Proprieatary Threats: Vendor Dependence
Problem that is more often faced by the user is that they cant come out of the proprietary model software. Since the standards of proprietary software are normally not open, it is hard for competitors -be they for profit or non-profit, proprietary or FREE Software – to ensure that their software is able to process data produced by proprietary software (e.g. Graphs or tables in word processors). By their dominant market position, proprietary software vendors thereby enforce a kind of de facto standard, e.g. On office software, which then – despite and because of the fact being closed – enhances the vendors, market position. This is of course a self-enforcing process. Whenever the proprietary standard are established the necessity to ‘follow’ them is given. Even in an open tender acquisition system, this requirement for compatibility with proprietary standards makes the system based towards specific software vendors, perpetuating a dependency.
–Contd…
This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 14th, 2004 at 12:31 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
