Denmark Chooses OpenDocument Format 198
Posted
by
kdawson
from the vote-to-empower dept.
from the vote-to-empower dept.
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).
another step in the right direction (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Queue the Complimentary Office 2k7 Licenses in. (Score:5, Insightful)
Great, free Office licenses would be good being that it supports ODF, its a win win situation for them.
They use an open standard and aren't stuck with any one vendor, and one of those vendors may give them software for free.
The only retraining needed will be to get people to save in ODF rather than DOCX.
Sigh... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why hopefully? Do you even understand the point of ODF? It's *NOT* OpenOffice.
Re:Queue the Complimentary Office 2k7 Licenses in. (Score:4, Insightful)
As long as they want the government to use their software, which in turn keeps people used to using MS Office and using it elsewhere.
They start making it incompatible with the standard and they'll run into problems.
Now ... if the standard allows for extensibility, and they take advantage of that extensibility to provide extra features that governments want to use than whos fault is that?
The point of an OPEN document format is to allow people to use whatever software they want, not tie them in to some particular OSS software package.
If that is your (or anyone elses goal), to get people to not use MS Office and to force them to use OSS like OpenOffice, well then thats no better than being locked into MSOffice really.
Re:Wrong decision (Score:5, Insightful)
The state, in order to conduct its necessary business, needs to use some sort of document format. Even the most minimal of states would have to at least write the law code down somewhere.
The document format that the state uses affects the citizens of the state; because they must possess software capable of interpreting that format in order to usefully interact with the state.
Therefore, the state's use of a document format constitutes a state-imposed market distortion in favor of software that can interpret that format, and against software that cannot. Because the state's use of some document format is unavoidable, the imposition of this market distortion is unavoidable.
The more openly available, and widely adopted, and patent unencumbered the format is, the lower the barrier of entry to supporting it is, and the greater the amount of software that can support it will be. Therefore, the more open the document standard used by the state, the smaller the market distortion imposed by the state.
Any free market libertarian is therefore obligated to support the state's use of the most open and least encumbered formats available.
Re:Cost savings? (Score:3, Insightful)
government offices will not be forced to upgrade to maintain compatibility. they will be able to apply cost-effectiveness decisions to their software purchases based on the benefit and value of future software versions.
Re:another step in the right direction (Score:3, Insightful)
I see no reason they'd switch from MS products if they work properly. Having used both MS Office and OpenOffice, I'd rather pay for MS Office than use OpenOffice, I'm pretty sure most desk jockeys would feel the same way.
Desk jockey, here. And just to be clear... have you ever used Office 2007? That's what made me switch to OOo.
The plural of anecdote is not data, but in any case, I'm sure if everyone realized they could get a free MS-compatible software suite, fewer would spend the money. The wallet is a powerful motivator.
And just wait until Microsoft extends the open standard in proprietary ways... remember IE6? This is why people want to motivate others to move away from Microsoft's software.
Re:another step in the right direction (Score:2, Insightful)
Who said anything about moving away from MS software? MS Office supports ODF.
MS Office supports only ODF version 1.0 (the up to date version of ODF is 2.0). Also, it has many features which aren't going to convert into ODF 1.0 correctly so it's not really suitable. What's the point of using MS Office as an ODF editor when you can get Open Office for free? Even if you do have MS Office, you'll be better off having OpenOffice.org [openoffice.org] installed on your computer as well.
Re:Cost savings? (Score:2, Insightful)
Judging by the low quality of documents that office monkeys email to each other, even more time and money could be saved by standardising on ascii txt files.
Re:Wrong decision (Score:5, Insightful)
By virtue of selecting the format that is easier for any product to support, they reduce the degree to which they interfere with the invisible hand's selection of the best product.
If they were to select a unique format, implemented by only a single product, they would be maximally constraining the invisible hand. Anybody who wanted to interact with the state would simply have to use the single product. By choosing a substantially open standard(pretty much all office suites that aren't Office already support it, Office supports it via at least two different plugin options and has native support on the roadmap) they have left the invisible hand largely free to choose the best product.
Had they said "No, only users of OO.org may interact with us", that would have been interference with free market competition between products. All they did was mandate a format, and they chose the format that imposed the least pressure on product selection.
Re:Wrong decision (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Wrong decision (Score:3, Insightful)
There are lots of companies who make standard nuts, wires, screws, tires, gasolines, insulation, etc.
If the government were to define a few standard cell phone chargers, then multiple companies would compete and cell phone chargers would probably cost about $6. Since they don't, off brand chargers are $13 and "brand" chargers from the cell store are $29.
Libertarian philosophy is fundamentally broken because it relies on a "magical" force to keep wealthy, powerful, individuals and companies in check and fails epically with regard to the iron law of oligarchy.
The only way libertarian philosophy can work is by having harsh taxes on anyone who passes a certain point of wealth and power such that we have many many "rich" people and no "super rich" people.
Since corporations are effectively immortal, psychopathic, wealthy and powerful people, we need a strong government to keep them in check lest they due things like dump toxins, allow us to be raped, take our property, fine us several lifetimes worth of income for downloading a couple dozen songs, etc.
Re:Wrong decision (Score:3, Insightful)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0nERTFo-Sk [youtube.com] i highly recommend that video explaining in a fun way what free market is and what is not.
there is no free market in existence for a century. What we have now globally is keynesianism which argues that government regulations and spending (central planning in disguise) is good for economy and politicians love that doctrine because they measure economic success with the GDP which can be inflated by government spending even with borrowed money ( gdp = consumption + invenstment + government + net exports).
Laissez faire economy is a natural state of things (think ecosystem unharmed by a man). There are natural tensions between the players of the ecosystem, supply and demand play decisive role in defining the equilibrium.
Now add government and central bank to the equation modifying natural balance. GDP growth too low and bars of citizen support on TV don't look good? Set low interest rate and observe the credit boom and consumption shooting through the roof. Ecosystem example? Think dropping tons of meat from helicopter into the ecosystem because you think that the predators need help.
This causes problem - natural interest rate is decided by the compromise between amount of loanable savings and demand for loans, but when government bodies set interest rate too low, saving doesn't pay back, borrowing money and gambling with it does. For a short period of time economy set to such overdrive produces nice GDP numbers and people feel warm and fuzzy inside but the disaster is around the corner. All that accumulated debt doesn't have backup in real savings which means that the whole economy is stimulated by lots of hot air and nothing more and becomes very fragile. Add government guarantees to the mix to make things worse (if government guarantees something, it's a safe bet, right? be it mortgages, bank deposits). In the ecosystem example dropping a lot of meat will make population of predators very healthy and big, so they'll kill most of the grass eaters, just like we have debtors more numerous than creditors. As you can see this is lose-lose situation, because there are only 2 ways to deal with it: feeding animals for eternity or letting predators to starve to reduce numbers to their natural levels.
Recessions are simply corrections freeing the energy of unnatural tensions created by the artificial stimulation and they are in fact healthy. We lived on credit card money and now we pay the price. It was nice while it lasted but now it's time to pay the debts and underconsume.
Current recession? There was a dotcom bubble which burst. Politicians didn't like the negative gdp growth of the recession that started, so they reduced IR and started guaranteeing mortgages. This led to a decade long real estate boom based on a false premise that houses gaining 10-20% every year is somehow backed up by the real wealth and legitimate growth. When subprime mortgages started to default it started the chain reaction.
Re:another step in the right direction (Score:3, Insightful)
One word dude....Excel. Calc is crap compared to Excel and why I don't even bring up OO.o to SMBs anymore. Sure if all you are doing is cooking up a basic doc or balancing your checkbook? I would have NO problem recommending OO.o. But I've seen the kind of things these Excel jockeys are cooking up and Calc just don't cut it. Now since I'm not an Excel jockey and am not up on their lingo, maybe one of them can chime in and give some examples of why hardcore Excel users don't care for Calc?
Oh and don't hand Impress to someone who does a lot of Powerpoints unless you want to hear them scream. Apparently it don't cut the mustard either. From what I've seen the lion's share of work goes strictly into Writer and the others are allowed to fall way behind. Kind of a bummer since Writer is the one they usually don't mind, it is Calc and Impress that are deal killers.
Re:another step in the right direction (Score:1, Insightful)
Yeah, and just because Office 2007 is compliant only with ODF 1.1 doesn't mean it is because 1.2 is only in draft.
The point of ensuring Office 2007 is not compatible with the draft ODF 1.2 is to make sure that it breaks compatibility with the other ODF compliant applications out there which are.
Re:another step in the right direction (Score:4, Insightful)
How exactly is this a troll? Is there ANYONE here that actually think Calc and Impress measure up to Excel and Powerpoint? Notice nobody had the balls to rebuff me, because you know it is the truth. Don't blame the messenger, blame Open Office, who are spending all their time on Writer and not doing jack shit for either Calc or Impress.
Lets be honest here folks- You could replace Word with Google docs and most "Sally Secretary" types wouldn't care, that is why Open Office wasting all their limited resources on Writer which is already good enough is stupid. from SMBs to the megacorps Excel, Powerpoint, and yes Access rule. You have to not only be as good as, you have to be better. And Calc and Impress are NOWHERE near even good enough yet, much less better. I haven't got to play with Base much, but it seems pretty capable.
But Excel is THE killer app, and if the FLOSSIes want to make inroads with OO.o they had better fix Calc but quick.Don't blame the messenger if your solution can't cut the mustard. I thought the whole point of FLOSS is the community pulling together to make things better? I give out OO.o to all my home customers, but SMBs? Enterprise users? They need a tool that is equal to Excel, and Open office just doesn't have one. Sorry but it is the truth whether you like it or not.