A link posted on Digg highlighted a current national consultation by the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) Trust asking about their soon to be launched online on-demand TV services. One of the key questions in this consultation asks if they should use proprietary Microsoft technology to show these programs or other more open technologies.

Fill in the form and encourage open standards!!

I recently read an article by John Knight in which he slates piracy as a major factor for the poor performance of open source software. Personally – I couldn’t disagree more. Open source can not blame its poor performance on piracy and when it does I feel its nothing more than a scape goat for poor quality. If the ONLY ’selling’ point of a piece of open source software is the fact its free – then it needs to take a long look at its self and say whether its even worth the time it takes to install.

There are many open source projects out there that compete with their paid-for or even mutually free counterparts based on their merits alone – rather than their price tag.

Ubuntu & Mepis – Ease of use, speed, excellent package management, configurability.
Firefox – Fast, slick, extendable, great compatibility & standards support.

Just two examples of free & open source software that manage to take on their proprietary cousins.

John uses Open Office as one of his examples in the piece and I can’t help but feel he’s chosen a perfect one to make my point. Open Office is great – if you aren’t expecting much. What he doesn’t seem to realise is that many people likely have MS Office at the workplace. If they were to then use OpenOffice at home they’d be lacking many of the standard features they’d become used to. OpenOffice doesn’t yet cut it and the fact its free is pretty much its only selling point right now (apart from Linux users who have no choice). If Open Office can’t compete – then maybe the developers need to work harder on creating a competitive product. A product with more than just its price tag to sell it.