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Australia Mandates Microsoft's Office Open XML
littlekorea writes "The Australian Government has released a common operating environment desktop policy that — among security controls aimed at reducing the potential for leaks of Government data — mandates the ECMA-376 version of Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) standard and productivity suites that can 'read and write' the .docx format, effectively locking the country's public servants into using Microsoft Office. The policy [PDF] also appears to limit desktop operating systems to large, off-the-shelf commercial offerings at the expense of smaller distributions."
The land down under just went under.
all these /. articles about gov't IT and Internet policy in OZ. It's hard to believe they're truly that clueless. (Not that us Yanks are much better off, it's just more centered around "security from terrorists," and ""intellectual property"". - same, only different)
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
iirc, even MS office doesn't use the standard as published ???
Sneaking the word "Open" into this specification was a really dirty trick by Microsoft because
- it implies that this standard is somewhat "open", and the word "open" has positive connotations
- it (seemingly deliberately) creates confusion with "Open Office" ie the product OpenOffice.org, or open source in general.
I wouldn't be surprised if a number of people were taken in by this, thinking that by making the decision to support OOXML they were somehow contributing to more "openness" in the sense of open government and/or open source.
Speak for yourself. I haven't used Windows in years, and I haven't suffered for it. Anytime I'm forced to open an office document (which is more often than you would think over the course of a CS degree), I just use Openoffice and everything works.
At least at University, I'm seeing more and more students primarily using free operating systems. In my CS courses especially, it's all over the place: a show-of-hands survey in one of my upper-levels recently had probably upwards of ten Linux users in a class of thirty. Of course, it's a lot more prevalent among CS students, but even among the less technical students Linux usage is extremely common. When I first got here, I was shocked when I would see a Linux laptop or two near me in a class...nowadays I'm a little surprised if I don't.
Free software may not be catching on as well as we would like with the older generations, but it most certainly is with the younger folks.
That's right. Freedom is a lot of trouble. Just give it up.
It's not capitalism. Capitalism is based on open markets. When a government mandates a certain platform that is not open. Actually....it's more like socialism.
Unfortunately this seems pretty typical of this government. They like to make policies up on the spot and those policies don't have any thought put into them. We've had stimulus spending that - helped keep the economy going. They didn't actually plan what they were going to spend on though and they never put proper policies in place and we ended up spending way too much on stuff that didn't work.
I especially like the opt-out section:
51. This policy is subject to the process for administration of opt-outs from Whole-ofGovernment arrangements.
52. Initial opt-out considerations will be factored into the transition plan and are expected to
show how alignment to the policy will be achieved as part of the transition plan. Claims for
opting out will not be considered during the transition phase.
53. When seeking an opt-out, an agency will need to include a remediation plan to detail how it
will return to the WofG COE policy. Opt-outs are limited to a maximum of 3 years, after
which the original business case will be reassessed to ensure it is still valid.
54. While it is recognised that agencies may have a need to develop separate SOE images, it is
expected that these images will comply with the standards set out for the COE to ensure
that agencies can still share data and services in a seamless manner.
Whoa shite! Opting out is a massive process and has to be reviewed every 3 years.............
The nice thing about .zip is that it is, in fact, supported everywhere, out of the box.
It's also nice in that it actually supports directory trees. The legacy lzma, and the newer xz, well, don't. I like tar in principle, and I use these formats for all sorts of things that I don't have to share with others, but there are definitely cases where zip is nice -- where it's nice to be able to effectively "mount" a zipfile, "seek" to an appropriate file within it, and read it, without having to decompress the whole thing. This is why zip is used by tons of games, where they might not even be using compression, but they can't trust most filesystems to handle that many small files properly. It's why it's used by both OpenDocument and MS OOXML -- it's the easiest way imaginable to embed multiple files into a single document, including multiple XML files that are compressed well.
It also depends what your goals are. Zip compresses and decompresses a hell of a lot faster than lzma. These days, I standardize on either lzop for speed or xz for compression ratio, but zip and gzip are nice compromises.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
~223 years on, they are still ruled by idiots.
Was ever a country ruled by smart people? Please provide examples if possible.
Hutt River Province...
Seems rather pertinent under the circumstances.
It is, after all, the second biggest country in Australia.
GrpA
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
But why go with a commercial format when OpenDocument formats have been around earlier, supported for longer and on just as many (if not more) software packages, including Microsoft Office? There's nothing saying that we can't use Microsoft Office and store/save in OpenDocument. All the IT managers would need to do is change a site-wide setting for default save format.
I get the feel that it's a bit more than the Government being locked in with volume licenses. I suspect that either: :/,
1) There was a bit of pressure on them from Microsoft to support the format, either though threats of "renegotiating volume licenses" (Which Microsoft has done to the Australian Government in the past) or promises of lower costs;
2) Microsoft spread a bit of FUD to the government officials about their version being "better supported", which is completely ridiculous when you consider the concept of an OPEN document format.
or my favourite supposition;
3) The people who make these decisions are misinformed, as well as too lazy/stupid to properly research alternatives.
As a government employee, I'd love the Australian Government to get the balls to publicly announce a project to trial opensource alternatives (Firefox instead of IE, OpenOffice/LibreOffice instead of Microsoft Office) in pilot schools/offices/whatever. Even if it didn't happen, I'd imagine that Microsoft would scrabble to keep such a big customer by offering some discounts. (If they didn't just bring out the big stick again.) Wow, we might be able to cut an IT expense that comes out of the taxpayer's pocket ... naahhh, that sounds too much like common sense.
Thank god we've switched to a web-based email/calender a'la Gmail/GCalender-like system. That's one set of Outlook license that we can hopefully get rid of in the future.
*sigh* If it wasn't so hot, dry and isolated in the Northern Territory, I'd be tempted to teach there simply because they've switched to Linux. I guess Microsoft wasn't concerned enough about keeping that territory as a customer to bring out the big twitchy stick.
Applications that only support .docx read capabilities include Apple's iWork, IBM's Lotus Notes, Oracle's OpenOffice.Org and Google Docs, amongst others.
I also just checked, and it's true--I can't save as .docx with OO.O Writer. Read-only capability isn't good enough, since "[software] must have the ability to read and write the endorsed file format".
If they insist on actual compliance with the standard, even MS will be out...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Here's the thing - we're all gonna die in the end, so all these fights against proprietary formats won't mean jack.
In that case, so is replying. Yet you seem to care enough about justifying your position (perhaps to yourself) to reply, so don't give me this nihilistic bullshit.
In life we pick the battles we can fight. These are potentially important issues, but basically given you're effectively saying about 90% of people are part of the "problem", I don't give a fuck anymore.
When 90% of the people are part of the problem is when I absolutely do care.
Take another battle I've picked: Religion. There's a small minority which does some really crazy shit. And they get away with it in the name of "religious tolerange", because a majority of the world believes enough crazy shit of their own that it takes a lot to make us as a culture say, no, you can't let your child die because you'd rather fucking pray than get help.
Easily 80-90% of the US population is religious, which makes it a safe bet that you are, too -- probably also Christian, probably believe faith is a virtue. If so, merely by supporting the idea that faith is a virtue, you are encouraging yourself and those around you to turn off their critical thinking and skepticism when the situation calls for it. That kind of thinking leads to atrocities. Never mind that merely by calling yourself "Christian", you lend credibility to these fuckwits.
Am I going to win? Not really. I do hope to reinforce separation of church and state, to promote actual science education instead of "Intelligent Design", and to establish some basic rights the religious would deny, like the right to marry. I'd love to see people tolerate less of the extremists. I really doubt I'm going to see the religious become a minority in my lifetime.
But you know what? I'd like to think that when I'm lying on my deathbed, I lived for things that matter. I'd like to think that I'd still be the kind of person who would be ashamed to think I gave up because it was too hard, or because there were too many people who disagreed with me.
Life shouldn't have to be some damn crusade.
You're right, it shouldn't. But this is the world we live in, and there are some issues which tend towards exactly that -- either you're a good little worker propping up the status quo, or you're actually helping to move things forward.
And life should be meaningful -- and it's up to you to find that meaning. Maybe you honestly don't care, but that's not what I'm hearing. What I'm hearing is that you do care, you're just too lazy to do anything about it anymore.
Yet somehow, you're not too lazy to post, and to try to justify how much you don't care. That says a lot.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
As long as they provide information to the public in an open format such as HTML or PDF, I don't care what they adopt in an SOE.
The major beef I do have however, is the Windows only tax return software provided by the Australian Taxation Office. The fact that I have to use Windows if I want to file my tax return electronically is totally unacceptable.
MOOXML, aka Microsoft Open Office XML
Quick! Spread the meme!
It's even more confusing than that. Ecma-376 has two editions, the first being rejected by ISO and the second being accepted as ISO/IEC 29500. The first was more or less Microsoft's old proprietary format, and the second includes either "transitional" or "strict" versions. I suppose the Aussie standard means ecma-376, 2nd edition (since it's newer), and either the transitional or strict formats contained therein. In that case, TFA seems to be close to correct--MS Office appears to be one of the only software suites that supports it.
Can't comment on the "smart people" bit, but if a kingdom is ruled by a king and a principality is ruled by a prince, then a country is ruled by...
If it can only be implemented by a single company and is a "standard" that only exists through what could reasonably be called corruption of a standards body, it's not really a standard.
The ISO standard is much stronger because it is supported well across the entire range of office suites available. None fully support it.
No, this is a myopic piece of crap from people who are either corrupt, inept or both. I have nothing against proprietary software, I work for a company that makes proprietary software and doesn't share source code. In the highly specialised market we are in, I see that as entirely fine. All the data our software transmits, receives or stores is freely accessible using tools from any number of sources.
I do have a problem with my federal government, the people I pay to maintain the security and standard of living I enjoy, mandating that all documents must be in a format that can only be handled correctly using software that must be bought from a foreign company. Especially when excellent alternatives exist.
I don't therefore I'm not.
After Wikileaks, governments are going to be all about rights management protection for documents. RMS stops people opening sensitive documents that they've copied to a USB stick.
Open / Libre Office doesn't have this functionality (and because of the Open Source movement's philosophical objection to rights management technologies probably will never have this functionality).
The recent wikileaks saga has been a big wake up call to business and government - because they want to do their best to make sure that their information isn't plastered all over the Internet. Office 2007 / 2010 support this out of the box (just that few people use it). Open / Libre Office won't support it in a million years because "DRMs is Teh Evil"
If you are used to one thing the other is always going to be worse.
You are going to have a hard time using the same fonts as Office uses since Open Office doesn't license the same fonts, you can choose to install them by yourself. OO will keep the font settings of a Office document but use its own fonts. Having done the switch my self, and having a big and expensive font collection I can tell you that OO handles fonts perfectly fine, even the standard OO fonts are fine.
That's why they should publish the slides as pdfs.
How is being locked in to a proprietary format supposed to stop things like wikileaks?
Or do they think that wikileaks won't be able to buy or pirate msoffice in order to read the leaked documents?
I have worked with companies and governments that try to implement various restrictions to stop employees taking data out of the organisation...
I have found that:
The restrictions are generally flawed (often the fault of ms for flawed implementation) and people can get round them easily.
The restrictions only serve to hinder people's ability to work.
Windows typically requires expensive additional software, eg software to prevent access to USB storage devices, and when this software crashes the underlying os allows the unwanted devices anyway.
Even if the restrictions work, there are other ways, eg taking photographs of the screen, printing stuff out, stealing the internal hdd from the machine etc...
You place restrictions on removable media, uploads to the web, attachments via email, people will just find another way... It's better to log rather than to restrict, because if there are no restrictions people will often pick the easiest route and you can at least catch them in the act, and everyone else can get on with their work unhindered.
When implementing security policy, people only tend to think about the front door, they concentrate on features rather than implementation... They buy all kinds of junk claiming to support fancy sounding buzzwords not realising that there are often ways around all of this stuff...
I saw a system where someone was using a web based application to keep data of different security classifications and belonging to different customers separated, now sure if you go through the web interface it won't let you access other people's data but if you get access to the underlying server you obviously have access to everything... And yet, people were claiming that an admin on the server wouldn't be able to access the data because they cant do so through the web interface!
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Actually, they are now required not to pay the Microsoft Tax. The last tests I saw showed that Microsoft Office got over 5,000 failures in Microsoft's own OOXML conformance tests. It therefore does not support OOXML and can therefore not be used by the Australian government. I suggest that anyone in Australia points this out to their elected representatives.
Amusingly, Microsoft Office actually did better in ODF conformance tests (with a plugin, I think), than it did in OOXML conformance tests. I'm not sure how OO.o does with OOXML, but it's managed to open both of the the OOXML files I've ever been sent.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
... for paying the "Microsoft Tax" in addition to their own taxes, to prop up the US economy at their expense.
I wouldn't be that optimistic.
I can't imagine why they'd do it; but the US sure could use the money to pay off some of it's debt.
Lobbies and money funneling come to my mind first. The business as usual for MS and the likes. And the gov't officials.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
Unlike a (religious) fundie, his reasoning is sound. Big difference there.
What all religions have in common is that they declare a universal cause of human suffering and claim to know the cure. Fundamental atheists claim religion is the universal problem and fundamental, evangelical atheism is the only cure. It's a religion of religion-bashing. That type of circular logic makes me think of a dog chasing its tail.
The logical flaw is that religion isn't the cause of all human suffering. People are, according to Sartre, but I lean toward the more broad, Buddhist perspective: Life itself is the cause of suffering.
Notice how few militant atheists attack Buddhism, Taoism, and even Judaism. They go after easy targets: Fundamentalist Christians born out of the Great Awakenings who lack a solid theology, Islamic extremists from countries that aren't very advanced, and a Hindu caste system that doesn't even really exist anymore.
What I find especially humorous is that the parent used South Park in some of his citations. I guess he missed the Dawkins episode.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."