Published May 2nd, 2003 by Jim O'Halloran
Open Source and Open Standards
ONLamp looks at Open Source and Open Standards.
Thus closed formats and protocols are not necessarily the death knell for open source. Unfortunately, they do quite effectively limit implementations to mimicking the original (which is one of the common criticisms of open source). So open formats and protocols do matter.
I’ve been preaching the use of open standards for a while now. Open Source is cool because it usually delivers better products, but the availability of the source code is secondary to me. What I really want is for it to work with the stuff (apps, servers, etc) I already have, and thats where Open Standards come into play.