Dutch ODF Plan Could Sideline Microsoft

Yeti7226 sends word of a discussion coming up Wednesday in the parliament of The Netherlands that could result in mandated use of Open Document Format at government agencies there. If the plan is enacted, public-sector organizations, as well as the government, would have to transition to using ODF by 2010. Microsoft Netherlands has lobbied hard against the provision. Backers say it doesn't exclude Microsoft, because ODF can be produced out of MS Office via the use of plugins. A funder of the OpenDoc Society invited Microsoft to join that organization, saying: "This plan is not about Microsoft, it's about ensuring the perpetual availability of data without any obstacles."

Comments

Open Data is also mentioned

[Skinkie]

The Dutch devision of OpenStreetMap also send in a letter to the commission about the need for Open/Free Data. Standards are important, but the reuse of existing government work is too.

Re:Of course...

[Rocky Mudbutt]

I for one will buy the first iPod-clone that supports Vorbis. Rockbox (GPL) supports Ogg/Vorbis and many other codecs on a number of platforms. I have thouosands of hours of Ogg music on my iPod running Rockbox. Never use the Apple software, it's not useful to me. I don't miss iTunes.
So what's preventing you from freeing yourself from proprietary software? Certainly not the hardware.

Dutch tradition

[starfishsystems]

The Netherlands has a strong tradition of liberal democracy based on a sense of people taking care of each other. And it has given the world some great thinkers in Computer Science as well.

Intitiatives like this one are likely to succeed here because they will be widely seen to make good sense.

There is nothing to prevent Microsoft from being part of the solution. Or it can be part of the precipitate.

Re:Bluff?

[risk one]

It's important to consider the structure of Dutch government in this case. The Netherlands have a system of many parties. There are some big ones, two of which usually make up the government, with a third smaller one. But the Dutch congress (which can veto bills, and bring up points of discussion) comprises all parties that got some minimum number of votes. I suppose most parliamentary democracies work this way, but the difference with countries like America and the UK is that in the Netherlands there is actually great diversity of parties in congress, many of which are small enough to really care about the issues. And a common divisor between all the parties that aren't in government is that none of them will care much about how great a deal the government is going to get from Microsoft (especially when there are free alternatives).

Don't get me wrong, we don't have a magnificent government at the moment, but the parliament usually works pretty well. The one party that would be most sympathetic to Microsoft here is the liberal VVD, and one of their prominent politicians is the Eurocommisioner that managed to give Microsoft a kicking in the recent antitrust suit. There is some hope for this one.

Re:No, it's true... Microsoft did a proof:

[Anonymous Coward]

For those scratching their heads:

* Step 1: Let a = b.
                * Step 2: Then a^2 = ab ,
                * Step 3: a^2 + a^2 = a^2 + ab ,
                * Step 4: 2a^2 = a^2 + ab ,
                * Step 5: 2a^2 - 2ab = a^2 + ab - 2ab ,
                * Step 6: and 2a^2 - 2ab = a^2 - ab .
                * Step 7: This can be written as 2(a^2 - ab) = 1(a^2 - ab) ,
                * Step 8: and canceling the (a^2 - ab) from both sides gives 1=2.
                * Step 9: We then subtract 1 from each side which gives us 0=1
                * Step 8: then multiplying by x where x is the price of the Microsoft suite you are investing in... you will note that x=0 and thus Microsoft is completely free!

Substituting step 2 into the equation at step 7 gives us 2*(0) = 1*(0) ... which is true, but then step 8 which reads "canceling the (a^2 - ab) from both sides" is actually a divide-by-zero error on both sides which is where it all goes awry.

Re:Well no wonder

[Anonymous Coward]

If I remember correctly, Microsoft's complaint was not that Office couldn't support ODF but that they couldn't implement all of the Office format features in ODF.

Re:Of course...

[mjwx]

I for one will buy the first iPod-clone that supports Vorbis

Disclaimer: Prices in AUD, this is an Australian store
Here's one and another one here

Cowon and Iriver have supported Ogg Vorbis for a while now. There are other models from Cowon and Iriver (different capacity, larger/smaller screen, different form factors, Drive/flash based) if these are not to your liking. I have the Iriver X20 and get better sound quality than out of latest generation ipod (I will admit that the trade off is battery life, I only get 10 hours). For Linux compatible MP3 player's the thing to look for is MSC (Mass Storage Class) functionality which tells the device to act like a flash disk that you can copy music to and the device builds its own library when the device is disconnected rather than have itunes do it when it is connected.

Just remember that these are not "ipod clones" but rather drastically different mp3 players. For the most part you will find great improvements (not locked to itunes, better controls and UI) over ipods. Compared to Irivers, ipods are expensive and annoying to use.

Re:Comparable Costs?

[tsa]

Yes but if you're a large company, or a non-profit organization, or a start-up, or a student, or a new-born, or a woman, or a single dad, or live in the third world, you can get a 'discount'.

Re:Bluff?

[BlackCreek]

Don't forget that Frits Bolkestein http://eupat.ffii.org/players/bolkestein/index.en.html, is also member of the VVD.

FWIW, the guy is a big-time defensor of software patents, and calls open source advocates of misinformers (in the context of software patents).

No

[Anonymous Coward]

There's nothing wrong with steps 5 and 6. Of course you can compare zero with zero. The fallacy is step 8, which divides by zero. The result of dividing something by zero is undefined.