Make your voice heard in the open standards debate

If you’re a keen follower of all things open source, you might already know about the UK Government’s consultation on open software standards. In short, the Government wants to reduce its IT costs and improve interoperability across all its departments and agencies; sensible aims, indeed. It is therefore considering making the adoption of open standards mandatory.

This represents a tremendous opportunity for open-source suppliers and any software vendor who builds to open standards because, in effect, it enables competition on a level playing field with some of the industry’s biggest players. There are large corporations with plenty to lose, however. So it’s no surprise that some parties are already lobbying against the proposal.

As a company with a long commitment to open-source and open standards, Canonical is actively engaging in the debate. We are preparing a formal response to the consultation and we will be at the round table discussion in London on 27th April.
This consultation is a public process in which anyone can get involved. If you’re interested in its outcome, whether from a business or philosophical standpoint, I urge you to go to consultation.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/openstandards and make your case before the consultation closes, on 3rd May 2012. We certainly will.