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City of Vancouver Adopts Open Standards

Posted by kdawson on from the asleep-at-the-switch-in-redmond dept.

rbrander writes "Vancouver, Canada's third-largest city, has adopted a policy of 'open standards, interfaces and formats' for all public data. They will also consider open-source software on an even footing with proprietary for all new software purchases. Fifteen of the fifteen people who signed up to speak to city council on the topic spoke in favor. Their only criticism was, 'can't you do more?' with one advocating that free and open source software be given preference, not equal footing."

3 of 132 comments (clear)

  1. Vancouver is Awesome by Phrogman · · Score: 4, Informative

    I am glad to see the city where I was born is leading the rest of Canada in adopting support for open standards. Hopefully this is a foot in the door that prompts the rest of Canada to follow suit.

    Vancouver, and British Columbia in general has always had a very strong Linux community. Victoria (the provincial Capital) has always had a fairly strong LUG going for as long as I can remember.

    --
    "The first time I got drunk, I got married. The second time I bought a chimpanzee, after that I stayed sober" Arian Seid
  2. Re:No prefered treatment! by Stormwatch · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's not about the best app for a given job, it's about avoiding vendor lock-in. When it comes to government documents, total format openness should be obligatory.

    --
    Circumcision is child abuse.
  3. It's not Open Source by thethibs · · Score: 3, Informative

    Really, folks, RTFA. It's about open formats, not open source.

    It seems to have been triggered by someone not being able to look at a WMV movie on the City of Vancouver site. They think you need IE to show a WMV. Gives you some idea of how intelligent the whole thing is.

    Undoubtedly job#1 will be to convert all those WMVs to ...what?

    --
    I'm a Programmer. That's one level above Software Engineer and one level below Engineer.