Interesting couple of articles from Inside Reference Data and Inside Market Data. The first is on Bloomberg making its codes freely available to all from its website http://bsym.bloomberg.com – given past standards-based attempts like ISINs falling short of providing the industry with unique and useful security IDs this looks to be a welcome addition. This seems to be a publicity "win" for Bloomberg, especially given rival Thomson Reuters has recently got some indifferent publicity with the EU over RIC licensing (see article). No prizes for anyone who thinks that Thomson Reuters will not respond in some way with regard to RIC usage, maybe giving us two working proprietary standards that go "open" – at least everyone would then be matching up Bloomberg Tickers and Reuters RICs in public rather behind closed doors – and maybe a good opportunity for a Wiki site to do the matching up?

The second relates to Bloomberg providing a open-source data distribution system called "The Platform", I presume as less expensive alternative to Reuters RMDS. Meanwhile Reuters is busying itself with the plans for its competitor to the Open Bloomberg terminal with "Project Utah". Obviously Bloomberg is comparatively unproven with regard to systems provision so this is a big change and will be very interesting to watch – from a technology point of view but also culturally since can Bloomberg turn away from thinking in "Terminals" all of the time?