EU Commissioner Kroes articulates benefits of open source and open standards

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European Commission

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In a well done video, released in mid-December, Neelie Kroes, the European Commission’s Vice President for the Digital Agenda, articulates the benefits of open source software and open standards.

Her remarks are especially potent, given not only her leadership in her current role, but having also served as Commissioner in charge of EU competition/antitrust policy where she oversaw the European Union Microsoft competition case.

In her remarks, she identifies the downside of relying on proprietary standards, which cost the European economy "several hundred million Euros per year" and damages competition.

In recognizing that "collaborative software is delivering software that is best in class," Commissioner Kroes says that the Commission is increasingly relying on open source through its research program, preparing guidelines to help public bodies better use open standards when procuring their ICT, and building a portal for open data based entirely on open source solutions.

Well worth taking the time to listen to Commissioner Kroes and commending her leadership on this front.

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Mark Bohannon | Mark Bohannon is Vice President of Global Public Policy and Government Affairs at Red Hat. Previously, he served as Senior Vice President, Public Policy and General Counsel at the Software & Information Industry Association (SIIA), the principal U.S. trade association for the software and digital content industry.

2 Comments

it is nice to see this!
instead of a press statement, of which you can always think of, as written by some secretary, which got an order from her boss to write something to please some open source nerds or whatever ...
this is something more real and tangible.
it shows someone with a title that at least sounds important to a layman like me, taking time to sit before a camera, and most likely also take part in the process of forming the speech.

Microsoft seems to try over and over again to control the use of indivisual computers. Linux gives us an unencomebered system to use. Free to use and free to change. Documentation is availble for free, updates are given in a timeley fashion. The few times that I use Microsoft at home almost seems painful to me. The opertunities of learning is overwhelming and the government in the United States doesn't have a clue how important open source is in keeping our country competitive. eyeMdone

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