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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."
I wonder if he's been reading a certain letter from Peru?
After someone (or several someones) take time to reverse engineer the file format and then the next 'update' they're broken again. It's wasted time and effort because they're closed.
I am not in anyway affiliated with Max Cannon
heh .
I don't know though , PDF was a fairly forward looking format and seems to be doing ok (.pdf and OS X seem to be fairly great , well pdf is if its used properly as opposed to people shoving everything in a pdf)and nobody can fault a pure text document for its functionality
Not to mention the plethoira of open standard formats out there.
All i can say is , Way to go norway .
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
They're not always opened correctly. People may have reverse-engineered the formats to a large extent, but not fully, and MS doesn't publish the specs.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Including the one for the "spreadsheet that almost everyone uses"
http://www.microsoft.com/office/xml/default.mspx
-Ryan C.
Of course, you could always just claim that it's not an open standard b/c microsoft hasn't released it... *note: we're talking the binary versions. (e.g. not OASIS).
And then there are other standards as well... for instance the ogg or XviD open standards, as opposed to .wmv or DivX.
Sure, Norway is small.
It's also per-capita on of the richest nations in the world, with plenty of high tech business. And did I mention oil?
She also punches far above her weight class in international affairs with a long and distinguished history of diplomatic intercession and hosting, and could serve as a shining example to many other nations, particularly her European neighbors.
So, of course, it's easy to make disparaging remarks about a small nation, particularly posting on a site like this where the readership is predominantly USian (and, geeky or not, still subject to that typically USian fault of not knowing or caring about the rest of the world) but in fact this is a fairly prominent nation with some real influence, and it could be a turning point for MS dominance in other areas as well.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
What are the Norwegians going to do when the US or British governments, for example, send them a .doc? Tell them they have to redo it over again in a non-proprietary format?
Norway isn't really a big enough country for other countries to worry about conforming to its standards of documents. They're probably still going need Office, or OO.org atleast, to read files sent to them from other countries.
Norway isn't an OPEC member.
They do, however, have a lot of oil.
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof for my post which this sig is too small to contain.
BBC or CBC. http://www.cbc.ca/ is actively embracing open standards. They have an OGG stream they are testing out, give instructions for user of Mac or *NIX and link to Mplayer.
http://www.cbc.ca/listen/index.html
This is a very good example for other countries to follow.
:)
Much as I love Norway, Norwegians and Nemi, Peru is the one leading the way on this. They got their first and are even mandating open source software for all government use.
Still, great to see the Vikings joining in.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
Norway is not member of the EU.
I spent a few days in Norway last year (Fredrikstad, Oslo, and Bjørkelangen) and it is really a beautiful and well developed nation.
a p o untry.cfm?id=Norway
.no as well.
Check out their GDP per capita: http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/eco_gdp_ppp_c
Index of Economic Freedom is good too, although a bit socialist:
http://www.heritage.org/research/features/index/c
Norway can afford to do what it wants. They are very rich (being one of the largest oil and gas producers in the world helps), and aren't even in the European Union nor do they use the Euro. The Norwegians I know are also very well educated, and tons of good software comes from
Their drug laws aren't as terrible as those we have in the United States either, nor do they have the death penalty, etc etc..
"Umm... Off hand, I can't think of much that is more irrelevant than the Norwegian Government."
Until you realize they control 1/5 of the oil market. That's enough to skrew over most countries twice.
Norway could buy Microsoft by pumping 1% extra oil for half an hour.
I know it's bad form to bring up facts in a M$ discussion, but why not look for yourself? Here's one example from a quick Google, has the same simple document in different formats. DOCX is apparently new in a new version of Office.
fud, notfud, yes, no, maybe
You don't have to buy software to read .docs either. There's plenty of free and open source text editors capable of opening .docs.
I thought MS's idea of opening up document formats was to use "industry-standard XML" with restrictive licenses.
Check out "Office 2003 XML Reference Schema Patent License" Hell, the title says it all, doesn't it?
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
- it has lots of money, and
- the Government controls much more than it does in the U.S. -- for example, private schools, universities/colleges and hospitals are nearly nonexistant. Heck, even the largest ISP in Norway is largely owned by the Government!
Now, for years, the Government has been spitting out money to Microsoft to purchase licenses for Windows and Office in all schools, universities, departments, hospitals and the like. Each and every high school in Norway has Windows and Office readily available for its students, many of whom have Microsoft Word and Excel as a part of their compulsory curriculum. A middle-sized high school in Norway spends up to 15,000 USD on Microsoft licenses alone.So Microsoft has done very well in Norway. In fact, Microsoft's Norwegian division did such a good job at dragging money out of the Government, that its CEO got promoted[link in Norwegian] to be the CEO of Microsoft Russia!
Fortunately, certain groups and politicians have realized that the money spent on Microsoft could be spent on more important things, and have objected to pouring out money to Microsoft, and Linux has been tried out in several schools throughout the country, with largely positive experiences.
The Government has therefore finally realized that the continuous flow of money going to Microsoft is better spent elsewhere, and that there are cheaper and better alternatives. And with this statement from the Minister, Norway is one step further on its way to stop this terrible waste of money.
Screw karma, I'm ticked.
.msi package. .msi packages are not of the devil, as so many slashdotters make them out to be. Windows 2000 and higher supports them natively. You can install the needed app to support them down to Win95.
.msi is everywhere, know it or not. Using acrobat reader at your office/house? Sure, you download a nice little .exe, but that .exe extracts a .msi to a temp dir and runs that instead. Macromedia is installed via .msi. VMWare is installed via .msi. Yes, you're running a .exe, but that .exe is just extracting a .msi and running that. Openoffice for windows is now a strictly .msi installer, and hey guess what? firefox has a .msi package too, suprise!
.msi is the .rpm of the windows world, .rpm is the .msi of the windows world. Quit blasting it because you can't run it on your linux box, it's not like the windows users can run your .rpm packages either.
Now, essentially every microsoft product comes in a
Oh, and before you call me a windows zealot and some moderator mods me down for being a windows zealot, RTFJ.
MS will be using XML to replace proprietary file formats in MS Office. So the Norwegian's will still be able to use Office.
It still all goes back to patents. MPEG and SMPTE need to release MPEG4 (AVC) and SMTPE (VC-1) to the world, but that will never happen. And no Open-Source product will be able to compete effectively in these markets in the near future. The reason I say this is that it has been 10 years since MPEG-2, and we are finally seeing a MPEG-4 (http://www.mpegla.com/avc/) and VC-1 (http://smpte.org/smpte_store/standards/). These will be used for future High Def. Video and Broadcast. MPEG-7 and MPEG-21 are on the way, but that's another story, and still patent encumbered.
He did coin a similar phrase though.
"There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee -- that says, fool me once, shame on -- shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again"
As you alluded to, this has often been attributed to Lincoln, although we don't have quite as definitive proof as the above video. I've also seen it attributed as an ancient Chinese proverb, but either way, I'm pretty sure it predates both Bush presidencies.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
NRK ogg
The official streaming is in the windows media format though...
--- guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people ---
Office's "Save as HTML" does not generate HTML. It generates some weird Microsoft-specific stuff that is neither XML nor HTML, but somewhere inbetween.
You do also produce 3.31 million bbl/day, which does indeed make you the 3rd largest exporter in the world.
You're not really a part of the EU, though you do contribute a sizable portion of their budget.
I'm not sure what the nobel peace "price" is, nor am I exactly sure what you mean. Your country HAS the prize? How did you get it? Are you planning on giving it back someday, or are you keeping it? Can I buy it on ebay? You do contribute a ton fo world aid, and should be applauded for that.
I'd also like to point out that, last I saw, LUXEMBOURG has the highest GDP/capita in the world right now. And not by a small margin, either. I wouldn't say that luxembourgers necessarily have it "better" than the americans, nor would your GDP/capita being higher. I'm afraid I have to ask you to back up your claim. In terms of the least labour-hours for a loaf of bread, that's the UK. I'd much rather live in america than the UK, because damn their housing sucks compared to america. I'd much rather have a huge place to live in with lots of room than be cramped into a smaller place. In terms of best places to live, I've gotta say mexicans have it about the best, they just have a terrible economy, socio-cultural problems up the ass, etc. But it's by far the most comfortable, beautiful, #1 place to live by me.
I will take this moment to admit that Norway is indeed one of the most beautiful countries in the world, and is doing MANY things right. I'm ashamed my country has been unable to at least catch up with you in many of these aspects. But I wouldn't say you have it the best out of everyone in the world :). If you were a real nerd, you'd remember the "cheap 1gbps fibre avaiable in hong kong for only $215 US per month and agree that they have it the best.
SWM seeks new sig for a brief fling
Using XML does not guarantee that the data contained is non-proprietary. It only guarantees that the data structure follows the XML-standard.
The news about Microsoft Office to use XML is only about buzzword compliance and nothing else.
Ridiculous. Travel around Norway and you'll discover that people doing the most humble jobs can speak English perfectly well - certainly better than most Americans. Norway is a rich, well educated and highly literate society - it makes most other countries look quite poor by comparison - USA included.
Have they ever got a lot of fucking tunnels and HEP!