There's an interesting story on O'Reilly's ONLamp.com today about the importance of both Open Source and Open Standards in the software world. This is a counter to Jonathan Schwartz's argument that open standards are more important that open source, but it brings up several great points in addition to a rebuttal.
Kick back and relax
Re: Open Source and Open Standards
good read btw... the problem w/ open standards is that too many people with vested interests have their hand in the honey jar when these standards are being created (as the article suggests)... also the other problem w/ open standards is that MS and other big companies make their own bastardized versions up like MSLDAP