Donnerstag Mai 31, 2007

German government considering ODF mandate
According to this German article, which is a summary of a panel discussion at the LinuxTag event in Berlin, the governing coalition in Germany is considering a mandate for open standards in general and ODF in particular. Key goals are improving the competitive situation and strengthening the position of smaller companies. According to the article, the governing coalition sees ODF as a standard that can help to increase competition in the office productivity market. Big players should not be able to dictate the market.
( Mai 31 2007, 07:45:31 PM CEST ) Permalink

Mittwoch Mai 30, 2007

Opinion about Microsoft's OOXML support for the Mac
"Right now, Microsoft is pushing hard to get ISO (International Organization for Standardization) standards certification for OOXML. How is it that OOXML can be a standard if Microsoft doesn't even fully support the format in a major version of Office? Irreconcilable is the push for standards and not fully supporting the format up for standards approval.

Meanwhile, Microsoft makes big noise about interoperability. What kind of example does Microsoft set when the formats for its Mac and Windows Office suites aren't interoperable? Irreconcilable is the position of increased Microsoft-and-other platform interoperability and the decreased interoperability between Office file formats across two platforms.

Microsoft can argue that there will be interoperability later this year. For enterprises mixing Office 2004 and 2007, later isn't soon enough."

The full article can be found here.
( Mai 30 2007, 04:16:39 PM CEST ) Permalink Kommentare [1]

Reminder: OOoCon 2007 Call for Papers Deadline is June 1st
This is just another reminder that the deadline for the call for papers for this year's OpenOffice.org Conference is approaching VERY fast. The cut off date is June 1st. Thus, there are just a few hours left! Details can be found here.
( Mai 30 2007, 03:03:18 PM CEST ) Permalink

ODF for OS/2
OpenOffice.org 2.0.4 including ODF support, AFAIK, is now available for OS/2. Unfortunately it's not free like for the other platforms. More details can be found here. Nevertheless, this adds another platform to the long list of operating systems for which ODF implementations exist.
( Mai 30 2007, 01:37:01 PM CEST ) Permalink Kommentare [3]

New Zealand could invest the $100M in OpenOffice.org development
I just became aware of this article via my colleague's blog. I'm not a Mac user yet, although I'm sure my next privately purchased laptop will be a MacBook Pro since I've seen it run Solaris very well in parallel to Mac OS X. Nevertheless, I know many people who are already successfully using OpenOffice.org on the Mac every day. Thus, I'm sure that the schools in New Zealand could easily use OpenOffice.org as an alternative to Microsoft Office.

However, I also admit that the Mac version of OpenOffice.org is still not perfect. Therefore, in case people in New Zealand are too concerned about the quality of OpenOffice.org, I wanted to suggest that New Zealand could invest the $100M mentioned in the article, or at least a percentage of it, into the development of OpenOffice.org. Such an approach would have multiple advantages:

First, students could help with the development of OpenOffice.org as part of their computer science curriculum. It would be like a Google Summer of Code project, except that the funding would not come from Google but from a government. In addition, local companies could be contracted with OpenOffice.org development and customization tasks which would lead to a local software economy.

Second, since OpenOffice.org can be used everywhere, i.e. at all schools, universities, and government agencies, every dollar invested in the development of OpenOffice.org would save licensing fees somewhere else.

Third, if a government like New Zealand invested in OpenOffice.org development, more governments probably would follow. For example, as can be seen on this wiki page, the French government is a heavy user of OpenOffice.org. Thus, France would be another good candidate.

Forth, the adoption of OpenOffice.org would also ease the adoption of a truly open document exchange format which is supported by many different applications on many different platforms. Thus, vendor lock-in would be decreased.

Anyway, I'm convinced we will see a lot more cases like the one in New Zealand over the next few months and years!
( Mai 30 2007, 09:18:06 AM CEST ) Permalink Kommentare [2]

ANSI/INCITS accepts comments regarding Ecma Office Open XML
I wonder who provided the template for the comments regarding OOXML that have arrived at ANSI/INCITS during the last few days. Many comments have almost identical wording in the beginning. The comments can be found here.
I guess, ANSI/INCITS is mainly interested in comments from people in the US, but if you want to send in your comments as well, you can probably send your emails to this person. At least that email address shows up on several of the other comments.
( Mai 30 2007, 08:49:31 AM CEST ) Permalink Kommentare [1]

Dienstag Mai 29, 2007

ODF in the sky
ODF files can now easily be created on air planes as well, even without a notebook. Read this!
( Mai 29 2007, 03:10:48 PM CEST ) Permalink

"Microsoft may cease to distribute SUSE Linux coupons"
Interesting news regarding the Novell/Microsoft relationship:
The SUSE Linux distributor said that an unfavorable final GPLv3 could mean "Microsoft may cease to distribute SUSE Linux coupons in order to avoid the extension of its patent covenants to a broader range of GPLv3 software recipients". Advertisement
The company also "may need to modify our relationship with Microsoft under less advantageous terms than our current agreement, or we may be restricted in our ability to include GPLv3 code in our products, any of which could adversely affect our business and our operating results."
Found here.
( Mai 29 2007, 12:31:10 PM CEST ) Permalink

Why ODF is a safe bet!
Some people still question if the OpenDocument Format (ODF) is a feasible choice. Some people also believe they should continue doing what they have been doing for the last couple of years simply because they believe that the market situation can't be changed and that they themselves can't influence change. However, these people seem to forget what swarms can do compared to a single fish or what many ants literally can "pull off" if they work together. Maybe these people should watch Pixar's "A Bug's Life" again. What's going on globally regarding ODF is to a large degree a reflection of the power of different communities.

ODF has quickly become the XML document file format with the broadest application and platform support, and probably the largest user base as well. ODF is supported by OpenOffice.org, StarOffice, OpenOffice.org: Novell Edition, KOffice, IBM Workplace, Google Docs & Spreadsheets, Abiword/Gnumeric, Textmaker, Thoughtslinger, Mobile Office and others. The supported platforms include Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Solaris, FreeBSD, OS/2, Symbian OS and Palm OS. Thus, all major operating systems are covered!

OpenOffice.org, as just one implementation of ODF, is improving and evolving quickly. As I recently mentioned here in my blog as well, Redflag Chinese 2000 Software is adding another 50 developers to the OpenOffice.org developer community. As a consequence, OpenOffice.org should get more features more quickly.

Even applications like Firefox and Microsoft Office can be used to view and/or create ODF files. For example the Sun ODF plug-in for Microsoft Word makes opening and saving ODF files with Microsoft Word 2003 a seamless task. A version of the Sun ODF plug-in that supports Excel and Powerpoint as well as older office versions is currently being tested by beta customers, with increasingly positive feedback. Thus, ODF can be used independent of platform, application and vendor preferences.

Sure, interoperability between different ODF implementations is not 100% perfect yet, either because a few applications don't implement every ODF feature or because ODF still needs some optimization. However, considering the current ODF momentum, ODF can be expected to evolve and mature very quickly!

I'm sure, the more users will use and demand ODF (i.e single fish come together to build swarms) the more Microsoft will add and improve their support for ODF as well. The ODF converter work initiated by Microsoft is just one sign of Microsoft's reactions to the user demand for ODF.

Now with Dell shipping PC's with Ubuntu pre-installed, the ODF market share will grow significantly because Ubuntu includes OpenOffice.org. Probably the additional visibility and credibility that Ubuntu got due to the Dell deal will lead to a lot more Ubuntu and OpenOffice.org installs than just the number of Ubuntu PC's shipped by Dell. For sure Google's ODF support in Google Search and Google Apps as well as IBM's millions of existing and soon upgrading Lotus users will also accelerate the ODF adoption. The huge number of daily sold PC's and Mac notebooks that don't come with a pre-installed office suite and thus will make people evaluate tools like OpenOffice.org will contribute to the success of ODF as well. Currently the number of ODF files on the web already outnumber by far the number of Ecma Office Open XML files.

I can't predict the future - if I could, I would play the lottery - but from my point of view the ODF stars are well aligned. It's fun to monitor the news because ODF news and success stories are coming in on a almost daily basis. I'll keep you updated!
( Mai 29 2007, 12:22:52 PM CEST ) Permalink

Yet another ODF implementation
I was told by Rick Walker, the President of Thoughtslinger Corporation, via email that Thoughtslinger implements ODF. Here is a quote from his email:
"We're a small Toronto-based startup and we've built a new simultaneous group editor that heavily uses the .odt format. Everyone in a team works on the same document at the same time, and everyone sees what everyone else is doing as they do it."
( Mai 29 2007, 11:08:39 AM CEST ) Permalink

Freitag Mai 25, 2007

OpenOffice.org on Dell PC's
Just in case you did not notice, Dell just started shipping OpenOffice.org via their Ubuntu bundling. Pretty cool!
( Mai 25 2007, 04:43:54 PM CEST ) Permalink Kommentare [5]

Reminder: Call for Papers Deadline for OOoCon 2007 Approaching!
This is just a quick reminder that the call for papers deadline for the OpenOffice.org Conference 2007 is approaching very quickly! The call for papers ends on June 1! Details can be found here.
( Mai 25 2007, 04:15:25 PM CEST ) Permalink

Since the press continues writing about the bunny virus ...
... I thought it's necessary to quote Malte:
"Sohpos has just confirmed to me that SB/BadBunny-A does not bypass StarOffice/OpenOffice.org security checks, and that the user is asked if he wants to enable macros for that document when loading it."
Also see the official OpenOffice.org statement here.
( Mai 25 2007, 04:12:55 PM CEST ) Permalink

New chart module and report designer for OpenOffice.org
In case you don't read the GullFOSS blog, which I definitely can recommend highly, you might be interested in learning that OpenOffice.org will soon get a new chart module and a report designer. Also check out the latest Mac OS X screenshot on this blog entry. Pretty cool!
( Mai 25 2007, 04:03:30 PM CEST ) Permalink

More software with ODF support
"New Web Services support enables organizations to easily build their own applications on top of the BioXM server, further leveraging this central inventory of information based on a user-created, extendible scientific knowledge model. The updated BioXM client application ensures a highly personalized work experience, adding new support for Mac OS X(R) as a client platform and extended data exchange capabilities now supporting OpenDocument formats."
I found the news herehere. Please let me know when you find new applications supporting ODF! Thanks!
( Mai 25 2007, 02:12:05 PM CEST ) Permalink