December 19th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
The New York State Office for Technology has put forth a request for public comment on the issue of data storage formats, particularly ODF vs MSOOXML:
“All stakeholders are encouraged to submit responses to all or parts of the RFPC, irrespective of whether they currently do business with or intend to participate in future procurements by CIO/OFT and/or the State of New York.”
Responses are due by December 28.
The RFPC consists of two parts and asks many detailed questions. I suspect this means New York State takes the issue very seriously, so I imagine they’ll see through the smoke blown by a monopolist, to understand that adopting ODF is of great importance to NYS and its citizens.
This could turn out to be big!
Posted in Free Culture, ODF | Comments Off on New York State Looking for ODF or MSOOXML Comments
December 18th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
Following up on my post from last week about the Dutch government adopting ODF, CNN Money has picked up the story as well. (Clearly from the same release, with the same errors!)
Writing “Dutch Government: Open Source Software To Be Adopted By April 2008,” CNN announces, “The Dutch government has set a soft deadline of April 2008 for its agencies to adopt open-source software such as free word processing programs and Internet browsers, a spokesman for the Economic Affairs Ministry said Thursday.”
The motivation is primarily for cost savings and vendor independence:
“The decision directs government organizations to use the Open Document Format, or ODF, to save text files, rather than Microsoft’s Open Office XML (sic, should be “Office Open XML”), and to use Mozilla’s Firefox or other open-source browsers, rather than Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Van Scherrenburg said the government estimates it would save EUR6 million annually on city housing registers alone due to a switch to the ODF standard.”
The phrase you’re thinking of is “tipping point.”
Posted in ODF, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on CNN Money on Open Source and the Dutch Government
December 17th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
Erwin finds a German article about the provisioning of OpenOffice.org training videos for Austrian schools.
Oftentimes you can’t find direct usage statistics about open source software, so you don’t even know it’s been rolled out until you hear about something like this.
Good for the Austrian schools!
Posted in OpenOffice.org | Comments Off on OpenOffice Appearing in Austrian Schools
December 14th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
“China’s Linux Desktop Market Booms,” writes Linux.com.
Linux on the desktop is competing against pirated Windows in China, but is steadily gaining ground. As the government gets stricter about its own offices’ use of pirated software, most are beginning to migrate to Red Flag Linux:
“Although China’s Linux market as a whole doubled from 2003 to 2006 to $20 million per year, sales of Linux desktop software grew more slowly. In fact, the market share of Linux desktop software in China dropped from 16% to 12% in the same period. But according to CCID Consulting, sales of Linux desktop software increased 25.1% in the third quarter of this year, catching up with the quick growth of China’s Linux industry as a whole. Several new developments have added fuel to the growth.”
Market share figures are extremely difficult to determine in China, but with the government and many vendors supporting it, Linux’s opportunity is going to be great. Microsoft, of course, recognizes the significance of the Chinese market and is fighting back with every tactic it can devise. But to my mind, there is no chance they will be able to achieve a monopoly dominance like their current position in the developed world.
Posted in GNU/Linux, Open Source | 1 Comment »
December 13th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
Erwin Tenhumberg let loose a flurry of blog posts this week covering OOo and ODF issues…
He uncovered a UK outfit selling PCs with OpenOffice.org preinstalled, adding to the pressure on other OEMs. I’m sure we will see steady progress on this front, bringing us ever closer to the tipping point.
He also announced (though I’m sure I already knew this) the OLPC XO will use ODF as its default format for its office productivity applications, meaning several million more users will be joining the ODF installed base.
And, he follows up on the Dutch government’s ODF plan: “According to this German article on heise, the Dutch parliament approved the open standards and open source adoption plan submitted by the Ministry of Economy. According to the plan, government agencies are supposed to read and write ODF in parallel to existing formats by April 2008, at least that is my understanding.”
Momentum is growing tremendously for ODF and OpenOffice.org. Congratulations to everyone involved!
Posted in ODF, OLPC, OpenOffice.org | 1 Comment »
December 12th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
Our friends in the KDE project were the first to fully adopt ODF in their office suite, KOffice, putting to rest our opponent’s claims that ODF was designed only for OpenOffice.org.
Now KDE has come out with a strong statement of support for ODF and against the dishonest Microsoft effort to rubberstamp its MSOOXML file format as an ISO standard. (Note: to date, Microsoft has failed in that project.)
ITWire quotes the original release in part:
“The standardisation process of OfficeOpenXML has turned sour, not in the least because Microsoft couldn’t resist the temptation to cheat. Right now we’re seeing evidence of a concerted campaign at discrediting OpenDocument vis-a-vis OfficeOpen XML. That’s unfortunate, to say the least. If OfficeOpen XML becomes an ISO standard, we will, in all likelihood, still not spend time on supporting it. The standard is enormous, very complex and to a large extent so badly specified that a full implementation is probably even harder than implementing the old Microsoft binary file formats. Add to that patent encumbrances and problems with copyrighted elements — and our conclusion is that we prefer to concentrate on making KOffice a great set of applications that are satisfying to use and satisfying to develop.”
Posted in Free Culture, ODF, Open Source | Comments Off on KDE on ODF
December 11th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
In its world tour of governmental standards adoption, ODF makes a stop in the Netherlands.
CIO magazine (UK) writes:
“On Wednesday the Dutch parliament will discuss a plan to mandate use of the Open Document Format (ODF) at government agencies. The proposal is part of a wider plan to increase the sustainability of information and innovation, while lowering costs through the reuse of data.”
“Policy makers see interoperability as the key to achieving these goals and therefore recommend that open standards should be used whenever possible. Bodies that wish to deviate from the open standards policy can request a temporary stay, but have to show a timeline showing a planned implementation date — a policy described as “comply or explain.”
Taking it a step further, the plan also recommends that open source applications be used where possible, to save even more money:
“The proposal recommends the use of open source software if that’s a viable alternative over closed-source applications, which could give a major boost to applications like OpenOffice.”
Europe has certainly become a hotbed of ODF and OpenOffice.org adoption. We should begin to see this reflected in market share statistics over the next several years.
Posted in ODF, Open Source, OpenOffice.org | 1 Comment »
December 10th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
Mozilla is undoubtedly a pillar of the open source world, not only because of the importance of Firefox, Thunderbird, and its other products, but also as a model for organizing open source software development and the promotion of open standards that benefit everyone participating in an open marketplace.
Mitchell Baker posted (in October) financial and operational highlights of Mozilla’s latest year of operations. With revenues of $66 million, mostly from the Google searchbar, it was a very good year!
The post includes tons of other really interesting info about Mozilla’s role in the marketplace, its download statistics and web infrastructure, impact on the future of the internet itself, and much more.
Posted in Free Culture, Open Source | Comments Off on Mozilla Annual Report
December 7th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
Andy Updegrove has begun work on a book chronicling the current struggle between the ODF and MSOOXML file formats.
As far as format wars go, this is turning into one of the biggest and most important that has occurred in years. Thus, Updegrove intends to keep track of the events so they may be analyzed by others in the future.
Chapter two was posted recently, inserting more historical context on the players involved.
The draft chapters posted so far have also generated a healthy conversation in the comments section, with a mix of theoretical discussions, editing, and other feedback. Writing the book itself is going to be an interesting process to follow along.
Posted in Free Culture, ODF | Comments Off on Updegrove Chronicles ODF vs MSOOXML
December 6th, 2007 Benjamin Horst
There have been a number of pieces of good news for the global OLPC community in the past few weeks, including the success of the Give One Get One program, the first order of 100,000 units from Uruguay, and an order of 40,000 plus options on 210,000 more from Peru.
On top of all this, a group has formed to promote and distribute the OLPC XO in India:
“We have received excellent response from at least a dozen state governments in India and we expect that large scale implementation will start from March or April next year, with an initial import of 20,000 to 25,000 laptops. And after that, subsequent imports could far exceed that number” said Joshi.
“Backing OLPC India is one of India’s largest mobile telecom companies Reliance Communications (RCOM) which has tied up with the global OLPC alliance, the OLPC Foundation, to promote e-learning for children. According to RCOM, along with OLPC Foundation, it has assumed the task of evangelizing the concept in the country by working with government agencies, non-government organization (NGOs), content developers, translators, teaching communities and project managers to create a successful ecosystems, and help proliferation of OLPC in India.”
Posted in Free Culture, OLPC, Open Source | Comments Off on OLPC Advances in India