The European Union should quantify the economic benefits of an open knowledge economy, said Luc Soete, a specialist in the economics of innovation and one of the speakers at the Openforum Europe Summit that took place in Brussels last Friday.
Soete, one of the participants in the discussion on open standards and competition, wants the EU to conduct a study similar to the one it did in 1988 on the expected gains of unifying the European Market, the so-called Cecchini report. "At this stage we can only provide hints as to the cost of non-openness."
An open economy requires interoperability and open standards, Soete says. He warned that a monopoly in technology combined with intellectual property rights on its proprietary standards, result in a double monopoly on the technology. Open standards can ensure competition in markets dominated by a monopoly.
Earlier, a civil servant at the European Commission attending the conference had asked whether the Commission's dependence on the Microsoft operating system and its suite of office applications was a monopoly the Commission should be concerned about. Keynote speaker Žiga Turk, Secretary General at the Reflection Group on the Future of Europe, replied jokingly: "I believe governments should not be too big, and not too strong."
He later added: "If public administrations where allowed to use the tools the Internet now offers, they would become much more powerful. That could become a bit risky."
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Soete is director of UNU-Merit, a joint project by the institute of the United Nations University and Maastricht University in The Netherlands. UNU-Merit is one of the partners in the consortium, that on behalf of the European Commission, has set up, operates and maintains the Open Source Software Observatory and Repository (Osor).
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