Open Standards: How you can support them

This is partially a response to http://tabulacrypticum.wordpress.com/2011/10/18/ecosystem-or-curated-manure/

I think somehow in this walled-garden world, we have forgotten about open standards. We have walled gardens of content (various DRM schemes that only work with one service or device), walled gardens of personal data (say hello to social), walled cloud providers, walled garden hardware accessories (say hello proprietary connectors), and walled garden APIs.

I think we need to stick to open standards wherever available. Open standards mean that consumers can ultimately get more choice. Think USB and the number of USB keyboards available in the market. Once you buy a USB keyboard, there is no need for you to wonder if it will work with your computer and yet the standards mean that there is enough competition and variety in the marketplace.

Not necessarily open-source, but open standards are what we need. Good news is that there are some things we can all support:

1. For music at least, most stores have gone DRM-free now.
2. For APIs, one would be wise to stick to open standards like OpenGL for graphics or at least cross-platform toolkits like Qt (for desktops at least) and PhoneGap for mobile wherever possible.
3. For hardware accessories, I stick to standards like USB and bluetooth where possible.
4. For personal data like calendar and contact sync, instead of sticking my data in some proprietary service, I am investigating ownCloud. Looks promising.