According to this on the amazing Groklaw, the campaign to halt the fast tracking of Microsft’s Open XML has succeeded. We will try to keep up with what happens now; reading between the lines written by some in the know, this is uncharted territory.
That is the date by which national standards bodies must submit any objections to fast-track processing of the Microsoft Office Open XML specification by the ISO/IEC international standards body. Only qualified “P” member bodies of the ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1 (”JTC-1″) have legal standing to submit such objections.
This long and detailed […]
This is a big story - 126 posts at the time of writing according to Google News - reported fairly dispassionately here.
Microsoft’s own press release is here and that from the hither-to deeply obscure ECMA is here.
Despite the hype, Open XML is not yet achieved the holy grail, becoming an ISO Standard, […]
Read here why
ECMA’s approval will help Microsoft in its effort to claim it is serious about providing interoperability for its enormous user base worldwide.
We will keep an eye open for more on this story, especially on how ISO intends to handle the proposed XML standard and what UK readers can do to try […]
the document format battle is coming to the forefront, with this press release from Novell beginning
Novell today announced that the Novell® edition of the OpenOffice.org office productivity suite will now support the Office Open XML format, increasing interoperability between OpenOffice.org and the next generation of Microsoft Office. Novell is cooperating with Microsoft and others on […]
Here and here are a couple of articles suggesting that Microsoft Office is being given a run for its money, by Open Office and online offerings from Google and others, such as Zoho and ThinkFree.
There are passing mentions of continuing battle over document formats - go here if you are not familiar with […]
or, in English
And Agored is available free!
“Agored” is Welsh for “open” and “ddim” is “free”, as in “free beer” so guess what this story is about!
We mentioned our soft spot for Wales a while ago. Here is another great open source story from Ping Wales.
Blogging for Media Watch is sometimes done in a 250-year old cottage up a mountain in North Wales so here is a recent story from Ping Wales and another rather older, but still current and worth reading.
Highly relevant to FLOSS offerings are two further stories, about the online Welsh dictionary and Welsh language […]
TechNewsWorld has an update on Massachusetts’ embrace of open technology, open standards and open source source software.
Massachusetts’ plan for adoption of open standards has been in place since 2003, according to Tim Vaverchack, manager of shared services for Massachusetts’ information technology division. “Our main focus is to bring in as many open source products […]
The Belgian government has decided to adopt the Open Document Format throughout its operations. The government will require that all departments can read ODF documents by September 2007, with a view to moving to full adoption a year later if all runs smoothly.
Peter Strickx, general manager for architecture and standards of Fedict, the organization that […]
*update* - the post originally linked to the wrong article on The Guardian’s site; it’s since been corrected. Apologies.
The Guardian today reports on the results of a series of case studies conducted by the Open Source Academy on the deployment of open source software in the local government sector . Although grandly claiming that “the […]
OpenOffice.org is looking to take advantage of Microsoft’s latest anti-piracy drive by advertising their software as the quickest, and cheapest, way to “get legal.”
ZDNet called on the EC to stop prevaricating over the adoption of ODF following promises from Microsoft over it’s OpenXML “standards”.
The European Commission wants an open standard for documents. ODF has been […]
Following a re-evaluation of their IT strategy, Bristol City Council have decided to consolidate their office software - currently a mixture of Microsoft Office, Lotus 1-2-3 and WordPerfect - around a single software suite. The “obvious choice” of Microsoft Office was rejected in favour of Sun’s StarOffice on the grounds of cost, licensing and standards […]
Search Open Source has a piece on one of the barriers to Linux adoption, the lack of an iteration of Microsoft Office for the platform. Focusing on the inevitable comparisons between OpenOffice.org and MS’s offering, it includes the sage advice “Stop whining and embrace change”:
There’s a contingent of IT folks, however, who discount these complaints […]
The Sunday Times carried an article yesterday that opened with an idea that’s been around for years - that Linux is only difficult to learn for people who are already used to Windows - but has, for some reason, failed to embed itself in peoples’ minds.
Danny and Linda Lee, who are both in their mid-50s, […]
The Guardian on Thursday had an article slating OpenOffice, calling it “dire” and demonstrative of the “futility” of the open source ideology. The piece has the occasional good point - coders shy away from OOo because of its fearsome size and complexity and hence much of the work is done during office hours on Sun’s […]
Well, will they won’t they? It appears the governor’s office may have welched with this statement:
“The Commonwealth is very pleased with Microsoft’s progress in creating an open document format. If Microsoft follows through as planned, we are optimistic that Office Open XML will meet our new standards for acceptable open formats.”
The “progress” referred to is, […]
Microsoft has finally come up with a response to Massachusetts’ engagement with ODF, with an announcement that it will submit standards used in the next version of its Office suite.
Amongst those suspicious of the move (and there are many - the entire open source community, for example) are Sun, who have cautioned the state […]
Government Computer News has an article on the debate spawned by the commonwealth’s decision within the US’s public IT community, whilst the Christian Science Monitor looks at the wider ramifications the switch may have, in a refreshingly sceptical article.
Deciding what kind of software Massachusetts wants to load on some 50,000 state computers may sound like […]
A major department of the French government, the Direction Generale des Impots which oversees tax collection in France’s cities and regions, have announced that they are to migrate 80,000 desktops from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice. The time-cost of the move is expected to be about three man-years, with a cost of just €200,000, compared to […]