about triple E tactics...

In relation to open standards, the Triple E or the EEE can be taken advantage by some vendors because it has been said that it can avoid vendor lock-in. This three E is Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish. In some cases, some vendors tried to make the most of open standards to their own with a view to lock in customers to their products by setting up these triple E tactics.


Embrace
Like what Hanna explained, it supports a particular open standard and it then applies the standards in its product and promotes them.

Extend
In implementation of the standard, the vendor add some enhancements to its original specification asserting that it is needed to address the needs of the customer in which it can make difference from other competitors. But it is usually made in areas where the specifications are not well distinct. But if ever the standard has scope for different implementation to distinguish itself, improved implementation should be done in which a necessary implementation can still interoperate with it.

Extinguish
In this case, if the improved presentation or execution of the standard turns out to be so generally used that majority of implementations support it, instead it effectively becomes the de facto standard. The vendor has now basically take control that open standard and made it proprietary.

According to Nah Soo Hoe
“A vendor that is using EEE tactics will not ensure this and as a result, products from other sources may not be now compatible with this vendor's products. The problem really arises if the vendor's products are widely used. If that is the case, other implementations of the standard may have to be modified so as to make them compatible with this enhanced implementation since the latter is dominant.”

governments also adopts open standards..

In government, the use of open standards is important and IT implementations are vital to ensure that it has adequate and reliable information to enable it to rule the country effectively. I look for a government that adopts open standards over the internet and I read that government of Croatian adopts an open source software policy and issued guidelines for developing and using open source software in the government institutions.

The Croatian government is concerned that proprietary software leads to too much dependence on the software suppliers. Open source software will make more transparent, according to the government’s document, entitled “Open Source Software Policy”

Domagoj Juricic, deputy state secretary at the Central State Administrative Office for e-Croatia and the leader of this project, explains what made the government publish the policy: "The use of information technology in government administration bodies is increasingly becoming important. So far, most of the software we use is proprietary software, so we cannot modify or complement it, or link software from different vendors. These software products impose rigid commercial conditions of use and limit our possibilities. In this way, government administration bodies may be led into a dependent position on the supplier of the software. This could lead to closed information systems, which make the success and efficiency of our eAdministration project more difficult.

Croatia is a country of southern Europe along the northeast Adriatic Coast

To read more on the policy, click the link below..
http://www.linux.com/archive/articles/56376