|| On Wed, 19 Jul 2006 22:31:15 +0200 || Jeroen Dekkers jeroen@vrijschrift.org wrote:
jd> An Open Standard isn't an oxymoron IHMO. You've got proprietary jd> standards like MP3 and de facto standards like MS Word.
You're missing my point, I think.
I know that these are referred to as standards by their vendors, but ultimately what makes a standard a standard? To me it is the availability for everyone to work and interoperate on the basis of that standard independent of their competitors.
So even though people like to speak about "proprietary standards" or "de-facto standards" for marketing purposes, I don't consider them standards, at all.
In fact I would encourage everyone to speak about "proprietary formats" and/or "proprietary interfaces" in such cases.
Regards, Georg