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Danish Study Recommends Open Standards for EU
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?"
Why don't the KDE developer stop working on KOffice and support OpenOffice instead?
We need more people working on OpenOffice. OpenOffice is the only product that has a chance against MS Office.
Open standards are the best thing imaginable for the customer. The data that software manages is consistently orders of magnitude more valuable than the hardware/software that does the managing.
This wont open up things entirely, there are still patented feature sets, and purely proprietary technologies. It will at least let the best product win, not the company that got their first.
it says that tie-ins to proprietary software effectively eliminate competition for government procurement and are inherently bad.
Well, I might say that if one were considering government procurement only, they might be inherently bad. But there absolutely *is* good software out there that is proprietary that is good, and better than anything available open source. This is not to say I am not in favor of open source. Quite the contrary, I believe in an open source foundation, but companies should be allowed to bid on contracts for their proprietary products as long as those products are either based on open source, or support open source formats and alternatives.
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I must say that I am a bit confused. Not long time ago our "beloved" government (I even voted for them) were in favor of software patents and the use of industry standard software (read Microsoft) ... Open Source has been discussed in the Danish parlament for some years, even before the current government (2 years old in a month). The former government promised to change all state-institutions to OSS, but still nothing has happened. SSLUG (Skane Sjaelland Linux User Group, biggest LUG in Denmark) have had some discussions on this topic without much succes ... but saying this, I am looking forward to a initiative from our very quiet IT-minister. The report is from the Board of Technology, that have many good and forgotten discussions.
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Better yet than XML... bundles!!!
.rtfd files on NeXT and Mac OS X. They're basically super-RTF files. They are actually a folder ending with .rtfd that the operating system presents to the user as a single file (for mere aesthetic and encapsulation reasons). They contain an RTF file and all the non-RTF resources (images, sounds, etc) that are embedded in the document as separate files in their own formats. I believe images are saved as TIFF by default.
:)
Go research
So why not combine open XML document formats and rtfd-style bundles! A complex document is really a folder full of files, but it appears to the user as a single file. This makes it easy to move around, esp from computer to computer, and presents a nice sensible metaphor to the user. It's also difficult to screw things up by messing with the components (but it is possible to get into the bundle if you need to). Inside these complex documents is an XML file that describes the components of the document. Then there are files that contain the components, in whatever (open) format you wish. RTF or OpenOffice or whatever for text, Ogg sounds, PNG or SVG images, CSV or more complex spreadsheet/table formats, all the fonts the document needs, etc.
One of the replies to the parent addressed the issue of pixel-exact rendering. That's easy - just use the same rendering engine everywhere! All Gecko browsers render exactly the same everywhere (assuming the same fonts are available). So just use a single homogenous rendering engine everywhere. (And include fonts in the document bundle).
I sure hope some brilliant application-software engineer reads this!
(Final note: Another, more risky option would be to provide an API for rendering modules written in some suitable language, which would then be included in the bundle. You want to render, say, Maya IFF images? Include the IFF renderer in the bundle. Of course great security precautions would need to be taken, and optimally the rendering modules would have access to nothing outside the document-world, and preferably only a buffer to draw into and layout above them would be managed by the program. This has been tried before, I think. But maybe its time has come?)
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nice...if the EU uses a public open format, their economic power will force MS to have filters for the format!!
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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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Open Standards are all about interoperability creating a level playing field where companies can compeat to produce the best readers and writers of the standards. Consumers and Govs are free to choose which suits them best. This is one of the reasons the web took off as html was essentially an open standard, even though there were no open source browsers about in the early days.
Open Source is a different beast. I don't think the the benifits for a company to open source its products are as clear. Yes there are advantages with transpanancy for govemental use. Yes its great for hobbyiest, probably great for products aimed at developers. But the economic model is dificult, the viral licencing can cause problems.
In general I'm much more passionatle about Open Standard than Open Source.
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