, Darryl Moore wrote:

> Evan Leibovitch wrote:
>
> http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/technology/time-for-canadas-government-
>       to-open-up/article1185932/
>
> Excellent article Even. Thanks. You are most definitely right about
> the potential of government contracts for custom software. Does your
> definition of inertia in the article, (and this list previously)
> include the cost of vendor lock in? That is a pretty big hurdle to
> change for larger companies

  i just skimmed that article, and it didn't seem to mention the value
of open *data formats* as well.  i think that's at least as important
as the open source concept.  most of the time i see a mention of open
formats, it's tacked on as a brief aside, but it would be nice to have
an entire article on that, explaining that vendor "lock-in" applies to
keeping your valuable company data in a proprietary format, such as
Word.

  i can even see the title of that piece:  "Why, yes, Microsoft *does*
own all of your company data.  Why do you ask?"  or something like
that.

rday
--

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Robert P. J. Day                               Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA

        Linux Consulting, Training and Annoying Kernel Pedantry.

Web page:                                          http://crashcourse.ca
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