Software, light bulbs & standards: Banning incandescent bulbs akin to banning FLOSS
I have been closely following the incandescent light vs. compact fluorescent light (CFL) debate ( BBC , /. , ABC , The Hindu ) which has moved into the legislatures of many provinces (here in Canada: Ontario , New Brunswick ), states (in the U.S.: California , ), countries ( Australia ) and regions ( EU ). I find this debate has interesting parallels to the software world, in particular the Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) world. The light bulb debate has been focused on (banning) a particular implementation technology (incandescent) when it should be focused on metrics (i.e. the proposed "standards" say something like " any light bulbs except incandescents "). Instead of banning a particular technology you instead want to put in place sensible, reasonable metrics and apply these as your standard. In this case, the standard should be some combination of energy/light output efficiency (light output per energy input, perhaps in lumens / watt) and lumino...