GeekPAC

Marten Mickos, CEO of MySQL, has taken the BytesFree.org Pledge. Well… sort of. See for yourself:

Our software is GPL so anybody can determine what our file formats are like.

///mgm

Actually, this brings to mind an important set of points:

1. You can have open formats with proprietary, closed software
2. You can have closed formats with proprietary, closed software
3. But you cannot have closed formats with Free Software

It will be awfully tough to convince any high-tech CEO to actually sign the BytesFree.org pledge, but as Marten notes, he doesn’t really have to. Is that a dodge? Yes, but it also happens to be true.

I don’t always like to make this point, because all too often open formats get lumped in with open source, and it could scare away some potential participants simply because they don’t want to open their code, although they’re fine with open formats. But it’s good to remind folks every now and then that, with Free Software, the artificial barriers to entry that we call closed formats simply cannot exist.