Japan To Adopt Open Software Standards

em8chel writes "Japan has adopted a policy under which government ministries and agencies will solicit bids from software vendors whose products support internationally recognized open standards. Japan thus becomes the first country in Asia to embrace open software standards (PDF), the OpenDocument Format Alliance says in a press release. ODF managing director Marino Marcich is quoted: 'By giving preference to open software formats such as ODF, it is saying that information should be competitively priced, innovative, and easily available to the widest range of people, now and in the future. We hail Japan for its diligence and vision.' The new guidelines are available (in Japanese) from Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry."

Comments

Re:Define "open"

[throup]

...an undocumented proprietary format that Microsoft named "Open Office XML"... It's "Office Open XML".

PDF is not a closed document format

[CrankinOut]

PDF is a published, documented format. It is copyrighted, but usable royalty-free in any software. From the specification book
PDF Reference
third edition
Adobe Portable Document Format
Version 1.4

"Adobe gives anyone copyright permission, subject to the conditions stated below, to:

• Prepare files whose content conforms to the Portable Document Format
• Write drivers and applications that produce output represented in the Portable Document Format
• Write software that accepts input in the form of the Portable Document Format and displays, prints, or otherwise interprets the contents
• Copy Adobe's copyrighted list of data structures and operators, as well as the example code and PostScript language function definitions in the written specification, to the extent necessary to use the Portable Document Format for the purposes above

The conditions of such copyright permission are:

• Software that accepts input in the form of the Portable Document Format must respect the access permissions specified in that document. Accessing the document in ways not permitted by the document's access permissions is a violation of the document author's copyright.
• Anyone who uses the copyrighted list of data structures and operators, as stated above, must include an appropriate copyright notice.

This limited right to use the copyrighted list of data structures and operators does not include the right to copy this book, other copyrighted material from Adobe, or the software in any of Adobe's products that use the Portable Document Format, in whole or in part, nor does it include the right to use any Adobe patents, except as may be permitted by an official Adobe Patent Clarification Notice (see the Bibliography)."

Note: I see the irony of not being permitted "to copy this book...in part". However, as I am writing about the book, US Copyright law permits small quotes to be used and attributed.

Re:Does anyone else find this sentence ironic?

[Anonymous Coward]

"PDF is an open standard, and is now being prepared for submission as an ISO standard."

You're off topic

[dreamchaser]

Altogether off topic. This is about a major country adopting open *standards*. Nothing says they need to use Open Source Software, Linux, or ditch MS to do so. You're grasping at troll straws.

Re:of all countries... japan?

[clesters]

Eh, never heard that before. When I was living there they seemed to have twice as much Open Source stuff running then anywhere else.

I could go into almost any computer store and buy a pre-built computer running FreeBSD.