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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."
This is a very good example for other countries to follow. This actually encourages competition and speeds up the embrace of open standards. The government should always be involved in iniciatives like this.
--MaxPowerDJ
The OASIS OpenDocument format is sooo 20th century man!
Of course you will. The whole reason that patents were introduced was to entice people to reveal their trade secrets to the world so they would become available as public knowledge. That's the opposite of proprietary file formats.
This isn't about copyrights or patents, only about government information. It will have to be presented in an open format.
Basically, they're saying that you can't provide government info in a format that would require someone to buy software to be able to read it. Which, all in all, is a good thing - information is more publicly available with fewer differences in who can access it.
I am not in anyway affiliated with Max Cannon
So unless it's a large country, it's irrelevant? I wish other countries would take stands like this.
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...home to Nordic warriors and kick-ass ministers.
Given that Norway is extremely wealthy due to the vast reserves of North Sea oil that they own, has one of the highest standards of living in the world and have "one of the most advanced telecommunications networks in Europe" (http://cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/no. html) among other things,I think they might be a fairly important customer, yeah.
When CNN announced that hey were offering news video clips for free viewing I thought well good for them... Then I tried viewing one from my SUSE box and found that they were using Microsoft's media player :-(
I left a message with them and explained the problem but I think it will take a LOT of people (hint, hint) to email companies who use proprietary formats before they'll get the message.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
And what is so impractical about XviD and ogg?
There are plenty of proprietary formats based around an openly accessible specification, notably the specifications for PDF files can be freely downloaded, and so an assortment of open source applications that can deal with PDF files are available, in addition to the official free reader.
The article doesn't make clear this distinction. Of course, an open specfication isn't quite an open format, but PDF does IMO have all the benefits of one.
What happens when the entire EU follows Norway? Will you laugh that off too because it's only countries from Europe nobody cares about?
the first Gulf war. Now its of the mentality that chooses to do "All Laci! All the time!" or "All Terry! All the time" or whatever is the latest dead, or nearly dead, body "du jour."
I have bothered to go to their site in a while. I'd rather go to BBC.co.uk
I would recommend that you do so if you want news.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
The *format* will be open (it's just plain XML), but the data it contains (the binary thing) is not. What if that ASCII-encoded-binary-field contains key formatting data? How do you expect to properly view the document?
See the trend? Microsoft is continuously trying to charge access for your *own* data! Just like DRM!
Well, my understanding is that they're talking about the document formats, not the software itself. Using open-source document formats allows for greater interoperability across diverse operating systems and document-creation software--or that's the theory, anyway.
It'd be kind of like each publishing company using a proprietary alphabet in its books. Readers would then have to invest the time and effort to learn each alphabet, or focus on one alphabet and lose access to all the other publishing companies' information.
And does it cooperate with open source? (Highly unlikely, but not impossible). To me, that is the #1 judgement of an open standard. Think of other open standards and you will see what I mean. Ogg, SVG, XviD, PNG, TCP, UDP, IP... e.g. if it doesn't allow other systems to interoperate, it can't possibly be open.
So are you saying that Microsoft's current formats are cutting edge, 21st century technology. I don't know if changing you format every couple of years to screw with your competitors should count as staying on the edge of technical innovation.
Cost is completely irrelevant.
The point is that proprietary formats -- by definition -- cannot guarantee free access to the information they contain, and free access is essential to the functioning of a democratic government.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
And Norway is far more important than a single city.
The problem (for MS) is not that Norway is that important. The problem is that it sets a dangereous precedend.
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof for my post which this sig is too small to contain.
Get a clue. That argument might have worked on some people 5-10 years ago but now that we have IBM and SGI making super computers with linux, you can hardly convince even the most naive among us.
Doesn't really matter anyways since MS is already going to open standards for the next Office.
The format is not so open anymore when you consider that basically all GNU software will be prohibited from using it. Without any real good BSD licensed Office software out there (as far as I know) what's the use?
Time makes more converts than reason
Norway is pretty used to open source compared to many other countries. Anyone who use or understand open source will also understand whats wrong with storing YOUR information in a format someone else has total control over. Its just not your own data in a sense. Forcing your citizens to use certain vendors products to function is not something the government should do either.
Demanding your own data to be readable by anyone without tullbooting to a certain vendor is so obvious it almost hurts. The problem is people really dont understand how it works, once they do they wont put up with it. Governments is in a perfect position to demand theese kinds of rules since they serve the public and not any perticular company. It cant be considered a trade hindrance either since there are plenty of free open formats for the propriarity vendors to implement free of charge in their applications.
HTTP/1.1 400
And when the other shoe drops?
You realize that only reason that many offices don't use something like OpenOffice.org is because they can't get 100% compatiblity when sending/receiving MS Office docs right? Now I'm not naive, there are plently of companies that would die without outlook and love sharepoint and Offices workgroup features etc. But and this is a big BUT, universities, consumers, small businesses, and even many larger business haven't sold they're souls to the Exchange demon. Your just going to let potentially millions of users just walk away from MS Office to OpenOffice.org OR any other office suite because your now a believer in Open formats? You'll pardon those of us who've been around a while from taking a wait and see attitude. Ms has wielded incompatibility as a club to bludgeon competitors for years. Why would they stop when they A)have a monopoly in the Office market B) have an MS "friendly" DOJ and president C) have so much to "lose" by working with others?
Let me guess, there is some sort of provision or scheme somewhere down the road where OSS and GPL software won't be able to use this due to patents?
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
You are 100% correct. Ideally, you could count on 100% of the population to use the same software that the government uses to send documents to them. In practice, though, they don't so it only makes sense to choose an open, documented format for data exchange.
Pragmatism wins over idealism any day. Of course, my take on "practical" seems to be a bit different than yours.
I am a
It's somewhat more serious than that. Because if the government of Norway is going to be moving to OpenOffice.org formats (for example) then everyone that wants to communicate with the government (which likely includes most Norwegians) will have to have software that reads and writes those formats. That means that lots more Norwegians are likely to have a copy of OO.org on their machine. All of a sudden the file compatibility shoe is on the other foot and its MS Office that has poor compatibility with OO.org formats.
Not only does Microsoft lose the Norwegian government accounts, but it almost certainly will find it harder to sell to Norwegian businesses and individuals in general. If this experiment is successful then Microsoft is also faced with the negative PR of a Free Software office suite migration on a massive scale. Norway might not be much of a hit for Microsoft, but throw in a few more EU countries, and Microsoft would definitely start to feel the pain.
Besides, Microsoft still has a ridiculously high price/earnings ratio. If Microsoft wants to keep its stock price where it currently is then it needs to be generating new business, not losing existing business. Microsoft employees, and especially Microsoft executives, have a great deal of their personal wealth wrapped up in MSFT. The last thing that Microsoftees what is for Wall Street to reevaluate the MSFT share price.
the Minister sent strong signals in the direction of Redmond to open up or become irrelevant to the Norwegian Government.
Should say:
the Minister sent strong signals in the direction of Redmond that we want a better deal on your software, and once you drop the price a bit we'll keep using your formats Everyone here keeps getting wide eyed when a country makes some claim like this, but as long as M$ drops their price they all seem to fold fast.
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Open Source is not very important. Open Standards are. That is what it should be all about. Open Source is in fact totally irrelevant, if all of your data is locked inside proprietary files. Somebody will sure start to reverse engineer the formats, but it almost never works 100% right.
/picz
Right now I'm looking at an OS browser showing HTML with CSS. There are som jpegs around and some png's as well. If Microsoft or other company had their way, all of those formats would be secret, closed and patented and the software should be licenced from them.
Open Source is nice and efficient way of writing code, but real freedom is inside open standards.
As it is now, every government and every company has a lot of unreadable documents sitting around on their disks. They only become readable, when a licence is paid to MS or Adobe etc. And who knows, how long these companies will be around? And what if they choose to abandon old platforms and try to force everybody to use the newest Longhorn 2020 Ultra Plus for $499 pr. licence? This is not freedom.
What if I work for some government office and would like to make a nice, indexed and searchable database of my Word documents available to the public. Where is the innovation, when the standards are closed and secret and unreadable for my programmers
Knowing what's inside your own documents is essential. Specially if you are a government.
I hope that EU will look at Norway and learn. There's not much hope for the US I'm affraid. Too much corporate influence inside the political system.
------- Look mum! I have posted another Slashdot comment! --------
Microsoft pulled this "don't switch to alternatives just yet, the next version of Office will have an open format" trick the last two versions of Office. And you're falling for it a third time? Don't you people learn from repetition? I think Bush said it best, or tried to: "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me"
There is no doubt that there will be something "non-open" about the formats when Office 12 arrives. Microsoft are playing this game of "we're moving the direction of moving open formats", the catch is that they will forever just be "moving in that direction" - they'll never "arrive".
I suspect that in a few years you'll be posting on slashdot again with "don't bother switching to OpenOffice 3, Office 13 is going to have an open format".
Microsoft will give up their proprietary formats when you pry them from Bill Gate's cold, dead fingers --- the core of their entire business model is that nobody else is compatible with Office.
But vast numbers of Scandanavians speak English quite well. So well, in fact, I had mistaken some for North Americans. Of course, this is a bit less common in Norway than it is in Sweeden or Denmark but I would dare guess that more Norwegians speak English than Americans speak -insert language here- by percent.
Ah, would this be the same Office XML format(s) that Microsoft has been filing patents for in various patent offices around the world?
"Sure it's open, anyone can use it. Oh, there is the matter of patent royalties..."
-- Alastair
And I suppose you're also going to make WMA and WMV (DRM innards included) open formats as well?
"You get what you pay for" doesn't say anything about what you get when you don't pay. Not to mention all the extra crap you get that you don't want, when you pay for some things.
But then, perhaps all this wisdom and logic is wasted on you, Anonymous Microsoft apologist Coward. Of course Norway's policy matters: that policy is exactly the kind of pressure forcing Microsoft to abandon one of its favorite monopoly abuses. You're going to have to find some other abuse to love, while supplies last.
--
make install -not war
Stop dick-measuring. It's not the fact that a Scandinavian country with a small population has had enough of being locked in, it's the fact that a sovereign country has woken up to the fact that using proprietary formats doesn't do anything for them, and has kicked sand in the face of the big bully.
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It won't even come close to working. This is as silly an approach as saying the entire government must use Microsoft. Peopele should be free to choose what is best for them. That very popular spread sheet really is the best on earth. So let's go to a less capable spreadsheet, after all we don't need to look too closely at our data we're a government. When in doubt raise taxes.
1. Just because an application can open a secret file format -today- doesn't mean one will be do so legally tomorrow.
2. Just because many people overpaid for software so they all can share the secret files it creates doesn't make it "open" to anyone but your fellow consumers.
3. Phrases like "for all intents and purposes" just make your assertions sound less problematic than they really are.
Competition in Office Suites? Really? are you serious about this? What's the viable alternative to Office then? Not Open Office, not Corel.
4. Microsoft has a monopoly that includes their Office product. As a result of their monopoly, they demand artificially high prices, additional profits and can deliver an inferior product. Then they penalize any competitor by simply lowering their prices to eliminate their competitor. They extend their monopoly by linking in other products in areas where no competitor is allowed. Outlook and their mail-server backend is a good example.
6. I agree with you that the government is playing hardball with MS. They really don't -want- to convert everything. In the future don't turn it into a "freemarket think" speech.
How does it make you feel to hear you have overpaid a monopoly for inferior software?
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
The real question is whether the Norwegian market is large enough to sustain and develop a good competitor, and give it market exposure and testing. Sure, MS won't miss the income - but is it a large enough market to give a good proving ground for a significant competitor? That's what should worry Microsoft.
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
Ballmer and his top managers has travelled around the world trying to stop even cities from switching to open software.
Microsoft seems to be scared of a domino effect.
You are either an idiot or working for a Redmond company? :-)
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
In fact, Microsoft's Norwegian division did such a good job at dragging money out of the Government, that its CEO got promoted to be the CEO of Microsoft Russia!
Not sure, if I would call that a promotion ...
No, it's 21 years total maximum, and such a sentence is usually served in about 8-10 years. We have a different way of thinking about society and punishment than Americans seem to have, and for the most part it works out pretty well.
It actually does make sense. Not only is it too costly to try and support every format, open or not, and it is too costly to ensure there is licensed software on every machine you may or may not use for documents... but you wouldn't change the language to make the government inaccessible would you?
Before this it was almost like saying: Mandarin only please!
Not everyone knows Mandarin in Norway - but some do I'm sure. People who are more well off would be able to get training, and as with everything, some smart people would be able to learn it on their own (think piracy). This leaves many other people out of the loop however.
From a cost standpoint, imagine this:
You've written a proposal and want to have it shown on the projector at the next town hall meeting. Should you, and the government, need to worry about what copy of Powerpoint is on the machine connected to the projector? In a company it is easy to ensure that every machine has a copy and that copy is a valid, licensed copy. However, governments often buy computers as they need them and can't blanket every machine with the same software package.
If you want to take a document to Bob in land development, and you work in the health department, is that going to be a problem? Using open formats makes it easier to ask: "Do you have word processing software?". You don't get to his machine and find out that your versions mismatch or that he is using something that understands your document like a foriegn language.
There are enough options out there, of course I can't get over why HTML doesn't stand out the most (when it comes to Word Processing). Mozilla Office anyone?
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How poorly you grasp the consequence of open. Yes a 14 year old may well be someone who fixes problems, but by the nature of the licence he is not the only one who is able to. They are not relying purely upon a 14 year old, or a bulletin board, or whatever. They are free to purchase support contracts from companies who are qualified in maintaining this. This sort of support is usually paid anyway in large organisations, they just don't have to purchase licences and new versions of software simply because the developers want more money.
The important thing about the Free is the "Speech" not the "Beer" aspect. Free, open, anyone can use, non-restrictive software is better for everyone. If people want to pay for it, and pay for support, great, support helps keep people fed.