Mittwoch Dezember 12, 2007

Dutch parliament approves 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.
( Dez 12 2007, 09:36:14 PM CET ) Permalink Kommentare [1]

Every OLPC contributes to the ODF user base
I was not sure until yesterday, but according to different, trustworthy resources, the productivity software shipping with the OLPC (One Laptop Per Child) or XO (which is the official product name) supports ODF as the default file format. Thus, every OLPC contributes to the fast growing ODF user base. Cool!
( Dez 12 2007, 04:18:41 PM CET ) Permalink Kommentare [1]

VeryPC pre-installs OpenOffice.org
VeryPC is yet another PC vendor pre-installing OpenOffice.org depending on the customer's choice. OpenOffice.org is the pre-selected option for an office suite for at least a few (maybe all!?) of their computers. Check out their product pages to see how they promote OpenOffice.org.
( Dez 12 2007, 04:15:25 PM CET ) Permalink Kommentare [1]

ODF Support for Office 2007
Apparently Microsoft fixed the Office 2007 bug that kept us from supporting Office 2007 for our ODF plug-in. Check out Malte's latest blog entry for details!
( Dez 12 2007, 03:48:34 PM CET ) Permalink

"Ministry of Justice Open Source Discussion Paper"
I just became aware of the "Open Source Discussion Paper" by the Ministry of Justice of New Zealand. I found the open source policies of the Ministry of Justice in the appendix particularly interesting. Here is a quote of the first two policies:

"Policy 1: Open standards
Choose software that implements open standards wherever possible. OSS is more likely to implement open standards than proprietary software, facilitating interoperability and data transfer in and out of application data stores. But evaluation must be on a case-by-case basis, as some proprietary software has excellent support of open standards and might meet Ministry needs better than a comparable OSS product.

Policy 2: Prefer OSS
When evaluating software as part of a technical solution, preference is to be given to OSS alternatives over comparable proprietary solutions. OSS increases deployment flexibility, provides for more robust code, allows faster changes, and permits flexibility of support arrangements. Put generally, OSS avoids the risks associated with vendor lock-in, and greatly lowers the cost of adoption (though not to zero; see below). This policy does NOT override the Ministry's policy of reuse before buy/build; existing applications should not be eliminated simply because they do not include OSS components. (Ignoring OSS alternatives is a form of irrationality, but replacing working systems because they aren't built with OSS is equally irrational.)"
( Dez 12 2007, 03:29:03 PM CET ) Permalink

Business Intelligence for NetBeans with ODF Support
I just came across the following announcement:
"today announced iReport, the world's most popular open source graphical report and dashboard design tool, will now support the NetBeans(TM) 6.0 Integrated Development Environment (IDE) as a native plug-in ... This includes the creation of ad hoc and parameterized reports, pixel-perfect reports in a variety of formats (Open Document, PDF, ..."
Pretty cool! Yet another tool supporting ODF! The full announcement can be found here.
( Dez 12 2007, 03:16:23 PM CET ) Permalink