Freitag November 19, 2004

"100,000 desktops to OpenOffice"
"Among other speakers, Christian Hardy from the French ministry of finance presented the large migration of over 100,000 desktops to OpenOffice, the free software alternative to Microsoft Office, across the national French Administration."
http://trends.newsforge.com/trends/04/11/19/148236.shtml?tid=138
( Nov 19 2004, 04:29:29 PM CET ) Permalink

Mittwoch November 17, 2004

How do you create PDF files?
I just saw Adobe's announcement of the Acrobat 7.0 Software. I create almost all my PDF files using the StarOffice 7 Office Suite (which is based on OpenOffice.org). The PDF export in StarOffice does not support bookmarks yet, but that will be fixed soon. Thus, why would I buy a new version of Acrobat?
Interestingly the document file format study initiated by the EU and conducted by a company called Valoris does not see PDF as a feasible file format for an open document exchange between government administrations.
With the upcoming XForms support StarOffice and OpenOffice.org will soon also support an open standard for creating and using forms.
( Nov 17 2004, 12:18:22 PM CET ) Permalink Kommentare [1]

Riding dead horses
Apparently Microsoft's cavalry is riding dead horses:
"Bristol City Council spurns Microsoft for Star Office"
( Nov 17 2004, 11:50:45 AM CET ) Permalink

Montag November 15, 2004

What has IBM to do with the OASIS Open Office XML file format?
I still cannot access the EU website myself, but a colleague of mine had more luck and forwarded the different letters to me. Today is a great day for OpenOffice.org and the OASIS Open Office XML file format. If you read the different letters from Sun, IBM and Microsoft as well as the paper from OpenForum Europe, you will see the result of an effort that started about one year ago.
Last year in October I got the task to provide Valoris with input for their file format study. A few months later Valoris handed the study over to the EU. Two file formats made it onto the short list, the Microsoft XML formats and the OASIS Open Office XML file format (based on the OpenOffice.org file format).
The EU invited Sun Microsystems (representing the OpenOffice.org/OASIS file format) and Microsoft for a presentation about their file formats. The outcome was a recommendation for open XML based document file formats and some requests/recommendations to Microsoft and Sun Microsystems.
The letters published on the EU website today contain the answers from Microsoft, IBM and Sun Microsystems to the requests from the EU. Simon Phipps provides a good summary in his blog.
Now that IBM also decided to back the OASIS Open Office XML file format, OpenOffice.org should have a bright future.
( Nov 15 2004, 03:39:23 PM CET ) Permalink Kommentare [2]

Dienstag November 09, 2004

Can governments make "Open Source" a requirement in public tenders?
A German IT news website just posted an article about the question, if governments can explicitly ask for "open source" technology in public tenders since it would exclude some vendors from the bid process. I'm not a lawyer, but from my perspective the requirement should be phrased differently. The outcome would be about the same, though.
Open and fair competition does not depend on the public availability of source code and XML schemas. Companies can provide very cryptic code or schemas that nobody else can use and call themselves open. That is not the point. In many cases open source development is helpful, but what is even more important is the support of open standards.
OpenOffice.org uses an open XML file format that had been designed as an implementation/product agnostic document file format. This file format was chosen as the basis for the OASIS Open Office XML Format that future versions of OpenOffice.org and the StarOffice software will implement. Thus, the file format is not controlled by a single vendor and can be implemented by multiple products (currently OpenOffice.org, OpenOffice.org-based products like StarOffice, and KOffice). A white paper explains the advantages of the file format.
Microsoft "decided not to follow the EU's suggestion [...] [to] submit its XML document formats, or schemas, to an outside standards body, deciding instead to maintain in-house the ongoing development of the specifications" (http://asia.cnet.com/news/software/0,39037051,39200323,00.htm). Thus, Microsoft will continue to have a competitive advantage regarding their file formats. Why should Microsoft define their XML file formats in a way that allows other office suite vendors to easily implement and support it? Why should Microsoft support features in their file format that are not important for their target customer segments? Why should Microsoft support the file format on other platforms than Windows? Why should Microsoft add XML support for PowerPoint if no paying customer asks for it?
From my point of view, governments should put more focus on open standards. Imagine all governments made support of the OASIS Open Office XML Format a requirement in their tenders. Suddenly Microsoft would be encouraged to support an open standard and an increasing number of vendors would get a chance to enter this market. Yes, OpenOffice.org-based products would get an unfair advantage in the beginning, but in contrast to the Microsoft XML file formats the OASIS file format is not controlled by one single vendor and has been designed to be implementation/product agnostic:
"More than that, I made sure that this format would be a good base for KOffice :) That's what my job in the OASIS technical committee is: ensuring that the file format can be used to express everything that KOffice supports. But I definitely think the OpenOffice.org file format was a very good basis for the OASIS format, since it was designed, from the start, as a file format that should be as independent as possible from the design of the application. It reuses standards like XSL/FO, CSS, HTML etc. as much as possible, so the goal is to make the OASIS format another one of those formats, where the application used to edit the document doesn't matter." (http://dot.kde.org/1097051569/)
Fortunately, the EU has done the first step in the right direction by recommending open XML document formats.
The success of the Java technology and the Liberty Alliance illustrates how powerful open standards with broad industry participation can be. Through the Java Community Process the JCP members define new specifications and standards. As a consequence, companies like IBM, Oracle, BEA, and Borland offer products hat can work together and that can be exchanged if necessary. Something similar happened with the Liberty Alliance Project. First, Sun founded the project as an open alternative to Microsoft's Passport technology, now it is an alliance with broad industry support.
Some people might believe that a world with just one vendor might be sufficient, if the products are good. However, that is a very limited view, because competition encourages product improvement. I myself first used Netscape, then switched to Internet Explorer, because it was faster. Today I use Mozilla Firefox since IE does not provide the tabbed browsing and the comfortable find feature, and apparently I'm not the only one who switched back:
"Faced with competition from Firefox, Microsoft's share of the browser market has declined to 92.9 percent from 95.5 percent in June, according to data released by Web usage tracker WebSideStory last week. In the same period, Firefox's market share increased to 6 percent from 3.5 percent, WebSideStory said." (http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=internetNews&storyID=6755158) Unfortunately not everybody finds it easy to support open standards, yet: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/08/nhs_ms_deal_analysis/
( Nov 09 2004, 12:41:34 PM CET ) Permalink