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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
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
Just IMAGINE -- being irrelevant to the GOVERNMENT of NORWAY!
The OASIS OpenDocument format is sooo 20th century man!
I wonder if he's been reading a certain letter from Peru?
or become irrelevant to the Norwegian Government
Well i expect that Bill Gates will probably handle this one personally. Because the last thing that Microsoft would want to do is piss off the Norwegian's.
Oh yeah. .abw, .sxw, and the like are definitely old and outdated, too.
.sxw is.
Well, maybe
Note to mods: I'm probably being sarcastic.
2004 figures:
Norway's GDP: $183 billion
Norway's Military spending: $4 billion
Microsoft's revenues: $36.8 billion
These numbers indicate that the best way for Microsoft to solve this issue is to simply raise an army and invade Norway. Don't be suprised if Norway is renamed to Billgatsia sometime in the next few years.
I Am My Own Worst Enemy
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
They don't open well in every program.
More specifically, formatting can easily be screwed when going from Quattro Pro to Excel or Excel to Open Office for example.
Office 12 will have open, XML formats, by default. We got the message. http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=7332 9
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.
Including the one for the "spreadsheet that almost everyone uses"
http://www.microsoft.com/office/xml/default.mspx
-Ryan C.
Well, it's not like Real Media format or QuickTime format are open standards. Embracing open standards is fine, but to do so at the expense of proprietary standards is stupid. More broadly, you can't afford to be idealistic in this industry; you have to be practical.
The Norwegian Minister of Modernization today at a press conference in Oslo declared that proprietary formats will no longer be acceptable
and he added: my sister was bitten by a prøprietary førmat ønce...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
No, actually if you read the article he has decreed that all government communication will take place using chisels and stone tablets.
Doesn't he know that open communication formats that can be read without specialized proprietary tools have no place in the future?!
air and light and time and space
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
They meant to type "Hard Sell"
...home to Nordic warriors and kick-ass ministers.
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.
"I once had a pc
or should I say she once had me.
So I switched os's
isn't it good
Norwegian Minister"
Mod parent 'not troll'.
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
DVI is not Linux only you twit. I use DVI files whern I compile my LaTeX files and that is on OS X and Windows. all you need is a DVI veiwer. and creating an OASIS veiwer is also easy to do and will be available in teh future.
OASIS files wil be the standard format for Abiword and Koffice.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Something like Norway, Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia, India, China and Japan combined?
Oh well, what the hell...
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!
Loosing? Please, it's 'losing'. Looking back on this event, would you say that they loost the contract?
--- witty signature
And Microsoft loves to change features and the layout in it as often as most of us blink. However, weren't they going to 'open up' the format for the next Office release?
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.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Well not the end but a good blow to Microsoft. It is basicly show the rest of the world that they can get along quite well without using MS products. And still loosing a country is a good blow. Yea it may not like be looing the US but it is a good loss, like loosing a major corporation like a GE or something.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Scandinavia may not have a huge population but it is one of the most progressive and IT literate areas in the world, so people pay attention when they announce this sort of initiative.
Oh, and not all of Scandinavia is "fjord-riddled".
EXCUSE ME ?!?!?! What are you talking about ?
Even printers can understand PS. You don't need a computer for that. Postscript is widely supported on all platforms, Microsoft Windows included. You can even add a "Generic PS" printer on Windows, and print to a file getting a nice PS archive.
DVI originated with LaTeX (as far as I know) and yes, it is mostly used on Unix-like platforms. At least around here, mostly by Sun users.
Lets not forget SGML, the whole she-bang of XML document formats, and of course PDF.
morcego
will have open formats that are not supported in any other version of Office, nor can it be purchased outside Norway, and will not install under any other locale of Windows. And costs more.
Reject Fear - Embrace Hope
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.
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.
No, but it doesn't seem to be specified well enough. IIRC the Abiword people have decided not to implement it, while the KOffice people are basically saying "here it is as best as we can, we'll tidy it up once OOo 2 is released and we actually know what the format is". I think rtf is, at the moment, the best way to do this. It's supported by just about everything, and can do most of what you need.
I am trolling
Reading this made me suddenly want to run some 400km west and hug the entire norwegian goverment. I just hope our goverment here in Sweden does something similar soon.
Why, oh why, cannot more sites do as the linked site did, and offer a layout that does not force the width of the article to some predetermined size, but rather lets me use all of my 1600x1200 display?
www.eFax.com are spammers
Here's why. And the article wasn't about open source. It was about open standards.
Or, my favorite, from the last version of Excel to the newest. Office almot never opens old versions correctly. Amazingly, Open Office does a better job.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
There once was a man from Peru,
who told Microsft to go screw,
he said we don't need your proprietary formats
with Linux we'll reformat,
And now they're doing it in Norway, too!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I'm all for supporting open formats. But is this more of an anti-Microsoft gesture or a true move to "open" formats?
and other document formats such as PS and DVI are Linux only
Odd. When did postscript and tex become exclusive to the Linux platform?
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.
That's some great momentum coming from skandinavia. It could have happened already 10 years ago, there were always small steps, but actually the ball never started to roll. Now that we have a rolling ball, we've got to *feed the momentum*, or it will die off.
Rethink how your personal way of dealing with proprietary formats. Incite discussion with your peers and in your company. If you're in a leadership position, come up with a plan and make it public.
If there are big news about this topic every week or so, the ball keeps rolling and might even break the ms-stranglehold on file formats in three years or so. Add your own momentum, and do it now!
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!
Postscript is a language for talking to printers. Its been supported by every OS, and natively on a large amount of hardware, for decades. For a free ps reader for Windows, google ghostscript.
Also, I believe K's office suite and Abiword can also open OO files, as the spec is completely open. Even MS Office could if they wanted to.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Yes, in many sectors the parrots are pining for the fjords.
Mercy was given to me by Christ...I must give the same to others.
Unfortunately, the OASIS format is modeled around the OpenOffice document model. There is no facility for extensions to the format, which means that it becomes impossible to use it if your applications feature set doesn't map directly to OpenOffices (or is a true subset).
Yes, it's XML and XML can be extended, but then it's no longer the OASIS standard document format.
And don't try to pretend that you can use your own namespaces to create your own functionality. Yes, you can, but since the OASIS standard doesn't require applications to maintain foreign elements, it's kind of a moot point.
It also doesn't address the issues of when you need to add something to a standard defined format because OpenOffice didn't support that feature. I mean things like a new border type, or a new data field format. Since the standard requires that anything you add to it be in a new namespace, you can't just add your own types and expect the document to validate.
I think OASIS severely erred on adopting one applications format rather than developing an open and extensible standard.
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
Open standards for government information means that everyone has the same access to said information regardless of income or what software they own.
I am not in anyway affiliated with Max Cannon
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.
its open format..
I should RTFA properly next time..
Norway: You must use open formats to deal with us!
;-)
Rest of World: No problem, how about you start by using a more 'open' language, like English?
No I'm not trollling for a flamewar, just thought it was rather humorous to have a country with a barely used language pushing for 'open' standards so everyone can read something...
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.
Surely there will be later revisions to the OASIS OpenDocument format if glaring errors like that are there? It's not a static process I assume.
...that we don't even have a Minister of Modernization. If we did, maybe our government would be thinking along Norway's lines.
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!
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.
correction: atm we don't plan to make ODT the default file format. Nokia however is working on improving our support for the format.
You can of course make it the default file format by tweaking your AbiWord profile.
It always amuses me when people say this. It shows how ignorant they are of the very format they're criticizing.
The Word format hasn't changed since Office 97. That's 4 versions ago. Excel hasn't changed since Excel 5, that's something like 7 versions ago. I can't speak for PowerPoint, but Access is the only one that has really changed much, but that's hardly a "document format".
Yeah, Word and Excel have both added new features that older versions ignore, but that's not the same thing.
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
Yes, it does. In fact it puts more food ont he table than proprietary.
People buy a product/good because it gives them some value. The lower the cost, the more value. By giving the product away free (or rather: at cost, which for software is pennies), they not only get the value of the software, but also get to use the money to buy something else. So instead of getting $value for their money, they get $value+$value2. This is a free gain to GDP. If the product makes them more efficient at work, its a free boost to their production as well which will have a multiplier effect on the GDP gain.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
another government that gets it.
I hope others will follow.
I would like to see all formats widely used on the Internet to be open with readily available published specifications.
Doing so would help level the playing field since anyone could write software reading and writing the specifications without having to get permission from someone else.
If governments use a companies software that only supports its proprietary standards they are risking being denied access to their own data at some future date. Also as the world moves more toward software that supports open standards, users of Microsoft's products may have a harder time communicating with the world.
Thus far Microsoft has been using its monopoly power to hinder competition but the world is slowly coming around anyway so Microsoft isn't going to be able to dictate defacto standards much longer.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
You certainly aren't... how did you come up with that horribly bad translation, anyway? I wasn't aware of any English to Norwegian option for the fish.
Here's a correct version:
Senere finner vi ut at noen betalte Guido for å dukke opp på dørstokken hans med et balltre og knuse kneskålene hans.
-- If no truths are spoken then no lies can hide --
Open and Free Government means no secrets, transparent.
You can't get more transparent than publicly defined specifications, paired with actual active use of them for all and sundry to see.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
This is great news but are we ready? Speaking in terms of Office software, as an example, I've tried to use OpenOffice 1.1 and 1.9+ beta and unfortunatlely, It does not compare to the "other" brand yet. It is klunky and full of annoying glitches. I thought I could ride them out but I couldn't. I am confident that all these issues will be ironed out in the future but are OpenOffice and like Open Source alternatives for Office software ready for the average Joe?
I hope it is just a problem with my wrong usage of it.
[alk]
before Balmer realizes that his company is in deep doo-doo.
Nobody likes to be strong armed into accepting inferior crap at usurious prices and will willingly accept cheap 'inferior'er crap that does what they need, without launching them on an 'upgrade treadmill.'
Most of what people are doing doesn't require more than a Z80 with CPM client-side. The rest is eye-candy.
How often have people upgraded only to find that their spanking new hardware doesn't run that much faster than the one they just traded in because Windows sucks the CPU dry?
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
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
Microsoft market value today: $270,973,173,240
The (Norwegian) Government Petroleum Fund: $160,323,643,991
Should be enough to buy a majority share of Microsoft.
Bad investment, but....
This is excellent news, no matter how you look at it (except if you work for MS).
This is only one country, but you knw how it is in life: it takes only one dissenter to encourage many.
I will be watching my country (Finland) to see if they'll follow suit (I won't be surprised if not, Finns really like to be different from Sweden, Denmark and Norway, almost stubbornly).
Sigged!
This will pass with a bit of targeted persausion.
You are thinking of the object, not the process. It may be that there are products that can open the current versions of .doc and .xls files, but how did they get that way and will it remain that way?
Current formats (the object) may be open by your definition, but by a process definition they are not. They require either either restrictive licensing to access a specification or reverse engineering (which is arguably difficult or impossible to validate as complete). Both of those processes to generate code are closed/restrictive, not open.
A standard with an open definition process separate from any implementation (open or closed) would generate an open format.
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
I take exception to that subject line.
Why not ask for the document on paper?
I have a really elegant proof for Fermat's last theorem. If this sig was only a bit longer...
Hm. When I was a library student, I discovered that the issue of open document formats was an extremely important one; it wasn't so much because we needed people to be able to open documents in one program or another, but because we wanted people to be able to open documents, period. What happens when some documents written today can no longer be opened because (a) the vendor who created the format no longer exists; or (b) the vendor chooses not to support that format anymore. I've seen (a) happen plenty of times (used to work in a company where we had to spend a lot of time converting databases from ancient proprietary formats to something usable by modern databases). And documents I wrote in MS-Word 2 can't be opened properly by MS-Word 2003. And I have no software that can open the documents I wrote in WordPerfect 6 (though OOo 2 should be able to).
If all documents are created in OASIS format or some other open standard, then companies will have to find new ways to compete with each other; perhaps some will have better interfaces than others, or so on. I'm not concerned about that; when the market opens one door, a new niche for enterprise is opened.
-- The reason it's called the right wing? Irony.
Not inside Norway. Like any other government, Norway's government will be one of the biggest customers for Norwegian companies. They are not just going to say, "OK we won't supply our government any more because we'd rather continue to use Microsoft products", are they?
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
surely, microsoft wouldn't ignore the norwegian goverment officials market.
this will really make microsoft open up their formats, this is going to make them lose about 50 users!
Well, obviously some company will want to sell CAD software to the Norwegian government, and so will develop some that complies with the requirements. Then the government gets the software they need, the company gets their money, and the rest of us also get access to a Free CAD format. Everybody wins!
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
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
Let's see, Government regulations require open standards for documents. MS Office does not support such standards (except for .txt and .rtf). Lets sell a new verison of MSO.
what about Poland? :)
I think he meant from the producer's perspective. That's a decent argument for someone to convert to OSS, but what about an argument for producing OSS?
=Smidge=
the Norwegian officials have found to solve their little piracy embarassment
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
"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 have to wonder if this also applies to the Adobe Acrobat format...?
Seems as though most governments have picked this one up, after all.
-Alyred
Population of Norway: 4,593,041
GDP of Washington State: 192,500,000,000
GDP of Norway: 183,000,000,000
So, like, Bill and Steve feel threatened?
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Yeah because being a major oil exporter is so unimportant to the rest of the world.
They only produce 1/2 of what Saudi Arabia produces. And 1 1/2 times what Iraq does.
Surely we can neglect countries as insignificant as this.
I once had a O/S, or should I say, it once had me
It showed me it's colors, wearing a hood, norweigan's should
It asked me to stay and where did I want to go today?
So I looked around and I noticed there wasn't a docking bay
I sat on the rug, biding my time, rebooting for WINE
I set jumpers until two, and then I said, let's put this to bed
It told me it worked for corporations and clippy started to laugh
I told it I didn't and crawled off to post my wrath (on Slashdot, of course)
And when I awoke, I was still stoned, but Linux driver support had grown
So, I lit my EULA on fire, isn't that good, norweigan's could (too).
Especially for governments, getting stuck with obsolote closed formats for their documents must be a really Bad Thing that should be avoided at all costs.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
The difference is that your company (or any company for that matter, excluding supercorps like IBM and MS) probably didn't have the market clout to instigate a wave of software development. An exclusive governmental contract, even for a moderately sized government such as that of Norway, would be juicy enough to spur development of a standard, or at least an open sourced solution.
My 3D Texturing Skinning work (under construction)
This appears really great for OSS on the surface... but how long before Microsoft is in Norway trying to buy back the Norwegian government, and will Microsoft make them an offer 'they cannot refuse'?
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.
Error: Sig not found.
Norway is a member of Nato - so USA will come to its defence!
The USA will initially rush to the defense of norway after the invasion. However rather than repelling Microsoft's invasion force, the US military will surround the the Microsoft private army on all sides, capture their leaders, and bring the invasion to a halt-- then suddenly announce a "settlement" by which a truce is called under the terms that Microsoft gets to rule norway, and doesn't have to give any of the land back or disband their army, but must set up an internal review board to prevent further invasions from occurring
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
I didn't post that to try to get at your personally. I'm sure your actually working towards an open format. But somewhere way above your head the lawyers and Ballmer have got together and made a plan on how to integrate this move with their long term strategy to destroy the cancer that is Linux and harm OSS in general. That is the nature of MS afterall. And last time I checked that hadn't changed. :(
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Umm... you appear to mistake "I know nothing about this" with "it is irrelevant".
I think that you will find that whichever way you look at it, no western country is irrelevant. Clearly this is relevant on many levels.
---
BDOS ERR ON A:>
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.
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! --------
Can anyone tell me what they will use other than Windows Media that is open with no licensing fees. Apple and Real are both propreitary. MPEG 4 is licensed through MPEG LA group and is the most expensive...What are they going to use... Also they better pull down all Adobe files because Acrobat is not open sourced.
Does any browser use tarfiles of mixed content?
.html.tar.gz file
In other words:
- browser gets a
- uncompresses, untars
- open $tmpdir/index.hmtl
The tarfile can contain HTML, images, SVG, PDF, etc.
It is great to see large organizations moving to open formats. Just remember that these are not necessarily altruistic OSS-loving freedom-loving folks doing it because they want compatibility. They may be doing it to promote the local economy.
Microsoft is a US-centric company feeding money into the US economy, while using *nix environments and open source promotes their local economy. That is a good reason, but these officials could just as quickly change their mind if Microsoft decides to open an office in their country and promise them 10,000 new jobs.
First the Norwegian/Peruvian government stops depending on Office (except maybe to help convert documents into .swx), then people will start wondering why their $300 Office suite from last year refuses to read government documents when this free Office suite opens them just fine. Local businesses (especially legal departments) and citizens might wonder why they are paying $300/license to use software that doesn't open government documents when they can download an office suite that does for free.
While I don't expect everyone to switch, I expect that this removes a serious incentive for Norwegian companies (especially law firms) to use M$ Office. All of a sudden the government managed to switch and it's no harder to use OpenOffice. Maybe Sweden or Finland will be next and if a couple countries in the EU start using free formats pretty soon EU documents will be done is free formats as well as proprietary, making it further easier for people, businesses, and other governments to switch from M$. The EU won't want to do this until they are pretty sure that it will work, and a member nation doing it is a good way to show that it will.
You have a bunch of old files on floppies from some program you used back in the mid nineties and if you can just get the data off of these files, you can use them in some newer software for analysis (or something). In order to install the old software to access the files, you need a Windows 3.1 computer, however you no longer have a machine that runs Windows 3.1 and have no way to load the program. If the data just had an open format, you could write some simple scripts and extract the information that you need.
I could go on forever with examples, but I am sure you get the picture. Sometimes there is important information in files and sometimes MS Office does not give you all the functionality that you need to complete your task efficiently.
I use Office 2003 at work, and Office XP at home... I'm an engineer, I run the full gammut of functionality in Excel, I have no problems myself. If you take the time to code your projects properly, you don't have problems like that.
-everphilski-
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 may be that Microsoft uses an XML file format, which technically could be read by any other application (since it's a text file), but where it really counts is in the interpretation.
Just because OpenOffice or WordPerfect or Ole's Word Processor (tm) can open a Microsoft document and display all the content doesn't mean it will be laid out the same. If Microsoft doesn't release *these* specs, then it's still a proprietary format.
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
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.
... slackers
Ole and Lena had left for their honeymoon. They were partway there when Ole stopped the car and put his hand on Lena's knee. Lena said "you can go further" so Ole started up the car and drove all the way to their honeymoon suite.
-everphilski-
I sense a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of Grammar Nazis cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
Enough to say go f**k yourselves to the EU, and still stay relevant.
It will be a great day when there is a non-propriatary solution that is equal or better in every respect to today's popular propriatary ones. I just think it'll take longer than 6 months for that to happen. The report the minister gets in six months will no doubt have two categories: 1) Stuff we can use open standards for 2) Stuff for which there is no suitable open standard for. It's nice to see a whole country (albiet a small one) taking a stand on this issue.
My question: Is Redmond irrelevant to Norway, or Norway irrelevant to Redmond?
- "OSS has allot of problems" : Lots of software used nowadays has a lot of problems.
- "It's in the extra's that their is a problem" : Now the writer switched to singular
...
- "Lots of documents use macro's" : How do you know what the Norwegian government does or doesn't.
- "but until theirs no perfect alternative" : always ignore whatever follows such a strong hypothesis.
Stephanhttp://stephan.sugarmotor.org
And in another news, the Norwegian Government has just announced a $4bn deal with Microsoft to upgrade all Norwegian publicly owned computers to run Windows Longhorn and Office 12 with its well known open APIs and open XML based document formats.
- 4r0g
We're always hearing about countries (Brazil, Germany, Finland, USA, EU, DOJ, Norway, etc.) that are going to "get tough" with Microsoft but they always wind up closing their mouth and quietly shuffling away to cut new some purchase orders for their local Microsoft distributor(s) once the Microsoft guy pays them a visit...
Microsoft guy: If you do that BAD thing, it's going to make Bill very, very angry.
Government person: What do we care?
Microsoft guy: If Bill gets angry, he won't let you use Windows any more.
Government person: Uh-Oh! That WOULD be very bad. Hey, just tell Bill that we'll forget the whole thing, then. As a favor, though, could you ask him to play nicer?
Microsoft guy: Hey, you got it. We did the same thing for John Ashcroft.
I think he means he wants Redmond to open up the wallet.
So what do you suggest? That a commercial office application developer wait until OASIS gets its act together and supports what they want?
Certainly a developer can work with OASIS, but OASIS doesn't move quickly. That means you tie your application to the release schedules of a standards body rather than your own.
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
In norwegian:
"For å få til brukerrettede tjenester via Internett eller andre elektroniske kanaler, må løsningene kunne virke sammen. Standardisering, spesielt innenfor kommunikasjon og datautveksling, er viktig for å få til økt elektronisk samhandling. Offentlige virksomheter skal bruke åpne standarder i sine IT- og informasjonssystemer. Avvik fra dette skal begrunnes. Der det er behov for å fastsette tverrgående standarder for hele eller deler av offentlig forvaltning, såkalte forvaltningsstandarder, skal de baseres på åpne standarder. Det skal etableres forvaltningsstandarder for bl.a. utveksling og presentasjon av tekstlige dokumenter. Standardene skal inneholde krav til tegnsett som dekker de offisielle språk i Norge (norsk og samisk).
Short translation: yada, yada yada. Government bodies are to use open standards. Any deviations from this must be reasoned.
It doesn't really say anything about open source.
This is not copycat behaviour , this is compatability.
OO.O promotes its own open formats , but it has the compatability to resonibly render Word documents , it is not yet perfect but it is rathe rgood.
Companys are not willing to switch , mainly due to retraining cost.
OO.o is not put forward on its compatibility with Word (its just one of the many features) , its put forward on its functionality and open nature.
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
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.
Alright, but suppose that they gave you the software at a lower price in the first place because they knew that you would not be able to switch vendors easily? It could be argued that this should be disclosed up-front, but even if it had been you know what would have happened...some middle manager would have siezed upon the opportunity to save a buck now in exchange for a problem which may or may not occur in the distant future. The point is that portability is going to cost more money, which might squeeze some smaller customers out of the market entirely even though they are wiling to take the lock-in to save money. This is why software is broken down into enterprise, professional, standard, and other editions so that each firm can decide what is important to them and pay only for the features that they want (mostly).
"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
- 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.
Perhaps because as far as I know none of the open-source really uses it all. Of course the implementation in MSIE still is buggy and inconsistent (got documentation at work from a vendor in that format once and of course it didn't work properly at first try)
It's available somewhere under the File menu, "Save whole page" or something similar, IIRC. I've seen requests for it in Mozilla's Bugzilla, but as far as I know it isn't going to be implemented anytime soon - a pity actually.
I have a really elegant proof for Fermat's last theorem. If this sig was only a bit longer...
I wouldn't count on it. They are even voting for the software patents in the European parliament, the only other swedish political party doing that is Moderaterna (conservative/liberal for you non-swedes)
I have a really elegant proof for Fermat's last theorem. If this sig was only a bit longer...
The Norwegian Minister of Modernization today at a press conference in Oslo declared that ESPERANTO would now be the only language used for official government press conferences...
I like microcars
The article says the minister's plan involved both open standards and open source.
For once I actually feel proud of being Norwegian and living in a country no-one knows about..
Why dot we just buy Microsoft, and open source everyting? It's not like we do not have the cash to do this...
Error #13: No coffee. Operator halted. Please place boot device at bottom.
ftp://latte.com/NorwayOpen.doc
Sorry for answering myself, just remembered the name of the format though, it's MTHML.
I have a really elegant proof for Fermat's last theorem. If this sig was only a bit longer...
I find it ironic you can read "requires open formats" as "bad for open source". I find the statement of "outright removing a competitor" humorous. The customer demands a product, any fool knows that Microsoft can produce almost any product they want to. The issue is that they don't want to provide that product, thereby removing THEMSELVES from the market.
Were the governments of the world to declare that they wanted only proprietary software, you'd probably find Open Source not in that market. Of course, the only way to argue for this is pretty much an economic issue. At this point, I think it's pretty obvious that Open Source provides a better value than Proprietary for a large swath of needs. Also increasingly obvious is that Open Source is scales better than proprietary. Increases in proprietary players are predatory, increases in open players are additive (assuming they are truly open).
There was a time when the existence of Mail Merge in an application was the same way. Sure, you could create your own mail merge, but in the end, the word processor having this functionality was the right decision for the customers. The same goes for open formats. Lack of "vendor lock-in" is the killer feature that drives Open Source more than anything.
The fact of the matter is that the free-program interoperability that you enjoy today exists because of millions of man-hours of work to achieve it. Say what you want about a "political cudgel", the cold hard fact is that a few million spent by Microsoft creates a few hundred million dollars of work just to interoperate with it (maybe more including the outside QA that goes into the products by the time they mature).
The investment by Norway in continuing to create this problem is not justified. As for PDF, if you ever have to implement a PDF handler, you'll be yearning for the coming days of SVG-P. It's like the bastard stepchild of PostScript and an early filesystem. Seriously, it almost creates a filesystem in a file (all kinds of block lists of irregularly sized blocks) and enough complexity to make it very difficult to parse (and impossible to recover when suitably corrupted). Adobe realizes this, that's why they're already knee deep in SVG (see the Adobe SVG Viewer if you don't believe me).
No, the sad thing is that so many people are so in love with the sacred cow of Capitalism (of which Proprietary software is apparently the posterchild), that they don't realize that Capitalism is still beholden to the Free Market. Every time I see someone crying about abuse of the proprietary model, I can't help but realize a simple fact.
It's all about demand. People demand what they want. They want software as cheaply as possible. It is no longer necessary that it cost very much at all. In fact, given the support/installation/development model that a lot of FOSS uses today, it can be funded entirely from people providing those very real services (instead of billing for bytes).
Face it, selling software as a business is pretty much doomed unless it is really that complex to write or your market is pitifully small. There will come a time when people really can't be fooled anymore. Software is not valuable. Time is valuable. When people are paid for their time and the software is open, everyone saves time--and every one thus saves money. Efficiency is what makes or breaks businesses (see Walmart, evil but dead efficient).
In otherwords, I'll gleefully revel in all of this as I put Microsoft to the fire, both because they would do the same for me and because this really is a victory for the freedom of developers and users alike.
I think Mauve has the most RAM. --PHB (Dilbert Comic)
Microsoft looses all 25 sales to the government of Norway. Actually I am glad to see this but to change Microsoft policy it will take the entire EU. Frankly I would love to see the US DOD require all open formats.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I avoid the word "realist" or phrases like "in reality". In my experience their use indicates corruption. Especially in connection with "I'm a ... advocate myself" or similar.
Stephan
http://stephan.sugarmotor.org
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.
Why is it not the same? People will still send you documents with new 'features' from the latest version of Word, etc., and will expect you to be able to open them (and even print them) with no loss in function or discernible difference in output.
Even if the way in which the basic text, typeface, image, field data hasn't been updated in a few years this doesn't mean everything is accessible.
the layman's guide to computer science
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
That means no more Java! They'll have to go to an open standard, like the ECMA C# language.
Best Buy can have you arrested
NRK ogg
The official streaming is in the windows media format though...
--- guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people ---
Seriously, how big of a market is Norway? Also, are they just talking about Microsoft formats or others as well. Do they expect every company to either open their formats or switch to open formats for Norway alone?
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.
Using HTML as an example is completely disingenuous. The whole idea is that it can look different. If Lynx starts to look like Firefox (or the other way round...) we know there's something really wrong. It's a markup language: an encoded form of layout suggestions only. If you'd used a binary format like JPEG you would have a far better comparison.
the layman's guide to computer science
This development is so progressive, I must register my respect and admiration, as an American, for this forward thinking decision on the part of the Norwegian government.
I know it may come as a surprise to some Norwegians, but we Americans really do educate ourselves on the history and culturesof other nations.
Hats off, Norwegia!
Last time I checked, the United States of America was part of North America. There is also a South and Central America, or so I am told.
Hence, I must ask: what gives USians the exclusive right to the label "American"?
When I was traveling abroad (especially Britian) I often found myself saying "No, I am not an American, I am a Canadian". But I would often get a puzzled look, because people don't always differentiate between the two. It's not intended as an insult, they genuinely don't see why someone from the US and someone from Canada shouldn't both be called "American".
It's like the word "European": there's a European Union which many of the Euro countries belong to, but would you say that citizens of a non-member country (say, Switzerland) are somehow less European?
I guess I shouldn't be surprised that Merkins think of themselves the only people in the Americas, considering their average knowledge of world geography.
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
Sorry Bill, we'd sure like to help you out, but the US military has to wax some cat in the middle east that evening. Or, rather, the politicians MS has bought in DC aren't the ones who can borrow the army.
What the do you think? Diplomats in English speaking countries already go through the trouble of translating their work to Norwegian. Translating to Open Office would be easy next to that. It's probably easier to do the Norwegian write up on OO than it is on Word anyway. Microsoft Locals are notoriously bad.
Norway isn't really a big enough country for other countries to worry about conforming to its standards.
Spoken like a real Softie. That's why M$ language support sucks.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
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...:-( )
MS calls his new "open" document format METRO. The faq is at http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/device/print/metro_F AQ.mspx
There is support for it Avalon.
Okay, a *few* Iraqis have been moved to a country near the US, but such cases are for enemy combatants.
Oh no no no. Be very careful here. They are cases where somebody claimed that they were enemy combatants while offering no proof and no way for those people to defend themselves from those charges.
There is a world of difference between those two things.
Don't forget our PM is a Lutheran priest! So we're just like Iran - ruled by the Theocracy! Yet another reason to "liberate" us! :)
That's just the production & export.
Check out the Reserves.
Norway comes in at a whopping 8 billion barrells.
Canada has 178, Venezuala has 77, Russia 60, Iran 125, Iraq 115, Kuwait 101, and of course the king: Saudi Arabia - 261. Hell, even the US has more oil reserves than Norway at 22.
Besides, is that really anything to be proud of??
Shouldn't Norway get on another high horse and proclaim that they'll be free of all fossil fuels by 2009 or something?
Kudos for their efforts with taking a stand, but we'll see how long it lasts.
The EU is already rolling over to the smell of MS greenbacks.
How precisely do you expect an older version of an application to support a newer versions features? If that version of the application simply does not have the feature, it can't very well know anything about it, can it?
If you can figure that one out, you should be a billionaire.
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Let's hope you're talking about OASIS OpenDocument format, because if you're just talking about another shitty WordML, you can go fuck yourselves.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
I think he was talking about code that might circumvent Microsoft's DRM. In the US we have a wonderful law. The DMCA which gives corporations the ability to stop me from using my fair use rights. I don't know if this plugin does circumvent Microsoft's DRM but if it does it's a problem.
The race isn't always to the swift... but that's the way to bet!
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 ...
It's free, perpetual and compatible with some open source licenses. Slashdot doesn't like it because it's incompatible with the Messiah RMS's Holy GNU General Public Bible.
How do you do that? An open and extensible standard, which different apllications can add whatever feature they make into, and it should still render correctly anywhere? This is obviously impossible, without making the entire rendering logic part of the standard, and anticipating every possible future expansion while making that logic.
While it certainly failed your expectations, I prefer a standard which actually can be used before we have analyzed every extension to a word processor in existence.
Roses are #FF0000, violets are #0000FF, all my base are belong to you
You're right of course. We are forcibly emigrating the entire Iraq population to Guantanamo Bay. Thanks for clearing that up.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
In the Linux community, RH and Mandrake are kind of at odds, but Mandrake (sorry, Mandriva) users scoff at RH/Fedora due to its heritage. Debian-heads dislike Mandrake because URPMI is slow, Gentoo-niks scoff at all of them because they get a source compile for free with emerge (where as the others are typically binaries), and they all hate MSI packaging because it's Windoze. And Windozers will scoff at all Linux because of its presumed complexity.
This sig no verb.
Talk about missing the point:
There is no reason why step 3 has to be the case, apart from Microsoft's obstinacy.
the layman's guide to computer science
You're right of course. We are forcibly emigrating the entire Iraq population to Guantanamo Bay. Thanks for clearing that up.
Well, as it's pointless to attempt to have a reasoned conversation with somebody entirely lacking in reading comprehension skills, I'll leave you to your delusions.
how about linux?
there is allready a project named skolelinux that is developing a debain-based distro for use in the schools, both for servers, workstations and thin clients (perfect for classroom and library computers).
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
"" How about taking the safety labels off everything, and let the stupidity-problem solve itself? """
It worked so well for the USSR, why not software and government communications.
Actually, previously some schools in Norway complained that MS Office was not available in the second way of writing Norwegian (don't ask) and was pushing the Norwegian state to only allow Write programs that were available in both languages. The schools were using Norwegian language laws to push this initative. Because of the (political) pressure, MS released a New Norwegian version of MS Office, I guess mainly to not lose the Norwegian market to OpenOffice. This, even though the so-called New Norwegian language is used much less than most languages in the world (it is not even used much in Norway), and less than many languages not supported by MS Office (like all these Indian dialects). It seems like MS values the Norwegian marked, and I guess they think it is worth fighting for. Especially now when OpenOffice wants to develop new markets.
--- guns don't kill people, people with guns kill people ---
This is an outstanding course of action set by or Norwegian friends. This should increase competition, lower prices and raise quality. Win-win all-around.
--
l'obscurite
Seduction Home
office produces with it's "save as html" function is, it most certainly is not HTML.
If that's not a chance to sell hardware, I don't know what is. In many cases it will be cheaper to bring in a Linux or BSD box than it will be to configure an aging system. People who realize that will be earning a living while you bitch and complain.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
Flame tasteless jokes if you want -- but don't just ignore the content.
You ignored my argument and just reiterated your original point (i.e. in the short term, all of Norway isn't important to Microsoft's profit).
I did not argue against that obvious fact!
Here is another examples of my original point with the same mechanism:
The (judged illegal) contracts Microsoft used their monopoly to force onto PC manufacturers that made it impossible to preinstall anything but Windows.
Gates said that they didn't want to give an alternative O/S a positive growth spiral (when BeOS offered preinstalls for free to manufacturers). It is the same thing with Norway; BeOS wasn't exactly big then...
This discussion is over. You made a stupid argument -- and then repeated it while ignoring the counterargument.
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
IF it worked as designed though.. DXF would be great !
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
Top billing in that crowd is impressive. So it seems Norway has more in common with Peru than meets the money blinded eyes.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
The intent is simple and quite clear (and correct). No government documents should be in any format that requires money be paid by any user in order to just have the ability to view them (no licensing fees to buy "rights" to the format so your software will be able to fully and correctly render the information).
The information provided by government belongs to the public, not to any corporation. No private, profit-centered, fee-charging corporation can be the ultimate gatekeeper of government (tax-funded) data. It MUST be available to everyone without requiring that they purchase any company's product to view it. It MUST be available to future generations - all corporations ultimately will die. Their death cannot allowed to be the end of access to public information.
Open standards that clearly delineate the requirements and do not permit propriatory extensions are correct and a good thing (tm). The standards must be such that no MS can come along and say "We obeyed letter of the standards and merely added a few extensions that are not forbidden." No. Uh-uh. The standards have to be such that they WILL be followed so that ANY wordprocessor or text editor or spreadsheet app, free or not, can correctly render and handle that information and that ANY and ALL extensions MUST be fully and openly published so that, if accepted, ANYONE and EVERYONE can use the new extensions without cost.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
Apparently sarcasm is lost on the left. Oh well. If you want to believe that the US government has declared eminent domain on Iraq and is currently evicting the populace, be my guest.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
MS has announced support for EU recommendations for interoperability of office documents, with perpetual licences:
http://www.microsoft.com/office/xml/response.mspx
I don't want to read
Neither is Canada, but they have lots of oil as well.
When the government doesn't want to pay licensing fees it is great to be able to run your computer infrastructure on the freebie software. Usually you get what you pay for too.
The original meaning of this comment holds no water. There have been many, many, OSS and freeware pieces of software the meet or exceed their commercial brethren.
The reality is that even though it might be OSS or distributed freely, no organization as large a government would have thousands of seats of a piece of software and no support. So, even though it's OSS it's highly likely that it will be OSS without a support contract or some purchased distros of OSS software.
There would be far too much risk involved, especially for that large of a conversation to not have some form of support for which they could fall back upon (Could you imagine telling your CIO/CEO that you have 500 servers running with software that has zero support?) So in reality it will be paid for OSS, in some form or another.
Sheesh, don't you know anything? :P
Open Office already can; at least on Debian. Opened a wpd of circa 396KB (92 pages) lots of complex, heavily formatted tables. WP versions 6-12 have essentially the same basic format. Supposedly MS Word can open a WP 6 doc? I still have my [bought from Borland] copy of WP 6.0c for DOS. I used it regularly until WP 9 had been out for about a year. Killer word-processor!
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
Just in case anyone needs this:
There once was a man from Nantucket,
Who had a dick so long he could suck it.
He said with a grin, as he wiped off his chin,
If my ear was a cunt, I would fuck it.
The government which is strong enough to protect you from everything is strong enough to take everything from you.
And the videos on CNN.com don't have DRM. They're plain uncrypted WMV videos. Screw the DMCA.
But who owns the copyright in the specific implementation of the WMV decoder used in the mplayer plug-ins? Don't you have to have a copy of Windows in order to get them lawfully? And doesn't Microsoft own patents on the ASF container and other technologies in Windows Media?
There's no need to develop a special open format for CAD for the Norwegian market. The OpenDWG specification, from the Open Design Alliance (which I run), is used by hundreds of software developers, including the vast majority of Autodesk's competitors. All the government in Norway needs to do is specify OpenDWG instead of DWG, and they'll be in good shape. DWG is proprietary, but OpenDWG isn't.
You ignored my argument and just reiterated your original point (i.e. in the short term, all of Norway isn't important to Microsoft's profit).
I did not argue against that obvious fact!
So I noted your "point" as a trivial fact uninteresting for Microsoft (according to their behaviour). Which makes a liar out of you. Or an idiot. Or a troll.
The two well known examples I gave that Microsoft is scared of Domino effects do weigh heavier than your opinion!
(Hard to know what you think about the examples I base my opinion on, since you haven't discussed them -- just repeated your trivial "point" a third(!) time. That stupidity makes your opinion quite uninteresting, really.)
Karma: Excellent (My Karma? I wish...:-( )
Ladies and Gentlemen:
In this corner, one mega-corporation owning the monopoly on an essesential technology found in every business in the world and most middle-class homes globally. A company known for only employing the best and the brightest throughout the world, and having billions of dollars in cash to fight with...
and...
In the other corner... a sovereign state. A national government. Abet a rocky, mostly desolate, small country with 1/5 of its land located north of the Arctic Circle. But, blessed with a million or so intelligent, civilized, and organized people (with their own king). A proud and powerful Viking heritage...and billions of dollars in cash from offshore oil to fight with...
Well, I like Norway. Expensive as hell, women to die for, a language that will kill you, and fertile, livable countryside around Oslo. I even get mistaken for being from Norway by people who think that all white people look alike.
But my money's on Microsoft in this fight. The people in Norway are just too nice and law-abiding to just simply ignore Microsoft, refuse to give them any more money, and keep using Windows anyway like all normal intelligent people do in the developing world. No, the Norwegians will just give in, pay up, and shut up.
Remember, these are the people who tried to put one of their most brilliant 15-year-olds in prison for basically just watching DVDs. One of their own people, just because some greasy California record company VP asked them to.
Applications -- such as word processors, spreadsheets, photo editing software, and CAD programs -- all have one thing in common: They are tools for the creation of copyrighted digital content. Just like Hollywood has an interest in the ownership of digital content, so do we all. Because we all create it.
If software vendors frustrate interoperability with their native file formats, aren't they essentially expressing a proprietary right in the digital content produced by their software?
Consider an example -- There are literally billions of CAD files in the DWG format created by AutoCAD. Many of these files contain designs for buildings, roads, and products, and many contain maps of everything from local subdivisions to military encampments in Iraq.
The only way to view these files with 100% fidelity is by using software licensed from Autodesk. No, this is not speculation. Neither PDF, CGM, SVG, nor any other ostensibly open file format is sufficiently robust to completely and accurately represent the data stored in any widely used native CAD file format, much less DWG. Autodesk loudly claims that only their software can reliably access DWG format files.
The Open Design Alliance, a not-for-profit industry consortium, publishes a specification and libraries for its OpenDWG version of this format, and makes these available to approximately 2,000 software vendors around the world. The Alliance's libraries are very good, and getting better -- but they have the limits inherent with reverse-engineering.
Autodesk has resorted to subtle EULA limitations, surreptitious encryption, and even FUD campaigns to try to limit the effectiveness of the Open Design Alliance. If Blizzard v. BnetD (a case now in the appeals court) is not overturned, Autodesk may be able to finally prevent the Open Design Alliance from reverse-engineering the DWG format.
In essence, Autodesk is attempting to impose a "tax" of sorts, by creating a situation where people believe they must use only Autodesk software to reliably access DWG files.
Many DWG files are owned by companies and people that are not even Autodesk licensees. (Consider that many of Autodesk's competitors, to whom Autodesk won't license software, are in buildings for which the plans are in DWG format!) Governments are major consumers of DWG-based data. In their acquisition regulations, they often specify "unlimited rights" in this data. Which means they have the complete and total right to exploit and use the data in any way they see fit. Except... of course... that they can't do this, if they, or their citizens, must pay a perpetual tax to Autodesk.
Autodesk is not the only company that behaves in this way, but the impact of their actions on society is larger than most all, except Microsoft. Policies such as the one undertaken by Norway give some hope that there are people out there who understand the question of who owns their data is critically important.
blessed with a million or so intelligent, civilized, and organized people
That's pretty insulting to the other 75% of the population!
But the way the polls are going, he'll be out of office this autumn. And it is questionable if the red-green government (that's socialist-environmentalist, yep) of AP/SV will carry on his work. God help us all (at least all norwegians).
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
I've been ridiculed at meetings in my office, because I've publically said that we should consider using open standards and free (as in freedom) software.
:-)
On the server-side of things we have used a lot of GPLed software to make our services integrated and good for our customers and ourselves. Then we merged with four other similar projects/businesses, and there was a clash of cultures.
At a meeting I was invited to one of the points on the agenda was "licensed versus freeware". I told my boss "this is not the issue, as a piece of software is considered a copyrighted work, and you need a license from the author to use it in a way the author finds satisfactory. Sometimes the author asks for money to give you a license, sometimes not. The interesting thing is what you are allowed to do once you have obtained a license." I gave a couple of examples to make things clearer, and then argued why we would use software with GPL like terms of use.
The agenda was not fixed in time for the meeting, which lasted all day. Finally, when there 5 minutes left, my boss said "Oh, you had this thing, what did you call it? Freeware?"
At no time, either in writing or spoken, did I say anything that was not factual or clearly argumentative. Statements like "I think we should consider alternatives, perhaps we can get a better price if they know we are comparing offers." is hardly below the belt. I sited Novell as a possible vendor. Yet, what did they do - they laughed at me, saying things like "Normal people use Microsoft" (I have that one in writing).
So I say thank you, Minister Morten Andreas Meyer, this really means something to me. It shows that my government thinks open standards and free (as in freedom) software/open source software is not some crazy loons idea, and in addition my bosses are in the enviable position that they must do as you ask.
Whats your main revenue stream? If its selling that software, maybe not. If its hardware, services, other software, or customization of software it is. In those cases, the software is a complimentary good. By loweringthe cost of compliments, you increase the demand for your product.
It also makes sense if the software is not a main competitive advantage for your buisness, wether you sell software or not. By open sourcing it, you can get improvements, lowering development costs for equivalent functionality. If 5 companies can each afford to spend 10K, going open source and working on 1 code base will get all 5 a better solution than 5 separate ones would be.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Maybe not ban Closed Source, but make it uneconomical. Insist for software to be guaranteed, and order source code to be held in escrow in case it is required for dispute resolution purposes. OSS gets around the escrow requirement since the user already has a copy of the source code, which is also a guarantee: it guarantees that the software will do exactly what the source code says it will do, if it is compiled and run on a suitable computer which is working properly throughout.
And how about mandating that (1) copyright lasts for ten years with no extensions, at all, ever; (2) derivative works of a work in the Public Domain can never be subject to copyright; and (3) every copyrighted work is automatically subject to a BSD-style licence unless an additional tax is paid.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
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.
Great! Let's hope they do so that alternatives can find a place to start from, and eventually topple MS worldwide.
Clever signature text goes here.
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.
I think I'm going to play Devil's Advocate with this one. :)
-----
How about I sell software AND hardware/service/customizations? Then I get all those revenue streams!
The only reason OSS development costs might be lower is because someone has already done the work. Basically, they're getting people like you to develop code for them for free, and they turn around and sell it (though perhaps not directly). All they have to do to keep their slaves working happily is not put the code under lock and key, which would be impossible to do anyway because it's already public.
RedHat is a good example. Stand on the backs of hundreds of geeks, take their code, package it in a pretty box with a book and sell it. The geeks are happy about doing the work as long as the source code is freely available, which is fine because only geeks would want it or even know what to do with it.
Where free labor is not available, you can still pay developers to work on OSS code, but you still come out ahead because a lot of work has already been done by others for free.
The only incentive I can see, from the perspective of a software company, is that potential 'free labor' aspect. Especially if I'm a startup company who can take a nearly complete OSS product and use it to slingshot my own development process. If I'm an existing large company that deals exclusively in proprietary software that I've developed in house, then it's a much tougher sale to make.
And that's the question I asked: Why should I donate my code, that I spent money to produce and generates revenue for me, to the public collective? How does giving away my research help my bottom line? Especially if I'm a mid-sized company that deals exclusively in software.
=Smidge=
My impression of the actual story is that this is about free access to data and not free beer. What happens 50 years from now when some poor Norwegian wants to access his grandparents' land records and the data is stored in an M$ only format that Redmond has decided not to support any longer? And don't forget, Norway is part of a loose-knit Scandinavian Confederation whose laws are synchronized now and then, so that this is likely to spread from Iceland to Finland at the very least. And where goes Denmark, can Germany be far behind?
One can only imagine the uproar from the cuneiform believers when the Egyptians had the audacity to mandate that all public records be kept on papyrus....
"Is this Winkhorst a nova criminal?" "No just a technical sergeant wanted for interrogation."
What retraining cost? Last I used OO.O (which was a few years ago ... we can't use it where I presently work) it was prettymuch a carbon-copy Word XP.
The real reason they won't use it is because the files won't be opened by the people in the other office who are using Microsoft Office... and that's a Bad Thing.
-everphilski-
The issue of "render correctly everywhere" is a red herring. Word Processors are not desktop publishers, though many people try to use them as such. Word processors, much like Web browsers, are designed to make the content look good given the constraints of the rendering environment, thus how it renders is irrelevant to the document format (other than obvious stuff like style definitions, and what not).
While I don't think it's possible to anticipate every possible extension, you should at least be able to anticipate common areas for extension and provide a mechanism to extend those. My examples of adding a new border type is a good example.
The OASIS standard is too tight in areas it should be loose, and too loose in areas it should be tight.
The fact that the standard requires anything added to it to be in its own namespace is way too restrictive. Yes, totally new features should be in a different namespace, but extending existing features makes that problematic, otherwise it won't validate against the DTD or Schema.
If you need web hosting, you could do worse than here
See interview with the Norwegian Minister of Modernization at norwaylive.no. The interview is in Norwegian only, but in a proprietary format... ;)
How do you do that? An open and extensible standard, which different apllications can add whatever feature they make into, and it should still render correctly anywhere? This is obviously impossible, without making the entire rendering logic part of the standard, and anticipating every possible future expansion while making that logic.
No, what he means is you should be able to put stuff into an OpenOffice document with FooWriter that FooWriter would know what to do with, but OpenOffice would ignore.
The trouble is, apparently, OpenOffice will discard FooWriter content instead of ignoring and preserving it. So if you send a document to an ooOffice user, they can't make a change and send it back without causing you trouble.
His suggestion is obviously an oversight of OASIS. That's what v2's are for.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
.... standing behind politicians, on TV, photographs etc?
,er, translation, is so dumb that begs disbelief.
I'll give you a couple of hints:
-Each politician speaks his own language.
-Teh funny guys talk to his boss immediately afterwards.
I hope from here you can eluciadte what would happen with electronic communication.
The assumption that the Norwegian goverment is the one that would need to do the
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If you think other goverments (initially in Europe) will not pause and take notice you have a very short imagination.
All those ministerial meetings are there to share ideas.
The next one attended byt the respective minister and his colleagues this will be a topic of discusion, and who knows, the next adopter of such policy may be Germany, France or Spain (not the UK, the poor sods Knighted Mr Bates, the convicted monopolist).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
... that a left wing goverment would stop this measure?
That would show there is something terribly weird about Norwegian politics.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
15 years ago Linux was a little hobbyst project, only people in the fringes of the Internet would know about Open Source Software and no company would dream about using free tols to keep busines running.
Today billions, literally, depend on open sourced tools and open formats, Linux is installed in datacentres all around the world and is gaining acceptance in the desktop (damn, if I could speak).
And the MS fan boys can pretend they are in denail.
Good try, you should attempt something cleverer next time.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Of course Norway is not a member of OPEC.
OPEC was established to counterbalance the so called 'Seven sisters', being seven large western oil companies who controlled the oil market.
As Norway is a western country it is not a member of OPEC.
Actually, I met a Norwegian girl at Dragoncon last year and we discussed politics at a bar. She mentioned that back home that all College is free even to foreigners. All you have to do is live there. I explained my disbelief and she stated that she knows a few people from the UK that live with her just for that.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
To bad that M$ will do the market research and say, "well, that means we can drop a virtually irrelevant market segment, and concentrate more time and money in our legal department to get case law made more favorable to our market design in other more populated and wealthy countries." I mean come on. Does anyone believe that Bill Gates is going to changes policy because of Norway?
Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability: without Availability the other two are assured, as is Bankruptcy.