April 10th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
Andy Updegrove writes Case Study II: A National Archive Moves to ODF, covering “the decision by the National Archives of Austalia (NAA) to move its digital archives program to software that supports ODF.”
He writes, “The significance of this example is that the NAA gathers in materials from many sources, in many different formats, which will need to be converted to ODF compliance for long term archival storage… But that will be a one-time only exercise, as compared to maintaining the capability of accessing all of those documents in all of those formats indefinitely. Instead, post conversion, the NAA will only need to deal with one software suite (in this case they have selected OpenOffice 2.0). But even if OOo is eventually discontinued, the ODF compliant documents will remain accessible, so long as any ODF supporting software remains available.”
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April 7th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
Following on the heels of Massachusetts and some rumblings in California, a bill has been introduced in Minnesota that would require its executive department to “use open standards in situations where the other requirements of a project do not make it technically impossible to do this.”
See the Standards Blog for more:
Updegrove writes, “The fact that such a bill has been introduced is significant in a number of respects. First, the debate over open formats will now be ongoing in two U.S. states rather than one. Second, if the bill is successful, the Minnesota CIO will be required to enforce a law requiring the use of open formats, rather than be forced to justify his or her authority to do so. Third, the size of the market share that can be won (or lost) depending upon a vendor’s compliance with open standards will increase. And finally, if two states successfully adopt and implement open data format policies, other states will be more inclined to follow.”
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March 31st, 2006 Benjamin Horst
I just learned about Penguin Day, which is a great idea for helping get non-profit organizations and FOSS groups to work together.
A number of cities have held Penguin Days, including Philadelphia, New York, Seattle, Toronto, London and others.
“Penguin Day brings together nonprofit staff, tech providers, geeks, consultants, and open source software developers for a day of learning and conversation. Together, we’ll demystify open source for nonprofits, frankly address the challenges of developing open source tools, and learn about specific promising open source applications for nonprofits.”
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March 29th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
Matthew Overington and Steven Deare write ‘Sandal and Ponytail Set’ Cramping Linux Adoption? for CNet News.com.
In the article, Peter Quinn discusses the effect of FOSS developers’ typically-casual dress code on their reputation among business users. However, he also says that FOSS and open standards like ODF are being investigated at almost every state IT shop in the US:
“I think there’s something going on in every agency in every (U.S) state,” he said. “Whether the CIO knows it or not, that’s a different thing. I think almost everybody, they say, ‘It’s not happening at my shop, I promise you,’ but when you (go) to their shop, it’s happening. So I think it’s happening everywhere, but there’s varying degrees.”
IT folks must keep quiet for fear of reprisal from the well-monied and entrenched corporate lobbyists. “When you think about the lobbying power and the cash that’s available for opponents of open source and opponents of OpenDocument, there is a significant amount of money and resource that people can and will bring to bear,” says Quinn.
Posted in Free Culture, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on Peter Quinn on FOSS Adoption
March 28th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
Again, it’s a shame I cannot speak or read Portuguese! However, it looks like Brazil’s “Computers for All” initiative has resulted in the sale of over 1,000,000 Linux-based computers to members of the Brazilian public in 2005.
At the same time, MIT’s One Laptop per Child project will deliver another 1,000,000 Linux-based “$100 laptops” to school kids in Brazil.
The Computers for All initiative’s website reports both of these victories.
In yesterday’s post about Microsoft, I read that officially, there are 330 million computers in the world running Windows. If that number is correct, then these two Brazilian projects will shift more than 0.6% of total global marketshare to Linux.
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March 17th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
In the Philadelphia Inquirer, Joyce Kasman Valenza writes, The Top 10 Technology Trends Affecting Education in 2005, summing up some of last year’s biggest changes.
She begins: “Technology continues to enrich the educational landscape. To highlight the most important trends of 2005, I turned to ed tech consultant Dave Cormier of the University of Prince Edward Island, one of the hosts of the Ed Tech Talk Show webcasts (http://edtechtalk.com/).” (If this is connected to the Ed Tech email list I am on, then it is a great resource.)
My favorites from the list:
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March 9th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
Most excellent, this study compares Moodle to Blackboard in a real world teaching environment, and students who used both systems show a strong preference for Moodle (almost two-to-one).
Blackboard vs. Moodle
From the conclusion:
“Moodle advantages over Blackboard:
* Easier to maneuver (fewer “clicks”!)
* Less area monopolized for navigation
* Easier to incorporate multimedia elements
* More tools available (glossary, poll, lesson, journal)
* Track student activity to see which parts of the course are preferred
* Quiz tool scores correctly and provides details on the student’s use
* Can be customized to add desired features
* Features are robust
* Survey allows as few as two choices”
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March 3rd, 2006 Benjamin Horst
Groklaw reports on the creation of the ODF Alliance, “an international group of industry partners, associations, NGOs and academic/research institutions… to build global support for the use of ODF.”
The list of founding members is long, and others are welcome to join at any time. Corel, IBM, Sun, Novell, Red Hat, Oracle, Opera, and a number of technology councils, universities and others are already proud to have their names attached to this initiative.
PJ summarizes, “What does it mean? To me, it means that there will be no future Peter Quinns left to take the heat all by himself. So, if you are a CIO for a governmental agency, and you are very much not wanting to experience what he did, this announcement means that you will have the support you need to make a successful transition, if that is the direction chosen. And if there are hostile hearings scheduled, such as we blatantly witnessed happen in Massachusetts, there will be people ready and qualified to speak up, with white papers and studies and success stories at the ready to unFUD the FUD.”
Posted in Free Culture, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on ODF Alliance Formed
February 24th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
Massachusetts won’t have to stand alone much longer. Groups within the EU are heavily promoting ODF as well.
It has come in the form of an antitrust complaint: “The European Committee for Interoperable Systems (ECIS) complained to the European Commission that Microsoft was guilty of violating antitrust law because it had refused to support the OpenDocument Format, among other infractions.”
Meanwhile, the Free Software Foundation Europe and Peter Quinn are also sharing their points of view with EU bodies, and they are strongly supporting ODF as well.
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February 23rd, 2006 Benjamin Horst
Participatory Culture Foundation has launched a beta of Democracy Player (formerly DTV), for Mac OS X and Windows (Linux coming soon). Its purpose is to change the landscape of media creation, sharing and consumption online. It’s GPL and intended to disrupt the power of the large gatekeepers to democratize media! Excellent.
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