summary of Re: Beyond 'open standard'

[Yavor Doganov]

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.

-- 
In the GNU Project, discrimination against proprietary software is not
just a policy -- it's the principle and the purpose.  Proprietary
software is fundamentally unjust and wrong, so when we have the
opportunity to place it at a disadvantage, that is a good thing. --RMS