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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?
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
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.
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.
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..
MS has just replaced the technical challenge of reverse engineering their closed formats with the legal challenge of infringing their patents on the new "open" formats.
Please read this entire document carefully to understand your rights.
- 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.
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.