Sunday, December 17th, 2006, 12:58 pm
How Open Source Software Prevents Lockins & Data Loss
Filed under:
Break the shackles.Don’t let your data get
locked and the vendor have the key
UCH has been said on the topic, but here is the gist. Open source, standards-based applications are much safer to choose. You know you will be able to access your data in the future.
Example: Can one truly open and recover, let us say, an Outlook 3 profile? Can one analyse its data once identified and recovered from an old computer? The matter of fact is that commercial vendors seek to make old versions obsolete. This leads to (frequently forced) upgrades which bring in revenue.
Open source programs don’t have the same interests and motives. They use standard data formats. If not properly documented (a rarity) the source code is available, in order for the data to be imported or parsed for subsequent use. Proprietary software does not have this merit. It is based on the lockin principle/stategy, which benefits the vendor, not the customer.
