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French Government Recommends Standardizing on ODF
Juha-Matti Laurio writes "From the InfoWorld article:
All French government publications should be made available in OpenDocument Format (ODF), according to a report commissioned by the French prime minister. The new report
also suggests that France ask its European partners to do likewise when exchanging documents at a European level. It is recommended that the government will fund a research center dedicated to open-source software security as well, adds the article."
Microsoft has threatened to invade France to reimpose "order" on the chaos of the ODF. France has pre-emptively surrendered. The treaty will, naturally, be written in .doc. Microsoft intends, while they're at it, to fire half of France's work force and outsource their invading-poor-African-nations operations in favor of France's core competency, whining about American hegemony.
Help poke pirates in the eyepatch, arr.
Standards are great tools. They provide everyone a level playing field to begin development. You have a defined target, and you can build your application directly to spec.
But what about innovation? If we cry foul that monopolies stifle innovation, then we should also be decrying standards that may not adapt easily to future problems.
The IHWB (Institute of Horse Whip Buggy manufacturers) can't compete with someone who develops a cheaper, faster, and safer means of transportation than on top of some unpredictable animal.
Because in Soviet Russia, the government writes your documents for you!
The heavens do not fall for such a trifle.
STANDARDISE THIS!
It is recommended that the government will fund a research center dedicated to open-source software security as well, adds the article.
Wouldn't that make it a prediction, rather than a recommendation?
Push Button, Receive Bacon
I am sure the French report's recommendations are sound, but much less sure they will be implemented. Microsoft has plenty of money to produce its own "independent" reports objecting to the imposition of a "monopoly" based on open standards, as well as playing up areas where MS Office is arguably superior. That same Microsoft money can also buy support for their point of view in influential circles.
But what about innovation? If we cry foul that monopolies stifle innovation, then we should also be decrying standards that may not adapt easily to future problems.
You're confusing a product with a business method.
A monopoly is created and maintained through business tactics (i.e. flooding the market with (initially) cheap product to kill off competition, strongarming resellers and OEMs, etc).
An open standard, on the other hand is just a tool. If a better tool is made available, there's nothing preventing the market from switching over to the new tool and phasing out the old one (i.e. the transition from ISA to PCI)
Push Button, Receive Bacon
While that may become an issue in the future, at the moment the only thing stifiling innovation (and competition) is microsofts memory-dump file format. The ODF is a standard composition format; Any well written program should be able to read ODF files, and should be able to write out an ODF in a similar way that photoshop or your favorite graphics program can output JPEGs. The resulting file may be slightly less useful, but it's a platform.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
Here in the US if some naive idealist came out with this idea he'd be on the MS payroll in a heartbeat.
The headline should read "French Government Recommends Standardizing on ODF, too!"
Because most people use
The real news here is the big F-U to Microsoft: We are sick of using only your software. Our governments are beginning to reccommend using alternate methods because we do not trust you. If you continue to develop software the way you do, we will proceed with our plans to isolate our governments from you. To illustrate, TFA:
-- Technological Independence. It is almost like there is going to be a Bretagne Tea Party, complete with euro-geeks dumping crates of Microsoft software into the Atlantic; What a sight they would be acting out in defiance of a monopoly of taxation without defragmentation. Bleh. Not bloody likely. Bring on the funding for OSS security, François!
FairTax baby!
So France is actually a pretty good place to promote ODF. It checks all the boxes. It's a standard. Any particular Francophone bits of it, the French government can influence by providing support. It is not anti-American but it is independent of America. Work on French support for ODF brings together France, Belgium, the doms and toms, Canada and Francophone Africa - so it is another small step in building links in the French speaking world.
And ODF should be relatively easy to sell to the bureaucracy. Gentlemen and ladies, this is a French solution to an international problem. No longer will we bound by the constraints of the Anglo-Saxons...
The only negative is that, in accordance with the immutable rules of French abbreviations, they will want to call it FDO.
Pining for the fjords
This is the government whose websites offer secure certificates as .exe archives, and whose tax website advises the user to ignore any security warnings that come up while using their system. If there's a way to render ODF unreliable, insecure and/or platform-specific, I'd say that the French are the people to do it.
Virtually serving coffee
Just because something is free doesn't mean it is better.
"Change is always forthcoming, except from a vending machine"
I don't think the main reason why this sort of thing (ODF and open source in general) is not more widely accepted is money (tco, licenses, etc) or political/economic pressure (gates/bush pressuring someone to spend their $ the right way).
I think the main reason why ODF/Open source/etc is not more widely accepted is reluctance to change.
To butcher a Dune quote, "They think in circles. Their minds resist squares"
A lot of businesses (and lets face it, government administration is a business) know that pdf/ms-doc works, they have been using it for a long time. They are used to the crappy interface, they are used to the updates/pop ups/etc. They are used to the fact that it works and they are used to the error messages that pop up. They and their accountants are used to the monthly charges for PDF/office software.
It is very, very hard to beat/argue against that sort of habbit. Yes, to us logical slashdotters (l0lz111) ODF makes perfect sense. Its great, we should bathe in it, eat it and breath it. It has word 'open' in it? great! More please!
But a lot of the established businesses/governments/organisations, it is not the same. An argument "but it is cheaper" or "but it is better" can be meat with "but what we have works well enough" and "but we have always done it this way and there has never been a problem" and then there is of course "why fix it if it isn't broken?" and "ok but what if we change over and it doesn't work?"
It is very hard to argue against established procedures/models/etc. What is plain to technical people is not always so to managers and accountants (often the same person). My point? More technical people in management.
So yeah, big cheers to the French government. they are definitely doing the right thing, in the right way.
You mean, like the copy of Microsoft Word which got bundled with my new computer?
where did I say that because something is free, it's better?
Push Button, Receive Bacon
TCP/IP is an open standard that has changed drastically over the past 15-20 years or so as the Internet has created a demand for new er application services like HTTP or SSH. By virtue of the fact that open standards are created by an open commitee, for any formal change to a standard, there needs to be lengthy discussion amongst everyone as to whether a change is of benefit to everyone or not - yes, those changes can appear to be slow to appear but I wouldn't call it "reluctance".
And as regards ODF, Microsoft have as much right as you or I to contribute to the definition of the standard and, based on their experience already with documents of various formats, can probably bring much "to the table" in ideas anyway.
What Microsoft don't seem to realise is that they cannot have it all their own way - on one hand, they want to now restrict piracy of their products (and good luck to them) but, on the other hand, by doing this they will force out a proportion of their user base (who simply won't or cannot afford to pay for MS products) meaning that the potential demand for ODF will increase. It strikes me as inevitable that MS will have to recognise and support ODF in the future, whether they like it or not.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Where will the EU get the money for such a centre of innovation? They're already putting money into fining M$, so... ooooh, I see.
Meta will eat itself
I have a hard time at work trying to get OOo through. The MS-Office licences we hold aren't even valid and there is no money for buying new ones in budget (small company), but that still isn't enough reason. My boss wants to switch, but his dad (and co-owner) is STRONGLY opposed to it. Not for any particular reason, but only because "I never used anything else, and I'm not going to learn something new now".
Free beer is never free as in speech. Free speech is always free as in beer.
There is the fact that more and more often the MS proprietary formats *don't work*. I don't know if it's particular to governments? Maybe it's because local government seem to have run EVERY version of MS software ever created and to have kept them going longer than MS ever believed, as a result they have versions of .doc and other MS formatted documents from the DOS days and cannot read them. Maybe the churn in business and the tendency to get rid of older documents means businesses don't suffer so much?
I can't think of a computing standards process that has hurt innovation. Certainly there are plenty examples of standards that have succeded versus their proprietary counterparts (TCP/IP instead of NetBEUI or AppleTalk, the HTTP and HTML instead of MSN or Rainman (AOL's proprietary page definition language)).
If someone has a great new idea, why can't they get it added to an existing open standard? Or even create a competing open standard. If it is innovative enough, it will be adopted. Standards aren't a monopoly. Standards still have to compete for mindshare.
The problem with open standards, for companies like Microsoft, is that they discourage lock in. If every word processor could edit all your files with full fidelity, you would have a lot less incentive to stick to Microsoft Word. If all server software worked perfectly with Microsoft Windows clients, there would be a lot less Microsoft server licences sold.
In my experience, it certainly is the main hurdle that OSS have to face. It's not being open, free, or whatever else, it's being different from what the people were using up to there.
For a lot of readers here, a new OS or a new piece of software is a new playground that is fun to explore. For most users it's like a nasty corner of town at night (and it looks like rain too). It's not rational but then people seldom are.
May contain traces of nut.
Made from the freshest electrons.
Rather than assuming a cult of Napoleon and the Revolution, I would say they just are better bureaucrats. A lot of US political culture assumes the market "takes care of itself", and is almost ideologically against state intervention, to the point the US are the last country still using medieval units of measure because no one enforces the metric system.
In France (and most other countries in Europe) the government can own large strategic companies (Renault, for example) and that's considered alright; I do not know what US citizens would say if Bush tried to buy Ford for the government for "strategic economic reasons". Frenchmen are mostly fine with the idea of a state intervening directly into the economy.
Now that's true that politicians in charge of the economy can do a lot of bullshit, but so can CEOs (one word, Enron). The French system may be stiffer and less adaptable, but allows top-down decisions to trickle down better.
Probably FOD, "Format OpenDocument", as OpenDocument is a proper noun.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
ODF is meant to be extensible.
It should be no problem for innovating companies to add new XML tags to the ODF document formats or include entirely new components to it. The good things is that other programs that don't support those new features should still be able to load the document, albeit without the new feature.
ODF is designed for both backward and forward compatibility.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
while most people here im sure hate microsoft, it kind of bothers me that europe is increasingly resorting to government mandated efforts to battle against american companies. yes it is smart on their part to stop being so reliant on american technology companies, but this action coupled with the tariffs and fines they are leveraging against many US companies are showing signs of a negative trend to me.
I have to point out that the EU is NOT the government of Europe. And that the national governments of member nations like France are not like U.S. states! It means the EU fines go towards the EU budget whilst any French government bureau is financed by French taxes and regulated by French law.
I don't doubt that Microsoft will fight this and attempt to drag it out as long as possible, but I'm not convinced that Microsoft will be able to buy its way into French politics, or many other countries. The US Federal Government is quite an unusual form of democracy when compared with the rest of the world, considering some of the things that seem to go on. Not every democracy is designed such that mega-corporations to fund both sides of a two party system and effectively buy their favourite policies. If it were so easy outside the US, I doubt Microsoft would have had so many problems with the European Union already.
> You'll notice there are two standards of Sea Mark (buoys) in existence globally.
True
> The french insisted on keeping their own standard when everyone else had a different one in place.
False. IALA System B is used in the Americas, the Philippines and Japan. Everywhere else in the world uses IALA System A.
Now if you had wanted to bring up prime meridians...
FYI - I teach the UK RYA (Royal Yachting Association) yachtmaster course.
In general commercial terms, I agree that legislation shouldn't (usually) require companies to avoid innovation -- that's how innovation happens, after all. With government entities, though, I have no problem with solid standards being adopted for communicating information. I'd quite happily accept a mandate stating that government documents have to be available in ASCII text, although these days HTML would probably be better since it'd allow for better markup and internationalisation.
The problem with innovative technologies is that with a few exceptions, they typically focus on the largest part of the market, and this ignores all sorts of niche markets. (eg. Disabled people, people who don't use Windows or have access to a major web browser, people who don't have cell phones, and whatever else.) This is where standards shine, if they're designed well, because it lets the people in the niche areas develop their own tools for handling the standard formats instead of having to hope that someone in the commercial world will decide it worthwhile to take notice of them. The fact that they're standards means that there's enough time (without change) for tools to actually be developed and be useful. And this is why organisations whose job it is to communicate should be adopting standards to do so, rather than trying to innovate too much.
Besides, vanilla or not, there's nothing wrong or limited with ODF if your goal is to communicate information, and this is what most government entities will be aiming to do.
The grandparent would seem to be a reasonably well masked troll, since the counterpoints to this statement are obvious and well rehearsed here on slashdot. But I'll throw my 2 cents into the pot.
In addition to the other fine comments regarding standards, let us not forget that this proposes an exchange standard. There's nothing stopping anyone from using propietary MS Word formats all the way until they need to send the document to someone in the French (and hopefully later the EU ) government. Well, there's nothing stopping anyone as long as MS implements the standard. Do they?
The problem with the current situation is the presence of de-facto propietary standard. Other word processors can't compete because everyone already has Word, and thus people buying new software want ot be able to read and write the latest propietary Word documents. MS exploits this, using it as a tool to ensure the eventual adoptation of it's newer version releases. This is good short term business strategy, but it's harmful for the rest of us. In that sense one can see this as the workings of the free market. If MS were a more benevolent monopolist, allowing open access to its document standards so other OS's and Word Processor developers could follow their standards, there would almost certainly be less anti-monopoly activity against them. One could say they are following, in tradtional corporate strategy, a greedy algorithm to formulate its strategy.
What does that have to do with the IT sector? Or do you mean that the entire economy is based on IT?
If it's the former, then that's wrong. IT is (or shoud be) just a tool that you use to get your work done. That's the same whether it's coordinating a fleet of taxis or running a governement or anything else. "making" and "selling" software is such a miniscule part of the economy that it's truly bizarre that it is such a focus of attention.
Pretty much every aspect of society and the economy nowadays is depended in someway on using ICT for most basic activities.
That's pretty scary when you consider that nearly each and every board room, meeting room and government office has a system that is exposed to the net with what amount to standardized backdoors into the system. Yes standardized, the same exploit working on 90% of the desktops can be called standard. In many cases there are even microphones built into or attached to the systems which can be activated.
That's really scary when you realize that no one outside of the original vendor can do code audits. It's the only one with access to or use of the source code. So in principle anything could be hidden there on purpose or by accident, by the vendor or by intruders. So called Anti-virus programs detect massproduced intrusion tools, but only after they've been collected and analysed. Custom or targeted intrusions using code that is not wide spread have a much lower chance of detection.
So making a backdoor for the one brand /model of system gives you a backdoor into not just part of the IT sector, but really a majority of the rest of the EU economy. France's move is a good one. Moving to open standards for government documents, will enable at the least diversification. Who knows how big the final gain will be. Few if any really predicted how (pre-spam) e-mail (aka SMTP + ISO-8859-x) would take off and drive advancement. Few if any really predicted that the WWW (aka HTTP + HTML) would take off and drive all kinds of improvement. However, everyone, even Chairman Gates' fanbois and catamites, is experiencing a need for document interoperability. Interoperability is something which we have seen can only be provided by open standards, in this case OpenDocument.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Good Lord, this is Slashdot. If you want academic standards of discussion and analysis, you could always try Digg!
And in case you are wondering, I think they have the right attitude. It's _your_ interpretation that suggesting that the French want to encourage the use of French and international standards, and mentioning Napoleon is xenophobia. Which suggests that you think those are bad things. Which, friend, makes you the xenophobe.
Pining for the fjords
Actually there were periods when they used to tattoo serial numbers on prisoners in the Gulags. So your statement should have read:
"In Soviet Russia the Goverment writes a serial number on you!"
The grandparent would seem to be a reasonably well masked troll,
It's probably an astroturfer, that's why such messages keep getting repeated.
This single decision could cost M$ hundreds of thousands of euros. You honestly think that a company that fine and upstanding isn't flooding every discussion they can with their propaganda?
---
New game: Spot the lying astroturfer on /.!
No, no, no... If it's Steve Ballmer we are talking about it's a "500 pound gorilla with a chair" not cheese, a chair...
On the other hand, there are plenty of MS zealots out there, for a variety of wierd reasons. So who knows?
Rather than owning strategic companies, the US just has a system of pork barrel politics to keep them going (e.g. anybody making airplanes, and the amazing system under which American farmers have their surplus corn bought to make ethanol which needs as much fossil fuel to produce as it replaces, for no net gain whatsoever (source: Scientific American, this month). It is also good at protectionism when required - look at how online betting companies suddenly got hit when the US realised they were foreign owned and extracting US dollars. I bet you before long they will find a way covertly to fund GM and Ford, because after the midterms the Republicans won't want any more vote losses. Any government that wants to stay in business has to find a way to rebalance the economy, because there is no such thing as a free market. Europe just tends to be a little more blatant (transparent) about it.
Pining for the fjords
You mention MSN, but you fail to mention that MSN Messanger, is the defacto messaging standard. Some others use ICQ/AOL or Yahoo IM. They are all closed standards. There's an open standard called Jabber, yet I don't think it's managed to gain much of a foot hold. Your forget that when HTML was created, there was no Rainman (definitely, definitely no Rainman). There was no NetBEUI or AppleTalk when TCP/IP was created. I think that open standards are great, however, I'm not really aware of any real open standards that have won when proprietary standards have beat them to release. We still user MP3,MPG,JPG,GIF (which is finally patent free), DOC, and many other formats that are propriety, yet accepted as the defacto standard, because it's what people have always used.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
In the stupid scenario you are describing MS products would be the least important of preocupations.
Any computer systems any country uses are securely built around products they can control during a crisis situation (if you think the Chinese military waits for patches released directly by MS for vital equipment, then you are watching too many bad movies).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
No, you can't use undefined tags and still call your product ODF compliant. That's just asking for a company (MS most likely) to release MS word with a bunch of their own extensions, and maintain their monopoly because nobody else will be able to read the format. Granted, OASIS can make changes to the ODF format (ODF Version 2?) such that future programs can make use of new features we hadn't envisioned. There's no point in creating an open standard if you let everybody just change it however they like.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
perfectly said. MS wants total market dominance. they decide to kill all competition, and also they want to decide that everyone pays them their tax. and they blame anyone who cannot afford their fees but still use it illegally as pirates. so, if there's an option they kill it - they are perfectly to blame no one else but themselves for piracy. they are also happy for pirates because some day the pirates will be forced to buy thier stuff whether they can afford it or not. win-win in any case. only thing is that us lemmings have been very very quite about it. switch to linux, OOo, and spread ODF ! hurrah to free sfware and open standards! its happening slowly here and there, but at least a 20% market for alternate products will be a very good: even for windows customers, because internt explorer wont be ignored for another 7 years! and maybe in 2014 be labelled as IE 14!
So Microsoft's proprietary standard(s) is/are future proof? And open standards never evolve?
Anyway, we're talking about a file format for exchanging documents. Necessarily there has to be a high degree of standardisation. The question is, who defines it -- Microsoft, or a public institution.
Customers are free to purchase software that meets their needs. MS is free to implement standard file formats.
Innovation?
Well, you can innovate in your user interface (see Office 12's Ribbon), or in quite a lot of UI features and stuff (spell & grammar checking) without the need for your own format.
And if you need to make the format evolve, just get on the format's standardization comitee/board, argue your point, and make the format evolve.
What do you say, others will be able to implement the innovations you add to the format? Why yes, that's called levelling the playing field, and it gives you (as a user) stuff like intercommunication (which is the point of a standard), competition, choice, ...
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
The first four you mention are all openly defined and stable, if perhaps encumbered with patents. They're implemented by literally thousands of small and large software applications. DOC is a messy unpublished format (I hesitate to use the word "standard") and it's a great effort for other vendors to reverse-engineer it, a situation MS is very happy with and is unhappy if required to use a less obscure format.
As for "it's what people have always used", you are obviously very green (well, in comparison with myself). In the early 80s, "everyone" used WordStar. In the late 80s, "everyone" used WordPerfect. Only with Windows did MS leverage its inside knowledge of the OS and its drivers to take a lead with WinWord. The early versions took great pains to be able to use WordPerfect files (which of course were also prorietary, but well-understood) and to emulate its features.
By all accounts, the DOC format is full of kludges and is not somethgn to be proud of or emualte by choice. I doubt I am alone in having Word documents corrupt spontaneously, or balloon unaccountably to gigantic sizes.
So ODF is not upwards compatible?
If I create a document in a future version of ODF, I won't be able to load it into an old appliction using a previous version of ODF? So basically ODF will force you to upgrade your software (and hardware) to match the latest features required by the latest ODF specs used? That would really suck if that were true.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
France fought from the start the Nazi invation, they were at war with Germany 20 years ealier as you may recall, so they were under no illusions of what a German, revengful ocupation, would be like (Versailles is in France you know).
The French resistence from the start looked for US and British support, they were unequivocal about who were friends and who were foes.
US people do not appreciate other countries pride for their own culture because the US has none of its own. Say what you meay, but the US is a young country with immigrants from all over the globe, thus the mere thought of a national culture is alien.
France has, understandably so, pride on all things French. Is what distinguishes them from the rest of Europe and what many other Europeans try to emulate (the food, the laid back attitude, the galantry, the language). Many US people tire of mocking that, or look at it in wonderment. The res of the world understand the US is the big world's melting pot, but the US does not reciprocate and tries to understand nothing about countries with homogenous cultures.
As for adoring standards, what exactly is wrong with that? The metric system, the most famous of French standards, has made international commerce and science possible. The Napoleonic code is the basis for legal systems in many countries, it was French compromise which allowed the meridian in Greeenwich to be considered the basis of UCT thus laying the fundation for a coherent, worldwide, time system.
As for French influence in the world you are painting a sorry pantomime of today's situation.
France can suggest things like adoption of this format, but with an EU of 20 something countries nothing that France says nowadays is gospel, not even for Belgium, if you think that tin pot despots in Africa care about what France does regarding a matter that most likely affects them little or not at all, then you need to read more newspapers.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I think a little company called Google will help there with Google talk.
This calls for making IT interoperability a "fundamental rule of common law". Somebody 'sgonna be kissing their secret network protocols goodbye! The report also calls for closer cooperation with the Russians, proposes a legal framework for RFID, explains the GPL, promotes the Quaero project...
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
There's a difference between "free" and "open." The internet was built on open standards. This is why when you get e-mail or access a web page, you can use any e-mail client and any web browser. (We'll ignore the html restrictions certain browsers have imposed and focus instead on the http protocol)
Open standards actually encourage innovation because no one has to write their own e-mail protocol or web protocol. It also does not hinder the adoption of new products because if I can just replace my current e-mail client with a new one seamlessly, I'm more likely to try it out.
This is why MS Word is the defacto standard. Because it's the best product? No, because anytime someone else tried to come out with a different product there was a high barrier to entry because the new word processor would not be able to use the current word processor files.
I think Open Standards help innovation because they allow anyone to create new software that can be easily adopted. The only person they don't help is any current monopoly. And as others have mentioned, if a newer, better way of doing things come up, there's no reason you couldn't adopt the new standard while retaining backwards compatibility with the old open format.
french oversea territories and departments.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfer
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
Well, it could upwards compatible in that sense. I guess you could implement and ODF reader that would ignore any tags it didn't understand. I'm not sure how current programs are made, but I imagine that they use some kind of DTD to decide what is and what isn't allowed. The point is, is that you can't call a program ODF compliant unless the files it creates use only what is defined in the current standard. MS can't just make up their own tags, because everyone else would be "forced" to implement them. ODF is just a standard for document formatting, and doesn't define any software you want to use. If they come up with ODF version 2, and your software doesn't support it, then you are free to make your interpreter for your desired office suite, pay someone else to make it, nag your software company that sold you the software in the first place to make it or whateter. You can go ahead and make an ODF module for WordPerfect 5.1 if that's what you want to use to type your documents in.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
And I can count on my two hands the number of people I've physically met that even know about Google Talk, and can count on one hand the number of people who actually use it. I don't even use it myself, and I use a lot of open source software (Linux, Firefox, OO.o,...). Why would I? There's nobody to talk to on there, and everybody I know who has GoogleTalk also has MSN installed, so it's not like I can't talk to them. Google has failed to make any impact that i've seen on the Messaging front. I can release a messanger too, but that doesn't mean that it will be popular. And the reason why MSN will continue to win out over google, is because MSN is included on almost every PC that ships from every factory.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Yes, I remember the days when everyone used wordstar, wordperfect, or whatever. Things weren't really any different. There was much less functionality in those formats, and computers were much slower, so things had to be easy to understand. But there was still problems with incompatibilities between processors. Just ask anybody who used AmiPro instead of wordperfect. Things didn't always convert that well.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Dude, when you sober up re-read the article. There is nothing there about specifying particular programs. The entire statement is about specifying particular data formats. In this case it's one that any vendor can implement, even M$
A format is not a program. Programs use formats.
Because Word has been the shining example of innovation. Grammar checking that hasn't been improved since the mid-90s (and killed off the thrid party market) and such helpful tools like Clippy. [/sarcasm]
I don't know about you, but I started using it because it was integrated into my GMail. Most of my friends use GMail now, because it's such a good webmail, and so instead of trading IM names and what programs we use we now just click on eachother's names in the contact list. I've had the same AIM name for about 8 years, but since I got GMail I've hardly even bothered with it.
Wait, you use Linux yet you also use MSN? Why? Even my Windows-only friends don't use MSN.
"What is Internet Explorer 7? Are you saying we can't access the normal internet?" - I love tech support. Really.
Don't let your boss's dad bullshit you. There's no need to "rip and replace" like his hero Ballmer talks about. Any smart business phases in new technology. The way to do that with OOo is to get it installed along side all the illegal MS Office licenses. At the beginning make sure it is set to save in the same format as everyon esle is using. That way, those that wish to can try it out. It's also a useful tool to recover corrupted MS Office files.
After key people have tried OOo, and you have some feedback, then make a migration plan. The boss's dad can keep using his copy of MS Office for the forseeable future. But keep in mind that he can lose the business lots of money that way. Going to OOo can reduce the company's liability there. Given all the phone home features in MS Windows, does he feel like continuing to take the risk?
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Read it again later, it gives the impression you were saying what now you are denying you said.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I can't see where you get this idea from that there is a "reluctance to change" open standards. TCP/IP is an open standard that has changed drastically over the past 15-20 years or so
TCP/IP is a standard for techies & geeks. Techies and geeks (A) Like shiny new things & (B) Like things that work better.
Joe Bloggs MBA is not a techy and not a geek. He likes what he knows. He is happy with "good enough", and doesn't wire his washing machine to a 100 Base T network just so his PC will tell him when his clothes are clean!
HAL.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
I don't have a GMail account, and I don't feel like changing my email address (to one controlled by a corporation) just to get some flashy new interface. I've been screwed over too many times by companies offering great features, luring everyone to their email service, and then cutting down the features and making you pay for stuff you were previously getting for free. I use MSN exactly for the reason I said I did. Because everybody I know talks on MSN, and even those who have something else installed, also have MSN installed. I don't want to manager multiple accounts for messaging, so I just stick with what I know 100% of the people I talk to have.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I fail to see the point in an open standard document format.
In photos, sound and video: yes. Umpteen different photo programs can perform umpteen transformations on photos in umpteen different ways, and then save the file as a picture again, without needing to encode any information about what was done. A picture is a picture is a picture. A sound is a sound is a sound. A video is a video is a video.
Documents, however, are a little different. The file is a series of transformations. The functions of a word-processor are thus totally prescribed: the standard and nothing more. That leaves next to nothing for Word Processor X to differentiate itself from Word Processor Y -- so why bother writing one? Why not just use OpenOffice.
In case you still don't see what I'm saying, an example:
I take a picture with my camera, and load it into Photoshop. I apply a pincushion effect to squeeze the middle of the picture in, giving it a "waist". I save it in .JPG and put it on my webpage. I can open it in Opera, Mozilla, IE etc, and none of the browsers need know how to "pincushion" a picture.
I open a text document in a word processor, apply formatting and then apply a pincushion effect to squeeze the middle part of the text in. Format X saves it as blahblahblah. If I open it in a word processor without pincushion, it doesn't work.
HAL.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
you mean, selling software?
Sure, but this is an American website - can we trust people to know these things? :) There is just too much French-bashing going on already.
Of course, the official definition of the format will be in French, and all dates must use Paris Mean Time.
Have you read my journal today?
You are aware that MSN is controlled by a corporation just as much as Google Talk is, right? If you want to be free of corporations, Jabber is perfect for you because you can run your own server (and use transports to bridge to the MSN network until your friends switch).
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
...certainly changing the side of the road at _this_ point would be a gargantuan challenge; however changing speed limits/distances to kilometres would not (Ireland completed such a change last year, and at minimal cost - 9 million euros for the entire country.)
Would make a lot of sense as (as you say) Britain otherwise uses metric almost everywhere (pints being the notable exception; but it's hard to see how you could reduce them to 500ml without formenting revolution!)
Can you include other namespaces? For example, can you have an ODF file with a big chunk of SVG in it and still call it ODF?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
One of my major complaints against US military idiotic IT policies was when, back in the '80s, they "standardized" on Microsoft Word documents for all official correspondance. I wonder who got paid off for that little fiat? There's no document that couldn't have been done just as well in, at most, ".rtf" format.
http://odf-converter.sourceforge.net/
... how ironic.
The goal for this project is to provide an Add-in to Microsoft Word 2007 to allow opening and saving OpenDocument format (ODF) files.
But they're not going to back-port, so you'll need Vista to do it.
So your average joe is forced to buy Vista and get used to the new interfaces, Aero, ribbons, etc, etc, as opposed to loading a COMPLETELY FREE software and relearn a few bits and pieces where the menus have changed.
Do you really want your own government shelling out MILLIONS for Vista or retraining and converting to free ODF-compatible software that means you can get Freedom-of-information requests fulfilled without requiring a MS contract ?
Looks like them "surrender monkeys" are no longer going to surrender their sovereignty to MS, unlike the beknighted citizens in the "land of the free"
What exactly is the problem here? They want on Open Standard. Why? Nearly everyone already uses .DOC.
If they don't like it why not author their own OS or Productivity Suite? Why not buy one from IBM or Sun or some Unix derivative. Ohhhh, that's right...they can't make it work as well as those authored by Microsoft.
So, instead of innovating, they are going to litigate and legislate the hard working Americans in Redmond to GIVE IT TO THEM. That's so European...let's whine until somebody else does it for us.
I know all about that. I work in DTP and have had to deal with all kinds of files. Now of course when people say "file" they mean "MSWord file", and are baffled at the idea that there is any alternative, which makes me rather sad; especailly as I am forced to use this myself. But "MSWord file" is no guarantee of compatibility. After a file has been passed back and forth between several people the style, layout, spelling, fonts, page size.... all change with no one really knowing how or why. A good part of my work is stripping layers of crap from such files before I can actually get to the creative part of the job.
I don't care about messenging services that are controlled by evil corporations. I'm care about my email address and services that go along with it being controlled by evil corporations. I don't use MSN hotmail or GMail for my email purposes. Unfortunately, I have to use MS's Service if I want to talk to others who use MS's service, so I use it. I don't have to use Hotmail or Gmail to communicate with people who choose to use those services, so I don't.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
I've started seeing Google talk accounts in the wild recently. The new firmware for my Nokia 770 comes with a Google Talk client (which is not actually very good, but does integrate nicely with the system). Since Google Talk uses XMPP, I can talk to any GT people with my existing Jabber account. Most of the people on my contact list have a Jabber account and an account with one other IM network, but it is not the same other IM network for all of them, so Jabber is the only thing I can use to talk to all of them.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
>>While that may become an issue in the future, at the moment the only thing stifiling innovation (and competition) is microsofts memory-dump file format. The ODF is a standard composition format; Any well written program should be able to read ODF files, and should be able to write out an ODF in a similar way that photoshop or your favorite graphics program can output JPEGs. The resulting file may be slightly less useful, but it's a platform.
.RTF? I use OpenOffice at home and I use Office 2003 at work. When I create documents, I use .RTF for the file format. Heck, even my AS/400 can read/write .RTF. But if I embed an Excel document inside my Word document and use external links to populate calculations, there is no way in the world OpenOffice will open this document. I don't see how ODF could help this.
Don't we already have this? Isn't it
We have HTML standards per W3C. Can anyone name a site that actually conforms to W3C standards? Mine don't. So we end up with browsers that display these standard pages differently.
If ODF moves forward, what are the odds that we end up adding more vulnerabilitys? As with HTML, IE and Mozilla trying to display non-W3C comliant documents have ended up with coding that allowed exploit. Let us hope ODF is explicit, refusing to display a non compliant document.
So it's ok to be locked into some services, but not others? That doesn't make sense.
Anyways, GTalk doesn't blow just because you and your stupid friends are attached to Microsoft.
"What is Internet Explorer 7? Are you saying we can't access the normal internet?" - I love tech support. Really.
You sound so American, and you call the European whiner !! Look at yourself, always complaining and being persuaded that all that is done in the world is meant to be against you.
I am always amazed to see that in definition of freedom from US-Americans, other people's freedom of choice is negligeable compared to your mega-corporation's freedom of establishing monopolies abroad and behaving as leeches on foreign economies. Sorry dude, our freedom of choice and decide our lifestyle and future will always be more important than your freedom to "innovate" (loot). By the way, all international labour stats show that the French have one of the highest productivity rate in the world, higher than the "hard-working Americans", basically, the Europeans work more and produce way more value than the US, but it's not as if you were really interested in understanding the true economic situation, it's so much easier to think that the US-Americans are always right and the rest of the world is wrong.
No you don't; you can use Jabber and an MSN transport.
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Interesting...I suppose those French that are actually employed work harder. Probably to keep their jobs because of the 24% unemployment rate. I just don't understand why the Europeans don't develop a BETTER OS and Productivity Suite?
We tried to change to OpenOffice at my work once. We found it slow, buggy, and it didn't do things as well. I know ODF != OO, but what other big suite of Office apps is there? And OO is still pwnd on Exchange, unless you pay for more stuff.
-]Phreak Out[-
But I still have to have an MSN account, and go over the MSN network, which isn't much different than using Kopete (which is what I use) to access MSN.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Yeah, in France, even MS is afraid to hire anyone.
...because "hacker" sounds way sexier than "code drone."
There's no mystery behind the changes. People do things to the documents, then forget about what they did, didn't notice they did it, or lie about it. I spend a portion of my time analyzing usage reports for applications I develop, and one constant is that people will randomly click around like monkeys, then give a "who, me?" look when asked about it.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
I just don't understand why the Europeans don't develop a BETTER OS
I think one of the Northern Europeans did something like this, but it didn't get that popular. I think it was called Linux or something. Sorry, no links, it doesn't seem to exist in any servers in internet.
I normally don't laugh at French jokes, but I found that strangely amusing.
A lot of businesses (and lets face it, government administration is a business) know that pdf/ms-doc works, they have been using it for a long time. They are used to the crappy interface, they are used to the updates/pop ups/etc. They are used to the fact that it works and they are used to the error messages that pop up. They and their accountants are used to the monthly charges for PDF/office software.
The GUI that people are used to work with has next to nothing to do with the format it saves the information. My home Windows-machines Word 2000 allows me to work with older Word formats with several other possibilities, like WordPerfect. Saving file in different format might lose some of the formating options that certain format allows. I write documentation most of the day(working hours) and haven't really had any problems on different formats. It's all about well designed templates.
Article is suggesting that the documentation should be availeble in ODF for the public. And that the new created documents should be in ODF. It has nothing to do with open source software. Just the format that should be used. Goverment can use whatever piece of software they want, but they have to distribute public documents in such format, that I can read them without buying a new version of certain software that will only work on half of my home machines.
I have all rights to have access to goverments public information. If they require me to upgrade my soon illegal sutdent version of MS Office to have access to their information, they should pay for it. Or they can just publish it in such format, that I can read it without paying to third party.
I apologize for not being clear. I meant better...that Linux thing is really grabbing market share!
Don't we already have this? Isn't it .RTF?
.doc or .odt.
.ods data in .odt files.
RTF displays differently in different programs and depending on what program you used to create it. An RTF made with Word can look different in Wordpad.
And RTF is much more limited than
But if I embed an Excel document inside my Word document and use external links to populate calculations, there is no way in the world OpenOffice will open this document. I don't see how ODF could help this.
ODF can help if MS ever supports saving as ODF well enough, because you can have
We have HTML standards per W3C. Can anyone name a site that actually conforms to W3C standards? Mine don't. So we end up with browsers that display these standard pages differently.
I am not a web developer, but the HTML I have written is all valid. I see "valid [X]HTML" buttons fairly often. Also, CSS is often a bigger problem than the HTML, due to IE having rather poor CSS support.
If ODF moves forward, what are the odds that we end up adding more vulnerabilities? As with HTML, IE and Mozilla trying to display non-W3C compliant documents have ended up with coding that allowed exploit. Let us hope ODF is explicit, refusing to display a non compliant document.
You can have a web page with completely valid HTML and CSS and still have exploits. Just as Javascript tends to be the most dangerous part of Web pages, the most dangerous thing in ODF is the ability to embed macros.
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
ODF is forward compatible. ODF 1.1 will be out fairly soon (it adds some tags for accessibility issues), and programs that use 1.0 will simply skip the new tags they don't understand.
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
Can you include other namespaces? For example, can you have an ODF file with a big chunk of SVG in it and still call it ODF?
You can include other namespaces. In fact, the ODF standard calls for the use of SVG for vector graphics, MathML for mathematical formulas and Dublin Core for metadata. ODF also uses SMIL, XLink, XForms and other XML standards. Basically, if it existed for XML, they didn't reinvent it.
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
I can't blame them too much. With Word files particularly, the model for styles and formatting is so convoluted and screwed up that no one understands how to use it effectively. Back with Word 5 for DOS, styles made sense, though you did have to RTFM to use them. but in an unceasing campaign to add more powerful features, and yet remain user-friendly, so many automatic or default adjustments are made silently (e.g.: missing fonts are substituted, with no sign that this has been done; styles are overridden, local formatting changes a basic style universally, etc, etc). I deal with university professors' documents; they're mostly just as clueless and treat it as a typewriter, and I've never met one who actually used heirarchical heading styles consistently, for instance. A chapter heading is likely to be "Normal" text with "24 pt Arial Bold" applied; a paragraph of text is actually Heading 1 formatted 12 pt Times.
So that basically makes the format extensible too.
Anybody could add new, non-standard, tags that are ignored by programs that don't recognize them and could be used by others to implement new features (even if that would piss off every ODF user in the world).
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