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

For how long?

[Anonymous Coward]

Given the behavior of Microsoft anywhere else that a move to ODF has been tried, I'm sure that somewhere near Redmond a 747 is being loaded with free software coupons, free educational locking computers, free bribes and ooxml documentation as we speak.

Re:For how long?

[xouumalperxe]

Alright, it's obviously flame bait, but I'll bite nonetheless. We're talking about open standards and specifications that anybody can implement software against. We're not talking about open source software, and decidedly not about Stallman or GPLv3. Irrespectively of your opinion on Stallman's attitudes towards software licensing, you have to agree that, for public records, there's no reason NOT to use a document format that's an ISO standard, requires no royalties to implement, and is well documented. Hell, I don't give a damn if they write their documents in MS Office and save it in ODF through a filter. As long as it's ODF (or any other similar standard, but ODF is what we have right now), I know I can read it and communicate in the same standard without necessarily having to own Microsoft Office. And that's what this is all about.

Re:of all countries... japan?

[wootest]

Which is why open standards would be of particular importance. I mean, right?

Re:Define "open"

[ScrewMaster]

You would think that, after all this time, the PHBs usually put in charge of software purchasing would have realized that nothing from Microsoft is open. Good, bad ... that's the way it is.

Re:Define "open"

[throup]

I am not a Microsoft fan and I believe that we have a perfectly good standard office format (ODF) and don't need another.

But... when there are so many good reasons to oppose OOXML (eg it isn't open when part of the spec says "do it like Word 97" [I paraphrase], ignores other existing standards such as SVG and invents whole new languages) there is no reason to make up new criticisms. Apart from the specification not being open, I can understand that this XML-based format, originally designed for use in Microsoft Office, can be called Office Open XML.

Whilst on the subject of confusing names, remember that Open Office is actually a trademark owned by someone else entirely. The office suite used by most free software users is called OpenOffice.org.

Re:Open Source and Growing Up Mormon

[Pecisk]

And this is relevant to this article because...?

Or you just wanted to start another flame war about how open source/open standards guys are zealots, etc. etc.

Guess what - even if you are neither, one of most advanced countries in the world using really open standards IS news, even for you.

Yes, maybe posting about every time when such things happens in local level - county, city, region - is a little bit silly (but even then I would like to know details), but this is different case.

p.s. Munich still goes "to the church", by the way (3thd year, and still going. Yes, they have mixed success, but they don't look back). So does lot of other organizations, cities, regions and countries.

Re:I blogged about this three months ago

[Anonymous Coward]

Choice of software is largely irrelevant to this. This decision is on Open Standards for file formats, not Open Source. There are perfectly fine examples of closed source and proprietary software using Open Standard file formats.
 
They'll probably keep using MS Office on MS Windows, they'll just save their documents as OpenDocument instead of a Microsoft format.