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Belgian Gov't requires ODF From 09/2008
An anonymous reader writes "The Belgian government has decided all government agencies will be required to use only open document standards from September 2008 onwards. One year earlier, they should be able to read them. In practice this means only ODF will be supported, although OpenXML will be considered if it becomes an accepted standard, and enough applications use it. According to a Belgian Microsoft-spokesman, Microsoft is considering supporting ODF (article in Dutch)."
Four little words. Cold day in Hell. Some reason will be found in a few months to delay the decision until Microsoft's format can be considered instead. When it comes to governments, money still talks
of course, I'd LOVE to be proved wrong, but where is the great German Linux migration, hmm?
"The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"
MS is "considering" supporting ODF. They will continue to "consider" it and will go so far as to "almost promise" that ODF support will come. Once the Belgian government signs another contract with Microsoft based on the "near promises" and "strongly worded statements indicating that MS will indeed support ODF," Microsoft will decide that it's not feasible. They simply won't have the resources to devote to such a task.
This guy's the limit!
Like new security holes?
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What is needed is critical mass. Having a USA state and a few small countries (same size as a USA state) move to this is no big deal to MS. Yet.
What is needed is a country like Japan, China, or EU to move to this. Then the party is over.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Agreed. It's sad, but true. Very few stick to their guns on these issues. MS comes in with their welcome wagon and gives away so many deals they are actually being paid to use product x. Then it doesn't become about idealology anymore and more about free money. I wish it weren't this way, but it is.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
It's not though. It must be clear, even to Microsoft, that the world needs open and standard formats. It must be evident, even to them, what it is costing government and industry to retain the current closed, proprietary formats.
What they have to weigh that against though, is that every hour they can delay the inevitable change, they bank revnues in excess of a million dollars. Every day they stall competition, they rake in almost thirty million dollars.
One day Microsoft will have to compete on merit instead of format lockin, but until then, every hour of delay they can engineer is a million dollar win for them.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Well if you look at the timeframe between the widespread of "word" for the "dummy" secretaries, and the time for ODF to be in use... It's what? 15 years?
:) Downloadable music and movies for cheap and no DRM, no M$/APPLE/SONY tax.
Plus concurrence is back. Word is buggy and the GUI sucsk. It's not hard to do a better job, but the bottleneck is compatibility with "word" format. So what? Well. Concurrence is again possible on the word processor market. Hurra!!
Same thinking for DRMs. they're just starting out of she shelves. Will it take another 20 yrs before we have legislations that outlaw them? 2026? Well.. I can leave with a 20yrs gap without a music-video purchase. But can the RIAA and MPAA?
It's good to see that sooner or later ppl get to understand technology, and can easily get rid of abuse in a few years..
I can't help but dream of the day with HDMI, DRM, zones on DVD, TV websites no longer blocked coz u cannot watch the program outside of the US
Well if you look at the timeframe between the widespread of "word" for the "dummy" secretaries, and the time for ODF to be in use... It's what? 15 years?
:) Downloadable music and movies for cheap and no DRM, no fucking M$/APPLE/SONY tax. No fucking Microsoft windows needed to watch movie, read ebook, play songs...
Same thinking for DRMs. Will it take another 20 yrs before we have legislations that outlaw them? 2026? Well.. I can leave with a 20yr gap without a music/video purchase. But can the RIAA and MPAA?
It's good to see that sooner or later ppl get to understand technology, and can easily get rid of abuse in a few years..
I can't help but dream of the day with all that crap outlawed: HDMI, DRM, zones on DVD, TV websites no longer blocked coz u cannot watch the program outside of the US
For many people Microsoft Word is a de facto standard, they wouldn't consider using anything else even though not that long ago they probably would have used WordPerfect and before that WordStar.
The point being that de facto standards can be toppled both from within the proprietary alternatives and the free software programs available. Microsoft has learned that to keep their users locked into Microsoft Office formats they have to do things we in the free software world can't do and wouldn't want to do—change the format, fail to document how the format really works, and provide no means of allowing others to improve upon any particular implementation of support for the format.
So don't get so lost in how things are that you fail to see how things were and how they can be better for users.
Digital Citizen
I don't know. The thing is, Microsoft's current business practice depends on forcing customers to buy MS Office. What usually happens is that someone receives a Microsoft Office document they can't open, from someone who has a new PC that came with MS Office already installed {which actually costs Microsoft a small amount}. They then get hold of a pirated version of MS Office, and eventually they might -- especially if they're a business -- get a paid-up version of MS Office. Given enough n00bs blindly sending out their space-formatted Word documents and added-up-with-an-idiot-calculator Excel spreadsheets in the newest versions, and enough people and businesses buying software rather than pirating it, this works well for Microsoft.
OpenDocument support would blow this sky-high. With the need to upgrade just to be able to read other people's documents removed, nobody is ever going to buy a paid-up copy of MS Office again.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!