Could your company become a victim of vendor lock-in? If you rely entirely on proprietary software, you very well could be. What exactly is this vendor lock-in of which I speak? It is a way of ensuring that you, the consumer, will only be able to use specific products as set forth by select manufacturers.

The non-technical public will care very little about access to the source, not realising what degree of freedom this guarantees to them, even if they never look at the source themselves. Same with open data standards. Why change or even care if all the world seems to use the same 'standard' of some proprietary software package, right?

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.

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.

In order for a migration to be successful, one needs to be familiar with native Linux applications, and the data needs to be stored in a format that is independent from just a single application.

Whatever the ultimate configuration, the system will be generic, said Le, "because the goal of the system was to be scalable, open and evolvable. We didn't want to be locked into any one vendor's particular [architecture or features]," he said.

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.

What happened and why open formats matter! Tucked in with the many security updates (and the restoration of one’s ability to paste text from a web page into a Word document!), a very interesting modification to the Office 2003 software waits quietly for installation with Service Pack 3. These events with Office 2003 should act as a cautionary tale of proprietary product, vendor, and platform lock-in.

The $279 Zonbu Notebook is the latest offering from the Open Source computer company—following up on the $99 Zonbu Desktop released earlier this year. The software is the same OS seen on the desktop, updated with a few new features such as real time data syncing. But the question remains: Does Zonbu find the sweet spot between solid performance and an entry level price?