At Wed, 19 Jul 2006 20:25:52 +0200, Patrick Ohnewein wrote:
Today everybody is talking about "Open Standard", IBM, Microsoft, etc. This results in an awareness about Open Standards in decision makers of the PA and the economy.
It will be difficult to propagate the term of "Free Standard" against the PR departments of IBM and Co. pushing the term of "Open Standard".
Even being it difficult it is worst trying, but maybe it would be wiser to try to create an official and widely accepted definition of "Open Standard", which matches our views of "Free Standard". This would mean, that PR departments of IBM and Co. will work for the propagation of "Free Standard".
I don't think that this is a valid argument. It is fairly difficult to propagate the term "Free Software" as well. Everything is plagued by "Open Source", including the companies you refer to. It doesn't mean that we should give up because PR departments, large/small companies, journalists, and unfortunately, Free Software developers, use the wrong term.
So, even if it would be difficult to propagate a new term, I think it's worth the effort.