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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."
Hardware? Where?
...since government is supposed to serve all people, not just the ones who use Windows.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Office 12 will have open, XML formats, by default. We got the message. http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=7332 9
Eyh! I'm Norwegian, you insensitive clod! But seriously, Norway is the world's third largest exporter of oil. We influence *your* gas prices. We also happen to be pretty far ahead in the tech and telecom sectors. We're the second richest country in the world (GDP pr capita). Yes! That's right. We have it better than the Americans, *and* we have the Nobel Peace Price. Trolltech, the makers of QT, the base of KDE, is situated in Norway, and don't forget Opera software. "The Scream" was painted by "Edvard Munch" (pr. "Munk" not "Munch"), a Norwegian painter. So *THERE*! Once you know the above, the following references become completely unfunny: "I'd like to thank the Prime Minister of Norway" in one of the "Police Academy" movies. "Norway? More like Snoreway." in the Kenya Flash movie.
How so?
What he's saying is, "The way software will compete in Norway is how it runs or interacts with the user, not how it stores information."
All it does is prevent being locked into a vendor because migration to other software is nearly impossible until|unless someone hacks the file format and creates a conversion program.
Here's a story from my background:
When I worked exclusively in mainframes and mid-ranges, the desire was to move from Data General's CEO (office automation): word-processing documents, spreadsheets, and calendars to IBM's PROFS system. DG wouldn't sell, let alone give the internal file formats. IBM's file layouts were open books. Management solicited quotes from local software whores and the best bid they got was a $50'000 retainer, 6-8 people with a minimum of 6-8 months. They came to me and asked if I could do it but without a firm schedule - to see what I could do to steam things open. The quality of the local DG customer service dropped dramatically as not only were they losing a big customer, but someone was hacking their secrets. But DG Sales stepped up the pressure to retail their pressence.
It was my first PL/I series of programs - I'd already worked extensively in at least a dozen other languages. (in order, the first few were LISP, FORTRAN, assembler, COBOL, BASIC). Once you've got a nice assortment, languages are languages - you aren't locked into a particular mindset but can also steal concepts from one and use them in another.
Anyway, I finished all three programs in less than three months without working overtime and without offloading my regular work. It was turned over to the migration team and it converted several hundred thousand word processing documents and spreadsheets, and hundreds of calendars flawlessly. No runtime errors and no reports of problems from any users during the years of use after the migration.
The gist of this is that if the file formats are open, you probably don't have to roll your own as there would probably be businesses which write & sell them. But application vendors don't want their customers to have the ability to move to anyone else at will. It goes against the grain of how they do business.
It will be interesting to see the status of this situation in two years - someone set a reminder and let's reexamine what's happening and what happens to this guy. The issue will die or he'll be swept by the wayside as this type of thinking is not popular in the business world!
The_Petroleum_Fund_of_Norway : $170 billion
Norway has far more cash in his pockets in this fund alone than Microsoft in total.
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof for my post which this sig is too small to contain.
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?
I imagine a secretary will open it with openoffice and save it to a standard format. If they are feeling evangelical, they may do just as you have suggested and request a standard format.
Picture this, you're a U.S. ambassador and a foreign government that controls a fair bit of oil and is historically friendly to you and well respected by the rest of the world sends you a letter asking you to please resend the papers you sent them, but in a format that does not require them to buy special software from an American company. Do you A) tell them no; or B) tell your executive assistant to do it? The clock is ticking here. Gee, sure is a tough choice huh? For that matter if you have to do this a dozen or so times are you going to get pissed at the Norweigans or at your IT guys who can't seem to send documents in the right format (whatever the hell that is)?
The truth of the matter is Norway can easily dictate the format they receive documents in, and if other countries (ones we are less inclined to cater to like Peru) ask for the same, it is much more likely we will do so for them as well. Some U.S. government officials might even wonder what the big deal is, research the issue, and try to mandate the same for their department, office, agency or whatever.
I believe it's still possible to have a 'personal army', at least in Scotland.
At Glasgow University, if you enter the examination hall with a personal army, you automatically get a pass, although don't take horses, otherwise you'll have to supply adequate water outside for them.
sorry the world just doesn't work that way. You don't just take your chips and go home because in the end you just end up hurting yourself. Most of the time idealism translates to stupidity.
Freeing the slaves was pretty impractical. Trying to coordinate voting across a huge nation instead of just having a bunch of little monarchies was impractical too. Police informing those accused of a crime of their rights is impractical too; 90% of people they inform either know already or don't care. Sometimes an idealistic solution is the right answer. In this case it is idealistic and practical and will probably save them money and time in the long term. The Norwegians are not running a business, they are doing what is right for their people and what they have announced is certainly something I would probably do were I in their place.