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☞ Regulate?

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1. 

   R. Hamilton, on July 21, 2010 at 01:38 said:

   “while the page is overwhelmingly about open source they still feel compelled to mention open standards”

   Of course. While they’ve attained (or bought)
   prominent or lead involvement with a number of
   open source projects, the Oracle database itself
   is not open. Thus, it can only interoperate with other
   open source projects via open standards. In other words,
   the big cash cow uses open standards as a way of
   associating itself with open source for marketing purposes,
   without itself being open.

   That’s one view. Mine is closer to this: I value both
   open source and open standards, but if I had to choose
   one, it would be open standards (truly open, so that
   anyone can implement them without having to pay
   royalties, and so that embrace and extend strategies
   that exclude other players from key roles are not
   permitted while still claiming compliance).

   In the end, I want my documents, photos, and other
   media to just work with whatever application I choose,
   and to pick the application based on features,
   platform support, cost, etc. Open standards make
   that possible. Open source does too; but all too often,
   it fails to meet the discipline of separating specification
   from implementation. That leads to situations where
   one has to use the same code or at least read the
   code to interoperate, and it often leads to poorly
   designed formats and protocols.

   Too much open source, especially that which was
   originally the product of a single person, or that
   which began as an open project but with mostly
   self-taught designers, lacks the rigorous discipline
   in its design that would have avoided common errors,
   allowed for more precise documentation, and
   provided for balancing future growth and backwards
   compatibility in a rational manner.

   Prominent open source projects can certainly
   participate in open standards. They would do
   well not to ignore them, where applicable. Ad hoc
   standards just aren’t the same, lacking not only
   design and diversity of interests, but are all too often
   associated with the arrogance of early success.

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