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Norwegian Minister: No More Proprietary Formats
Been on TV writes "The Norwegian Minister of Modernization today at a press conference in Oslo declared that proprietary formats will no longer be acceptable in communcation with government. He also calls for all parts of government to have a plan ready by 2006 for use of open source solutions. Taking great care not to mention the name Microsoft directly, but rather referring to 'the spreadsheet almost everyone uses' or saying this is the last time I will present a plan for information technology being broadcast on the net in Windows Media, the Minister sent strong signals in the direction of Redmond to open up or become irrelevant to the Norwegian Government."
Something tells me that this is inconsequential to the big software giants, as most business does not come from the fjord-riddled lands of Scandanavia. Now if this were Washington, or the EU as a whole (neither of which are possible), then maybe this would be bigger news.
"Leisure is the mother of philosophy" - Thomas Hobbes
It's a nice thought to have government running something more open, but it'll take something a little bigger than Norway to convince Microsoft.
Why this is a good thing?
Not trying to be flame bait or a troll.. but
Why should some company spend millions of $$ in research to develop a product and then have to have it out in the open so that someone can just make a rip off of their product?
Yeah all these gov's want to go open source because they are saving money, but if you are involved in an open source project that saved them millions of $$ do they give u a tax break? Does open source put food on the table?
What's next? Will the Leamington Assayer's Office also kick Microsoft to the curb? /Time to sell off Microsoft stock!!
"...become irrelevant to the Norwegian Government."
More likely, the Norwegian Government will become irrelevant to everybody else, when their Word and Excel documents are rejected and sent back.
Honestly, this is like one of those tiny toy dogs yipping and snarling, not realizing they can easily be stepped on by the very creature they are threatening.
The "irrelevant" statement is nothing more than wishful thinking on a Microsoft Hater's part.
You can already save files in formats that *nix machines can read, from Excel, Word, etc. It is hardly Microsoft's fault that the USERS are too stupid to use formats that you want them to. I use DOC files because I have no need to send anything to the Linux side of my network as no one is doing anything over there in terms of office work. If someone was, I'd send it as pure ascii text and let them format it however they want.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
"said it" != "coined", numbnuts