Submission + - EU calls for use of open standards
fondacio writes: In a speech that has been reported as taking a swipe at Microsoft, European Union Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes has called for businesses and governments to use software based on open standards. While not mentioning Microsoft by name, Ms Kroes referred to the fact that "[t]he [European] Commission has never before had to issue two periodic
penalty payments in a competition case" until this happened to Microsoft, and also referred to other pending cases. Most of the things she told a conference in Brussels will not come as a surprise to Slashdot readers, but it may be considered encouraging to hear the following quotes from someone in her position:
"Where interoperability information is protected as a trade secret, there may be a lot
of truth in the saying that the information is valuable because it is secret, rather than being secret because it is valuable. [...] we should only standardise when there are demonstrable benefits, and we should not rush to standardise on a particular technology too early. [...] I fail to see the interest of customers in including proprietary technology in standards when there are no clear and demonstrable benefits over non-proprietary alternatives. [...] standardisation agreements should be based on the merits of the
technologies involved. Allowing companies to sit around a table and agree technical developments for their industry is not something that the competition rules would usually allow. So when it is allowed we have to look carefully at how it is done."
Ms Kroes also mentions the criticism of software patents, and the company she does mention by name is Apple. Her speech can be found here in the open PDF and HTML formats and the proprietary Word format.
