Belgian Gov't requires ODF From 09/2008 106
An anonymous reader writes "The Belgian government has decided all government agencies will be required to use only open document standards from September 2008 onwards. One year earlier, they should be able to read them. In practice this means only ODF will be supported, although OpenXML will be considered if it becomes an accepted standard, and enough applications use it. According to a Belgian Microsoft-spokesman, Microsoft is considering supporting ODF (article in Dutch)."
Not yet (Score:4, Insightful)
What is needed is a country like Japan, China, or EU to move to this. Then the party is over.
Re:Not yet (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Not yet (Score:5, Informative)
Brussels is the seat of CoEU, EC and EP and is unofficially called the capital of the EU, but it's not official. Also Europe != EU != Euro-countries. We're in Europe, but like hell if Brussels is any sort of capital for us.
Re:Not yet (Score:2)
Re:Not yet (Score:1)
Re:Not yet (Score:1)
Yeah, because that didn't turn out to be a tremendous waste of time and money.
Re:Not yet (Score:1)
The EU is an economic agreement, not a country. The UN is in New York, does that make NY the capital of the world?
Also the government of Belgium is a completely different entity than the EU. They have no more power to make this a Europe-wide decision than, say, Austria.
I've said it a thousand times, don't make Belgium more important than it is. It's a nice little country but in the end i
Re:Not yet (Score:1)
Re:Not yet (Score:3, Insightful)
Basically the choice becomes, do you lose your market or your lock-in? You can lose a competitive advantage, or you can lose everything.
My gut says
Re:Not yet (Score:2)
Historically, MS has used one of several approachs.
.
If MS makes the product buggy, then OO/WP may end up on the system. OTH, if they extend the format but can close it, then they have the superior product but with no access by others. I do not know ODF , but if there is a way for MS to embrace and extend it without letting others know it directly, then that will be done
ODF should be easily verifyable (Score:2, Informative)
Because ODF is XML-based, there are fast standard techniques to verify whether a given document is 100% ODF compliant or not.
This would mean that a lot less "cheating" is possible than with a difficult-to-implement binary format.
To be fair, the same would hold for Office Open XML (that's what Microsoft calls their format -- i wonder why), so if that also becomes a standard you'd be able to choose
On groklaw I read a discussion on the legal and technical merits of bo
Re:ODF should be easily verifyable (Score:3, Informative)
Re:ODF should be easily verifyable (Score:2)
You don't have to guess: that's what they've said they're doing.
Re:Not yet (Score:2)
Re:Not yet (Score:2)
is ooo any better in this regard?
Re:Not yet (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not yet (Score:2)
Belgian companiess can start sending ODF docs to other countries, anybody complaining on that format would get slammed with "attempt to hinder free competition" So if Belgium goes this way, all other countries will have to at least accept ODF docs from Belgian companies
Re:Not yet (Score:2)
Re:Not yet (Score:2)
Re:Not yet (Score:2)
Re:Not yet (Score:2)
Re:Critical Mass (Score:4, Insightful)
It's not though. It must be clear, even to Microsoft, that the world needs open and standard formats. It must be evident, even to them, what it is costing government and industry to retain the current closed, proprietary formats.
What they have to weigh that against though, is that every hour they can delay the inevitable change, they bank revnues in excess of a million dollars. Every day they stall competition, they rake in almost thirty million dollars.
One day Microsoft will have to compete on merit instead of format lockin, but until then, every hour of delay they can engineer is a million dollar win for them.
Re:Critical Mass (Score:2)
It's not though. It must be clear, even to Microsoft, that the world needs open and standard formats.
I think they know the world wants them, but they also know that it is in their best interests to stop them on most fronts.
One day Microsoft will have to compete on merit instead of format lockin, but until then, every hour of delay they can engineer is a million dollar win for them.
Sure, in a few markets, but not in most. Governments are not enforcing antitrust laws against them, partially due to camp
Yeah, right. (Score:5, Insightful)
Four little words. Cold day in Hell. Some reason will be found in a few months to delay the decision until Microsoft's format can be considered instead. When it comes to governments, money still talks
of course, I'd LOVE to be proved wrong, but where is the great German Linux migration, hmm?
Re:Yeah, right. (Score:5, Insightful)
What's really needed here is more than just a top level city/state/country decision. How many people are using odf in their daily lives? What killed WordPerfect was that they could not open Word Documents. Try sending out a few odf's every now and then and do YOUR part to show that it is being used. When you get the email back saying that it could not be opened, you'll have your OpenOffice and Open Document speech all ready to go. "Open Office opens all MSFT documents PLUS odf and does x y and z!"
Re:Yeah, right. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yeah, right. (Score:2)
Re:Yeah, right. (Score:1)
C'mon (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not saying be a complete nazi about it, and I'm not advocating doing anything as stupid as sending your resume in a format someone might NOT be able to read (which includes
Re:Yeah, right. (Score:2)
Re:Yeah, right. (Score:2)
The rumours of WordPerfect [corel.com]'s death have been greatly exaggerated. A new version was released only last year. I know a number of people who still use it in their day-to-day work. Most of them are novelists. One is a lawyer. It isn't dead, it has been relegated to niche markets.
Re:Yeah, right. (Score:1)
C'mon - we've seen this dozens of times before. They'll support it. Then they'll add extra "features that our customers want."
Deja vu all over again.
Re:Yeah, right. (Score:2)
Re:Yeah, right. (Score:3, Interesting)
Not necessarily... (Score:2)
Re:Not necessarily... (Score:2)
£10 says that Microsoft will implement a half-arsed attempt at supporting ODF, which sometimes produces interoperable documents but usually doesn't (of course they'll render perfectly in Office), the Belgian government will accept this and everyone will go home happy.
Re:Not necessarily... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not necessarily... (Score:1, Troll)
Re:Not necessarily... (Score:1)
hrmmm... can't seem to find a link to the linux version.
Re:Not necessarily... (Score:2)
Re:Not necessarily... (Score:2)
Re:Not necessarily... (Score:2)
Da bears (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Yeah, right. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Yeah, right. (Score:1)
Hopefully it's about money as well (Score:1)
Lately we heard of many projects
- They plan to hire 7.000 cs by the end of 2007.
- The e-ID card
- Now people can pay their taxes on the web
- The ODF format.
It's not just an idea thrown into the air.
That's a massive structural update at all the level of the organization of the belgian governement.
Now if you are in this context and you have to choose for a common document format, would you really
choose MS Word (.doc) file fo
Again ?! (Score:4, Informative)
"considering" (Score:5, Insightful)
*ONLY* open document standards? AWESOME! (Score:5, Interesting)
You know what that means, right? It means that not accepting MS Office files is just the tip of the iceberg. It means every other format the government uses will have to be open too, including audio/video codecs, and -- best yet -- CAD FORMATS!
As a civil engineering student and Free Software advocate, this is really exciting, because right now AutoCAD has a near-monopoly on CAD for civil engineering applications, to the point where governments often require its native format (.DWG, .DXF) for contract proposals and such. Don't get me wrong -- AutoCAD isn't a bad program, but it's a Windows-only one, which makes me constantly frustrated at work. Mandating use of an open standard format might give a boost to competing, cross platform, software.
Incidentally, I ran across this website that has a lot of good information about this: the Open Design Alliance [opendesign.com]. From their FAQ:
Re:*ONLY* open document standards? AWESOME! (Score:2, Informative)
Well, from the real article [zdnet.co.uk] this seems not to be so simple.
They use sentences like "Belgium's government departments will be instructed to use an open file format for internal communications", "all document exchanges within the services of the Belgian Government w
De facto can be toppled. Fear doesn't scale up. (Score:3, Insightful)
The point being that de facto standards can be toppled both from within the proprietary alternatives and the free software programs available. Microsoft has learned that to keep their users locked into Microsoft Office formats they have to do things we in the free software world can't do and wouldn't want to do
Re:De facto can be toppled. Fear doesn't scale up. (Score:2)
Which is presumably why my copy of Office97 isn't able to open documents saved by the latest and greatest versions of MS Office.
Except it can. MS don't do this, and haven't done it since they redesigned the format to use an extendible syntax, which was (I believe) first implemented in Word95. Older versions only fail to
Re:*ONLY* open document standards? AWESOME! (Score:1, Offtopic)
Ah, just the man I wanted to talk to... ;)
I need a simple and free CAD application for a one-time project, and I was wondering, since you're in the industry and all... Which one would you recomment? What I need is a simple 2D CAD application that's free and runs on both Windows and Linux (and preferably other OS'es) so I can share my files with others with as few restrictions on the platform it runs on as possible. I have some experience width CAD from using RoboCAD back in highgschool (which is now free
Re:*ONLY* open document standards? AWESOME! (Score:4, Informative)
You did notice I said I'm a student, right? ; )
Anyway, most of my (limited) experience has been with AutoCAD and SolidEdge, which are both expensive and Windows-only. I have done some research into the matter at times, though, but I don't think I'll be of much help.
First of all, if your needs really are simple, you could just use a drawing/diagramming tool like xFig, Dia, or Inkscape. Beyond that, though, all I can really suggest is QCad or possibly BRL-CAD [brlcad.org], seeing as how those are about the only two Free* CAD apps for Linux that aren't already dead or "in planning" or whatever.
I also found this list [tech-edv.co.at], although I suspect it isn't of much help.
*I don't like QCad's license either, especially seeing as how the Free Software version is crippleware. I'm surprised nobody's forked it yet -- it needs it!
Re:*ONLY* open document standards? AWESOME! (Score:2)
Thanks, I'll check 'em out in my spare time (kinda busy with other stuff right now).
And yes, you're right, QCad definitely needs forking; the problem is not many people have a need for an open free CAD application, and few of them are coders... Fewer of them still, understand the whole math behind CAD applications. I guess that kind of sums up the reason there's so few FOSS CAD applications out there. At least, that's my theory.
Re:*ONLY* open document standards? AWESOME! (Score:2)
Other file standards (Score:1)
MS Support of ODF (Score:5, Funny)
Re:MS Support of ODF (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:MS Support of ODF (Score:1)
Re:MS Support of ODF (Score:3, Funny)
Translated using Altavista (Score:1, Redundant)
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Government exiles microsoft documents
As from September 2008 its all digital office documents of the federal government Odf-bestanden. ODF or open document Format are a file format for office documents that previous month officially were accepted by the international standard organisation ISO. It opens, standard '', which by software developers at discretion can be used to develop applications. ODF are with that a potential competitor for its ow
Translation from a belgian (Score:5, Informative)
Government bans Microsoft-documents
From September 2008 onwards all digital office-documents of the federal
government wil be ODF-files.
ODF or open document format is a file format for office documents that
was officially accepted last month by the international
standards-organisation ISO.
It concerns an "open standard", that can be used at will by software
developers to create applications. ODF is therefor a potential
concurrent for the own file formats the software giant Microsoft uses
in its office software Microsoft Office.
The federal ministrial counsel took the radical decision last friday to
make the ODF-standards obligatory from September 2008 onwards for all
federal governmental services. One year earlier all services must
already be able to read the ODF documents. According to the magazine IT
Professional Belgium is the first country in the world to take such
measures, and thus de facto forbids the usage of the Microsoft formats.
However the door isn't entirely closed for Microsoft. The company now
has the choise: either they open their programs for ODF-files, or they
develop a standard themselves that can be used next to ODF. The most
important candidate for the latter is the by Microsoft designed Open
XML.
But according to Peter Strickx, who is responsible for software
standards at the federal government, Open XML has to be first
officially recognized and there have to be enough applications
supporting the format. According to Microsoft spokesman Frank De Graeve
they also consider supporting ODF in the Office software.
Re:Translation from a belgian (Score:2, Informative)
So you want someone to translate them ?
Here is my (I am a Dutch, French and English speaking Belgian) translation:
Use open standards for the exchange of office documents.
The council of ministers approved the law-suggestion (I don't know the English word) for the use of open standards for the exchange of office documents.
Minister Vanvelthoven: The exchange of office documents such as text documents and spreadsheets has been especially based
Support? (Score:2)
HTML all over again? (Score:5, Funny)
As much as I am ashamed to admit it, however, I use OpenOffice but save in the .doc format.
Maybe what we need is a support group to expand odf. Let me start.
"Hi, I'm Andrew and I have been using .doc for ten years."
Re: HTML all over again? (Score:1)
Here come the deep discounts (Score:4, Interesting)
Here comes yet another bad business practice for MS stockholders to suffer at the hands of WalmartSoft.
Here come the
Towards critical mass (Score:4, Interesting)
The Belgium federal government might not be the biggest government in the world, it's still a big (read rich) government.
You can bet your ass that many sotware companies are allready thinking of how they can make money out of this.
This will increase the amount of secondary support and software available for OpenOffice.
Also, if your biggest customer is the government (which is true for many companies), it would be logical to use the same file format. Especially if you can use it for free.
Thirdly, if the government publishes documents on it's website, they will now do it in ODF, instead of MS-Office. Which means that many civilians will install ODF compatible software, just to read them.
Safety Not Guaranteed (Score:2)
WANTED: Somebody to go forward in time with me. This is not a joke. P.O. Box @#!%, Oakview, CA 93022. You'll get paid after we get back. Must bring your own document formats. Safety not guaranteed. I have only done this once before.
Re:Safety Not Guaranteed (Score:1)
Re:Safety Not Guaranteed (Score:2)
Better later than never.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Plus concurrence is back. Word is buggy and the GUI sucsk. It's not hard to do a better job, but the bottleneck is compatibility with "word" format. So what? Well. Concurrence is again possible on the word processor market. Hurra!!
Same thinking for DRMs. they're just starting out of she shelves. Will it take another 20 yrs before we have legislations that o
Better later than never.... (Score:2, Insightful)
Same thinking for DRMs. Will it take another 20 yrs before we have legislations that outlaw them? 2026? Well.. I can leave with a 20yr gap without a music/video purchase. But can the RIAA and MPAA?
It's good to see that sooner or later ppl get to understand technology, and can easily get rid of abuse in a few years..
I can't help but dream of the day with all
Microsoft are Go! (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Microsoft are Go! (Score:2)
Here we come to save the Motherfuckin' World, yeah!
Microsoft - FUCK YEAH!
Freedom is the only way, yeah!
Linux Hackers your day is up, cause now you have to answer to
Microsoft - FUCK YEAH!
So lick my butt, and suck my balls
Microsoft - FUCK YEAH!
What are you going to do when they send you
It's the dream we all share, MS Office for tommorow
FUCK YEAH!!!
Vista, FUCK YEAH!
Clippy, FUCK YEAH!
X-Box, FUCK YEAH!
Explorer, FUCK YEAH!
Spyware, FUCK YEAH!
Bluescreen, FUCK, YEAH!
chkdsk, FUCK YEAH
Gates comment: (Score:1)
Re:Gates comment: (Score:1)
http://www.bitstorm.org/gates/ [bitstorm.org]
yawn... (Score:2)
yes, sure it will become an accepted standard -- by sheer weight of their monopoly on desktop OS.
and plenty applications will use it: M$ Office Basic Edition, M$ Office Starter Edition, M$ Office Professional Edition, M$ Office Director's Cut Edition etc
btw, M$ will support ODF when WinFS is finally released.
Ethics of Open Source (Score:5, Interesting)
On a related note, I edit a well-established, peer-reviewed academic journal, and am presently putting together an issue on the ethics of open source software (to appear June, 2007). Anyone who may be interested in contributing is invited to email me, and I'll send the CFP.