Explaining Open Standards email attachements

[Matthias Kirschner]

* David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> [2010-04-06 11:52:21 +0100]:

> On 6 April 2010 10:36, Matthias Kirschner <mk at fsfe.org> wrote:
> > * Sam Liddicott <sam at liddicott.com> [2010-04-05 17:55:40 +0100]:
> 
> >> Widespread standards IS interoperability. Open standards merely
> >> potentially supports interoperability - as the standard becomes
> >> widespread. There are enough proprietary widespread standards, or
> >> you wouldn't have had to write your document in the first place, I
> >> think?
> 
> > Do you have five examples of widespread _standards_ which are not Open
> > Standards?
> 
> Microsoft Word .DOC . So many people, places and businesses accept
> them by default and often refuse to accept anything else. It's only in
> the past few years that I've seen even computing recruiters accept
> PDF, for instance.

That's a nice example. In that case widespread standards are not
interoperability but monopoly.

Best wishes,
Matthias

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