September 4th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
Groklaw announces that Office Open XML is Disapproved.
“So what does it mean? If you try to fast track an unbaked format, tech folks will notice it’s not done yet.”
The official press release from the ISO confirmed it late on the morning of September 4:
“A ballot on whether to publish the draft standard ISO/IEC DIS 29500, Information technology – Office Open XML file formats, as an International Standard by ISO (International Organization for Standardization) and IEC (International Electrotechnical Commission) has not achieved the required number of votes for approval.”
PJ also links to some of the press coverage, including this Wall Street Journal piece. (I could only read the intro, since I’m not a member…)
Posted in Free Culture, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Groklaw: ISO Rejects MSOOXML
August 23rd, 2007 Benjamin Horst
Got a note from my friends at Bug Labs about the launch of their beta program.
“We need to test out the SDK, the environment, the interfaces, the APIs, and, yup, you guessed it, the hardware too. Now to set expectations right off the bat: we don’t have nearly enough units to go around (yet), so there’ll be quite a bit of testing in a software-only environment (which is a-okay, as we have a full emulator that gives you a Virtual BUG!). Also, we’re going to use a bit of a “staged” approach, so we will start small, then slowly expand the pool of testers as time goes on.”
For now, the units are scarce and the company needs to ramp up its ability to collect and process feedback, so they are wisely starting with a limited beta. You need to sign up on the site for consideration. But if you’re a hardware and software hacker with an idea for Bug’s modular platform, get on it!
Posted in Free Culture, Open Source, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Bug Beta Begins
August 21st, 2007 Benjamin Horst
I hate to keep writing about Microsoft, since the company is just not doing anything very interesting (in a positive sense) anymore. However, their vendetta against ODF does have a big impact on open data formats and their standardization around the world. So far, MS has delayed ODF’s triumph, but it has not and probably will not be able to stop the inevitable.
On that topic, another national standards body will probably be voting against OOXML standardization: Poland. PolishLinux.org announces a technical committee has voted by 80% against accepting MSOOXML as a standard.
It’s never quite this simple, and in fact, the original committee that produced this vote had been reduced to an advisory role. Now it’s on to another committee to make the final decision. Let’s hope they follow the first!
Posted in Free Culture, ODF, Uncategorized | Comments Off on Poland Against MSOOXML
August 20th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
The following is not scientific, but it is a way to roughly gauge the current relative usage of file formats in the ongoing global contest. Based on the number of ODF versus MSOOXML files available on the web, ODF is steamrolling the competition, writes Ben Langhinrichs.
“In eight months since Office 2007 was released to the general public (10 months since release to enterprise customers), there are under 2,000 of these office documents posted on the web. In three months, 13,400 more ODF documents have been added to the web, with only 1,329 OOXML documents added. It is hard to spin ten times as many ODF documents added as OOXML documents, especially as 451 (34%) of those new documents were added on Microsoft.com. That isn’t what I would call good traction for the overwhelmingly dominant office suite.”
“And all of this before IBM rolls out Notes 8 with the ODF productivity editors included as part of the package.” (That rollout started last week, so give it time to reach critical mass, and we’ll see what additional impact it has had.)
Half the fight is in perception, so information like this can help to sway fence-sitters and skeptics toward adopting ODF, who might otherwise have given up due to their fear of institutionalized momentum for the previous market leader.
Posted in Free Culture, ODF | Comments Off on ODF vs MSOOXML on the Web
August 16th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
Great news comes from Malaysia this week: the government appears to be adopting ODF as its standard document format.
ZDNet Asia announces, “Malaysia formally embraces Open Document Format.”
“The decision taken has been deliberated carefully for a considerable amount of time, and much thought process has been put into it,” Nor Aliah Mohd. Zahri, ICT deputy director general at MAMPU, said in a statement.
“These discussions centered on open formats, particularly as they relate to office documents, their importance for the current and future accessibility of government records, and the relative ‘openness’ of the format options available to us,” Nor Aliah explained.”
Posted in Free Culture, ODF | Comments Off on Malaysia Chooses ODF
August 15th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
Last night New York City startup Bug Labs hosted an introductory meetup at Punch Restaurant‘s upstairs Wined Up bar.
Bug Labs founder Peter Semmelhack describes the company thus: “Bug Labs is developing BUG, an open, modular, consumer electronics web services + hardware platform. Designed for the general audience, not just the technically inclined, Bug seeks to bring to the world of hardware gadgets what the Internet, open source, XML and web services have brought to the world of software and media.”
Most of the online action is on the company blog, but last night Bug Labs showed its hardware publicly for the first time. Its product is a modular, Lego-like collection of hardware components and software infrastructure that you can attach together to dynamically build specialty devices to service the long tail of product users’ needs.
Marketing chief Jeremy showed off three circuit boards plugged together, in size and shape totaling about the same as a video iPod. The base board contained the primary Bug device, while the other two, each half the length of the first, were an accelerometer/motion detector and a camera, respectively. Plugged together in this configuration, Jeremy held in his hand a security monitoring system.
When product launch occurs in the fall, many other modules will be available, including GPS, cell phone, LCD screens, keyboard and more. Bug Labs will target hackers and hobbyists first, and then when a collection of third-party applications have added consumer value to the product ecosystem, they’ll be able to make sales to normal consumers too.
With a few other organizations making moves into the world of open source or modular hardware, including OpenMoko, the OLPC, Drobo, and (sort of) the Nokia Maemo platform, it looks like a new, dynamic and fascinating market segment could be on its way to emergence. Let’s hope it brings the enormous benefits of open source communities to the hardware world that FOSS has brought to software already!
Posted in Free Culture, GNU/Linux, Maemo, OLPC, Open Source, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »
August 14th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
Two industry heavyweights have noticed MSOOXML is now struggling in its cakewalk to ISO approval.
Ryan Paul, for Ars Technica, reports that MS OOXML might not succeed in the fast-track process in Microsoft one vote short of fast-track OOXML ISO standardization:
“Executive board members of the International Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS), the organization that represents the United States in ISO standardization deliberations, recently held an internal poll to determine the position that the United States should take on Microsoft’s request for Office Open XML (OOXML) approval. With eight votes in favor, seven against, and one abstention, the group was one vote short of the nine votes required for approving OOXML ISO standardization.”
In his personal blog, Mark Shuttleworth wonders if there is an Emerging consensus in favour of a unified document format standard?
“It’s too early to say for certain, but there are very encouraging signs that the world’s standards bodies will vote in favour of a single unified ISO (“International Standards Organisation”) document format standard… In the latest developments, standards committees in South Africa and the United States have both said they will vote against a second standard and thereby issue a strong call for unity and a sensible, open, common standard for business documents in word processing, spreadsheets and presentations.”
Shuttleworth identifies three highly compelling arguments that the world implement one, single standard:
- This is not a vote “for or against Microsoft”
- Open, consensus based document standards really WORK WELL – consider HTML
- A SINGLE standard with many implementations is MUCH more valuable than multiple standards
ODF is an important standard that could one day be as significant as HTML. Current efforts to derail it are coming from one source that sees it as a threat to its monopoly–but whatever your feelings toward that company, everyone is better served in the long term by building the best infrastructure today. And that digital infrastructure is ODF, not MSOOXML.
Posted in Free Culture, ODF | Comments Off on Shuttleworth and Ars Question MSOOXML’s Chances
August 1st, 2007 Benjamin Horst
Mozilla Links publishes French National Assembly receives first open source laptops:
“Open source software-loaded laptops are now being delivered to members of the French National Assembly. The French government found that software license costs surpassed training and deployment investments so the decision to move to open source was taken and Linagora, a French company specialized in open source software projects, was hired for the transition. The laptops come loaded with a customized version of Ubuntu 7.04 and productivity applications that include Firefox 2.0, OpenOffice.org 2.1, Thunderbird 2.0, Lightning, VLC Media Player and Adobe Reader.”
I’ve mentioned the plans for this migration in French Parliament Moving Toward Ubuntu and French MPs Dump Windows for Linux. It’s great to see it come to fruition.
Posted in Free Culture, GNU/Linux, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on French National Assembly Receives First Open Source Laptops
July 27th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
The BBC summarizes the OLPC project and its now-finalized XO hardware.
Very unique constraints have led to unprecedented design ideas. However, I think many of these ideas will be proven by the XO and then adopted by more mainstream computing devices.
Among those ideas: “To ensure the laptop is robust and can be maintained as easily as possible it omits all moving parts. It has no hard drive, CD or DVD drive. As it also packs a low power processor it has no cooling fans… Instead of a large hard drive the laptop has 1GB of flash memory, similar to that used in some digital cameras.”
For energy efficiency, components can be shut off while other parts of the computer remain active: “The off-the-shelf processor is designed to be energy efficient. Unlike a standard chip, which remains active even when nothing changes on screen, the AMD processor is able to shut itself down, only waking when it is needed… To conserve as much battery power as possible the wi-fi adapter can operate even when the main processor is switched off or asleep.”
Other clever features include its custom Linux-based OS, screen that can switch to black-and-white mode for readability in daylight, human-generated power options, and replaceable keyboard to accommodate many language layouts.
Also take a look at some of the stress testing currently underway to ensure the XOs can withstand real-world conditions.
Posted in Free Culture, GNU/Linux, OLPC, Open Source | Comments Off on BBC Overview of OLPC XO
July 19th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
Miro is the paradigm-changing, web, Bittorrent, and RSS-enabled video player application for all three major platforms, formerly known as “Democracy Player.”
As the primary project of the Participatory Culture Foundation, its goal is very lofty: to ensure that when television migrates to the internet, it is available in an open format, open source, open access form. This notion could fundamentally change web television in ways that make it far more egalitarian and far more democratic and far more interesting than the corporate product delivered today.
Accompanying its recent name change and version update (just shy of 1.0, they are being cautious in using that moniker), I’ve started a Facebook group on behalf of the project to help in its marketing efforts. It’s an open group, so please join in and contribute there!
Posted in Free Culture, Open Source, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »