The Social and Political Implications of Open Standards

Laura DeNardis, Visiting Fellow in the Information Society Project at Yale Law School explores the ability of Open Standards to promote the public interest at the UN Internet Governance Forum in Athens Greece during the Open Standards Workshop.

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News & Politics

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• Open
• Standards
• A2K
• Access
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• Knowledge
• Yale
• Law
• School

[schestowitz]

DirectX was done as a response to OpenGL because OpenGL facilitates competition (cross-platform). Microsoft doesn't like competition, so it made ActiveX, DirectX, OOXML, and lots of other anti-standards weapons.

[pelicanghost]

I thought KnightChatX was saying that DirectX was open, apparently he was talking about his experience.

[KnightChatX]

I've never known anything of Microsoft that was released to be closed source accept for things people make they wish to define as source code being closed. All the programming information and usage is free. As far as I'm aware the source code has always been free. The technologies are all free for use yes, as is the information on them. They just haven't had information on their premium products released or groups setup like with Mozilla.

[ingotian]

Its proprietary to MS. Why do you ask?

[pelicanghost]

Isn't DirectX close source?

[ingotian]

Open standards are important for democracies to prevent too much power being transferred to individuals or companies at the expense of the rest of society.

[KnightChatX]

In programming, technologies like OpenGL, OpenAL, DirectX, aid in multimedia, communications, game developers use these standards for instance to provide input for various computer devices, and audio/video output. Standards to make life easier for productfulness is a good thought.