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On Saturday 30 May 2009 16:51, Henry Bremridge wrote: > On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 02:08:18PM +0100, Adrian Midgley wrote: > > This week the economist says the argument is won. > > Link did not come through: > > http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13740181&source= >hptextfeature > > (Access is free) > > Extract: > > “FIRST they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, > then you win.” Mahatma Gandhi probably never said these words, despite > claims to the contrary, but they perfectly describe the progress of > open-source software over the past 15 years or so. Such software, the > underlying recipe for which is created by volunteers and distributed > free online, was initially dismissed as the plaything of nerdy > hobbyists. Big software firms derided the idea that anyone would put > their trust in free software written by mysterious online collectives. > Was it really secure? Whom would you call if it went wrong? One thing the article tends to skim over is the interchange standards - they are absolutely necessary, very simple to define - a total nightmare to get agreed. MS and several others will fight their last fight to prevent any standards for interchange to be defined. With these standards we will be able to things we used to do before MS and XML came along - half the staff in companies will dissapear as my pc will talk to your pc and no need for people to compose documents to send to others to print out read and type in! ISO will be a bloodbath.... Tom te tom te tom -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html