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Norwegian Minister: No More Proprietary Formats

Posted by timothy on from the say-that-might-work-elsewhere-too dept.

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."

2 of 697 comments (clear)

  1. Money better spent elsewhere by chrispolarized · · Score: 5, Informative
    It's absolutely true that Norway is not a big country (population about 4.5 million), but note that
    • 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.
  2. Re:Good by pllewis · · Score: 5, Informative
    Yes, I totally agree on open standards, however there is more to it then that. MP3 ( MPEG 1 Layer III ) is a standard, MPEG4, and now WMV9 are standards ( WMV9 goes by the name VC-1 and is will be used for HD-DVD content ). You can read all about their structure, but you cannot implement them without a license. That is the real issue.

    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.