OpenLife

This is no brainer! Please sign the petition at

http://www.openparliament.eu/

Citizens and stakeholder groups should not have to use the software of a single company in order to communicate with their elected officials or participate in the legislative process.

All companies should be given the chance to compete freely for contracts to supply ICT services to the European Parliament.

I am a citizen of the EU, and I want the European Parliament to adopt the use of open standards and to promote interoperability in the ICT sector.

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openparliament

A letter to the Microsoft CEO with fait and reasonable request from the OpenDoc Society:

Microsoft Corp
attn. Mr. Steve Ballmer
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052-7329
USA

Date: 22/01/2008
Telephone: +31 20 888 4251
E-mail: michiel@opendocsociety.org

Amsterdam, January 22nd 2008

Dear mr. Ballmer,

on behalf of OpenDoc Society I want to request the following:

we would like to have the possibility to enable the users of the
Windows platforms to work with the Open Document Format (ISO
26300:2006, or ODF for short). We think there is a significant amount
of Windows users that would be helped with this technology.

What is the price your company would charge us for pushing a mechanism
to your users through the AutoUpdate-facility of Windows and/or
Microsoft Office that should activate at the first encounter of a user
with an ODF file? Your operating system Windows should then prompt the
user with some information about the available software that works with
ODF, and how to install that software that would enable him or her to
make use of ODF. Preferably we would like the user to have as little
work as possible during the whole process.

Can you tell us what the different options are in this respect, and
what these different options would cost? Potentially, we would be
interested in some other file formats currently not available under a
vanilla Windows installation too - such as SVG, RDF and SMIL. Are there
other options available to us to have third party applications
installed in Windows when a user encounters them?

As you will understand, we are eager to start using this post-factory
file extension facility as soon as possible. Would it be possible for
you to respond by February 14th 2008?

Kind regards,

Michiel Leenaars
Board of OpenDoc Society

For correspondence please use:

OpenDoc Society Intnl. secretariat
Wibautstraat 150
1091 GR Amsterdam
The Netherlands
Phone: +31 20 888 4251
Fax: +31 84 712 2055

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odf, opendocsociety

It seems that some people has seen through the ill-disguised attempt by the Danish government to secure Microsoft dominance in the Danish public sector:

Denmark Pretends MSOOXML Already an “Open Standard” and Mandates a Trial of ODF/MSOOXML: “Denmark has announced that open standards are going to be a requirement going forward there, starting in January, which is being hailed as a great step forward for openness. However, if you look closely, you will see that it is pretending that MSOOXML has already been approved as an open standard, equivalent to ODF. ODF is already an ISO approved standard. MSOOXML is not. It was specifically disapproved, and the next meeting will be in February, which is after the January starting date in Denmark. In short, Denmark simply doesn’t care about ISO approval.

Denmark ranks the two as the same, and mandates a trial of both. I wonder what the outcome of that trial will be? Why even bother to pretend?”

(Via GrokLaw.)

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ooxml, odf

Interesting news from the Netherlands:

Proposed legislation that would mandate the use of the Open Document Format (ODF) across the entire Dutch government has infuriated Microsoft. A group promoting open standards sees no threat, however, and has invited Microsoft to join its ranks.

On Wednesday the Dutch parliament will discuss a plan to mandate use of the Open Document Format (ODF) at government agencies. The proposal is part of a wider plan to increase the sustainability of information and innovation, while lowering costs through the reuse of data.

See Dutch government threatens to sideline Microsoft

If the Dutch government finds it reasonable to opt for one open standard - ODF - with a “comply or explain” provision why did the Danish government have to chose a double standards - ODF and OOXML - solution thus effectively securing that a large part of government will have to go for the OOXML Windows compatible standard?

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What Microsoft does not seem to be able to manage (if not for technical reasons then for political), Apple of course is able to: The new OS X 10.5 (Leopard) due to be released end of October 2007 supports ODF. Check out Leopard’s feature list.

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odf, leopard