Kroes: vendor lock-in a waste of money

In a recent speech EU Commissioner Neelie Kroes stated that badly functioning IT markets and high vendor dependence have far-reaching consequences for the functioning of public bodies and companies in Europe. There is much to be gained, both economically and functionally, by focusing on open standards and open source software. ‘This is a waste of public funds no government can afford any longer.’

The Dutch IT magazine Computable.nl has a summary of the speech with my comments (original in Dutch – Google translation here). English commentary on the speech here, here and here.