April 1st, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Okay, I missed it, even though I’d been part of an email conversation about the first annual Document Freedom Day, which took place on March 26.
Document Freedom Day is a global project to promote an open document format (the real one, ODF) and to help users adopt applications that support ODF.
“ODF leaves space for all present and future vendors to implement it and makes sure that end users won’t suffer from any sort of vendor lock-in. In contrast to earlier used binary formats which were cryptic and difficult to process, ODF’s use of XML makes accessing the document content simple.”
I’m looking forward to an even bigger Document Freedom Day next year!
Posted in Free Culture, ODF | Comments Off on Document Freedom Day
March 21st, 2008 Benjamin Horst
For the past few years, Malaysia has been on the forefront of the ODF-MSOOXML struggle as well as the OpenOffice.org-Microsoft Office competition. However, bit by bit they have been moving in the direction of the open source camp.
A recent press release informs us that a Malaysian government agency has chosen to migrate to OpenOffice, in “MAMPU Migrates to OpenOffice.org.”
Quoting the entire short press release:
“The Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit (MAMPU), today officially adopts a policy to migrate to the OpenOffice.org open source productivity suite. This is in line with the Malaysian Public Sector Open Source Master Plan, which calls for government agencies to reduce costs, increase freedom of choice and interoperability.
“From April 1st, MAMPU will start adopting the OpenDocument Format (ODF), standard for all new documents created. ODF, the ISO open standard for electronic documents, is also the default format for OpenOffice.org. The agency will also uninstall all copies of Microsoft Office by the end of 2008.
“To ensure a smooth migration, presently over 80 agency staff have been trained by the Open Source Competency Centre (OSCC). Additional staff will then be trained internally by the IT department, which will also provide support for OpenOffice.org.”
Combined with a strong presence in Singapore and the Philippines, and a recent 20,000-seat government migration in Vietnam, it appears that Southeast Asia is quickly becoming a major stronghold of the OpenDocument Format and OpenOffice.org itself.
Edit: The Open Malaysia blog covers this story with greater detail.
Posted in Free Culture, ODF, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on OpenOffice.org Adoption in Malaysia
March 18th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Beijing won by a landslide in voting for 2008’s OpenOffice.org Conference location, Willy Sudiarto Raharjo reports (based on an email from John McCreesh).
This is the first OOoCon to be held outside of Europe, and reflects the rapidly-growing OOo community in China.
Beijing RedFlag 2000 is the local representative for the bid, and Peter Junge was the co-lead managing the process. Their influence in the Chinese software market is large, and this conference should help show the world how OOo and ODF-based applications are succeeding in the PRC.
Posted in ODF, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on OpenOffice.org Conference 2008: Beijing
March 17th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Swapnil Bhartiya, of the EFY News Network, interviews Matthias Ettrich, the founder of KDE.
Ettrich talks about how he started KDE in 1996 to provide a Free Software answer to Windows 95, and how it has grown until today, when KDE offers a generally superior environment to Microsoft’s: “Try to compare Windows XP with KDE 3: nobody in their right mind would choose Windows over GNU/Linux based on the desktop experience alone.” (Why he specifically mentions the previous version of each desktop environment, I’m not sure.)
He also points out some of the remaining obstacles for Free Software: “Microsoft Office is still a major hurdle; we need more governments and companies to have the bravery to standardise on truly open formats. A proprietary undocumented text format as the de facto standard — and that’s what .doc is — is a shame for all parties involved. It’s like using a special patented ink that can only be read with special patented sun glasses.” (KDE is promoting ODF, as one of its earliest and strongest backers.)
He’s also optimistic about India’s future as an open source powerhouse. “India is a major commercial software development centre, home to some of the world’s largest software companies, and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t play a similar role in the Free Software space.”
Posted in Free Culture, GNU/Linux, ODF, Open Source | Comments Off on EFYtimes Interviews Matthias Ettrich
March 8th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
OpenOffice.org 3.0 is coming this fall, and many people are already starting to get excited about it. VentureCake is excited about its PDF import, native Mac OS X Aqua interface, and more:
“We love OpenOffice.org, hereby referred to as OpenOffice like normal people do. We like the fact it does pretty much everything we need for free, we like the out-of-the box PDF and Flash support, its better-than-Word ability to work with large documents, and the joys of using a standard file format that’s actually, you know, a standard.”
The article lists a boatload of planned new features that will be really cool, including the PIM (Thunderbird + Sunbird), support for saving files in wiki syntax (MediaWiki is already supported), hybrid PDFs, and others.
Hybrid PDFs in particular seem interesting. VentureCake states “The whole Openoffice suite can save ‘hybrid’ PDF documents that can be viewed as PDFs or edited as OpenDocument files.” This should bring even greater compatibility to the suite and make it much easier to work with companies still using legacy applications like Microsoft Office…
Finally, the extensions user experience will be upgraded to make it feel much more like Firefox’s, which I think will make it far more popular among OOo users.
This is going to be a major upgrade, possibly as significant as the move from 1.x to 2.0, and it should bring legions of new users along with it.
Posted in Mac, ODF, Open Source, OpenOffice.org, Wiki | 3 Comments »
February 26th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Google understands the importance of open file formats, and Zaheda Bhorat, Open Source Programs Manager at Google, has recently blogged about it on the Official Google Blog in a piece titled “A renewed wish for open document standards.”
She summarizes the issue succinctly: “The subject of open document standards grows in importance not only for the technically- minded, but for anyone who uses a computer to work on editable documents. Across the board, standards are crucial. They ensure that the devices and technology you use today will continue to work tomorrow, that your DVDs will play in your player, that your calls will go through to any network, and that your documents will be accessible from whichever system you choose today and in the future.”
Support for ODF is especially important now, as Microsoft’s major effort to undermine it is approaching its climax. The ISO will vote again next month on whether MSOOXML can also be an international standard alongside the already-approved ODF. But MS has attempted many unethical tricks to rig the process, and these seem to be catching up to the company as their publication in the media has galvanized opposition to keep them away.
Posted in Free Culture, ODF | Comments Off on Google’s Zaheda Bhorat on ODF
February 21st, 2008 Benjamin Horst
A few old news articles that I’d nevertheless like to catalog here today:
InformationWeek writes, in mid-January, of Lenovo preinstalling Linux:
“Starting Jan. 14, the T61 and R16 Centrino ThinkPads will have the option of shipping with SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10, with OpenOffice.org included. A news item over at DesktopLinux.com revealed that the T61 will sport a Core 2 Duo T7205 2.0-GHz processor, 1 Gbyte of DDR2 RAM, an 80-Gbyte 5400 RPM hard drive — all for $949.” (Incidentally, choosing Linux will save a buyer $20 over Windows on the same hardware.)
Erwin Tenhumberg writes a status report on ODF that he titles “Dispelling Myths Around ODF.”
A very thorough article that debunks some of the FUD Microsoft has been spreading around ODF (though personally, I have not seen as much MS FUD as I expected–maybe their energy isn’t what it once was).
My favorite section is where Erwin lists some of the prominent applications that use ODF as their default, or one of their primary, formats. These include KOffice, OpenOffice.org, StarOffice, IBM Lotus Symphony, Corel WordPerfect, Apple TextEdit, Google Docs, and plenty more.
Posted in GNU/Linux, ODF, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | 1 Comment »
February 13th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
Thankfully, the EU’s antitrust office functions much more effectively than does the US DOJ’s!
Groklaw reports on a new investigation the EU has begun into Microsoft’s tactics in promoting its MSOOXML file format, in EU Commission Investigating Microsoft’s MSOOXML Push. Beyond that, Groklaw has collected a large number of resources following the ODF vs MSOOXML contest:
“Now that it’s making headlines in the mainstream press that the EU Commission is investigating Microsoft’s behavior in trying to get MSOOXML accepted as an ISO “standard”, I want to simply remind the world that Groklaw has a permanent ODF/MSOOXML page, including a chronology, where all the events can be tracked, month by month, since the Massachusetts events began in January of 2005.”
Groklaw links to Andy Updegrove’s detailed article of a similar title, EU Initiates Investigation Against Microsoft OOXML Push. When companies try to corrupt and interfere with government bodies, as Microsoft did to Sweden during the initial MSOOXML standardization attempt last year, it’s clear the EU will come to their defense.
Posted in Free Culture, ODF | Comments Off on Groklaw: “EU Commission Investigating Microsoft’s MSOOXML Push”
February 12th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
IBM is a staunch defender of open standards in IT these days, and has been one of the big supports of ODF (OpenDocument Format), the XML-based specification that should do for “office” documents what HTML has done for the web: make it totally agnostic to the software you use to create and consume data. ODF could break up another monopoly and bring a new wave of innovation to the realm of desktop and net-based computing.
Ars Technica reports on IBM’s announcement that ODF is superior to Microsoft’s MSOOXML:
“As governments around the world begin to establish IT procurement policies that favor open standards, the stakes in the document format dispute are rising. The trend towards mandatory standards adoption in government IT has led some to speculate that government agencies and companies that work closely with the public sector will begin to turn away from Microsoft’s deeply entrenched office offerings, instead adopting alternatives like IBM’s Lotus Notes, Sun’s StarOffice, or OpenOffice.org which use the OpenDocument Format (ODF). Microsoft has been seeking ISO approval for its own OOXML format in order to ensure that its software remains competitive.”
The strategic and market reasons are clear why an open standard (ODF) is better for customers than a closed standard, even one that masquerades as open (MSOOXML). But the issue is greater than that. The open standard, in this case, is also the technologically more advanced of the two.
“Citing technical and intellectual property issues, a growing number of critics believe that Microsoft’s standards are flawed, restrictive, not adequately aligned with existing standards, or not conducive to broad third-party support. They argue that Microsoft should adopt ODF rather than fragmenting the office document space with its own alternative.”
After years of dragging their heels, Microsoft has slowly moved toward supporting standard HTML, so we should demand the same with ODF. It’s best for customers, and any business that wants to thrive should do right by its customers.
Posted in Free Culture, ODF | Comments Off on Ars Technica: IBM Calls MSOOXML Inferior
February 5th, 2008 Benjamin Horst
In KDE 4.0’s cross-platform strategy, Mac OS X plays a key role. The KDE TechBase keeps track of KDE on Mac OS X projects here.
While 4.1 will bring the final release for OS X, there are plenty of things to play with now. I’m particularly interested in KStars, the KDE PIM, and KOffice itself.
I’ve long been a proponent of OpenOffice, but I don’t see KOffice as a threat to OOo. Rather, I think the two are complementary, each with a different primary focus, and yet also helping each other by forming a strong argument for ODF. With ODF, there’s no need to fight for sole software hegemony, since we’ll still be compatible with everyone else regardless of our personal application preferences. As OOo and KOffice grow, they bring more users to the ODF file standard. And as ODF grows, it lets more people freely choose OOo, KOffice, or one of the many other compatible programs.
If a politician were discussing this issue, they’d call it “growing the pie,” not just changing the relative sizes of its slices. That’s good for all the communities involved!
Posted in Mac, ODF, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | 1 Comment »