November 13th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
Erwin Tenhumberg can read German, but I cannot. He found an article that includes a report suggesting the Swiss government adopt ODF as its default format for office application data.
Erwin writes, “Considering that Belgium, the state of Extremadura in Spain, and the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the US have already selected ODF as a standard for government use, and looking at all the similar efforts in France, Malaysia, India, Brazil and elsewhere, I’m pretty sure that Microsoft will fight against the eCH proposal fiercely as well.
Nevertheless, it’s good to see yet another country is seriously considering the adoption of ODF. I’m sure more countries will follow these examples.”
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November 10th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
A formal Novell statement indicates their continued commitment to ODF, despite the recent agreement with Microsoft. In fact, the purpose of the agreement seems to be future compatibility for OOo with whatever new formats MS sets for upcoming versions of its office programs.
In Novell’s own words, “The agreement does not change our existing commitment to enhance OpenOffice.org, assist customers with deployment and support of OpenOffice.org on Windows® and Linux®, and encourage customers to standardize on OpenDocument Format (ODF). The agreement is designed to ensure that customers using OpenOffice.org will continue to be able to read and write documents using future Microsoft Office file formats, as they do with the existing closed and proprietary file formats employed by Microsoft Office today. OpenOffice.org Novell Edition will continue to use ODF by default.”
Sounds promising. Indeed, it would be a technical and political step backward to abandon ODF for proprietary formats at this point (which some have feared Novell might do), and it would be a strategic mistake to do so. Novell has been a champion of ODF and OpenOffice, and they are not backing down now, so close to victory.
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November 8th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
Free Software Magazine tests ODF transfer between OpenOffice.org, KOffice, and AbiWord.
“Numerous office suites and word processors support the OpenDocument format (ODF). ODF is an open standard for saving and exchanging office documents. The standard has been developed to provide an open alternative to proprietary, for example Microsoft Office, document formats.”
There are some problems, but they are most likely due to the newness of ODF support in these applications. As support matures, these problems should be wiped away.
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November 6th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
Erwin Tenhumberg writes on his blog, French Ministry for Agriculture and Fishing choosing OpenOffice.org.
It looks like another French government agency is making the migration!
Someone kindly provided a rough translation of the original French article as a comment on Erwin’s blog, which indicates that 120 advisors of the ministry have chosen OOo and they are planning to migrate the organization itself in the near future.
With the number of large French government agencies adopting OpenOffice in the past 18 months, and the general enthusiasm for ODF across the EU, I fully expect France to became one of the biggest backers of ODF/OOo and to make a formal announcement of it soon. This will provide the movement with a great boost of momentum, and open the doors to Europe-wide adoption of OpenDocument as a government standard.
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November 1st, 2006 Benjamin Horst
Tom Chance of NewsForge writes Where ODF stands in the EU.
The article’s a little dry (because it has to explain some of the EU bureaucracy), but it contains valuable information. For example:
“A key presentation on the ODF day came from Dr. Barbara Held, who is the Enterprise and Industry Directorate-General of the European Commission Program for Interoperable Delivery of pan-European eGovernment Services to Public Administrations, Businesses and Citizens (IDABC). Got that? Right. The IDABC basically exists to smooth over the technical problems within the European Union caused by the 25 member states exchanging data. The existence of multiple, incompatible file formats poses a formidable problem for the EU, so the IDABC was tasked with developing a strategy to overcome this.”
After some analysis, Chance advances his promising conclusion. ODF is gaining strength and support as a possible Europe-wide standard:
“To summarise the labyrinthine complexity of this, the EU is currently moving toward the standardisation of document formats, and internally many EU bodies and member states prefer ODF. But the EU is unable to require the use of ODF across the board.
So where do we go from here? The more stakeholders voice their support for ODF, the more likely it is that Europe will standardise on it, either with a legally binding decision or a series of unambiguous recommendations. Citizens of the EU can talk to their representatives in the European Parliament, pressing home the advantages of ODF by referring to the EIF and the IDABC’s recommendations made in 2004, and also talk to their national representatives, increasing the pressure to standardise on ODF on a national and even local level.”
Remember, the EU is the world’s largest economy. If its governments begin to standardize on ODF, corporations, universities and home users will start to follow. And very quickly, ODF may achieve the strongest strategic position in the coming contest for global standard adoption.
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October 25th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
Huffington Post, a political blog, covers the importance of ODF to an increasing number of governments around the world.
Several have already mandated ODF for their own use, based on the theory that open standards will promote competition among office suites (and other document creation tools), which will improve quality and drive down prices–a reversal of the stagnation that’s been the norm for the past decade.
In addition, and more importantly, governments want to ensure the data they produce will remain accessible, and not be threatened by the decisions or strategic moves of a single entity. Data only a few years old, stored in Microsoft’s Office formats, is quickly becoming inaccessible due to format changes that are not documented to the world. The only way to escape this is to use a fully documented, open format, that can be (and is) implemented by multiple software programs. Microsoft’s formats do not meet this requirement; only ODF does.
Governments already mandating ODF include Belgium, Denmark, and Massachusetts.
Others look like they might be moving in the same direction. My guesses for the next to make this smart decision are more US states such as Minnesota and Wisconsin, as well as Brazil, France and India.
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October 18th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
CNet’s News.com writes French government report lauds ODF.
Not only is France very enthusiastic about using ODF for internal government needs (as evidenced by over 400,000 government PCs being migrated to OpenOffice), but it’s also interested in heartily promoting ODF to other EU member states.
“A member of the French Parliament has prepared a report for Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin which recommends that France mandate the use of the OpenDocument format, or ODF.
According to French news reports, the study was commissioned one year ago and recently presented to de Villepin by Tarn Bernard Carayon.
He recommends that the French government “propose to its European partners to systematically favor open standards and, as the first example, to mandate the international ISO format ODF for the creation and diffusion of all official document exchange at the European level.”
Meanwhile, Denmark has been eyeing and analyzing the cost savings of OpenOffice.org over the forthcoming Microsoft Office 2007. CIO Magazine reports Study: Danish Gov’t Can Save With OpenOffice:
“The Danish government could save about 125 million Danish kroner (US$21 million) over the next five years if it adopted the OpenOffice.org productivity software instead of upgrading to Microsoft’s Office 2007 suite.”
Enhanced interoperability and huge cost savings are the one-two punch that ODF and OpenOffice can provide governments and other large organizations. The market is going to shift soon.
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October 11th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
An Alfresco company press release proclaims Alfresco Announces Support for OpenDocument Format:
“LONDON—July 26, 2006—Alfresco Software Inc., the first provider of an open source enterprise content management solution, today announced full OpenDocument Format (ODF) support through its ODF Virtual File System. ODF is an open, XML-based file standard suitable for office applications and designed for managing features in text, spreadsheet, charts and graphical documents.
Alfresco’s ODF Virtual File System offers a simple shared drive interface to any office application. Microsoft Office and OpenOffice users alike can save or drag content into intelligent drop-zones, where rules and actions transparently convert incoming content into the ODF vendor-neutral format. Documents can automatically be sent through a controlled review and approval process and also have records management rules applied to them.”
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September 28th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
“darcusblog” is an interesting resource for XML, metadata, citations, OOo and ODF. The author is co-project lead of the OpenOffice Bibliographic project (OOoBib), which will provide very advanced bibliographic and reference data management capabilities to OpenOffice starting in 2007.
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September 20th, 2006 Benjamin Horst
Two very quick and self-explanatory links from Andy Updegrove’s Standards Blog, while they’re still relatively fresh:
The Emerging ODF Environment, Part V: Spotlight on IBM Workplace
OASIS Launches OpenDocument XML.org
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