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Danish Study Recommends Open Standards for EU

Posted by timothy on from the danish-studies-are-fattening dept.

PDAJames writes "The Danish government has wrapped up a two-year study of open source's potential for the public sector, and has some pretty interesting things to say. For one, it says that tie-ins to proprietary software effectively eliminate competition for government procurement and are inherently bad. For another, it recommends a public sector-led effort to adopt an XML-based standard document format, either that of OpenOffice or a new one developed by the EU. Will they push ahead with these plans or is it just more talk?"

9 of 185 comments (clear)

  1. Speaking of by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

    XML-based standard document format, either that of OpenOffice

    There is another vendor providing XML-based document formats currently.

    1. Re:Speaking of by penguinrenegade · · Score: 3, Informative

      Actually they are using a warped XML - not TRUE XML. Just like they did with Palladium - took over someone else's format and warped it.

    2. Re:Speaking of by Carewolf · · Score: 2, Informative

      Actually only the metadata (author and title of document) is formated in XML, all the rest is just in a new proprietary binary-format contained in XML.

  2. Re:Where? by broeman · · Score: 3, Informative

    The Kingdom of Denmark is actually located both in Europe and North America (we gave up on Wineland aka New Foundland). It includes Denmark, The Faroe Islands and Greenland. The country and state Denmark is the "little hat" you see on top of Germany. And happy to tell this, we are still feared in east-England because of our past (even the CIA calls us raiders! :)

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    (yes this can be compared with sex)
  3. Re:Well, at least some part of government has brai by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    It wasn't a snowplow it was a groundleveler, don't listen to stupid journalists.

  4. Re:Bundles are the answer!! NeXT had this years ag by dspeyer · · Score: 5, Informative
    This is exactly what xml word processors do.

    OpenOffice uses zip to combine several xml files (one for content, others for meta-info and editor advice) and any image files or similar embedded content in their native formats. IIRC, KOffice uses tar.bzip2 and Abiword uses tar.gz, but I don't have those in front of me at the moment.

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    Sig:Why copyright isn't a fundamental human right

  5. Re:What about Office 2003? But... by dspeyer · · Score: 2, Informative
    Samples of MS-XML have been posted here on /., and they are pretty opaque. They don't seem to be using base64 tricks, but they're doing everything else.

    Just because XML is open doesn't mean everything built on it is open. TCP/IP is open, but there's plenty of proprietary applications and data flowing over it.

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    Sig:Why copyright isn't a fundamental human right

  6. Looks good but.... by bYTEREALm · · Score: 2, Informative

    Ive hears about these initiatives in my country before, and well talk is cheap. I'm a free software user and supporter. We need at least open standards for all companies wanting to do business with our goverments. Open source would be nice, but i could settle for open standards as the next best thing.. ;) And yes we danish are a lot more than pastry, for years we were known and feared as the notoriuos vikings at sea. Tro det eller lad vaer - Believe it or not.. ;)

  7. Errors in the original posting. by jhorlyck · · Score: 2, Informative

    As one of the authors, I will point to one major and one minor error in the original posting: - It is not a report from the government, but from the Danich Board of Technology - an independet, public technology assesment board. - It was not a 2 year study. Work started in jan. 2002 and the Danish report was published on oct. 12, 2002. The English translation (financed by EU Commision) was published last week. The report is available from www.tekno.dk