Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on May 08, 2002 11:26 PM
In case you were responding to my response and not the parent of this thread...I was using free in RMS's sense of the word. This does bring up a point, however.
With Open Source/Free Software, there are almost always no-cost software implementations of whatever open data formats the community comes up with. On the other hand, no-cost implentations of proprietary data formats are usually non-existant. (Depending, of course, the companies attitude toward it's customers and the communities desire to do the reverse-engineering.)
All this adds up to a double benefit for the use of Open Source for the public sector. In addition to the technological benefits, Open Source lowers the barriers to entry for those wishing to interface with public systems.
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Re:The Peruvian bill, OT
Posted by: Anonymous Coward on May 08, 2002 11:26 PMWith Open Source/Free Software, there are almost always no-cost software implementations of whatever open data formats the community comes up with. On the other hand, no-cost implentations of proprietary data formats are usually non-existant. (Depending, of course, the companies attitude toward it's customers and the communities desire to do the reverse-engineering.)
All this adds up to a double benefit for the use of Open Source for the public sector. In addition to the technological benefits, Open Source lowers the barriers to entry for those wishing to interface with public systems.
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