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)."

Comments

Yeah, right.

[SpooForBrains]

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 ... *sigh*

of course, I'd LOVE to be proved wrong, but where is the great German Linux migration, hmm?

"considering"

[gEvil (beta)]

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.

*ONLY* open document standards? AWESOME!

[mrchaotica]

You know what that means, right? It means that not accepting MS Office files is just the tip of the iceberg. It means every other format the government uses will have to be open too, including audio/video codecs, and -- best yet -- CAD FORMATS!

As a civil engineering student and Free Software advocate, this is really exciting, because right now AutoCAD has a near-monopoly on CAD for civil engineering applications, to the point where governments often require its native format (.DWG, .DXF) for contract proposals and such. Don't get me wrong -- AutoCAD isn't a bad program, but it's a Windows-only one, which makes me constantly frustrated at work. Mandating use of an open standard format might give a boost to competing, cross platform, software.

Incidentally, I ran across this website that has a lot of good information about this: the Open Design Alliance. From their FAQ:

Why is the Open Design Alliance necessary?

Despite the common availability of neutral file formats, such as IGES and STEP, the vast majority CAD drawings are stored in proprietary formats. The best-known of these is Autodesk's DWG file format. DWG has, for many years, been far and away the world's most popular format for the storage and exchange of 2D and 3D CAD drawings, with billions of important drawings in this format around the world. With an estimated 5 million seats of AutoCAD sold throughout the world, AutoCAD is in a monopoly position within its market segment, where no competing product could be successful without the ability to read and write DWG files.

Beyond this, DWG files have been used to store the designs of publicly funded roads and bridges, and US and other government contracts often explicitly require that drawing data be stored in DWG format. Autodesk has declined to publish the format or to make libraries available to read and write DWG files to those companies it considers competitors. The Open Design Alliance was originally founded as the OpenDWG Alliance in 1998 to provide an open specification for OpenDWG (it's version of the DWG format), and to provide program libraries -- to anyone who wanted them -- for reading and writing OpenDWG files.

MS Support of ODF

[should_be_linear]

As MS employee, I can promiss we will not only support ODF, but extend ODF to many new ways our customers are excited to experience.

Translation from a belgian

[cazzazullu]

Here you go guys:

Government bans Microsoft-documents

From September 2008 onwards all digital office-documents of the federal
government wil be ODF-files.

ODF or open document format is a file format for office documents that
was officially accepted last month by the international
standards-organisation ISO.

It concerns an "open standard", that can be used at will by software
developers to create applications. ODF is therefor a potential
concurrent for the own file formats the software giant Microsoft uses
in its office software Microsoft Office.

The federal ministrial counsel took the radical decision last friday to
make the ODF-standards obligatory from September 2008 onwards for all
federal governmental services. One year earlier all services must
already be able to read the ODF documents. According to the magazine IT
Professional Belgium is the first country in the world to take such
measures, and thus de facto forbids the usage of the Microsoft formats.

However the door isn't entirely closed for Microsoft. The company now
has the choise: either they open their programs for ODF-files, or they
develop a standard themselves that can be used next to ODF. The most
important candidate for the latter is the by Microsoft designed Open
XML.

But according to Peter Strickx, who is responsible for software
standards at the federal government, Open XML has to be first
officially recognized and there have to be enough applications
supporting the format. According to Microsoft spokesman Frank De Graeve
they also consider supporting ODF in the Office software.

HTML all over again?

[andrewman327]

I am very annoyed by Microsoft's additions to html in FrontPage. Fortunately it seems that they cannot do the same type of thing with ODF, as it is a more protected format.

As much as I am ashamed to admit it, however, I use OpenOffice but save in the .doc format.

Maybe what we need is a support group to expand odf. Let me start.

"Hi, I'm Andrew and I have been using .doc for ten years."