Comment Blackout for Hungary (Score 1) 185
Comment Dear Hu Jintao (Score 1) 185
Comment If the answer is 0101010 what is the question (Score 1) 296
Comment Re:..the language (Score 1) 163
Comment Re:Open is fundamentally more productive than clos (Score 1) 163
Comment Re:A monopoly is a monopoly (Score 1) 163
A monopoly is a unfair advantage in the marketplace. A standard is an agreed-upon way to do a given thing. If all the players agree on how things will be done -- assuming they can act on those standards -- that *reduces* the likelihood of monopolies occurring, because the playing field is leveled.
Our problem is that all we had was a set of mandatory standards set by exclusively the government (not by a public process), and later we succeeded guarantee by law that these standards will and remain to be open: you can use them free from any restrictions and royalty.
"our organisation managed to put through an ammendment to the electronic public
services law. The strategy was to avoid obvious confrontation, instead of open
standards the phrase "public benefit" was used. unfortunately some important
aspects (like democratic creation and maintainance) were lost in translation.
Anyhow this is a win, that all electronic interfaces to the public utilities
will be freely and gratis accessible even by libre 3rd party tools. huzzah!
Comment Re:What do -I- Think? (Score 1) 163
Comment Re:What do -I- Think? (Score 1) 163
Comment Re:Open is fundamentally more productive than clos (Score 1) 163
Comment Re:Better translation or summary? (Score 2, Informative) 163