Ah, how the mighty have fallen. In what must have been gross oversight, Red Hat is pitching proprietary software on its website under the banner of "No vendor lock-in." The way Red Hat and IBM make it appear, simply running one's software on an open platform like Linux magically removes the proprietary lock-in of the application.

Just as a brief summary for those not familiar with the topic: A vendor of proprietary software can store data in closed, proprietary data formats. Thus, if you are a customer of that vendor it becomes very difficult for you to move to a competitor's product, for example if you like the features or price/performance of that offering better. Instead, the cost of moving, the risk of loosing all your data may be too great. You are 'locked in' to the current vendor...

"Vendor lock-in has become the primary problem for IT decisions in general and Free Software adoption in particular. It distorts the market and denies Free Software solutions equal competition on the merits. The problem has been that many lock-ins are invisible, for example reliance on proprietary protocols or needing to use certain document formats.

LOCAL IT developers are being stifled by the dominance of US software companies that hold on to government business through "vendor lock-in", industry observers say.

In another assault on open access and free (libre) science, Feynman's work is being seized by a proprietary software vendor and wrapped in proprietary formats.

The title basically says it all. I'm posting this because it shows how people should be using phones that don't contain DRM and proprietary code and don't allow vendor lock-in.

Open standards are critical in ensuring that the South African government both avoids vendor lock-in and promotes democracy. This is according to South Africa’s minister of home affairs, Nosiviwe Mapisa-Nqakula.

Memos for your Boss that create awareness of the possible pitfalls and caveats of proprietary software plus the proposal of open source software and its ability to prevent vendor lock-in situations when using proprietary programs.

Sean Cohen's piece on ownership of software and vendor lock-in and other important things.