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Denmark Chooses OpenDocument Format
Seahawk was one of several readers to write in with news of Denmark's decision to embrace ODF. "On Friday morning Denmark decided to choose ODF over Microsoft's OOXML. For now the decision is only effective for governmental institutions, but regions and municipalities will most likely follow some time in the future. The decision has unfolded over a period of four years, and many open source advocates were fearing the worst, but it looks like the minister finally caved in and listened to what a lot of people were saying." While in transition away from Microsoft Office formats, the Danes may find use for this new OpenOffice integration guide (sent in by reader AdeleWard).
This is great news. Open standards, like other forms of openness, spreads like wildfire. In Europe we saw Belgium, Netherlands, Norway adopt ODF, now Denmark. A similar pattern occurred in South America, with Brazil proving to be the center of influence. So the question is: who is next?
dealt themselves a blow to their ability to interoperate with other people.
Incorrect. ODF increases your ability to interoperate with other people. Have you used Microsoft Office? It can't interoperate with its own older versions, and the reasons for that are entirely aimed at getting users to buy the latest version, nothing more.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
That's not entirely true, since Microsoft Office can support ODF. If their decision was about the benefits of an open file format then the choice of software to run should be irrelevant (meaning they could still run Microsoft Office everywhere instead of something like OpenOffice).
Remember to maintain your supply of
This slashdot story has the same headline as many Danish stories, but the decision did not exclude OOXML, and did not specifically pick ODF. However, the criterias that were decided upon, currently only fits ODF in the minds of most people, but Jasper Bojsen fra Microsoft also thinks that Microsoft OOXML complies with the criterias.
So basically, ODF is in, OOXML may be in, too.
No, SUN was well aware that MS pulls tricks like this, they thought that they would be clever and they put in a requirement in the Java licenses to stick to the standard. Microsoft's Java system was stopped by an actual court decision. Unfortunately for SUN, it turned out that Microsoft had used their work with Java to learn and they created a Java copy called .NET. Basically a lesson. It is never worth cooperating with MS even if you think you are much cleverer than they are.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
You're probably a MS shill but the simple fact is that there exists free plugins so that MS Office users can use ODF. One of them is made by Sun which currently is the only one with Enterprise support. Surprisingly the only company that does not make a plugin is MS itself. So who's appears to be hindering interoperability here?
I would like see the logic at which you arrived at this conclusion. Open Office is free so there is no higher cost there. ODF is an open format which means anyone can write applications that use it. The list of existing applications that use it includes Google Docs, WordPerfect, Lotus Symphony, etc. If anything, using MS Office incurs a higher cost because Danish citizens will be required to purchase it from MS to see Office proprietary formats.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
more importantly, older versions cannot interoperate with newer versions, in an attempt to force everyone to upgrade once a few important people do so. MS was forced to release a docx interpreter for the older office programs because companies complained so much.
Um, not *having* to spend money in commercial software licenses?
It's the same old argument ... why insist on having citizens pay for software so they can read official documents?
* If you force a free format, you can use any software you like -- including the same commercial software you've been using for years.
* But, if you force a commercial format, there is NO guarantee (almost like the opposite) that you can use any software you like -- even non-commercial.
"Good news, everyone!"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenDocument
Prominent office suites supporting OpenDocument fully or partially include:
* AbiWord [16][17] (Users of Windows installations must first download and install Import/Export Plugins)
* Adobe Buzzword[18]
* Atlantis Word Processor[19]
* Google Docs [20]
* IBM Lotus Symphony [21][22]
* KOffice [23]
* Microsoft Office 2000, Office XP, Office 2003, Office 2007 with plugin [24]
* Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2 (SP2) [25]
* Microsoft Wordpad (Windows 7 versions)
* NeoOffice
* OpenOffice.org
* Sun Microsystems StarOffice
* SoftMaker Office
* Corel WordPerfect Office X4[26]
* Zoho Office Suite
--
I vaguely remember reading that each ODF implementation has little variances.
But it is a step in the right direction.
I went ODF (and open office specifically) with all my documents last year after word 2007 started abitrarily hanging when I tried to print word 2003 documents. After translation to OOo, printing time was reduced dramatically as a side benefit.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
An open standard is the first step, and MS knows this which is why they fight against it so hard...
OO may lag behind today, but for a large number of users it would already be more than adequate to their needs. For many of these users, compatibility with other people using MS is what stops them using OO. An open standard levels the playing field and removes incompatibility as a problem.
With an open standard, you would see casual users moving to OO or other free alternatives, as well as other pay suites like wordperfect starting to retake market share.
The extra users and attention would result in increased development of these suites.
You would also see new players entering the now competitive market...
The extra competition would also force MS to start competing by improving their product and/or lowering prices.
Also consider that many companies will quite happily use something inferior if it is significantly cheaper, that's how MS got to where they are today after all - they pushed their products which were massively inferior to Novell and Unix (often laughably so) but for a fraction of the cost.
But the GP is right, i am happy to see another government moving away from proprietary formats and i hope others do so too. Open standards are good for everyone except the owner of the proprietary system they replace... Governments should do things which benefit their people, that doing so is detrimental to MS is irrelevant since even in the US, MS is a very tiny percentage relative to the people and organisations who would benefit from open standards.
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Office 2007 SP2 supports ODF 1.1.
The current complete and published OpenDocument format is ODF 1.1. ODF 1.2 is in draft form according to the latest announcements from OASIS. Just because OpenOffice.org is putting out software based on the draft, doesn't mean it's final yet.
Denmark voted "Yes with comments" on the ISO OOXML ballot. Of course that turned out to do a hell of a lot of good since at later meetings a lot of ISO's changes to the ECMA spec were tossed away, so essentially we just voted "Yes".
A lot of the members of Dansk Standard wanted to vote "No", but it was pretty much a foregone conclusion that Denmark would say yes given that business in this country is nearly 100% MS-based. (Actually... Denmark might be the country in the West with the highest percentage of Windows installs).
And on a personal note, I don't take ISO seriously any more, and neither should you.
________
Entranced by anime since late summer 2001 and loving it ^_^
How are you supposed to use a spreadsheet to calculate your taxes when there is no standard for formulas in spreadsheets?
Why would you want to use a spreadsheet? Our taxes are calculated automatically. If you have any changes to the proposal mailed to you, there is a web based system were you enter your new values and get it recalculated instantly.
As an American, I need to set you straight on a few things. First, it's queue the music, as in a queue ball in pool or as you call it, green ball bounce edges pocket shooting or simply snooker.
Now we cue up in a line, or simply a Q, named after the irrepressible Star Trek character who was of course partly British in spirit. And marking edges of tape is most effectively done with India ink, which has a bit of a misnomer as it is actually produced by Native Americans.
Finally, the word Walla is French, of course, by way of the frontiersmen who first traveled up the Columbia and started trading with the Indians. I am afraid that your word, viola, simply refers to a big violin.
Listen, idiot, with Virtualization, most of us, in a professional sense NOW have instant access to a Windoze VM, and MS office, and commonly several versions, and I now almost never use M$ Office, for anything but testing. An when I do I cringe since I see software make harder to use, eg the ribbon, simply for marketing reasons; that is M$ greatest sin, they think they are ENTITLED to frig with the software to force sales.
By any objective standards all M$ software is crap by design, M$Word typeset algorithms are a crock of shit, the documents looks so awful that you can tell it must have been set by Word. Excel and its many 'mathematical' bugs and quirks is well known for creating un-auditable business process, usually a big SOX headache. And so on, on, on.
So even though I have essentially free access to the OS, Office and Outlook I almost never use them because they are so bad. When it comes to Development the WinWorld is even worse. M$ regularly shoots itself in the foot in security, portability and flexibility terms.
At an even more basic level, if you follow the history of the industry, things move on, you adapt or die, look at past greats IBM, DEC, Wang, Compaq, SUN, HP all now shadows of their former greatness.
If you look closely M$ is in terminal decline.
I'll take the bait and post this despite my dislike for Microsoft.
link
Also, their PR
Hm. No plugin, because no plugin is necessary, I presume.